also, CSS Profile app opened yesterday (9/30)
Thank you! @romns116
@ninakaterina D finally drove by herself for the first tim this weekend. I told her she had to at least drive around the neighborhood without me a few times to help get rid of her nervousness. There are a few stores within a mile or two of us that are very easy to get to using almost all neighborhood roads. She had done it with me a million times but she relies on me to remind her which lane to get into, when to switch lanes, etc. D19 and D21 (who has a permit but drives much more than D19 and is more confident) finally went to the grocery store and picked up S23 by themselves on Saturday. Then she drove herself to a friend’s house to sleepover Saturday night. This morning she finally drove to school for the first time (also a pretty easy, 3 mile neighborhood streets type drive.) I think she just needed a push to do it alone!
Our school ranks by weighted GPA which forces kids to play the AP game if they care about rank. Honors classes are 4.5, AP, AICE and DE are 6.0. Freshman year when we were trying to get rid of an extra AICE class and add an elective the Dean told us it was a bad idea because it would make her fall behind her friends in class rank. 8-| I said we didn’t care because she would fall behind in grades if she didn’t have at least one relaxing class her entire freshman year. She has had one semester C, one semester B and a full year B (8th grade algebra, I never knew our math classes only give one year end grade so I always thought she had one A and one B in that class until I saw the official transcript) and she has a 3.86 UW and 5.something weighed. She is in the top 10% - I think just between 8 and 9%.
Some kids at our school do everything they can to get lots of 6.0 classes like taking DE classes over the summer, loading up on online courses on top of regular courses, never taking electives. Our old principal got in trouble because he cut a deal with a family so that the child would not have the 4.0 classes count towards his GPA! He wanted to be valedictorian and wanted to go to an Ivy but he also wanted to be class president which means you have to be in the 4.0 leadership class. The dad somehow convinced the principal to not count that class in his GPA although of course every other student in there gets the 4.0! I have no idea what ever happened with the GPA (if they put the 4.0 back or not) but the kid was valedictorian and did end up at a HYPSM school - so crazy.
@romns116 thank you! I really like the app! I’m now stuck at the IRS verification screen. It keeps giving me an IRS error, maybe overloaded with requests? In any case, glad to get this started for both kids.
@drewsmom17 @4MyKidz you’re welcome!
had the same issue trying to connect to IRS using DTS. It would open the IRS site, I’d enter the personal info for verification, then it would go to a blank screen. I ended up entering in the tax info manually. Worked without any issues after that.
Took the day off today to fill out the financial aid forms. Did CSS Profile yesterday and as I posted then - ugh painful. I got up early to do the FAFSA today and our internet was out lol. It came back up around 9:45 and I guess I hit a sweet spot, no problems with the FAFSA site or the IRS Retrieval tool. All done!
The talk about grades and rigor is interesting. So many schools handle things differently. For example, our city only weights based on AP classes, not honors (only weighting is - for AP classes - an extra 0.0488 for an A, .0366 for a B, and .0244 for a C). We have no A+ grade, but do have an A-. I think the extreme difference in grading systems is probably why some colleges rely so much on standardized tests, which can be rough if a student has a hard time with those kinds of tests due to anxiety, etc. Our city currently still ranks, but is supposed to get away from doing that in the next couple of years and do percent rankings only. (Rankings aren’t out yet, supposed to be released some time this week).
I just checked what our school profile says about weighted versus unweighted and how they figure percentiles. On S19’s transcript, he will have an unweighted GPA with percentile and a weighted GPA with percentile. We don’t have rank but the top 5% weighted GPAs wear some sort of special cord at graduation.
I really don’t like standardized tests but I also don’t get how colleges can determine rigor of the school without them. At the very least, they could look at AP scores instead of ACT/SAT scores. Something that’s not talked about too much is the reputation of the high school. If the AO knows your school and believes that it prepares kids well, that has to help. It’s obvious that our school has better relationships with the top universities in the midwest, but kids are on their own to get into Ivies. And our counselors know the people at Grinnell, Carleton, Kenyon but have no relationship at all with people at the NASCAC schools. Middlebury has plans to visit some other high schools in downtown Chicago so I asked our counselor to reach out to them and see if they would come to our school as well. Haven’t heard back yet.
