Parents of the HS Class of 2019 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
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@JenJenJenJen Wow - how scary for you and your D - so glad she is ok!

D and I had our meeting with the outside college counselor yesterday. We are planning on using her for help on the resume and activities/honors sections of the application. Yesterday was more of a getting to know you meeting but I will let you know if she has an great advice after our next meeting.

D doesn’t have a ton of ECs to start with, During the meeting she was getting annoyed with me for listing too many things when the advisor asked about EDs. I started with the bigger things (volunteering at a pre school) then moved on to smaller things (Vacation Bible School volunteer 3 summers, babysitting) then moved on to hobbies that might be able to be listed somehow (photography, SCUBA, music…) She kept saying, “Mom - they don’t care about that!” It is hard to get her to understand that some of these things may not be important to put on the final resume, but we are paying this lady to help us sort out what is and is not important so we need to tell her everything. For example I mentioned the babysitting and D thought that was pointless to mention but of course the advisor said that should definitely be on there! D hates to talk about herself so this is going to be hard and the essay will be even harder!

Speaking of the essay, @homerdog I am so jealous your S is done with the main essay! I know he has a lot more to work on with his list of schools but it must make him feel good to have the big one done. I am hoping to get D working on the essay in the next week or two.

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@eh1234 I wouldn’t sell the music EC’s short at all. Most kids don’t stick with music all 4 years, or maybe even anything for all 4 years. It shows consistency, and commitment as he has both in school and outside school related activities and those are very different. Perhaps your school is unusual but I really don’t think most band/orchestra kids have 20 additional things to list. Or for that matter that most kids period have 20 things to list. Most struggle to fit in 10.

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Way to go, @homerdog’s son! My D is at a similar point to @elena13’s S. She read “Write Your Way In” by Rachel Toor and she said it was a fun read and helpful, but she hasn’t actually written anything yet.

I’m hoping she’ll have an experience any day now that will spark something for her to get started. I should probably find a non-nagging way to remind her to be thinking about it . . .

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@zozoty I made him the template.

I tend to disagree with many here on this section, though agree that it can depend on the school. This is a chance to paint a picture of the student and a great exercise in short action oriented statements. I believe (and could well be wrong) that this section helped my B+ S17. We spent a lot of time, far too much in his opinion, on this section but I do think words matter and 100 characters are not very many to work with.

Both V1 and V2 describe the same activity, I believe the V2’s are stronger. Are there awards? No. Are they worth listing? I think so.

Activity Type: Theater/Drama (Theater Tech Stuff)

V1.

Technical Assistant, Drama Program, XX HS
Sound and light board operations, costume creation, set movement and construction for various shows.

V2.
Technical Assistant, School Drama Productions
Manage sound/light board operations. Perform set movement & build, costume creation. 12+
productions, elementary to high school level.

Activity Type: Music Instrumental (Band Stuff)

V1.
Trombonist: Jazz, Classical, Marching Band, XXHS
Active member in all performing bands at school with a constant upward movement in all bands.

V2.
Trombonist, School Bands and Community Ensembles
Perform in 4 school bands annually, including jazz, classical, marching, pep. Band Council Member. Community ensembles, alternative & big band.

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@3SailAway - There were lots of sarcastic comments and jokes about Rachel Toor’s book at our house. I thought it was good and I would leave it in the bathroom for S to read one section at a time. He’s a huge smart a$$ anyway, but he had fun yelling out negative comments about the book and trying to irritate me. This will sure be an interesting year.

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My biggest problem with people asking about D’s college search is that I get some not so subtle negative reactions. Her list is made up almost entirely of “safeties” because, 1) those are the schools she has fallen in love with and 2) Those are the schools that are going to give her money to attend. I get a lot of “Oh, doesn’t she want to reach higher.” kind of comments and often just that disapproving silence. Then people assume that we don’t know what we are doing and offer lists of “better” schools that they think would be appropriate for her and the scholarships that they are SURE she is going to win. Um…no. I am thoroughly enjoying the college search with D, but I wish everyone else would shut the heck up.

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@eandesmom Thanks for providing those examples. My older D didn’t even use the Common App so I still haven’t even looked at the format (waiting for S19 to open his account when he gets back from a week at Oberlin this weekend).

I may have exaggerated a little, but most of my son’s band and orchestra friends somehow find time for one or more sports, lots of interesting summer experiences, Eagle scout, internships, academic teams, student government, etc. Many will easily fill up 10 slots without having to make multiple slots for music. Ah well, I love low-energy kid. He can’t deal with being busy all the time unless he really loves what he is doing and he just doesn’t love that many things.

He did qualify for some auditioned district/regional/all state (alternate) orchestras so I guess he can list those separately even though the time commitment is minimal once you get in!

