I am nervous about the list because it has been so stable for months now. I know that my kid has been focusing so much on the present that he doesn’t have time to think about the future, but now that school is out and he’s starting to draft his essay I had hopes that he would revisit the list and really think about what he wants in life and whether each college on the list could fill those wants. But in the end it’s his life and his process. He hasn’t had much time to decompress from the school year still. I have to keep reminding myself to back off and let him take ownership.
The list is never done… until the final application due dates in January 2019.
Then you guys will second guess the final list again, until April. Then when the results come back, you will freak out. Then you will pick some place to deposit. Then you’ll freak out about making the right choice. Then you’ll worry all summer long. Then around the holidays if the kid survives the 1st semester you’ll wonder what all the worry was about in the first place.
We literally have no list, just some places he sort of likes at the moment. Just going to try to let him figure it out on his own for awhile. Some schools may be added, some may fall right off the radar. That’s fine. I’d like him to do a bit of research on his own this summer, but he hasn’t shown much interest in doing that previously.
Me, looking at the spreadsheet list:
“HAVE WE CONSIDERED EVERY SCHOOL FROM BOSTON TO PITTSBURGH TO DC THAT HAS AN ENGLISH PROGRAM, MARCHING/PEP BAND, ROTC, AND MERIT SCHOLARSHIPS!!! HAVE WE??? MAYBE WE HAVEN’T. THERE MIGHT BE ONE WE’VE MISSED. AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!”
In my defense, he added the ROTC thing a short time ago. Which blew the original list up. A little panic and fomo is to be expected. Right? RIGHT?!?!? 
Yep. I think now that the senior class of 2018 is gone, our kids are up to bat and just like when they were little kids playing Little League, that’s a bit nerve wracking. You’re reasonably confident that they have a good chance of getting a hit or otherwise having a respectable at-bat, but you’re also worried. You watch them put on that hitter’s helmet and grab their bat, and up to the plate they go. Gulp. What if they strike out in humiliating fashion? What if they get hit by the ball??
It’s the “this is really happening now” vibe that’s going to take some getting used to for all of us.
I don’t feel fantastic about D19’s list right now. For one thing, I’m tired of constantly having to educate people about her choices, and meeting with blank stares of non-recognition. I’m used to this and yet it’s also just lame and annoying right now. Macalester College? (blank stare) Scripps College? (clueless gaze) etc etc. I’m having to re-educate my mil who seems to redeem herself and then slip back into her 1990s knowledge. I’ve been working on her for over a year. She’ll seem to be on board, and then…“but maybe it’s not good to pass up the University of California…” Seriously? So many things wrong with this statement…admission is very selective at those campuses, they’re not a good match for D, merit aid could make the cost LESS elsewhere than at those campuses, they’re not a good match for D, they’re not a good match for D, my late parents’ wishes ought to count for something too, they’re not a good match for D, etc.
I’m comforted by thinking that the summer is going to be informative and D19 will make a lot of progress in settling on her priorities. We’ll know if Dreamy Reach is indeed the Dreamy Reach, we’ll know if proximity to home is truly important. We’ll also know how her AP scores and second SAT look. I personally think the “love the school that loves you” criterion is important, so we’ll see how her list schools play their cards over the next few months. Do they woo her or ignore her?
And most importantly, will she be utterly charmed by the lightning bugs in the Midwest? 
D19’s GC called her in last week to say her schedule “doesn’t work”.
After some juggling, they found a science that fits (AP Physics1) and she can take AP Spanish and AP Gov. But, she can’t take both AP Lit and AP Calc. The Calc class is a combo of pre-Calc and AB Calc.
D had to decide on the spot, and she picked Lit. The alternative was regular English. (The theater class she originally wanted doesn’t fit due to required Econ.) She likes math, and does well in it, but she figured she’ll get a whole year of pre-Calc as a senior and be really ready to take Calc in college. (Another factor in D’s choice was low Calc teacher quality at her HS.)
GC is swamped and cannot return phone calls. I asked via email whether she will assert that D19 took “the most rigorous course load available”. GC did not answer directly, but said she will include a note in her letter to colleges saying that Calc didn’t fit.