@homerdog My impression is that the high school visits by admissions reps are scheduled pretty tightly. So they might not have time to come to your school but might be able to meet up individually with your son. For example when my D15 was looking at LAC’s we figured out when the Mt. Holyoke rep would be in our town and emailed to ask about visiting/interviewing with their rep. D15 was able to meet up with her in the lobby of her hotel for a 15-20 minute quasi interview.
@Corinthian Great tip. Thank you!
Date night tonight! Mr. InfiniteWaves and I are going to hang out and gaze longingly at each other while one works on the FAFSA and the other works on the CSS Profile. Cant. Wait.
“Lookin’ good tonight honey. Now pass that W-2 over here…”
Thanks very much to those of you who mentioned the CSS opening early. I was able to work on it yesterday. Not done, but getting there.
Spent a good hour or two going over every college D thought she may apply to, added them, answered some ridiculous questions meant only for them, then got to the end to see they wanted to charge me hundreds of dollars to send the CSS to all the schools listed. So just a hint- You have to pay to send the CSS so only add schools you are sure of at the beginning. Maybe everyone else knows this? LOL. Not me. So much time wasted.
I couldn’t get on the FAFSA site, so I tried the app as well (thanks again CC friends for the tip!!) I was able to get all the way to the tax return transmittal, then it went blank so i’ll try again later. But I feel successful for getting to that point 
Good luck with this, everyone! I’m totally stressed about some of the questions, and feel like I’ll have nightmares about D not being able to go to college because I answered incorrectly. Home value? Zillow has my home listed 1,000 feet bigger, with more baths and worth like $60,000 more than I could ever get. So what now? Ugh, question is rhetorical. I’m sure I’ll figure it out.
I was up all night because my brain would not stop reminding me of all of the stuff we still have to do - not just for college but regular life stuff too. Now I guess I need to add FAFSA to my list - don’t know if I need to add CSS? It would be so helpful if D could just have a list already, then I could see if any of these are even necessary.
@InfiniteWaves - Definitely give him the CSS Profile to do, and you do the FAFSA :).
@SunnyFlorida22 - For home value, are there any comparable homes nearby that have sold recently? You might be able to use that value. Or find another listing in your neighborhood that’s similar (with the CORRECT stats) and see what zilow says about that one :).
Decided this would be a great time to do some remodeling in the basement. (Well, the mold from the shower leak kinda decided that.) I think I will be installing 1000 sq ft floor mostly myself. Soon we will wake up and it will be Nov 1
@ilovebillyjoel D is applying to several LACs, so four of her five interviews have been for schools in that category. It does feel weird that she’s had to interview so much…this is not that common for a general (non-auditioning) applicant. We visited four campuses on a trip in July, which is when she did three interviews, two of which were at LACs and one was at a small-to-medium Jesuit school. We live within 100 miles of another of her schools, which is where we went last Friday during a random day off school. And another LAC on the east coast, where we have not visited, said they “strongly recommend” interviews so it’s been on my radar and we jumped on the opportunity when they sent an email saying they were having an interview event in our town. Of those five, she’s had a little bit of everything…two on-campus with young AOs, one on-campus with two AOs and I was invited to sit in the room as well, one on-campus with a student intern, and finally one off-campus with an alumna with a young AO present but interviewing someone else simultaneously. Phew! She put in a request for an alumni interview for another LAC, and we’ll see how my motivation goes for another campus visit 3 hours from home…I’m tempted to skip that one. She’s applying to my alma mater LAC as well but they only offer alumni interviews and not campus ones, so we’re skipping that one too. I’ll interview her myself. 
Our school is one of those that does not rank, and does not provide a quartile although if you’re in the top 10% you can tell because you’re eligible for a spot in the UC system and are notified. The GC said our district doesn’t do ranks because doing so benefits only the few kids at the top. I’m glad about this. We do have plusses and minuses on transcripts but the GPA impact is the same for everything. And the occasional teacher “doesn’t do” plusses and minuses, which is a bit weird. I think the software automatically calls it an A+ after some high cutoff that is not a perfect score, like a 97 or 98 I think. D has managed to get four A+s in core classes (and Health…lol…), but she also has plenty of A-'s, and four B+s or Bs. She had an annoying young APEL teacher mid-year last year who graded like a fiend and it was impossible to get anything decent grade-wise out of her. D got an 86 and was told she was “well above average” for the class. The problem is grade inflation and lack thereof is very inconsistent. I’ve really tried to communicate to D that it’s not worth making yourself crazy over a B here and there, and some of it is honestly luck.
