Parents of the HS Class of 2019 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
10001

I’m definitely guiding my son through the process, having done the same with D17. S19 has developed his list after visiting some schools (and nixed many) but mostly he’s applying to schools suggested by my husband and me. He’s pretty easygoing and I think he’ll be happy at any of the 7 schools that are on his list. Once he decided on the schools, I helped with researching what tests the schools require and supplemental essays. I also will input the credit card number for scores to be sent.

I am pretty heavily involved with the college application process, but take cues from my kids. Some parents are really pretty clueless, so I think of it like signing them up for their sports stuff or other extracurricular activities. There is, of course, the other extreme, where parents take over the entire process.

With D17 and her college scheduling, I helped her figure out the registration process (not easy) for 1st and then 2nd semester. But now her school has some dual verification so I can’t even access her account unless she is with me. It’s all worked out well.

10002

My son17 asks us for guidance about classes in college, but he went out of his way to meet with his academic advisor one day this summer and they worked out a plan for him. That it is a useful resource to have. At the end of the year we asked him to show us his grades, just to keep him honest and let him know that as long as we are paying for everything we should be able to know how he is doing. He’s a decent student and did OK his first year, but it was a good way for us to talk about his classes and what he is planning going forward. I think he likes we are still somewhat involved, especially the paying for everything part !!

Son19 asked us to help with his senior schedule, but he tweaked it a bit to his liking. We had a chance to read a couple of his essays and they’ve been pretty good. I think he’s on track to getting everything done, so there is light at end of the tunnel.

10003

I am definitely filling some of the role of an administrative assistant for D19. I didn’t register her for SATs, but I did figure out when/where they’d be. (And for the upcoming August SAT, she told me, “Dad, we need to register me,” so she did more of the work than she did 8 months before.)

I don’t think it’s too much help to double-check issues regarding interviews, etc. I haven’t closely read her essay, though I’m sure she’ll formally ask at some point, at which point I’ll give her my thoughts and suggested grammatical changes, and that will probably be the one and only time I see it. I’m OK with my daughter failing at things as part of learning how to become an adult person, but I think the scope of the failure needs to be commensurate with the maturity level – e.g., messing up the application for an optional summer program, or submitting a merely passable application essay that might not engage an AO is OK, but failing to submit all the required forms for applying to college or financial aid, is not. D19 is plenty organized, but I am willing to put up the bumper rails on the bowling alley called applying to college. (That might be one of the single worst analogies I’ve ever been willing to write down.)

10004

I just finished entering for the 3rd or 4th time all of S19’s classes from his transcript. #-o
That is some typing exercise for my secretarial career post retirement. lol

I am trying to enter SAT scores on SRAR but the box goes only up to 800. ? :-/

10005

A few college visits last week and this to report on. The first one, RIT. It’s long as it included a 2 day event so if not a school of interest skip away!

3 days is a lot and we knew would either make or break the school. S19 had an interview, and CS departmental meeting on Thursday, and finished up with a general tour of the academic side of campus. Friday – Saturday he attended a College and Careers event. This included an overnight, the first afternoon/evening had some admissions related sessions but mostly icebreaker related. Saturday was all “career” sessions to help kids see what kind of jobs are out there based on majors.

The tl;dr summary is…when I picked him up on Saturday the first thing he said was “I love this school so much”, and then “thank you”, and then I got a hug. As of today it is still his top choice and the plan is for ED2.

We drove in from and while I had known it was a large campus, I was still a bit surprised at how spread out it was. The nickname Brick City is accurate. Checked him in for the interview where they gave him a nice string bag. When the interviewer came out, he asked if I wanted to go in. Which was a first for me. I realize the interview itself is optional but how is it an interview if a parent is present? Helicoptering run amok? I’ve been invited in at the end a couple of times with other kids but this was odd to me. I declined. Afterwards he felt it went well and he’d been given some good insight about his potential majors and overall fields. We strolled a bit through campus and found our way to the departmental meeting. This was with the department manager of student services, and a rising senior. He was given a departmental T shirt (a nice touch I thought) and we spent a solid hour talking about the program. Wonderful idea having the rising senior there who was able to speak about her co ops (3) and share how the process worked from her perspective. She represented extremely well and it was a great meeting. We had some time to kill before the tour so got a cookie and S19 opened up his common app and got the initial questions done for all his CA schools, so some progress!

Tour was, your basic tour. All academic and an hour long. Tour bingo (quidditch, blue light, walking backwards). I did enjoy hearing about the “nap app” and our poor guide walked backwards into a bike, a pile of leaves and a chair. It is a big campus; all of the buildings really do kind of look the same but there is quite a lot of green space and some nice sculpture pieces. Over 3 days it grew on me.