I am concerned–maybe overly, but I don’t know. I read that out of Wesleyan’s entering class, 90% had Calculus in high school, and then I couldn’t sleep. Wesleyan isn’t her favorite, but she likes similar LAC’s that fall between 10-30 in the US News rankings.
I haven’t transmitted any of this worry to D19. She is happy with her schedule now–summer reading for Lit is Handmaid’s Tale and Beowulf–she’s psyched.
What do you all think, will not having Calc mean her app doesn’t stay on the table?
@SDCounty3Mom I hear you on the rituals! I have taken my son to school everyday since preschool!!! It has always been our time to download and talk or just let him sleep. I can’t believe this time is coming to an end soon.
@SDCounty3Mom For whatever it’s worth, I’ve really not worried about educating others about D19’s list. I mean, I’ve generally spoken publicly more in vague generalities (“mostly small liberal arts colleges”) or summaries from a campus visit, and generally folks have been fine with that. (Some are familiar with the schools, and others draw smiling nods of “I have never heard of the place you are talking about.”)
It’s definitely more difficult, I would imagine, with family relations, and that’s something I really haven’t had to deal with for a variety of reasons. You have my sympathies.
If it matters, this random stranger on the internet thinks Macalester and Scripps are excellent colleges!
@3SailAway I have to believe that colleges are going to look at the whole person and not just that one class. A big issue in our county is the pushing of kids to keep taking higher and higher math classes in high school. Our secondary math coordinator (I teach 8th grade math) has been telling us at county wide math meetings that the top 50 colleges that she meets with are all telling coordinators to slow the HS kids down! They don’t want them taking calculus in high school because its a whole different ballgame in college. They said they prefer kids to take college Calc so that they know they are learning it properly. However, it’s that catch 22 because right now all of us parents want to ensure that our kids are competitive for college admissions and they are being compared to kids from all over so unless a global change happened it’s going to take a long time for the perception of rigor to change. I remember how much we stressed about son not taking a Physics in HS until we talked to several college AO’s and they said not to worry his two years of IB HL Biology was perfectly fine.
@3SailAway My D19 is also not taking calculus in high school. She went from the advanced track to her own weird track that there is literally no one else on in her class of over 500. She dropped from Honors Pre-Calculus to regular Pre-Calculus at the beginning of the year after it became clear that 3 AP classes, the top choir, two major volunteer commitments, and honors math were going to make her explode. So we eased on the brakes and she enrolled in the regular course instead. That class was full of seniors – she was the only junior. And we’ve been advised not to have her take AB Calc next year because supposedly the preparation is insufficient, although I’m not convinced myself that she couldn’t make up any gaps over the summer independently. So I too worry about this. She’s slated to take AP Statistics instead. She has no interest in a STEM career and is heading for education or religious studies so I think this will be ok, but it’s not ideal. If you want to think outside the box a bit, you could consider having your D do an independent study approach, taking pre-calculus this summer and then AB as a senior. BYU has well-regarded high school courses online for a reasonable price: https://is.byu.edu/about/advanced-programs But that would be time-consuming for your D and she’d have to really be on board to make it work. I’d consider having my D try this but she’s already got such a full calendar for the summer and math just kind of deflates her, so we’re waving the white flag in her case.
I agree with @Kona2012 that you’ve got to believe that holistic admissions offices look at a body of work and don’t table any application based on one lone criterion.
@BorgityBorg Thank you! (high five). It bothers me more at some times than others. Only one of D’s favorites is really a “name” school that would get wide recognition. And yep…Mac and Scripps are very high on her list.
@SDCounty3Mom (high five back – didn’t want to leave you hanging out there awkwardly)
D19 had a couple more familiar names on her list initially – not because they were more well-known but because that’s what she thought she wanted. She’s backed off on those and now, with the exception of the state school safety, is fully committed to the Macalester-level of outside familiarity (and Macalester specifically as part of her list).
8787. Could it be the top colleges want their math teachers to keep their jobs?
Well, there’s also the fact that secondary-level math pedagogy…has issues. We’ll just leave it there.
@Nicki20 I don’t think so and I agree with @dfbdfb
being a secondary math teacher/special educator for 18 years it is sometimes amazing the things I see. Plus think about our own kids and the different teachers they have encountered over the years, even in their high level classes. And there is this push to teach Alg 1 in 8th grade and everyone wants their kid in “advanced” classes but sometimes regular math8 is perfectly fine, especially since we are teaching the building blocks of future math. There is too much pressure too early!
