Waiting for the motivation fairy to arrive. Trying really, really hard to back off. I might need to vent here at some point just to stop myself from speaking.
We gave my son a target goal of 8/25 to have the Common App and main essay done. Heās close to being done, and just has to write a few smaller supplement types of pieces 200-250 words. Those pieces arenāt too hard, so he should be able to crank those out and Iād imagine everything will be done next week. Then we just need to GC to gather some things and try to get teacher LORās in asap, but those might take longer. Once school starts I donāt think my son will have any extra free time to work on apps and write essays, so itās good he cranked it out already.
For you others, you really do have lots of time to get stuff done. Some schools and even have sessions with seniors where they work on the common app together.
Our school wonāt even release transcripts until after school starts, which is another 4 weeks still.
Our school will not release any transcripts until the 3rd week of September. Not a big deal but Iād like things to be done.
Our school doesnāt release them but the GC office sent my sonās in to the NCAA clearinghouse and they forwarded one to a coach who wanted one. They gave my son an unofficial one to use until school starts.
S19 was able to get s hard copy of his transcript on July 1. I guess we should count ourselves lucky. Heās just taken a photo of it and attached it to any emails where coaches have asked for it.
I feel better reading some of your posts. Weāre still very much looking at colleges and formulating lists. The stressor comes from DS19s surprise high SAT score which put lottery schools in play, and so we must determine if there will be an early decision to an ivy or some sort. Meanwhile, Iām trying to identify some potential merit aid schools, make sure we donāt miss any deadlines for scholarship consideration, and try to determine how important the campus visit is to the admissions process.
Had a long talk with my ex husband about all of this last night - heās really freaking out about everything - not really giving S19 any room to breathe. He has certain goals he tries to set for S19 (for example, he was supposed to have been coming up with an essay topic while we were touring schools over the weekend), and then if S19 doesnāt do them on his Dadās timeline, itās like the sky is falling in and the world is going to end. His perception is that S19 just doesnāt care. Meanwhile, I just toured 4 schools with him over a long weekend, and I feel like Iām getting a sense of what heās looking for, even if he canāt articulate it to himself or others.
So I mentioned some of this conversation to S19 last night and he explained to me how there are two types of people - action people and āingā people. The action people have deadlines and get things done according to a plan (his Dad) and āingā people like him and me are always āin progressā - thinking about things and then somehow miraculously pull everything together at the last minute. Both styles are legitimate, and have pluses and minuses, and they just have difficulty working together. I guess he learned this recently at his Brown leadership ācampā. I think the kid is going to be OK. His Dad, however, might not make it through this process.
@evergreen5 - feel free to vent away!
Agreeing with @RightCoaster, that if you have a fall athlete, itās wise to get as much done before school starts. Once school starts, an athleteās day can run 7-7:30. And thatās before homework can begin! Plus sports have weekend commitments as well. And keeping grades high first semester is crucial, so that homework has to get done. Doesnāt leave a lot of time for essay writing.
Also agree with @RightCoaster & @wisteria100 . Football starts full swing/double days on Monday. S is trying to get as much done as possible. He just hit send on 4 apps. Then he will finish with the essay for one school, short answers for another this weekend, and short answers for counselorās rec this weekend. Heās been working on these for weeks, then I and my English teacher friends will review/edit. Our goal is that the rest of the apps (5) will be submitted before the first day of school on 8/27. This is a different, more time consuming process than my oldest who only applied to 3 schools that didnāt require an essay or supplements. Son is chasing merit and also wants the best chance at first come, first serve institutional aid. Iāll be glad when we are at the stage of comparing award packages! After visiting 9 TX campuses, we are done with visits!!!
@RightCoaster @4MyKidz Itās the same with theater kids. Home at 8PM most nights, but without the recognition that they work that consistently after school
True @JenJenJenJen ā¦my youngest is in ColorGuard. Her practices routinely end at 9pm on school nights! It is beyond ridiculous and a serious problem. But she loves it and still manages good grades so it is what it is.
@JenJenJenJen hopefully all of those hours show up on the activities section of the application. Theater kids are some of the most busy kids around!
I just realized I never came back to talk about our tour of BC and quick look at BU. Originally D had no interest because of the cold, religion and city aspects of the two schools but earlier this summer decided she might be able to compromise since she loves Boston so much (thanks to me raising her as a good Masshole even though she grew up here in FL! 
