S19 has senior photos today. He missed the original session back in June because we were away. He’ll do the required photos for school. And a parent-requested golf shirt/khakis situation. And we left the third available outfit up to him if he wants to add it.
This could be interesting. We’ll be lucky if he bothers with the golf shirt request. 
DD’19 is doing some more senior pics today too. Her 19 year old cousin does them and she has already done her soccer session with him. Today she plans to do some in town, on the school’s stage, at our home with the cats, a tractor, and our Studebaker pickup & her guitar, at the Botanical Center, and in downtown Des Moines. She also wants to do some fall color and winter pics later if her cousin has time!
On Friday DD agreed to visit the school I’m rooting for, even though she currently thinks she dislikes it. Of the five schools on our list now (all smaller Midwest publics), it is the closest, cheapest, has all the majors she’s considering, has pleasing school colors, and good reputation in our area. It’s just not exotic enough because a handful of kids from school go there every year. Hoping for a great visit. I just don’t see the need to have her driving 6 hours away to a place that seems cooler when there is a similar one 2 hours away that is cheaper.
@firstwavemom - Thanks for the info. about Pitt. I think my S will apply but I don’t know a whole lot about it yet. My friend’s D just started there and they loved it when they were touring.
Sigh. Pitt was on my list of potential schools to tour, but kiddo decided that he was a Ravens fan and didn’t want to go to school in Pittsburgh. Knocked out a bunch of very good schools. Well, I guess you have to narrow the list somehow.
Ha ha! S is a pretty big Ravens fan actually, but since he won’t tour any schools anyway, I guess it will be on the list. 
S19 liked Pitt (and we had a tour guide from our county in VA), but it’s not a good fit for the major he decided on (and he was probably iffy for getting any merit aid - apparently when they say “A average” they mean it - his unweighted 3.7(ish) GPA probably wouldn’t cut it). With no merit aid, it would definitely stretch the budget. If I had a really smart pre-med kid, it would probably be at the top of the list.
@bjscheel LOL “has pleasing school colors” - so good to hear that is considered by others too!
@elena13 We moved to PA from MD (Mr. InfiniteWaves and I still work in the Baltimore/DC area) and are Ravens fans. I really wanted S19 to consider Pitt. But he decided that four hours is too far away. It’s probably for the best. 
@elena13 and @InfiniteWaves we are big Ravens fans, too. Did not see one person with Steelers gear, but lots of Pirates team spirit. Probably because NFL regular season hasn’t really started. My son feels it is not a dealbreaker. Kids from our school tend to get pretty good merit money even with lower than A averages.
I’m curious how many of you have actually asked for an app waiver and if it’s worth pre-sending scores in an effort to sway them? Who do you contact?
Never asked for one, but offered quite a few after touring the school .
@MAandMEmom One of the HS students on our tour of UAH brought along her older cousin, who asked about fee waivers at the end of the tour. The tour guide left us to go fetch a code. The whole group expressed our appreciation that she knew to ask. Would never have occurred to us otherwise. We have recently received mailers from schools that are not on our list offering fee waivers. I’ve gone online for a couple to see if they charge in general, and they seem legit. Some have a date deadline to use the code.
@MAandMEmom We had the most luck with private universities. They either provided the waiver after a tour, emailed a fast app with waiver, or provided a waiver after son emailed and asked. He has now applied to 6 privates and has not been required to pay for any of their apps. Zero success with the public universities he is applying to and they range from $40-$80. Their response was only if son had qualified for an sat or act waiver.
^Wow. RPI sent a separate “special” application portal, but I read pretty carefully and didn’t see any waiving of the fee. @4MyKidz You have inspired me. Nothing worth a fail, but a try.
I think we’re just resigned to paying application fees. The waivers S19 is getting by email are not for schools on his list, he has a lot of public schools, and we aren’t touring most of them prior to applying. At least we saved money on gas/food/hotels by minimizing tours for Mr. “most colleges seem fine.”
@mathmomvt You are not behind. My D14 wasn’t the least bit stressed, and completed her apps a week before the Nov. 1st deadline and was accepted to all. She played a spring sport in high school, so had plenty of time. The main reason we are trying to get a head start with S19 is that he plays intense TX football, which combined with school & orchestra, consumes the Fall app season. We will have the same push for D20, as she also participates in a time consuming Fall activity: Colorguard/Band, plus school plus orchestra. I really just want my kids to sit back, relax & enjoy their senior year as early in the school year as possible.
And I wanted to add that 95% of the stidents in the high school where I work wait until October to work on their apps…and they are successful.
@peachActuary73 As I tell my students, “The answer’s already NO if you don’t ask, so what’s the harm in asking?”
We weren’t offered a fee waiver after our UAH tour, and I had no idea that it was something we could ask about. Oh, well - it was only 30 bucks. All of the fee waivers S19 has received were for schools he had no interest in, never visited, etc.
No t-shirts and no fee waivers - sounds like our campus visits were a bust LOL!
Same, the fee waivers are for schools S19 is not interested in applying. Many priority this and special that for some interested schools, but no freebies. I think for fun I’ll send his ACT score and see if that triggers anything.
@firstwavemom We got a T-shirt but I’m pretty sure no application fee waiver when we visited Pitt last April. S19 is working on his Pitt app now, but doesn’t have a transcript yet to work on his self-reported transcript section. We actually visited Pitt kind of impulsively because we were going down there to visit CMU as a high reach, and we really liked it. We have some concerns but we got a really good feel on campus and on the tour.
This year he is taking an online class through Stanford Lagunita for which he is getting HS credit but not college credit, and he’s not sure how to list it. There’s a section for college classes but I don’t think this counts since he’s not taking it for college credit. I think he should just list under his HS classes something like “Online Computer Science (Compilers) course” – make sense? (I actually don’t know how the HS is handling credit because I don’t think the course provides grades/feedback other than a completion certificate, so I assume it’s just a pass/fail kind of thing that doesn’t enter into his GPA.)