Parents of the HS Class of 2019 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
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Now that we have official scores (and are, per S17 officially one and done lol), I spent some time crunching through S’s list to see if the 33 made a difference in what we should be looking at given the lopsidedness. He opened it up to some additional schools so we took a fresh look at all of it.

With S17, I had a spreadsheet that ultimately ranked things and came up with a “fit” factor number that then allowed me to rank the colleges. I have to say, in S17’s case, it was spot on and was a very useful tool for both of us. I fleshed out S19’s today.

Fit factors for this kid are: Urban or Cool College town, Direct admit to major (CS), High % of small class sizes, Decent sized CS faculty, no FL required, no Physics preferred, Ability to play music (but preferable jazz), Co-Op.

Mine were: Cost, Ease to get into, Co-Op, Small (er) total school size but not too small, ease to get to from Seattle, and nearby family.

And then of course his chances of getting in. The results were interesting some “top” contenders really didn’t add up at the end of the day and some new ones did better than expected. 18 on the list after some were cut for clearly failing in a key fit area. Once fit factor was said and done, here is how it played out. It is fun for me to see how this translates as the process goes on! A few of the larger schools did much better than I expected (were off, but were re-looked at) and there is one new add I’ve not even broached with S17 yet (Drexel) but I know he will be open to it.

  1. Drexel
  2. Seattle University
  3. Colorado State
  4. Rochester Institute of Technology
  5. University of Washington-Bothell*
  6. Santa Clara University
  7. Western Washington University
  8. Northern Arizona University
  9. Portland State
  10. University of Washington-Seattle Campus
  11. University of Portland
  12. Worcester Polytechnic Institute
  13. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
  14. University of Maryland Baltimore County
  15. Macalester
  16. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  17. Oregon State
  18. Virginia Tech
  • Could (would likely) live at home

Looking at the top 10, it breaks out like this

Admissions: Safety 6, Match 2, Reach 3
$$: Safety 6, Match 3, Reach 2

4 of them are both admissions and financial safeties. SO much better than S17 who had ONE!

He could care less about prestige and is a bit anti prestige, though he loves Macalester and I don’t think he “gets” their prestige factor lol. But at the end of the day the numbers there does not make it add up to the the dream school he thinks it is (and I did too)

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Well son19 did it, he is now an official State Champion in one of his events in track. He set numerous school records and is their 1st state champ in a long long time. Totally unexpected! Son is so happy right now. I think he now qualifies for Nationals which is insane. His mom and I are still in disbelief. Pretty crazy!

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@RightCoaster WOW!!! Congratulations, that is so exciting! I can’t even imagine, that’s huge!!!

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@eandesmom your post is helping me organize S19’s list. Have 4 financial & academic safeties is awesome!

@RightCoaster congratulations to S19! What a great accomplishment!

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@eandesmom I love your process! And how awesome that you have six safeties in your top ten. Crazy!!

Ours is so much more boring. I guess we have the whole safety/match/reach thing. And costs will only be determined at the end when we see possible merit. Other than that, all of the schools on S19’s list fit his other criteria (small classes, travel reasonable from home, housing for all/most years, nice athletic facilities, lots of study abroad options, strong placement center). The biggest variable is the “feel” of the school and that can’t really be put into a spreadsheet.

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@homerdog, the percentage of William and Mary students living on campus feels quite high – US News says 73%. Students are guaranteed on campus housing for three years, but could get bumped sophomore or junior year. If you do get bumped and you hang in there until August rather than find off campus options, the college will eventually find a place for you, but sounds stressful for D who likes everything planned out ahead.

I would say that Greek life at W&M is different from how it feels at a “party school”. It’s a studious place, and a bit geeky–in a good way :wink: I think under 30% of students are Greek. If you have more questions, a recent grad is a helpful cc poster: @shawnspencer

@carolinamom2boys, I would say that W&M has an enthusiastic, intellectual student body, but my impression is laid-back, not competitive . . . Or maybe you meant that rush for the Greek system is competitive. Hope your goddaughter is happy there.

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@homerdog you can get a good feel for possible merit at many schools. I factor in known/automatic merit that is stats based and in some cases will use the schools NPC. However some NPC’s don’t include merit and others don’t even ask for gpa or test scores yes toss number out so I don’t trust those at all.

I have been pretty unhappy with his list to be honest and this process made me feel a ton better about what is on there, as well as what isn’t. It did not play out the way I would have guessed and that makes it interesting!

Quite shocked how well CSU did and how poorly Mac did.

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@eandesmom Was Macalester’s downfall the CS department? I keep hearing that LACs can’t always do a good job for that major. With the 33, he may get some merit there!

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@homerdog Macalester is hurt by several factors

Cost

It requires not only the CSS profile but the NCP profile which will be a nightmare for us and they do not appear to allow for a waiver…

Size of the CS Department

Foreign Language requirement

Difficulty to get into

While the ACT score is nice, it’s still in their middle 50 and he does not have the GPA to go with it. If he did get in, I’d expect little to no merit and FA to match the PROFILE definition, which is 10k higher than our FAFSA EFC right now and likely to be a larger gap next year.

