@mom2twogirls Same situation here. Rites of passage 
Both my husband and I still have all four of our wisdom teeth with no issues. Maybe we have big mouths 
. I’m hoping our kids have inherited this and won’t have to have them extracted!
@ninakatarina, my husband also over shares about the college list. I told him that it’s like baby names. With D19 (our first) we were naive and shared our baby name list. Mistake! We started from scratch in private. From then on, we were vague, sometimes gave out random decoy names if pressed, and kept the real name until the birth announcement. Much nicer that way 
@homerdog, sorry that your son was sick for the Bowdoin trip–he’s a trooper! Glad it went well and was a hit.
We have the same phenomenon where the most recently visited school is the favorite. How long does that effect last? Do we need a buffer time after the last visit to be able to do unbiased comparison?
@3SailAway Our dentist said our kids might end up keeping their wisdom teeth too. Right now he sees no reason to take them out. Both kids had expanders before their braces so maybe it expanded their mouths so far that the wisdom teeth have room!
While S19 has the “last school seen is favorite” thing, what seems to have happened is that it all evens out in a few weeks. I expect he will be saying he likes all of his schools again by September. One wise friend suggested that, when accepted student visits come around, take S19 to the school we like best last. And then maybe he will choose it!
I didn’t get my wisdom teeth out until I was 33. Same dentist we have now who says d19 should get them out, so we definitely trust her. She can do it herself, says an oral surgeon isn’t needed.
@homerdog I think your s19 is going to do great no matter where he ends up. Hopefully when decisions, honors programs and financials all come through, he will be able to rank them better.
No secrets regarding my son’s college list. Not really sure what the reasoning behind it is. For most kids, there will be acceptances and rejections. Is there fear that someone else’s child may get your child’s “spot”? I can understand not sharing if your student doesn’t want to share , but I am honestly confused by the secrecy.
My husband got his wisdom teeth out when he was 46. The periodontist prescribed painkillers that made my husband nauseated and unable to eat. He’s a diabetic. We kept going back and asking for a different prescription, but the periodontist refused to see us. My husband ended up in the ICU with ketoacidosis. Lawsuits everywhere. It was not fun.
I, on the other hand, had my wisdom teeth out when I was 19. No fuss, over in a day, spent the rest of the week watching old pirate movies. Repeatedly, the painkillers had me so woozy that I kept forgetting that I had seen the movie I just saw so I would watch it again once the VHS was rewound.
Not looking forward to the kiddo needing his wisdom teeth out. Luckily we still have some time before that happens.
@carolinamom2boys, I don’t feel like we are keeping secrets. It’s just an awareness that it would be better for D19 to have plenty of space to make her decision without opinions from uninformed sources. Plus, the more my husband talks about it, the more he reveals what he would like her to do, which does unduly influence her. Finally, she is a private person and prefers not to talk about the college search with her grandparents, let alone the neighbors. She doesn’t have a finalized list and hasn’t decided on ED. Is it really keeping secrets if we don’t discuss it openly?
@3SailAway did you read the part of my post where I said that I understand if a student doesn’t want to share. Not discussing schools is pervasive on CC. I don’t understand it, but I understand people have different opinions. I believe that discussing schools can actually help make an informed decision, but that’s JMO.
@homerdog. Glad you had a good trip. Any other thoughts about Bowdoin or what you liked as a parent? If you’ve got everything ready to go for the Common App and have already done the activities and awards, it shouldn’t take that long. I just found the proofreading took a while (but I didn’t print it out). I like your thoughts about how to think about senior year. We’re getting right into S’s fall sport and will start with photographing the kick-off party for the boys on Friday. H and I made a 10-minute video (lots of game video clips and photos) last year for the end of season banquet and it was a big hit, so we’ll try to top it this year.
We did attach a resume to some of the applications for D17. I figured most colleges wouldn’t read it, and I get that it is redundant, but if you can fit most things on a page or a page and a half, I think it’s much easier to skim that (plus if you need a little extra room to describe an activity or accomplishment you don’t get cut off) to get the full picture of a kid. However, I do think it’s a personal preference that won’t really affect acceptances.
Yay for kids making progress on essays! S will not share his with me, so I’m thinking this may be a problem.
As far as not telling other people the college list out in public, I am thinking that most people don’t keep it a secret if kids are applying to popular state flagships or schools in nearby states with which many people are familiar. However, if they have a number of reach or far away schools on the list, it may feel better not to have to hear others’ comments or opinions until decisions are made.
@homerdog the Common App only takes a few hours max. You just need to have the material organized. A lot of it is pretty standard stuff, but there are some questions where the kids might get confused. I filled out a lot of the stuff but asked my son to do other sections . We just need to finish the activities section, have most of them done.
Our college search for son19 has gone to full out Boom or Bust so I don’t want to talk about it with anyone in “real life” lol. I can’t really ask anyone I know for advice and we are just winging it at this point in time. Trying to hold it all together so stress level stays in check. If anyone asks I just tell him he’s looking at mostly ocal schools and that can mean anything- lots of choices in our neck of the woods. I usually try to. defer the question back to the other person so they can blab away and I just shake my head.
