@dfbdfb. One of my S19s has one from a few weeks ago that he never opened either. I think it wasnt in his top three, so he’s rather enjoying the possibilities!
Of course - I want to know (especially if it could be cheaper than the ones he’s choosing!!)
@Cheeringsection regarding touring NC State’s lab facilities, the best thing would be to contact admissions directly. They will at times be able to accommodate meetings/tours that cater to a more specific focus after the main tour you take on the day of your visit.
My takeaway from my kids experience and their friends, to get into the most elite places like the Ivies or Amherst/Williams, you have to have stellar stats, but also at least two three different ECs that you excel at. Maybe parents here have additional insights.
My takeaway is that my D should just listen to me, I know what I’m doing 
@Stuffedquahog That is very cool!
@homerdog Sorry about the WL, but I like his policy of not saying on any W:s!
@dfbdfb Haha - that is too funny! Sounds like something my D would do if she didn’t care about the school. When decisions came in from schools that had fallen to the bottom of her list she would just tell me I could open them.
D is sleeping right now after waking up sick early this morning and she is so mad. This puts her over the number of absences she is allowed before she has to take her final exams. I think they are allowed 6 before they have to at least show up and sign in for the exam and 8 before they have to actually take the exam. All but 1 of her absences have been because she was truly sick and 4 of them were from when she was in the hospital with the flu so I knew she didn’t have much of a chance of making the cut off. 
Oh well, now she won’t be stressed if they have a senior skip day since it’s too late to matter anyway!
@dfbdfb when I mentioned D19’s accidental offer and that we would never know if she’d got any merit… I totally forgot they would have sent mail too. So we found out she did end up with a merit offer from them, not huge but not insignificant either. It was a nice little confidence boost for her actually (her ED school gives almost no merit and her stats are at the low end).
@elena719 My takeaway is that, to have a successful application process, it takes a ton of work. One cannot expect 17 year olds who are up to their necks in homework and ECs to lead the process. Yes, S19 ended up being able to tell us what was important to him in a college but only after visiting schools early on. I took him to Northwestern and U of Chicago summer before junior year to look at mid-sized universities, one suburban and one urban. Took him to Wisconsin to see big state school. Took him to Beloit, Oberlin, Denison and Kenyon to see LACs. That helped him narrow down what he wanted. Then, as all of you know, I spent a lot of time on CC finding LACs that fit his stats.
He did everything ahead of time. Took SAT in fall of junior year and was done. Was lucky to have an awesome English teacher at school who went to Michigan undergrad and Iowa Workshop who taught the kids how to write personal statements. Gave them memoirs to read so that they could understand what the genre sounds like. And then we hired him over the summer to review S19’s essays and S19 wrote most of his 15 essays before senior year.
Also, we visited his matches and safeties. He showed as much interest as possible going to the AOs meetings if they came to our school, interviewing if it was an option, spent time on the schools’ websites to make sure that his supplemental essays were very specific to the school. Since we visited almost all of the schools he got into, I think his being able to write about the classes he sat in on and his feeling on the campuses really helped. The only schools he got into that we did not visit were Dickinson and Hamilton. Dickinson was a safety that I do not think has yield protection but, still, he contacted the XC/track coach and also met with the AO twice when he came to our school. Same with Hamilton - coach was interested but knew S19 wouldn’t go ED and he wasn’t fast enough at the time to be recruited. S19 met with Hamilton rep at our school and did an alumni interview here. We visited William and Mary, Grinnell, Carleton, Bowdoin, Kenyon, Davidson and he was accepted at all. We didn’t bother with Williams, Amherst, Midd, or Vandy as they say that interest didn’t count but I’m not so sure. At Midd, he was waitlisted but I think that’s because they had no supplement so he had no way to show specific interest in the school. He did interview and it went well and I do wonder if that helped him get on the waitlist.
I would say he was successful at the schools where he made the most contact - supplemental essay, interview, AO meeting at school, took his art supplement (only Vandy wouldn’t take it), contacted the XC/track coaches. All of the LACs, including Williams where he was denied, had coaches who told him his stats were stellar and he could walk on. So that was just another person at the school who may have helped him. Only Dartmouth is left and I would say he’s had a decent amount of contact there. Met with the AO at our high school, went to an alumni lunch in Dec (that we still don’t know how he was invited), wrote a strong supplement, had his peer rec written by a boy whose known him forever and whose parent is a Dartmouth alum and looked over the letter, didn’t initially get an interview but emailed his AO and asked for one and was contacted by an alum the very next day and under the wire of their deadline for interviews. Sent his portfolio and emailed the AO with updated art awards and a personal statement about why Dartmouth’s new art building is where he’d like to study. Of course, this is a crapshoot of an app and we will know the result later today. So far, his results are exactly as I predicted (and a friend can vouge for me as I gave her my predictions in Jan).