The next day I dropped him off after checking him in, making the bed in the dorm room and seeing a few sponsored/decorated dorm rooms none of which were super exciting or special. They were very standard, better than many I have seen (carpet all seemed brand new, in the 2 dorms we saw) and certainly livable if not exciting. S19 did express, post pick up the next day that he is now considering a single after all if he can. His roommate, while perfectly nice and also a possible CS major, was up till 3 am snapchatting with the flash going off. S19 values his sleep and goes to bed between 9:30-10:30 without fail, nightly, and is an early riser.

I went to a parent session for the College of Computing and Informatics, which was simply outstanding. The assistant dean provided an overview of the programs (majors, minors, BS/MS, and MS) as well as “what is” computing, and he was a very engaging speaker. Lots of Q&A towards the end regarding the 9 majors within the college. They made a point to call out department reps for each major as well as admissions and all were available in the atrium for the next hour, as well as at the parent reception that followed. There were other sessions available during the time for different colleges but we were only interested in the one, so I hung around the admissions rep and was able to get some good data for admissions by major for the 3 we were interested in, roughly CS 33%, Game Design 40%, Software Engineering 60%. They do have an undecided option but made it very clear that if you really wanted CS, you probably wouldn’t be offered undecided as there are only so many slots. CS is 1/4 of the entire population of RIT with 4000 students. She also shared she would rather see a B+ kid with very high rigor, than an A student with low but that GPA is definitely more important than test scores. They are offering ED2 this year and she isn’t sure how that will play out. She said they decided ot add it as they found that kids were finding out about RIT late in the process and had missed the ED I date but I’m not sure I buy that. For us, ED1 is a bit problematic date wise. It’s a “friendly” policy and you can move to RD or decline based on $$ however I would really like to see how 1st semester goes even if finances come in ok and our semester ends after the ED1 commitment date.

I then spent about 20 minutes just sitting in one of the green spaces before the parent reception. The reception was in their global village which is an area filled with some shops, dining and sophomore+ housing. It was billed as appetizers and an adult beverage, but it was really a very nice spread from the Mexican restaurant there (a local chain I think) and then they wandered around handing out extra drink tickets. Really good food and a very tasty margarita I have to say! Lots of outdoor seating, live music and zero presentations, just networking available if you wanted to chat with the reps who had been pointed out earlier in the sessions. Not as helpful for the engineering folks whose session would be the next morning, but great for me. I had a very nice chat with the Software Engineering department head. It is currently the 2nd choice major and would possibly be first except it will require 2 physics courses (in CS he could choose either physics, bio or chem and he would choose chem). He felt S would be able to manage it, that the 3 on the AP exam was more solid than perhaps my son thinks it is and that bode wel for him but also discussed the resources available if he did struggle, “why” they include physics and that it wasn’t uncommon for much of the class to feel the same way my S did about it. I seemed to be a magnet for the solo mom’s at the event and we had a nice corner of mom’s with kids in a mix of majors and the overall impression was, we were all suitably impressed. To me, it was a brilliant marketing move. Sales is relationship based and they let, and facilitated, those relationships happening in the way it was structured.

I skipped the morning parent sessions but did show up for my pre-paid lunch at the all you can eat dining hall and found it to be quite edible. While I sat in on a student panel (meh) and a co op session after, it wasn’t anything I didn’t know already. It was time for pick up after and I waited. And waited. Had an ice tea (RIT did a great job of beverage stations, extra tables and seating in shaded areas at many areas). Waited. Waited and waited as the parade of kids went by. The tiger (mascot) left. It was down to one dad and myself (ok a couple more but seriously!). My kid was not answering and not reading the texts. Finally 30 minutes past pickup I get a call. He was in his dorm room, just then. He’d been talking to a professor after his last session. I let him off the hook. Based on that conversation he is changing his 3rd choice major on his application so it was a well spent 30 min.

For anyone considering the event in the figure. S felt it was about half kids interested in RIT and half kids interested in understanding how majors translate to careers to beneficial to a wide variety of students and to me, was a very good value for what we got.

10006

So far, S19 has worked on his resume to give to teachers and the GC and done most of his profile (and SRAR) on the Common App and Coalition App. He’s not used to me nagging him all that much (I didn’t look at his grades junior year except for seeing his first and last report cards) so I think I’m being fairly annoying this summer.

I would really like him to finish a draft essay before school starts - most of his deadlines are Nov 1 for merit, but the sooner he gets the apps in, the soon he can do the music school supplemental apps and request audition dates. I’m afraid he’ll end up needing to be in two different states on one day if he doesn’t plan carefully. That part still hasn’t come into focus, but I think he may end up needing to travel nearly every weekend in January and February.