)
Despite the fact that we were on a two week vacation up north it was very hard to find time to fit in a visit to the city. We flew into Providence, visited my mom near the Cape, left the kids with my mom while we went to the newport Folk Fest, back to my momās house to visit with family then up to Maine to see friends - jam packed trip! We finally picked a day and luckily there was room left on the tour. We drove about an hour and a half up to BC and drove right by the exit to my momās regular house - it was nice to show D how close she would be to family if she needed anything.
It took us a bit to find the right parking garage then we followed two other moms and their daughters to find the admissions office. They had just come from a tour of Tufts and were on their way to Northeastern later that day - 3 in one day! BC doesnāt track interest so they donāt even have you sign in when you get there. There were several students saying hello and telling you not to sign in but just grab a seat and wait. D had her first introduction to what it might be like at a religious school when we walked by the desk and there was one student and one nun answering questions.
The information session was good but LONG! (do not try to plan anything quickly after this visit - I was supposed to meet my brother in Boston and told him it would take about 1 1/2 hours - it ends dup being almost 2 1/2 by the time I got on the road!) There is a cute video that plays while you wait then an admissions director came out and gave a short talk before she introduced the 4 student panel. I had read good and bad things about the panel here on CC, I donāt know if we got lucky but we really liked the students and what they had to say. They did a good job of making sure they had a semi-diverse group of kids - different majors, different religions (catholic, atheist, jewish) and a Mexican LGBTQ guy who really showed how someone who isnāt your stereotypical Jesuit student can fit in at BC. They took questions for a long time and then the admissions director wrapped it up talking about the actual application process. They do not have ED at all and they highly suggest you do not go for EA unless you are very above the average. The was so different than what I had heard before at other schools and it there us for a loop. They take about 1/3 of the class EA ad 2/3 RD.
The tour broke us up into groups of about 5-6 families each. The campus is beautiful, lots of green space, those amazing stone buildings and the stadium is right on the edge of campus. D wasnāt as sure as I was about the buildings- they all look like old churches which to her seemed kind of creepy! Of course there were religious statues and symbols around campus but it wasnāt as much she expected. We got to see the business school building, a few other class buildings and that was about it. No dorm, no dining hall and no library visits.
They do have a pretty big core curriculum and there is a two semester theology requirement. I had researched that quite a bit since that is what D was against. You can take all sorts of classes about religion, not just a basic āIntro to Catholicismā class, but they one that I thought D would consider was a class that incorporated religion, philosophy and community service. You take a class during the week then do service 10 hours a week (you pick the location - they have connections with tons of places) along with it. The tour guide took us by the office that organizes the program and said people really love that choice. I asked how hard it was to get in and he said there are lots of sessions so you can almost always get in at least by sophomore year.
The campus is also broken up into two locations - the main campus and the Newton campus. Newton is about 10 minutes away and there is a shuttle that runs all day long. Newton campus has freshman dorms (I canāt remember what percent live there, not all of them but I think the majority are over there) and it has its own facilities like a dining hall, study areas and maybe even a library? (I didnāt take notes on this visit!) When I first hear this a while ago I thought it sounded terrible - I wouldnāt have wanted to be separated as a freshman. I have read more about it and the tour guide talked about it as well and said the kids who live in Newton say they loved it. They form very tight bonds and donāt seem to mind the separation. You can request which campus to live on as a freshman but it is not guaranteed.
Overall D liked the campus (she seemed to get over the creepy factor after a while), didnāt mind the religion as much as she thought she would and loved the location.
After BC we were going to self tour BU but BC took SO long that we were starving and just wanted to get into Boston to meet my brother and get a slice of Reginas pizza! Luckily BU is basically right on the road that you take from BC into the city so we went by BU and I pointed out buildings as we drove past. She decided that if she was going to suck it up and live in a cold place she at least wanted a nice campus so BU was out.
BC will stay on her list (yay - a school on the list!!) but it is a hard one to figure out - especially trying to figure out the EA/RD decision. They donāt report average GPA, the ACT (which they super score) mid 50 is 31-33 with an average of 32 (D has 32 with super score 33) and the acceptance rate was 27%. Oh -and the other problem - it is super expensive and we are full pay. :(( She knows it is a possibility but not unless she really loves it.
^Roughly half the freshmen live on Newton - Iām trying to remember the exact proportion, but I think itās 40% Newton/60% Upper. (It has been that way for decades.) Average admitted stats for 2022 were SAT 1448, ACT 33. http://bcheights.com/2018/03/26/bc-accepts-27-percent-2022-applicants/ We are awaiting the enrolled stats that will probably be posted in September; theyāre lower, obviously.