We aren’t listing out S19’s list to most people because (1) he’s superstitious and just wants his acceptances and denials to be private and (2) most people here won’t know most of his schools and neither of us want to get into why he’s not applying to the usual suspects around here for the top kids. We get caught up in the weeds of his reasoning and the conversation just gets longer etc. It is hard to explain to people when their kids are gung ho about schools that don’t fit what S19 wants. He would rather just wait until he knows and then tell people if they ask. It’s not about kids taking different kids’ spots. He’s been open with his friends and they all know each others’ lists.
@elena13 I’ll do a review of Bowdoin for you this afternoon. Need to run out for a bit.
@ninakatarina, how scary that must have been with your husband after getting his wisdom teeth out. Some painkillers make me nauseated to the point of more misery than the pain.
@carolinamom2boys, even if D wasn’t fairly private, I would be inclined to be careful with the topic for many of the reasons mentioned. Another factor for us is alma maters. We have multiple family members with beloved alma maters (including me), but D has to see the schools through her own eyes. Plus, my husband is on faculty at a “reach school for all” and that will come up if we open the discussion.
@elena13 oh boy. Bowdoin was a hit even with my husband who has been crazy picky about the full price/no merit schools.
Our tour guide was easy going and well spoken. Very comfortable in his own skin. Loved his school. The dorms (while not fancy) were all set up with a common room and then doubles on either side so that there are four kids to a common room. Kids can go in their bedrooms to go to bed and their roommate can stay awake in the next room to work or watch tv, etc. You’ll never have a noisy roommate if you want to sleep. The campus was just the right size and the classrooms and labs we saw were pristine. The town is right next to the campus and super cute, not too small and not too big.
Small class size, most professors live in town, not a lot of distribution requirements, and a career center that makes the freshman meet with a counselor in the first month on campus to set up a Linked In page and start talking about how internships work, etc. Seems like a larger percentage of graduates go right to a job instead of to grad school like some other LACs. That’s S19’s plan so we were very interested in finding out how they use alumni and the career center. We were impressed with everything we heard regarding that. One of the biggest things we liked were the kids and adults we met there. Every single one was welcoming and we got no stuck up vibe at all. The kids genuinely loved their school and were impressive and well spoken. The adults in admissions answered all of the questions from parents with no snark (which we have seen at other schools). The info session wasn’t a hard sell and nor was it of the “you’ll never get in here” variety.
The whole time we were there I was trying to picture the place under two feet of snow. A prospective student from CA asked the tour guide if kids bring their long boards or bikes and the tour guide politely said you could but they don’t work very well in the snow. And then he smiled. Yeah. It’s something to consider.
We liked that it’s just 30 minutes from the airport. We are trying to stay away from the flight plus 90 minutes drive even if the school is good about shuttling kids back and forth during busy break times.
Overall, it just felt good there. Our next door neighbor went there and graduated six years ago now. She’s been very successful and she just has nothing but wonderful things to say about her experience.
@elena13 I would not assume that just because you haven’t seen the essay there is a problem. I have yet to read my D’s essay!
@homerdog Thanks for the great review! It sounds like a wonderful place aside from the weather. It’s still on our “possible” list but it sounds like Bowdoin has a lot to offer. When visiting a number of LACs with my D I really liked the ones that started with career services early in their college experience.
@zipstermom I can’t help worrying though! I think he knows he needs to get feedback and I’m hoping he will show the essay to his IB lang teacher from last year and maybe someone else, but he says it’s personal. Ugh. He’s super stubborn about some things, although he did change his mind last minute about letting me come to meet-your-teacher day. So there’s hope.
Why is everyone so stressed out and worried about the status of applications? It’s August. Most EA and ED applications are due around Nov 1. Seriously, you people need to relax. My S has not evened opened a common app account yet. Back when older D was applying, they held a workshop in school in Sept and had everyone open accounts and spent some time filling out all the basic info. I hope they do that again this year. I can’t imagine that filling everything in is going to take more than a couple hours. So D opened her account in Sept, had her main essay done by mid October, and apps were all in on time at the end of the month. It worked out fine.
In other news, we are going on S’s first college visit on Friday.
@me29034 S19 had to get some of his apps (mostly the essays) done this summer because he has something like ten essays to write and they need to be good. Each essay has probably gone through at least three rewrites and the CA one more than that.
When he starts school, he will have little time with a intense schedule and XC. When he’s in school, he goes to school, goes to XC, comes home and showers, eats and does homework until 11:30. Gets up and starts the whole thing again. Usually 5-6 hours of homework on the weekends and meets in Saturdays that take most of the day. He would have had no brain space left to write thoughtful essays. Some of his apps are due 12/1 for merit consideration and the rest 1/1 and 1/15 but we are going on a extended family vacation (with 22 family members!) for a week at the holidays so he doesn’t even have the option to procrastinate and do essays in Dec. We aren’t freaking out. He’s methodically written almost all of them this summer and he’s fresh for school. He won’t actually send his first app until after NMSF is announced.
That’s just our situation and he had to prepare this way.
@me29034 DS19 completed his Clemson application on Aug 3rd because housing is determined by application date, not acceptance date. He has now just started looking at the other applications and inputting demographic data. He is just now starting to think of essay topics .
How do I find out which schools determine housing by app date?
I’m looking at the UTexas and UMichigan housing sites, but can’t find anything. I must be missing it.