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@RightCoaster So exciting!! Congrats!! Do you think that means you’ll be definitely working the recruiting angle when it comes to college then?

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@Sailaway Thanks for the feedback. I’ll have to find out more about the housing. I’ll ask when we visit. I get the intellectual, intense thing. I think most of the schools on S19’s list would be considered a little intense. He expects to have some balance but also to work hard. We have a friend whose son is at W&M so I will ask them more. If S19 likes it, applies and is accepted then I think he will spend time with our friend’s son on campus.

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@3SailAway No, I was speaking about the college atmosphere itself . Her perception as a student there is it is not a collaborative , but a competitive environment . She is strong academically and a pretty driven young woman . We have an acquaintance whose family member was faculty there for several years and describes the environment as competitive as well. He tells stories of students ripping chapters out of textbooks in the library in order to get an upper hand . I have never attended there or had family attend there , this is purely based on someone else’s experiences . In terms of Greek life, my goddaughter’s pics on social media look like her sister’s pics from Greek life at a “party school” I guess everyone has their own perceptions to consider when making a choice.

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@dfbdfb and @RightCoaster, Congrats on your exciting news.
Just when you think parenting is a totally thankless and frustrating job, it’s amazing to sometimes have an experience that gives you hope again. My son has been a bit of a pain lately and acted like an ungrateful jerk on Monday when I had the nerve to waste part of his day off to take him to my grad school alma mater for a campus visit/tour. He went on a student council retreat this weekend and his phone doesn’t have cell service there. So I was surprised to get a call from son’s friend’s phone today. S said in one of their workshops they had to write a letter to the person who has had the greatest influence on them. He wanted to read his to me and it was very sweet. There were tears of course, and it was so nice to hear that he really sees things and knows what I do for him.

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Great news, @rightcoaster and @dfbdfb!

Anyone else’s kid receiving UChicago mailings with the right address but the name of a different kid? S19 is friends with the other kid, who attends his high school. Somehow, it makes the outreach seem…less personal. :wink:

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Congrats to your son @Rightcoaster! Very exciting!

So today, my son was the 13th best on his instrument in the state. Which I guess is sort of impressive but doesn’t get him into the orchestra in an 8 person section. I’m still proud of him - most of the kids who make it started playing seriously earlier and have been at that level since 9th grade while my kid wasn’t even in the top orchestra in his school in 9th grade. He’s on a good trajectory - I really hope someone will take him if he decides he wants to pursue music in college.

@eandesmom Colorado State’s limited gen. ed requirements were a big selling point for my D16

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@RightCoaster Yay! Track practice here starts Monday and DD’17 is a little sad that her track days are over.

DD’19 had individual district speech today. Drove over in freezing rain and back in snow, but she got a 1 in Solo Musical Theatre so on to State again.

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Congratulations @RightCoaster ! That is huge! <:-P <:-P

Congratulations @eh1234 ! =D>

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Thanks for the nice notes everyone!! We just went out for a victory meal and a Shamrock Shake, ha.

Congrats to the kids with good test results, awesome. @eh1234 that was a fine musical performance by your S, you should be proud of that. @bjscheel nice job on the States again!

@elena13 that was a nice story!!

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Thanks for the info on Manhattan @MAandMEmom . My S isn’t interested in engineering so it sounds like your issues shouldn’t matter for him.

We have backed off on pushing S. Not that we were pushing that hard anyway, but we can see the potential, and know he is smart, and so it is frustrating for us. Unfortunately, he is just not that motivated and we can’t make him be motivated. He has confirmed that he really does want to go to college, so we haven’t given up entirely, but we are now targeting schools with acceptance rates in the 70% range, where an 1100 SAT is in the middle 50%. Given his other two “wants” of urban and medium to large size, the list is now filled with Catholic schools. He says he is OK with that but I do worry that he will wake up one day next September and say no Catholic schools, and the list will go poof. Most interesting at the moment are Manhattan, St. John’s (Queens), St. Joseph’s (Philadelphia), and Duquesne (Pittsburgh).

Given the type of schools we are looking at we are also not pushing him to take more APs. We haven’t had course selection yet for next year, but I now think he won’t be taking any AP’s. These schools will give credit for AP courses but I don’t think they really expect applicants to have them. AP Gov seems to have taken away any desire he had to major in political science. He still likes the subject matter but they’ve had to write a lot of papers and he is just very tired of it. Writing is really just not his thing. He is now thinking about majoring in business. We are actually pretty pleased with that. No matter what path he takes after college, it will be helpful to have a knowledge of business.

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@me29034 If your S is interested in St. Joseph’s, he might want to consider Loyola U Maryland. Mr. InfiniteWaves and I are alums. It is in Baltimore City just up the street from Johns Hopkins and is known for its business school. It is a Jesuit school like St. Joe’s and the two are very similar. Loyola, Hopkins, Towson U, and Goucher share a free bus route that goes between the schools and into the city.

My S19 has been in Catholic school for the duration. After visiting St. Joe’s and Loyola, he decided that he wants to move on from the whole Catholic school thing. Can’t really blame him.