The EA acceptance rate was higher than RD for 2022. EA was 31%. https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/bcnews/campus-community/students/applications-up-for-bc-2022.html The number or fraction of EA apps deferred for 2022 was not announced; however, if a third were deferred to RD as in years past, that would put the RD rate down around 22% (with the overall being the reported 27%). I donāt know whether the number of RD apps was unexpected or whether the yield from EA was greater than expected, but RD being lower than EA wasnāt typical in earlier years, when the rates were closer to each other.
Our school sends a decent amount of kids to BC every year, lots of Irish catholic kids around lol.
Anyways, they do consider legacy kids and so I think a couple of kids from our school get in that way every year. Good students anyways, but legacy helps the local kids a lot. Literally every single catholic kid in MA applies there and PC as a back up.
So the Naviance from our school shows kids with a 4.7 average and 1430 is average. If you have a higher GPA theyāve taken some kids upper 1300ās -1420. Most of the kids in the green zone had both high GPA and high test scores. To get a 4.7 or above at our school the kid needs to be taking multiple APās Junior and Senior year and getting very good grades. There is no way the āaverage regularā student from our school to get into BC, BU or Northeastern anymore. There are too many kids from our area that want to stay local, and no kid feels like they have a legit chance at Harvard/MIT so they all apply to BC,BU,NEU ( if they are decent students). Of the kids that apply from our school the kids have a decent shot according to the data and 5-10 enroll per year. My neighbors kid goes there, and she was an excellent student that got shut out from Ivies and Tufts and went to BC over Umass Honors Program.
@RightCoaster Do you happen to know when the Naviance scattergrams get updated? I see the number of applicants from class of 2018 (those were posted in early June) but the scattergram stats look the same as before (Iām concerned about the latest stats, eek). The dotted line average score doesnāt make sense to me, as in Iām not sure what itās supposed to be an average of (I think itās 1410 on the scattergram for BC). Also, do you happen to know any more about the legacy admit rate?
(Sorry, for the next few months all my freaking out will be via keyboard. Or at least I hope. Here we sit, two weeks before the last planned SAT1, and the aforementioned motivation fairy is MIA.)
Thanks @evergreen5 and @RightCoaster. We donāt have naviance at our school so I have no idea how many kids apply or get in. I will ask the college counselor if she knows when we see her next. Our public school does not list where kids are going to college but one of our local private schools puts out a list. DH went there so we still get all of the mail - I was pretty surprised that out of about 120 students 6 are going to BC! Seems very high to me, I always thought schools donāt take that many from each school but who knows.
D just got back last night from her trip to St. Thomas where she met a bunch of kids from the local private school down there. The senior class was about 35 kids and she met two going to BC. She also met a super nice girl going to Princeton. This girl told D, āYou should try - you never know if you might get in, I didnāt think I would!ā D just smiled and nodded knowing this would never be an option. She later found out the girl was valedictorian, president of her class for three years, president of the drama club, etcā¦not exactly the same league as D but it was nice of her to say anyway! :))
I think each school can update their Naviance info when they have it. Our school updates it before summer break. The GC bring all the seniors in for a big event and they ask each kid to update their Naviance data before they graduate. Is it perfect data? Prob not, but better than nothing.
I think any kid with over a 1400 has an OK chance there especially if they took a somewhat rigorous HS schedule, like lots of Honors and AP classes. I also think they look for kids involved in church.community service more than BC and NEU. From our school the kids that get in there are the typical mid-upper class white kid from the Burb who is mostly catholic, likely Irish and wants that kid of experience in college. Nice good kids who did well in HS. The kids at our school either really want that, or donāt want that experiience at all and those kids apply to BU or Northeastern. I donāt think too many kids apply to BC and NEU and BU as well because they are totally different. BU and NEU more similar. BC is more ātraditionalā and BU and NEU are more diverse in people and thinking.
Thatās just my opinion. I have been on all of these campuses a lot during my lifetime for all sorts of events and know kids at all 3 schools. Neither of my kids have been interested in BC but both have considered BU and NEU. I think BC is a great school for the right kid though.
@RightCoaster I grew up somewhere near you and knew kids at each school as well. I was pretty sure D would not like BU but she felt like she had to see it to be sure - she had never seen a truly urban school. My mom is Irish/Italian catholic but she did not raise us catholic. D is not into religion but is into community service. My uncle is a BC Law legacy and kind of a big name in that region - too bad he is too far removed to be considered a legacy! I donāt know if it will end up being one her top schools anyway, Iām just glad it was finally one she was willing ti put on the list! 
adding that I donāt know where you live, Iām just assuming itās a suburb of Boston - didnāt want to sound stalkerish! :))