@SunnyFlorida22 You have to pay to send the CSS to schools? Sigh. I gues that makes sense but I hadn’t thought about it. Couldn’t the schools just pay a subscriber fee instead…sigh. I was pleasantly surprised that a few of D’s schools have no application fee and/or have a waiver, but the costs are creeping back up with the music supplement production costs, score reports, financial aid forms, etc. I’ll keep telling myself that we’re saving money by not working with a professional consultant…
D passed her road test last Friday at the age of 17 years and one month. That would’ve been way late in my high school back in the day but she’s not that far behind here. She was extremely nervous despite my numerous pep talks about how it didn’t matter much. Her permit was due to expire the next day so I am indeed glad that I didn’t have to return to the DMV to get a new one. Her examiner marked her down for having “tunnel vision”, which confused all of us but it was fun for her to declare that she really doesn’t care! To torture me, S21 looked up online drivers ed options for himself that very morning. Since D took a loooooong time to get through all the various steps, I really need a break from it all but S is eligible for a permit in March and unlike his sister, wants to do it all the moment he’s age-eligible. Sigh.
How college crazy am I becoming?
I like to follow the Nobel Prize announcements every fall. It’s this week and next week. I read up on who is in the running, I cheer when I read about the winners.
Before now I’ve never really noticed whether the winners are affiliated with colleges. I mean, I have this dim notion that most of them are college professors because that’s where research happens, but I never paid attention to specific institutions.
Just now I barely read the announcement about the two winners for Medicine this morning because I was scanning the article to see where they taught.
Kyoto University and University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, in case you’re interested. Oh, and they found a better way to treat some cancers.
I really need to adjust my perspective. Although that will probably fix itself by March 30 next year.
@sunnyflorida22 Totally on the same page with you. Got most of the CSS Profile done after @parent2one shared. I was not following that date too closely myself.
I need to update our charts, which are Excel and OneNote printouts, and are about to go on an unused cork board. Need to add CSS dates and Scholarship dates. The CSS submissions are going to have staggering due dates. No need to submit to schools that may not get an actual application. Only 1 of our CSS schools are possible EA. I’d really like to know how close to full pay we are, though.
Case Western just got officially dropped. D19 said that she’d rather go to her safety OOS public if the choice was between the two of them. She really liked Case when we visited Spring Break, and they don’t have any supplemental essays, but letting her drive this as much as possible. I guess this was the point of knocking out the rolling admit schools.
I wish we had more EAs or rolling apps on S19’s list. @peachActuary73 I think it’s great to drop schools once one is in the bag and it’s the top safety choice. S19 has one EA but we don’t get an answer until early Feb so that’s not helpful. He may get a pre-read via XC at a match school fairly soon here but I don’t know if I would trust it enough to drop other schools.
I’m sure I’m in the minority, but navigating the FAFSA was more challenging than the CSS for me.
How do we add schools? The instructions say click on “Make FAFSA Corrections” but I do not see that link anywhere.
Oh my, all you overachievers are hurting my self esteem today. I’m going to be doing Fafsa and CSS so much earlier than I ever did with my D, but my goal is to have them done sometime in the next month!You guys are so on the ball!
Yes, and all the fees add up, even when there are waivers for the application fees. Fees for CSS, test scores, subject test scores, some for submitting arts supplements. It’s crazy!
@homerdog - I agree with the suggestion to try and arrange a separate meeting with the Middlebury rep. A couple of years ago, a Kenyon rep was visiting some private schools in our area. I was so impressed that they guy wanted to drive across the city during rush hour to meet my D at a Starbucks and they had a great meeting. They ended up having nice e-mail correspondence through the whole admissions process.
Our county is strange with GPAs. The kids cannot get higher than a 4 for each class but they do add 10 points to their numeric grade for AP and IB classes (nothing for honors). So, rank is definitely helped by the higher level classes. S will have 16 AP/IB classes when he finishes and that sounds crazy but it’s what he wanted to take. Rank is in the top 1-2%.