Thank you @momtogkc I feel like I’m crazy. It’s like an SNL skit.
FWIW Twin B has already submitted Wake Forest rolling ED and all I did was proof essays. Twin A is like pushing an elephant wearing golf shoes up a mountain. Both girls so not a gender thing, but Twin A is killing me. Every single step of Common App has been a struggle. If I step back and force Twin A to sink or swim, she won’t be at any college next year and that is not ok.
So we have let our son head to our vacation home in the mountains for 5 days with a group of guys, what possible could go wrong? LOL First time we’ve let him do that. I’m going to text him later to remind him the County Sheriff lives down the road, ha. I’ll have to drive up there next week and sanitize everything before my wife goes back up for a visit.
Son19 asked f he could do the same, we said no way. We said 18 is the minimum age we would consider letting him do anything like that. He goes " great, I turn 18 next August and my friends and I have just started planning a trip to Europe" . Arrggghhhhhh. His group of friends have suddenly become very adventurous, they have been exploring beaches, cities, restaurants, parks, museums etc. on their own.
@RightCoaster s19 and his friends are throwing around the idea of a road trip across the whole US during the summer after senior year. I told him not to spend any time on that plan. Not going to happen.
@RightCoaster We are experience this as well - camping, the beach, etc. So far we have avoided the kids only trip.
My friend who has boys says that with each added boy to the group, the collective IQ diminishes by 5 points. LOL.Hope clean up is easy!
We let our son17 go away on a trip last summer with some friends for a week. He was going to be leaving to go study abroad anyways, so we used it a warm-up tool. He survived, we survived. He figured out how to survive on his own in Europe for 4 months and fortunately nothing bad happened. It was a good experience. But he is a nice mellow kid who is more conservative in nature than son19 who is a maniac daredevil. He’d be like on of those guys you see in Europe jumping off giant cliffs in a winged suit, lol, or something equally stupid. He’s too much of a thrill seeker and that concerns me. He goes all out 100% of the time in everything.
When I was a kid I somehow convinced my parents to let me drive to Fort Lauderdale from New England for our high school spring break. Ha!! it was epic!! I had such a great time, but I have no idea what my parents were thinking actually letting me go.
@InfiniteWaves We are having a problem getting class rank too! And we go back to school tomorrow! My son is trying to finish his Coalition app. Our school has removed all transcripts from our online portal and is refusing to tell anyone class rank. He can’t move to the next section of the Coalition app without his class rank. We know he is top 10%, they gave him an award in May for that, but we don’t know the exact number. The school has sent transcripts to colleges for him this summer and they can’t even tell us if those transcripts had a class rank on them or not. I am beyond frustrated at the way they are yanking these kids around.
@Stuffedquahog I love that idea! Thanks for sharing. I think we will try to do the same when our kids go to college.
@momtogkc St Thomas is one of my favorite places. I hope your daughter has a wonderful trip!
what about schools that dont rank?
I agree with others that it’s reasonable to provide administrative support and guidance to kids at this age. And we all know our children. For my D19, she would become so stressed by having to personally keep track of every detail that her mental health would suffer, so I’m happy to lend a hand. I’ve definitely helped shape her college list based on my own familiarity and values, although I have to say that her top choice school is all her. But she has yet to hit her 17th birthday and has done so much toward her applications – the real actual meaty stuff that an application actually consists of – so I have no hesitation about providing basic help. I agree that taking over the process, making the college choice, etc is bound to backfire eventually. But I’ve seen people in my life take that very hands-off approach to parenting and I’m not convinced it’s beneficial as a blanket policy. We have friends who let their toddler fall off the tailgate of their truck “so she’ll learn not to do that again” and my husband and I both thought, hell…she could’ve gotten really injured doing that. And she’s like 20 months old…how much perspective does she really have on what just happened? But to each their own – we all do what works for our families.
I am getting a little concerned about D19’s lack of progress on her essays but for now I’m trying the more hands-off approach to see if that helps. She’s spent the week at her grandparents’ and has been entertained all week by her grandma, the neighbors, and her aunt. I’m glad she’s enjoying some leisure time before senior year hits, but again, I know my child and I know she focuses a great deal of energy on her classes and it will be hard for her to really devote the hours necessary to generate high-quality essays while she has the chronic distraction of her classes and senior year goings-on. But it’s looking like the year is going to start with little if any essay work done, so there’s only so much I can do. Hands-on prodding didn’t seem to work, but neither is hands-off either at this point…in due time, I suppose. Maybe she’ll text some good news in the next few days…
We had a timeline settled for when to apply to schools and that lasted 48 hours. Sigh. We received some advice from someone with extensive relevant knowledge, so that advice has blown up my happy little timeline. And here I was enjoying my daydreams about early applications and being settled by Christmas. Now it’s looking like 8 out of 10 of D19’s apps will be RD, so that means we slog through the long wait for March. At least she has two EA schools so she’ll have some early results for comfort and baselines. But I can see that as with life in general, “expect the unexpected” may be the phrase that characterizes all this. I keep telling my kids that it’s important in life to adapt to what comes, adjust accordingly, bounce back…so I need to practice what I preach with my own reactions.