I will say this - I don’t know if parents or kids know how much the essay and recommendations matter but I think they matter a LOT. Once a student gets past the academic threshold, I really these are the two ways to stand out. S19 has received hard copy acceptance letters from seven of his eight acceptances and five of those had a handwritten note out to the side of the letter that mentioned how much they liked his essay. And three of the letters mentioned how he’s got teachers at home who believe in him. So, for parents with younger kids, I would say to make sure the essays are authentic. S19 did no bragging in his essay, didn’t write about overcoming a problem, or how he led some group, etc. His essay was about his high school friendships. We went through his app and thought his ECs and grades showed his leadership and rigor. We hoped his teachers would speak to his curiosity and his character. I thought what was missing was a personal statement that said what was most important to him and he wanted to write about his friendships. I think most people might read his essay and think it’s well written but doesn’t say much about him. His English teacher and I both disagreed with that. His essay was pure S19. It was who he is and it was something that wasn’t going to come through anywhere else unless he wrote it in his CA essay. I have a feeling that it was just so different that the other essays the AOs read.
So that’s it…well, until we get his last decision and he decided where to go!
Starting graduation announcements today!!! Man, this is surreal!
Edited to ask-- Where does the tissue insert go? In front of the name card, or in the last of the 3 folds? This has, um… been “while” since I last did something like this. LOL
Same takeaway as ~ @bjscheel - my kid needs to listen to me more. Lol!
But my major takeaway, not just from our experience, but from seeing the results other families are getting, is that the road at private schools is much harder for unhooked kids who are either merit shopping or legitimately need financial aid. You really need to start early targeting potential schools, probably completely forget about the reaches, and if you can, apply ED to a match. Also, if you have the means to pay the application fees, target a good number of safeties so you can comparison shop.
My other takeaway is that things are very much kid dependent and as parents of twins, I had a front row seat to that. Both my S19 and D19 visited one each of large state, mid size state, community college and LACs as sophomores as part of their scout troop programs. I think that was a great start to the process and that made them hone in on LACs. They attend a high school with 4000+ kids, so, the intimate atmosphere and the interaction with professors at LACs appealed to them. So, we took them to visit LACs fall of junior year. We picked schools based on US News, Colleges that Change Lives, and LACs where we had applied. We did make sure that they saw the range from Amherst (11% acceptance) to Puget Sound (80%). That’s where the similarities end.
S19 wanted a LAC without fraternities in a big city that limited him to Mac and a few CA schools; but, wanted a winter, didn’t like Portland, didn’t want to go to the South, so, it was Mac or bust for him.
D19 loved almost all the LACs we visited. They didn’t do interviews during visits, but, D19 did alumni interviews or AO interviews if they visited their high school. Actually, we didn’t know that we could set up interviews during visits. I guess I dropped the ball there as a parent. S19 refused to apply to any school that required an interview, although he is a very pleasant and sociable kid. S19 turned in his apps literally 3 hours before the deadline because he was working on his essays and we had to take him to Starbucks to turn the common app in before Starbucks closed at 9 because our internet had crashed that day! Talk about a stressful day!! We read his essay and supplementals AFTER the apps went in!
D19 was more organized and turned things in October for RD! Her English teacher read the essay and gave suggestions. D19 also had a peer group of friends who read each others essays and gave feedback. I’m happy to say that all those kids have gotten into good schools.
We had absolutely no contact with the admissions offices or anyone, other than orchestra directors as both want to continue to play music in college. We talked to them on our visits. Maybe that helped. But, there was no contact after the apps went in, in spite of my bugging them. We didn’t show any interest anywhere either.
Hopefully a future parent can benefit from reading all these posts and figure out what works best for them and their kid.
I agree with @homerdog about the essay. My son got into his reaches and I am 100% sure it was his essays. He battled anxiety and depression through much of HS so ECs weren’t his thing. (He chose to work a number of jobs instead.) His personal statement essay was intensely personal and could only have been written by him. It was a risky essay but he felt like it was the story he wanted to tell. I gave him ideas to tighten it up and pointed out a few grammatical errors…but it was all him both in personality and voice and I think that came through.
Also agree about the essays and recs. At the end of the day schools are accepting people not stats. They need to get to know the kid behind the numbers. I once heard an ad com make a reference to ‘drone’ candidates. I think he meant an app where the personality doesn’t come through or it comes across as bland.
It’s hard to say what we learned or what we might have done differently because the process is so individualistic. D19 got into (what I thought were) her safeties and matches, and got waitlisted and in one case denied at her reaches. (Still waiting to hear from one low-reach.)
Her application had a lot of strengths – test scores that were at or above the 75th percentile at all of her schools except the denial (and around the 50th percentile there), a 4.0 unweighted GPA, some APs (5s and one 4) an intriguing range of music and other ECs, demonstrated interest by visiting all of the schools except one (she got in there). She is, I believe, a good exemplar of the “average excellent” student.
I can theorize as to why she didn’t have success at the reaches. Was her college-specific essay not good enough (which I think is possibly/probably true as she was deferred EA at the waiting-to-hear college) and therefore maybe investing in an outside essay editor might have been worth it? Should she have spent more time on her Physics subject test, on which her score, while respectable, probably doomed her chances at the STEM school that denied her? Did she not package her perfectly fine but not jaw-dropping ECs well in the common app? Should I have been reminding her that should make sure to open every e-mail and (as appropriate) click on links that interested her? Maybe. But we all make choices in the parenting process, and I knew there was a limit of what I could suggest and have her stay sane. (She was very self-directed during the process – I was not nagging at all.) And at a more basic level, I have no idea why she didn’t get in. Maybe her essay was totally fine but it’s something else – the other colleges happened to have already admitted a bunch of orchestra kids and just didn’t have room for more. Who knows?
