Frankly, I wish our GC had anything to say. @cinn124 Your school may be smaller than ours, but my gut feeling is that any of the students at our school who ended up outside of the state had parent “curators”.
@peachActuary73 smh. D’s graduating class only has about 100 kids. The GCs in her school really push in state. It took my kid a while to convince her to stop putting NY schools on her list.
@JenJenJenJen I would chose the major that she is most interested in , but make sure that her other interests are options that she could transfer into.
When it comes to the major question on the common app, can we change it for different schools? i had no idea that S19 would have to answer a question about major. If he’s super honest, it would be undecided. If that’s not a good answer for some reason, then he has a few majors he’s thinking about and I guess he would write one of those. I bet there’s a way to be strategic about this though. Like @JenJenJenJen, I’d love any advice on this front.
In the common app each school asks it’s own set of questions, and they might ask for a major and then 2nd fave and then 3rd fave
If you’ve set up a Common App account already you can add the schools you are thinking of applying to, and then see the questions they asked last year.
Thx @RightCoaster I’ll take a look. I set up a dummy account with my name.
Like @RightCoaster said, it seems like D16 answered a question either on the common app or a supplement that asked for her top three academic majors and then asked her to rank on a scale from 1-5 how certain she was about each choice.
You can set up an account in your kid’s name now and poke around. We set one up and son19 and I sat down and populated some of the generic type of info and added a few schools to the My Colleges tab. You can see the questions from last year, and I think you can even see their essays from last year 2018 too.
We’ll probably have our son start working on the activities section soon. That is an important section because your kid can only tell admissions people only so much about the importance of their ECs and what they accomplished.
I just looked at all of the common app questions for S19’s schools. Most wanted top 3 “academic interests”. The two big universities that I checked (UNC and Wisconsin) gave only one spot and wanted “top major choice”.
With Common Application, you can change answers for each school and send them. There are common questions and school-specific questions. Thus in principle, you can send different essays to different schools if you would like. This was not the case a few years ago.
We had an interesting addition to sons college list this past weekend. Initially our IEC had recommended College of Wooster to my son because of his interest in undergrad research and neuroscience. We looked at website and did a little research. We discussed taking a trip to Ohio this summer to check our the school and the area to see if it was something that would appeal to our son. But then we started looking at small research oriented schools here on the east coast so we stopped talking about COW. Then last week I got an email from a COW admissions officer saying that our son had caught their attention and they were going to send him a link to a streamlined application in August and the various merit scholarships that were available. They encouraged us to come for a visit, etc… I mentioned it to my son who then said oh I got two emails from them also and he showed me their emails. So now my husband is in on the conversation and says I think you need to look around their website and decided if you are interested. If so you should go visit. Which turns out he is, so now we are headed to COW middle of August.
But I’m also wondering if the email I received is for real. Is COW really interested in my son and what is a streamlined application? Or is it just a marketing scheme…
@Kona2012 Those emails are kind of generic, based on info they have gotten, maybe regarding your son’s test scores or by interests he has in terms of majors or types of schools. They also send notes like to kids from certain schools where they would like to generate more students, places where they know they have decent success with yield.
The schools start sending out these “special” application email around now, and they are OK to fill out, but many times it’s just as easy and convenient to apply using the Common App. They basically ask for the same info, it’s not really streamlined. It may " streamline" things for them, but it doesn’t seem to save a lot of hassle from what I saw with my son17’s school list.
To add to the SAT subject tests discussion — I am soooo frustrated with these tests and college admissions requirements.
What is the difference between Optional and Recommended
William & Mary – Optional
UNC CH – Optional
Davidson – Optional
Tulane – Optional
Dickinson – Optional
Univ of Delaware – Optional
Duke – Recommended
Lafayette – Recommended
If Optional truly means optional and recommended means do them then I’m inclined to tell my son to take out Duke and Lafayette! LOL!!! That’s one way to scale down a list of colleges, right?!
And looking at tuition those are some of the highest
Duke - $73k (and a total reach)
Lafayette - $70k
Tulane - $71k
Dickinson - $69k
@Kona2012 I just checked S19’s email and he has that same email from COW so, unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a particularly personal invitation. He hasn’t shown any interest at all and I’m pretty sure the only info they may have on him is a PSAT score.
Optional is optional, unless you have super great scores - send those in!
Recommended, I’d take them, unless you think the scores are going to be really bad and not help the case.
I personally don’t think they matter much unless you score result is bad or an 800. A top score proves you know your stuff and can take a test, a medium score doesn’t really prove or disprove anything, and a bad score could be a red flag.
@RightCoaster ok so Optional means take or don’t take. If you take a get a good score submit but if you decide not to take then it won’t hurt your application?
And recommended really means you should take them, right?
@homerdog well that’s kind of sad in a way… having a child who is not recruited for a sport because Taekwondo doesn’t count as a recruited sport, it was nice to get an email from a school who claimed to be interested. That’s disappointing in a way… not going to tell me son and will still take him if he wants to see the school.
DS16 began receiving emails about this time his Jr year. They often offered application waivers and expedited applications with early notification status . There’s no harm in filling it out just to see what is offered.
@Kona2012 The “special applications” emails from some schools are often just fishing expeditions (definitely the case for COW, Tulane, Renesselar for instance), that’s not always the case, but more often than not it is the school just trying to capture applicants. COW will, however, roll out the red carpet if you choose to visit and in fact has one of the best admitted student visitation programs around. My 2016er received the COW interested email, applied, was accepted with a very nice merit package and visited. Great school, she ultimately decided it wasnt the place for her.
As for using the “special applications”. My advice, after to two kiddos (2016 & 2018), don’t bother. Often GCs and HS have trouble matching up their pieces of the app (rec letters, transcripts, school reports) and it can create a logistical nightmare, particularly if there is a Common App version available.
Also, as much as your seniors are eager and anxious to get their applications in and completed early, be aware (from personal experience) that submitting too early can create a quagmire that will require a lot of follow up. Honestly aiming for late September to mid-October will get most applications in well ahead of the rush. And trust me there are schools on your kid’s list today will not be there on Aug 1, Sept 30 and December 1. Consider submitting one application very early, particularly one with a rolling admissions policy that your kiddo it actually interesting in attending, the level of confidence and stress relief of being admitted “somewhere” is invaluable!