Congrats @yucca10 - that’s cute that they do a surprise party!
We decided to postpone D’s ACT from tomorrow to late October. To be honest I am not even sure she will take it then- she has been on the fence about taking it again because she is convinced she will not improve. She had not done one bit of prep for tomorrow’s test so I gave her the option of paying the fee to postpone and she gladly said yes. I hate that we are still worrying about this up until the last minute but I guess I should have known this would happen - she always seems to perform best under pressure!
DD has her first college acceptance today- Concordia University in Nebraska. Yesterday she had a good visit to a school that I would love for her to choose. She did well in her audition for the musical today, and got on Homecoming Court. Her crush is talking to her on Snapchat and she seems to be getting her elementary school BFF back. Wednesday she started volunteering in a field she wants to go into and has been put in charge of their social media. It’s been a big week
@momtogkc , D19 postponed her August SAT subject tests for the same reason as your D. I guessed, she needed the break from tests to work on her applications.
Three days of senior year done. D19 seems pretty happy with it so far. Even though her schedule is jam packed, she feels like the pressure and stress of it is noticeably lower than last year was. That might change, but she is feeling pretty good so far.
She’s not quite ready to hit send on the apps, but she is getting there. I’m predicting maybe another week at the most. She’s getting feedback and will need to edit the supplemental essays, and then it’s just a matter of double checking everything else. Of course, that’s just her own part of it. I am expecting the school/ teacher parts will take at least another couple of weeks.
We got the score for her final SAT. It was a great score that just missed her goal by 10 points. She was a little sad about it but bounced back pretty well. She hasn’t even mentioned trying again, and we aren’t encouraging it. So, done with standardized testing until APs in the spring. Big sigh of relief here… at least until it’s d22’s turn!
It’s a lot more real now. We are still struggling with what to do after the 4 public university deadlines. We did learn that one of the publics that we saw as a match is more of a safety. The Admissions office explained how they recalculate GPA. They use a certain amount of each CORE subject. I wish I had taken a picture, but for instance they might only take two social studies courses, and will choose the highest. They also weight Honors courses .5 and AP/IB/DE 1. So their published GPA stats trend high.
Of the rest of the list, she is only in LOVE with one of the privates. Of course, low acceptance, pricey. The other definite private is a dad request and she’d like to sabotage the app.
@4MyKidz Thanks! We did successfully get two private fee waivers.
Congrats to all of you with acceptance letters! I cannot get S19 to think past his top two choices. He did plan to visit his counselor and get LOR requested this month. He applied to MN because they sent a free app code but doubt that is a safety finances wise.
He has a visit planned next month to see if #2 will beat his #1 choice. Both are reaches due to being so competitive and possibly financial reaches, even with ED and known efc. I can’t get him to think about plan B. By the time he hears back, plenty of scholarship and honors deadlines will be past. Grrrr, I’m starting to stress a bit!
Three days of senior year done here too. He’s excited about most of his classes this year. On the first day, S19 found out that his counselor has gone on maternity leave. I’m happy for her, but umm, this is an awkward time to get a new counselor. How do I delicately ask when she will be back? S14 also had a similar situation where his counselor retired after his junior year.
S19 also got good news. His head counselor informed him and another student that they are the school’s nominees for Presidential Scholar from their school. Are any of you familiar with the process? He needs to write two essays within the next two weeks, and the counselor recommended he write about challenges he has overcome and leadership, the two topics that my dear privileged and introverted child has the most trouble with. Sigh.
And it looks like he will make NMSF based on the cutoffs for our state (NJ) even though he hasn’t heard anything.
Have any of you been told that you should wait until October or so to send transcripts to colleges? My daughter handed in some transcript request forms to the counseling office and was told that they usually didn’t send transcripts until October because most colleges want the senior courses on the transcript. I know that some schools require mid year transcripts, but October is NOT midyear (it’s not even the end of the first quarter) at our school, and none of my D’s schools require midyear transcripts anyway. Also I went back to all the websites and none of them say anything about needing transcripts from the first quarter or term of senior year either. Finally some of the schools that she’s been admitted to or already applied to have been sending emails reminding her to submit her transcript. And most of the schools will get a listing of her senior schedule with the Common or Coalition App.
My D is not applying to any very selective colleges and there’s no reason to string this out any longer IMO. She got her last SAT score yesterday and she met her goal, so is ready to submit her remaining applications. We both want this to be done. If her school can just send the transcripts we can breath a sigh of relief because nothing more will be required of her school for 11/14 of her applications (she only needs LORs for 3 of her schools).
Our school doesn’t send out any transcripts or recommendation letters until October. They say it takes them that long to update the school report. It still is in plenty of time to meet admissions deadlines.
We haven’t gone through the counseling office for the ones we wanted done early. If the school didn’t require a GC rec letter, we had the option of paying $5 for a sealed official transcript from the Administrative office.
Our transcripts have “courses in progress” for senior year. Any transcript submitted after the first quarter will have first quarter grades. (But the first quarter ends after the Nov. 1 deadline).
The transcript request form asks for all deadlines and the school is good about meeting them. I’m not sure what they do with a rolling admissions school if they get the request early (and well ahead of other deadlines).
I rattled off what I thought was S19’s list today and got some “I don’t want to apply there” responses so at the moment I think he only has four schools he’s definitely applying to. I’m not sure how we got here 9 MONTHS after he finished his standardized testing. Yikes. I’d say he has one match and three safeties academically and I guess everything is a reach in terms of auditions. Seems like a recipe for a gap year.
I don’t think our HS uploads transcripts to Common App till next month but the GC office provided us with sealed copies to send out to schools with rolling admissions. Maybe your HS will do the same? Wouldn’t hurt to ask.
Hmmm. Well, we just attended a college application admission session at her high school and all she was told was to use a certain form to request transcripts and that’s what she did. They didn’t give any dates.
I also just looked at the packet that was given at the session and there’s a template for the kids to use to track their application milestones and there’s a field for “Date Transcript Requested” and the example is “Aug. 17”.
They just need to communicate better.
My post was actually about 10 times longer with a rant about other conflicting info they gave at the session, but I deleted most of it.
I guess a saving grace is that her ED school doesn’t even require a transcript - they do the SRSR thing and she’s done with that.
I sent an email to the admin asst in the counseling office (she’s the one who told my daughter that they don’t send the transcripts until Oct) and explained that some of her schools have been advising us to send the transcripts and SAT scores. She told me that she’d send them now if I wanted her to but I told her I’d let her know in a couple of days because I wanted to check here to see if there was any valid reason to wait until October. She didn’t say there was some reason they couldn’t - but if they have to manually upload the transcripts for the Common App that makes sense for the Common/Coalition App schools.
I also just looked at the transcript request form and it states that all transcripts are free unless mailing one is required and a $1 fee will apply for a hand mailed one. I think only one of my D’s schools (that doesn’t use the Common/Coalition App) requires a hand mailed one - all the others gave us an email address.
I’m going to ask her to just send them all and see what happens.
I actually just learned that checking the box for financial aid can impact some decisions (eg, schools not need-blind). So if you don’t anticipate using FA, then don’t check it.