And of course there are other things that she could not change – she attends (by choice) a school for many years that is well-known and has a lot of advantages but offers no science AP classes. That can’t help a kid who’s trying to study STEM in college. There weren’t a lot of AOs who visited, so she didn’t necessarily get to put (her) face to (her) name. We are not a full-pay family.
Our S24 is on a different track for his post-HS experience and so any insight I gained will be shared with friends and neighbors with younger kids as opposed to being recycled. (Gotta do something with all this random info I’ve picked up.)
But if I had any single suggestion for the parents of the HS class of 2020 who are lurking, it’s that your kids should really try to find, in the words of the book of the same name, “8 first choices.” D19 was sad to get the denial as that school was probably her first choice, but we made sure that she picked schools to apply to that she really wanted to go to. As a result, regardless of what happens with the eighth and final school, she’ll have a range of schools to choose from that she’ll be glad to go to. From that perspective, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Now that I’m pretty much finished with this process for D19 (AKA the guinea pig), I do have to do this all over again for D22. My takeaway from this process is:
Start studying NOW for the SAT. My D22 already took the PSAT last fall, and needs to make some gains. I have several study books now, and we have been big on Khan Academy for many years, and I am begging D22 to be diligent and do the practice questions there. Every time she does the questions she feels like she’s either learning or getting more confident. Can’t do better than that!
I also now I know not to bother applying to and giving UT application money and their $50 housing deposit, because unless kid is in the top 6% or maybe 5% by the time D22 applies, they only very rarely get acceptance.
D22 and I have conversations about what she would enjoy doing in life; what would make her happy, etc. to figure out where that child belongs. That is something I didn’t do with D19 as she’s more self-directed than D22. In the end, we all know our kids better than we think.
@jellybean5 I agree with the SAT studying. We have a D21 and she knows her summer willl be ballet and SAT studying. Only caveat is that a student needs algebra 2/trig under her belt in order to score high on the math section so starting early is good and all but, for kids who will take that class as a junior, they will do best on the test further into junior year or into the summer between junior and senior years.
Agree re essay and recs. Definitely what got my 25th percentile unhooked D19 in! Then again she’s the kind of kid that always manages to pull a rabbit from a hat.
I’m fully hoping the demographic cliff being talked about for the mid-2020s happens and some of this insane pressure is lessened for D26.
Takeaway - Trying to articulate what gave my twins the nod over so many qualified applicants is like nailing jello to a wall. But I’ll try and apologize in advance if the message gets muddled.
I can say that you can’t really orchestrate any of this, and then follow that up immediately with “make sure you have the basics before you even consider applying”. Polar opposite statements, but valid nonetheless. Valid because you do need the requisite stats to get to the gate to compete for admission. Once there, you can’t orchestrate what comes next. What I think pushed my twins over the admissions gate was the support of their school. Without their school’s support in the form of great recommendations from teachers and their guidance counselor, I don’t think they had a shot. Each twin spoke frankly with each recommendation provider and asked whether they would not just write a recommendation for them, but whether they would support their application to H (or Y). And only after they got confirmation from each person did they make the decision to use their one silver bullet on their SCEA school. If any one of the individuals they asked were not 100% behind their applications, I think they would have done ED to another school.
At the end of the day, the AO’s at the tippy top colleges reading an application have no idea who the student is. They have no choice but to rely on the words of people who have known this student day in and day out…comparing them to others in the class and others they have taught in their career. It gratefully worked out for my twins, but it could have so easily gone the other way. They each had a great list if it didn’t work out…which was critical.
I’m going to add a different perspective. All these things that have been been mentioned about essays, studying early, etc may all be needed to get into very selective schools, but aren’t necessarily needed for more average schools or average kids. If you have one of those coming along in the future, you do not need to pressure that kid in this way in order to get into colleges.
FWIW, my S19, with less than stellar stats (3.15 uw gpa, 1220 SAT, only one AP, no ECs except basketball and he isn’t a recruited athlete) got in everywhere including his reaches. At the most difficult admission school, he was below 25% for SAT score, did not retake the SAT even though the school requested it, and only answered two of the three optional questions on the application. He got in.
Neither of my kids applied to the very selective schools and I feel like I am living in a different world than most of these posts describe. You are only in this rat race because you choose to be. It isn’t everyone’s experience. Your kid could aim for less competitive colleges and have a much less stressful senior year. I don’t agree with the common CC belief that you must go to a selective school in order to get a good education. I think that belief is putting a lot of unnecessary stress on high school seniors.
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I agree, @me29034 – but you don’t know where my D19 applied. I think everyone of us here would agree that students don’t have to apply to selective schools, that that is an individual choice.
I really don’t think of it as a rat race. Maybe others do, and it certainly required some work on our part and D19’s part, but rat race? Not for a minute.