Can the CSS profile help with financial aid if your EFC is pretty high, but your assets/equity/net worth are on par with the net worth of your household pets? I think S19 will only apply to one or two profile schools and i haven’t really looked into it since those area already reach schools. Maybe the financial part would’t be as bad as I think?
S19’s new mom-avoidance method is to make sure that he is always either sleeping, hard at work practicing, or not in the house so I haven’t had much chance to bug him lately. I am resorting to bribery and told him we’ll go shopping for a new bow when he gives me a final college list, completes the questionnaire for the GC and has a draft essay.
@mom2twogirls @eandesmom Thanks, your ED2 rationale makes sense, and now something to consider in terms of all submissions.
My son is actually working on some Common App stuff right now before he heads out for soccer practice.
Has anyone noticed that the “questions” for certain schools on the Common App aren’t available yet? What the heck does that even mean? Why wouldn’t they be available, the App has been open for a week?
@eh1234 OMG the mom avoidance is killing me. She is actually going to the gym. I’m working from home today and she took a 30 min. shower and now at gym. Seriously, neither helping, prodding, or giving space are working with this kid.
@Stuffedquahog great idea visiting and getting info on classes so we can relate. Thanks.
@sdl0625 On the Coalition app you can either enter class rank or check a box that says your school doesn’t rank.
Our school has changed to no longer ranking students, but that is effective starting class of 2020. For S19’s class, they are ranking the top 10% and then telling everyone below that to mark “my school doesn’t rank.” They told us yesterday they are still reworking the top 10% rankings, so they can’t give out that info yet. So frustrating since college apps are already open.
My son wants to check “my school doesn’t rank” and move on, but I’m thinking it would look like he was being dishonest or sloppy when the college admissions ends up receiving a transcript with a ranking on it.
CSS PROFILE schools all calculate financial need differently, so depending on your situation, a CSS PROFILE school could be better or worse for you than a FAFSA-only school, even if they all were to meet 100% of financial need.
It’s a mess, the whole financial aid system is.
@dfbdfb So, if I do NPCs on schools’ websites, is that more like them looking at FAFSA or PROFILE? These NPCs I’m doing have 60+ questions.
@sdl0625 our school doesn’t rank, it has never been an issue. And no, they really really don’t. It’s not like they actually provide deciles in the GC report but don’t tell us. The will provide the following. 1) Average GPA of the preceding class and 2) rigor of courseload. That’s it.
@homerdog I drove from Seattle to San Fran after graduation with my best friend. We lived. Actually we got a flat tire which is another story and in the days before cell phones but, we lived. S19 wants to go to LA to a convention with his cousin (they graduate the same day). They’d like to drive but it’s a short time window and I’d rather fly them, plus S19 doesn’t have a car and his cousins might not survive that drive. I probably will although I’ve not checked to see what my sister thinks. Either they are ready to be on their own or they are not and if I’ve done my job, he can handle it.
Each schools NPC is different. They will generally do the following.
- Use either their own profile or fafsa based calculation to show any possible need based aid.
- Use their own super secret or not merit factors to show any possible merit
- Lump the 2 together in a way that you have no idea what is what
- Include only need and obscure all merit so you have no clue what your kid might qualify for
- Use an outdated calculator that spits out a random amount to everyone based on a general income range (and i am sorry but 99k+ is a LARGE range).
Yeah…no quick and easy one size fits all and YMMV.
@eandsmom These kids all just got their licenses this year and two of them have hit parked cars. Not sure they are ready to drive across the country! The other parents and I are thinking about a spring break trip for them and some of us would go along. Might be the compromise. Only problem is that some of them will be getting admissions results while away and that might get a little hairy!
Thanks for the NPC clarification. Only found one school on our list so far that will estimate merit. All of the others (that offer merit) don’t ask about grades, etc, so we don’t have much to go on except the info I get from our school about what kids get scholarships. Even then, we don’t know the kids’ stats. I’ve also perused CC results to see if I can gauge merit possibilities. That’s been helpful but nothing is for sure of course.
There is a road trip idea brewing in D19’s friend group, too. I told her to replace that thought with just about anything else. A week at the beach, in the mountains, NYC, train travel, camping . . . Just not driving!
@homerdog yes, most are deliberately opaque about merit unless they publish the stats on their websites. About all you can go on in that case is the CDS, if you can find one, and look for their average non-need merit and the % of kids that received that.