I just finished explaining to him that he’s not going to be able to go to Indiana to audition in person since it would require 22 hours of driving, 2 absences from school, and 3 nights in a hotel for a school that’s a long shot to begin with. He didn’t see why this would be a problem, lol!

10007

Drexel tour update. It was…interesting. Definitely different.

The visit included a CS department meeting, general admissions presentation and a tour.
The Drexel campus is as urban as you might expect. We arrived the night before and wandered a bit trying to get a feel for it. The next day when we headed to the CS meeting, it took us a bit to find it as it turned out to be the first few floors of an affiliated student housing mid-rise building, the front of which was under construction and on the other side of a pretty busy street. The meeting was semi informative but really didn’t do anything to sell either of us on the program or school, it was quite a bit of being talked to, versus the professor engaging S. Heavy focus on academics, and a niche section of it that S has no interest in but the professor definitely had a lot of passion for. S requested a flowcart and got…more general talking.

The general admissions presentation was much the same. Heavily focused on academics and co op, almost nothing it seemed on campus culture, school spirit, student life outside of the classroom. It is a quarter system and as a result, the co ops are 6 months long and things do move quickly when not in co op. Frankly at this point S and I were almost ready to drop it from the list entirely. The tour however redeemed it some. It was long, 90 min and perhaps overly so. We did get a good feel for the academic campus, which seemed definitely disjointed (and we had heard that prior so no surprises there). The residential however felt like a campus and was well connected with decent green space. Dorms seemed a bit larger than we were used to. Interestingly the gym is alleged one of the top college recreation centers in the country but all we saw was a hallway. No library tour either which I always find odd on any tour, though its not uncommon. Despite walking into literally every academic building on campus, or passing by, the CS one was not mentioned until the very end. They are moving into a new building and there was a vague reference to it at the very very end of the tour.

Overall, we both felt that the academics are likely solid, the co op program quite good but we got very little feel for any kind of campus personality or culture. Or maybe we did. Their current slogan is “ambition can’t wait” and that was the general impression we got. Not in a grinding stressful kind of way but in a students just want to get out and work now, kind of way. Which seemed a bit lonely to us but our one data point, the tour guide, was quite happy. One pro was a repeated emphasis on their performing arts program. Not sure if they are desperate for members but we were told repeatedly that they will pay for you to come play in their various groups. Which for S, who wants to continue trumpet in college, was appealing.

S17 wants to keep it on the list and apply, but it moved down. It is a PROFILE school, and the only one left on his list, which I am not thrilled about. They did say, as I contacted them prior to our visit, that they do not recalculate EFC with the PROFILE form up, only down. At the end of the day, while we both liked the location and some aspects, I don’t see it as a fit and would be ok if it falls off entirely. I am however very glad we went as it gave S some needed clarity and was a great comparison to his other co-op school, RIT.

10008

Can the other parents on this thread who have kids applying to audition/portfolio review BFA programs chime in so we can commiserate?

I read the post about whether or not kids should send their own SAT scores and kind of chuckled to myself. Probably they should. But between required prescreens (which are different at every school) and supplemental essays and audition dates and common app vs. individual app at nearly 20 schools, I honestly have no idea how the average 17-18 year old could navigate this type of application process without at least some oversight and help. I’m also probably underestimating these kids but even with a lifetime of organizational and time management skills and a J.D., I still personally find it overwhelming. So I will be sending those SAT scores when the time comes and check it off as one thing on the list that neither of us has to worry about anymore.

We have a joint email account for college related things and something I noticed today is that many of the schools sending emails which waive the application fee use the exact same template and virtually the same language. They must be using a 3rd party service. I usually delete 90% of the emails which come into that account but started randomly opening some today and even ones which don’t say it in the subject line are often about waiving the fee. Just a heads up for anyone else who mass deletes these emails - there may be fee waivers in there and hey, if it’s free and they’re on the common app, it might be worth the clicks to apply.

10009

I too believe that applying to college is a team effort and I enjoyed the process with my S16 and now I am enjoying it again with my D19. As we all know, there is so much involved in the college process from beginning to end - I feel strongly that they do need us to be involved and helpful.

I also chuckled when reading @mom23travelers post. This is exactly what happens all the time with my S16. He reports via phone call or text from school “an unsolvable issue”. I then worry and fret. Then I talk to him one week later and problem has been solved and solution is not just “ok” but “great”. I keep falling for it each time a similar situation comes up - because a mom will never turn off the worry button.

So here is one thing we do to stay involved with my S16 academics. Three weeks into a new semester we drive up to see him and take him to dinner. Before that we walk around campus and have our own “back to school” family event. He takes us to each classroom, we have him show us where he sits and then he tells us about the class curriculm, the professor, the semester projects , etc. They are small classrooms and all open on a Saturday. It’s fabulous because when I go home i have a clear picture of where he is during each day and I can hold my own in a conversation about his current classes.