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lol, @elena13! D19 is my most conforming kid. D21 on the other hand, got marked down a grade for sarcasm in her historical paper on Emperor Nero. Hilarious, but did not follow the rubric. As you gain wisdom on how to manage the college process with a smart a$$, please keep sharing!

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@gallentjill OMG, I so agree with you! Especially annoying are those that hear that he’s planning to major in engineering and he’s narrowed it down to two schools (super-dream-reach and safety with merit)… and then say, “Oh, have you thought about Virginia Tech?”
eyeroll Nooo, our STEM Academy student who wants to major in engineering NEVER KNEW ABOUT our state’s Tech school! Used to try to explain that he’d considered it but it fell off the list due to location and lack of merit aid … now we just say, “too many cows.” (Most of those folks have no idea how much tuition has skyrocketed, and assume in-state is automatically cheaper… not so in our case!)

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^^
Too many cows and too many tress are very legitimate reasons to not consider certain schools. I’ve seen this firsthand.

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My concern is DS19 has quite a few ECs that he is very invested and active in, has held leadership positions in and has participated in since he was a freshman . After tomorrow, he should add Eagle Scout to that list. He also volunteers in the community at a military veterans museum. He truly does this because of his interests , not to pad a resume.

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Speaking of too many cows in the area, I’m very interested to find out what S19 thinks of Oberlin’s campus. We just dumped him off at his (grim but spacious) dorm room for the week and haven’t heard much from him since.

We wandered around the town and campus a couple of times in the 18 hours we spent there. Very charming, but I can’t imagine spending four days there, much less four years unless it’s very convenient to get to surrounding cities. Who knows, he might love it and come home wanting to look at small schools.

@carolinamom2boys Congrats to him for finishing the Eagle Scout process! I know it’s a lot of hard work. One of my son’s friends did most of the work on his project sophomore year and I just found out that he’s still jumping through various hoops trying to finish it.

I’m not sure how I managed to raise a child who only likes bass, guitar, music in general, cats, YouTube and Netflix, but here we are.

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Thanks @eh1234

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Coming out of lurking as we embark on this process. My D19 has high expectations with many reach schools and it’s comforting to see that others struggle with the same. However, I’ve probably pushed the envelope too much and need to back off. I appreciate everyone’s candor and advice as we go through this craziness!

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Apps opening: Some state schools (e.g., Iowa State) opened 1 July. Bradley is an interesting one, it turns out: Their own application opens 1 July, but you can also apply via the Common App starting 1 August, and they express no preference for either. (If you apply early using their application, though, there’s no fee.)

Jostling in the list: She’s down to 11, from 12 a couple weeks ago. She still intends to apply to St Mary’s, but worries it’s too small—but she also worries that the big state schools on her list are too big. She’s therefore started paying more attention to Bradley—their marketing slogan of “Mid-Sized. Big Difference” appears to have been developed specifically for her, I’m starting to think.

Weirdnesses in acceptances: I’ve posted before that my daughter had something come up in her application to Iowa State—pretty much a purely stats-entry school—that required a human to look at it (my guess: she’s taken a lot of courses during the last three years, more than might be expected on an honest application). So she applied one day in June, and the next day got a notice of the need for human review, and was told it would take two to four weeks. Well, she logged into their portal today to find out whether there was a note explaining it or anything—it’s been more than two weeks, after all—and found out that she’d been accepted the next day, not weeks later. She never got an email telling her that, though (and nothing came in the mail before we went off on holiday, though I’d’ve expected it could have arrived from Iowa in that time). So that was strange.

Bullet points in the Common App: @RightCoaster, there is a workaround for the Common App’s lack of bulleting: use the Unicode bullet character (which is •). If you have a Mac, it’s easy—at least using the ABC-Extended keyboard (not sure it works with the default keyboard, but I think it does), Alt-8 gives you the character right away; on other systems you could always just copy and paste it.

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Is that our first official acceptance?

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@ninakatarina I believe someone else’s child was also admitted to Iowa.

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I never thought I’d be in tears over freaking standardized test scores. S19 took the SAT for the first time in June. He needed to finish out the year of math. He is still sleeping but scores came in this morning and I checked. His score is almost 100 points lower than his PSAT. He will not qualify for some of the schools on his list, even with his unweighted 3.9.

Time to rally. Gotta put on my encouraging parent pants. He can retest the SAT. He can try the ACT. Or, he can regroup and go for test optional schools. Can only move forward at this point…

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@InfiniteWaves sorry for the news you (your son) received today but it’s only his first sitting. It is such a stressful process. Your son can do some test practice/prep this summer and retake the SAT or prep for the ACT. My son did not do as well as he hoped on his first try and improved quite a bit on his second sitting.

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My S also did not do well on the June SAT. Down 70 points from his previous score. Both sections dropped. Oh well. At least he has a decent score (for him, not by CC standards) so it is what it is.