Hmm, reading all the gloomy new re the Spanish SAT2, I’m a bit dubious about S getting anything over 500. He was focused on the Math 2 and Bio, but did the Spanish as a 3rd…just for the heck of it. He’d studied for AP Spanish, which he said was very hard and said SAT2 was even harder.
18 parent here. My son applied for 4 scholarships and won one (local). They were all fraternal and/or religious.
Small amounts, but also smaller applicant pool.
A little progress today. I asked S yesterday if we could have a “college meeting” today and we set a time when he got home from work. The meetings do not involve him staring at his phone or ipad and have been the only way we can get anything productive accomplished. So, we pulled the trigger on one more attempt with the ACT and he’s signed up for the July test. We’ll see if any studying actually takes place this time. The college list is kind of weird at this point and is influenced by S not wanting to do any more visits (he’s really only done 3 official visits and one of those was for my D). I"m sure the list will continue to evolve, but it’s kind of difficult because he really doesn’t like his safety and the majority of schools on his list are reaches. Oh well.
Oh! But S was invited to join a team and travel to Ohio for a water polo tournament in a few weeks, and he actually didn’t turn it down! Baby steps.
Maybe we can hit Vanderbilt on the way…
Kiddo is beyond burned out lately, I’m glad school is finally done for the summer. He got a list of books for summer reading and was told to pick 2, so he’s reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Slaughterhouse Five. Last night was our No TV night. He picked up each book, read a page, and then put them down and said he just couldn’t do it. Finally he picked up some comic books and read his way out of his funk.
Ah, well, he has time. Rehearsals kick into high gear week after next, but until then he can allocate his time however he sees fit. Should be nice.
@ninakatarina - My D loved The Road! It’s funny, I was just commenting yesterday that this is the first summer I haven’t been going to the library to retrieve stacks of books that my D requested. She read non-stop all through growing up and usually had multiple books going at a time. However, I think this first year of college did a number on her reading passion (first semester she had 4 classes and 25 books!). Her down time now includes, Netflix, puzzles and making a scrapbook with photos and memories of freshman year.
Oh man my D completed her community service project yesterday and it was SO fulfilling and wonderful. D is this truly soft-spoken soul who really does not have a lot of friends her age, but boy, do children ever adore her. She raised money to buy summer sendoff surprises for refugee children who she’s been tutoring all year. Our city is a resettlement hub for refugees from around the world. She first wanted to do a huge amazing toy drive and had to work with the organization’s leadership to scale down her vision into something workable, but she kept at it, raised almost $1500, and her giveaway was yesterday. I went along to help the kids pick out their items and to try to take some photos, and it was truly a highlight of my year. I can see D in the future and she really is going to be in classrooms, in nonprofit situations, out doing long-term volunteer work. She’s not going to get rich but she’s going to touch lives – and the cool thing is, she’s not yet 17 years old and she’s already out there touching lives. (mom tears!) As we arrived yesterday with the first boxes a little girl ran up to her, curious about the boxes, and hugged her and asked if she could be her tutor that day, looking up at her with such sweet affection. D is on a different wavelength than her public suburban high school peers, but this kid sure is alright. Makes me misty right now just thinking about it…
So, a feel-good story for the day! And it made me think, you know what, college is college. She’ll be fine wherever she goes. She’s got heart and empathy and love and is action-oriented, and that’s enough right there. It gave me, at least for now, the perspective I had let lag for a while.
Enjoy your sweet teens! Love them and be proud.
@Kona2012, thanks for your reply! D19 dropped algebra in 8th grade because she missed over 60 days of school due to severe migraines. She had an A when she dropped, but we wanted to reduce all the pressure on her and let her focus on getting better. We didn’t know for sure that she would get better, but thank goodness, she slowly did. She continued in accelerated/honors/AP for other subjects, but we figured it was fine for her to be in regular math. DH, who minored in math and loves it, thought it she would enjoy it more if we didn’t try to push/rush it in summer school.
@SDCounty3Mom, thank you also! It sounds like your D marches to the beat of her own drummer. Good for her. I will try to have faith that holistic really means holistic, and not just perfect in every way!