We did this the first two years. He’s a junior now so we’ll probably not have him take us to the classrooms this year but I can guarantee that we will talk specifics about each class he has over dinner when we come up to visit him during the beginning of each semester. He enjoys it too! He wants to tell us all about his schedule

10010

@homerdog thanks so much for posting about test scores. I did not think about that as a way to show interest. S19 has a few small schools on the top of his list and interest is important at one of them, if not all.

@eandesmom love your trip report for RIT. We toured there this summer and it looked like a great school. The landscaping helped soften up all the brick and the outdoor patio area was really nice. I would have been happy if S ended up there but I think he feels it’s too far away for him.

10011

@eandesmom Very nice visit reports. The Drexel comment implied that RIT was not a PROFILE school. I missed that when researching schools. I guess that’s the problem with searching for an attribute to be missing. Somehow a few PROFILE schools did creep onto our list, but only 2 remain.

Can I ask, in general what is the reasoning/strategy for applying ED2 versus ED1?

10012

@peachActuary73 In my opinion, I think ED2 is a way for schools to lock in students who may not have the school as their top choice and therefore don’t want to apply ED1. These students most likely apply either ED or EA to their top choice school. If they are rejected from the top choice, they can then apply ED2 to the other school since ED2 deadlines are after the early round results are released.

10013

The later ED2 date also can work for kids who feel it could help their application to have the 1st semester senior year grades in when the app is initially being considered.

10014

Today, in totally unnecessary things to be insanely impatient about right now…

S19’s application to the top choice, rolling admissions, state flagship system is ready to go. With one exception. Class rank. A rank is provided on his transcript along with unweighted and weighted GPAs. However, we don’t know if the one ranking is unweighted or weighted, and the application requires both rankings. The SRAR system won’t let you just enter one.

I sent an email to the GC. Currently at the high school’s mercy. Not even sure if she is there. School starts in two weeks. Which is making me impatient. S19? Not so much.

Knew you all would understand. :smiley:

10015

Ugh, I get it, @InfiniteWaves

There is so much in this process that’s out of our control. This is your top priority, but there are people for whom this is an afterthought and you have to rely on them. So frustrating!

10016

@InfiniteWaves hang in there. I’m sure we will all have stories about lagging info from counselors and recommenders.

10017

What is a PROFILE school?

Also, has anyone had a kid love a school while there and get home and tell rest of family they didn’t like it? It has happened with two schools now (different trips). Could be immature reaction to me loving that school or friend saying something negative? It is very strange.

10018

@TwinMom2023 that is CSS Profile, You need to fill out a huge amount of data to see if you qualify for any aid. They count everything against you, it’s brutal if you have equity and $$ laying around.

10019

@peachActuary73 you are correct, RIT is FAFSA only.

And…on ED1 V Ed2. In general yes, students use it as a backup for ED1. In our case it is completely date related. While we aren’t looking necessarily at first semester grades for application reasons (though it is possible schools will want it), as the mom I need to see how that first semester goes before letting him commit to an ED, OOS school. Junior year was rough. The end of the semester is always rough. I need to see that he has progressed and can finish strong. Our school year is late, and the end of the semester isn’t until 1/31. RIT’s ED1’s deposit date is 1/15. ED2 is 2/15. They have a friendly ED policy and we can move him to RD if needed or pull out for $$ reasons but knowing my son, if he hears he got in 1/1 and has enrolled by 1/15…I am just not sure he’d have the same end of semester focus as he would otherwise.

Also, ED1 is due 11/1 and we own’t have Q1 grades. We will for ED2 and that should help.

However it does run the risk that they see it as RIT not being his first choice.

10020

Hello everybody! We are coming to the end of our summer, school starts Monday, :frowning: D is ending the summer on a high note by visiting hr friend who lives in St. Thomas. She is there right now and sounds like she is having a great time. While she is there I have been acting as her secretary - I told her I charge $20 an hour! I had to email the dean about her schedule, sign her up for the next ACT (she decided she might try again but isn’t sure), dropped her papers off at the local college for a Dual Enrollment class and went to school to wait in a huge line to get her parking pass! These are all things she could have done on her own if we hadn’t been away but we flew home at 11pm on Monday and she left at 10am Tuesday for St. Thomas. She did go to the school early that morning to get the dual enrollment papers all signed but didn’t have time to do the rest. I don’t mind helping her on that stuff, I know she is capable but when she is that busy I like to help. I don’t think she would be great at keeping the college application deadlines all in order so we bought a calendar for her room and I am going to help her keep everything on track.

@TwinMom2023 My D has done that at most schools. She tells me that when she is there she thinks she likes them but as she has more time to think about it she remembers things she didn’t like - its very frustrating!