Hi Peeps. We have returned from admitted students day at Hobart & William Smith. The visit was very nicely done. Because Twin A was ED, it didn’t occur to me that there would be so many kids still deciding. The programming was mostly affirmation of areas where HWS excels and similar to a normal tour (but with food). My husband had taken her for the first tour and interview so this was my first look at the school.
I came away with two helpful facts for other parents. 1) No matter how many times you looks at photos, video, or Google Earth, nothing compares to seeing a campus in person. The school is pretty and the campus footprint is bigger than I expected so that was great. The lake is close and just beautiful. The town of Geneva is a nice size and already several years into a $10M revitalization grant. I swear I thought I had a every inch of the place memorized. The campus is not flashy like our southern schools. It is understated and that fits with Twin A perfectly. Lesson 2) If your kid has accepted or applied ED, they will be super anxious to get to campus and know that they made the right choice. I know this is obvious in hindsight, but I didn’t realize how frantic she was to get on campus and have that validation. I was focused on my own path – of course.
HWS is full tilt on a few areas: student faculty relationships, small town/family feel; community involvement and leadership; the environment and making the world a better place. I think their approach is fantastic and those themes were repeated. They take kids and shape them into adults who will be independent and not afraid to lead. It might be challenging to hide under the radar at the school. Twin A is gifted and happy to hide and shy away from challenges so this is a great match for her. The incoming president is the first woman president and coming from Wesleyan. I’m excited to see what she does.
So much other exciting news on the thread. Congratulations to all of the decisions. I’m still catching up.
@mom2twogirls - LOL! I thought I was in the home stretch. Do you mean to tell me I’m going to be getting Google doc alerts at 10pm the night before a paper is due next year too?
Loved your post @citymama9
"The way I’m looking at it now is that I think colleges “need’ you or they don’t. Some will need someone like you for a certain reason and a similar college may not have a need for someone with what you have to bring to the table. You can do everything right or not do everything right, and it may not matter either way.”
My next kid is applying next year and although I have been through the processes already twice I was reading the thread for ideas, advise etc. Big thanks to everyone for posting.
I only wish I had the “insight” or “sophistication” to know which schools would want someone like my kid. That would save us lots of wasted apps and heartaches!
@Trixy34 that’s what she’s telling me. On the bright side, she has way too far surpassed me in STEM subjects and no longer asks for me to edit anything related to them. It’s strictly English and Social Studies. Since she is planning a Chem E major, there aren’t too many classes that will be required and in my wheelhouse anyway. And those that are sound kind of interesting, so I won’t mind reading them.
@momzilla2D Congrats on the OSU decision. My daughter will, also, start there this fall (Policy Management, Leadership & Policy). There are a couple of great parent groups on Facebook.
@Trixy34 I guess we are on top of things but she’s been decided on a school and major since the fall and we have to have things to do! It was neat to see her go through the course catalog and get excited about classes she could take.
I haven’t edited much for her this year other than some scholarship essays. I don’t know if she will email me any drafts from college or not. I don’t mind, she takes my advice well and usually it only needs minor tweaks. Writing is her strength, math is not, so it’s a good thing she’s already fulfilled her math requirement through DE or I know she would be Snapchatting me math problems!
@Corinthian, I know what you mean about being too close. Kinda like some of my D’s options. My D wanted OOS years ago! Glad your D gets to go out of state and see what it’s like. Hope she likes the snow too.
@jjulesjenks That’s exciting! I think I knew that your daughter had chosen OSU, once upon a time, but then forgot. Now that the decision is made, maybe my memory will improve.
I’ve pondered a lot on what unknown hook would get my daughter into this or that school. Art? Music? Sports? Idaho? Who knows, but it’s mostly out of our control. Once all the academics and ECs are determined, I feel our child’s biggest opportunity are the essays.
I remember something an admissions officer at Whitman said to us a few years back. She described the different kinds of application essays she got. She emphasized the need for your essay to stand out. She asked, “Why will I remember yours?”
This really stuck with me and I encouraged my children to take a risk with their essays. My older daughter started her essay with a seemingly outlandish assertion that had to catch the reader’s attention.
For D19, finding a topic or theme for her Common App essay was difficult because she hasn’t really had any significant setbacks, traumas, unique accomplishments, experiences, etc. - ones which would make her stand out in the eyes of T20 admissions She’s just lived a good old simple life. Listing accomplishments or qualities was not going to work.
In the end, she wrote an allegorical story describing an experience of inner growth. Surprised the heck out of me. She was able to reveal, through the story, a part of herself in a creative way and give the reader a window into who she is.
This approach was certainly risky, but apparently it worked for us and both my daughters got the right admissions officers.
The essay is certainly tricky, very subjective. And humanities kids have an advantage there. I keep having this image of an admissions officer reading an amazing essay, and then the next several just don’t stack up. Maybe very good essays, and if read in a different order, may have gotten in, but…luck of the draw. Don’t think I had to do an essay, back in the day, but I’m sure my essay would stink. I’m just not that creative. My sister’s OTOH would have been great. (me=math major, sister=english major)
Yeah, I don’t know. I thought S19’s essay was pretty neat too. He took a funny yet somewhat ordinary problem that he encountered and walked the reader through his solution step by step, turning it basically into a discourse within his own mind, so he conveyed how he approaches problems and applies what he has learned in order to devise a solution. And it really did convey, in large part, who he is. He received hand-written references to his essay on his acceptances, but still received plenty of wait-lists. I thought it was unique and memorable, but maybe not - maybe it’s a common approach. It got him into RPI and a couple other engineering programs, but maybe it was a little too mechanically inclined for the liberal artsy people. But who knows? There could be countless reasons why a kid is rejected or wait-listed, none of them related to their qualifications or personality.
@am9799 Thank you so much! If you want any help or suggestions based on the kind of person your child is, feel free to dm me. I feel like I have a PhD in College Confidential at this point lol. Just kidding, but I love to help. Oh, and you don’t have to have insight and sophistication, you just have to obsessively research and try different strategies and hope for the best.
Speaking of the Common App essay. It was the most stressful aspect of the admissions process. My daughter and husband were in agreement that it was good, but I felt like it could be better. In one part of her essay she talked about some of the things that she feared and how she learned to overcome them. She used the word “anxious” and I went into panic mode after reading that you can’t say anything that will scare the admissions people. I imagined they would see that word and translate it into serious anxiety disorder and see her as high risk. I was totally overthinking it. In retrospect I realized how silly and crazed I was. My husband calmly said, “Doesn’t everyone feel anxious about something”? He kept on reminding me that they don’t want an essay where you talk about how perfect you are.I think she also used the word, “shy” describing herself as a 3yo. I thought it would be the end of her. Anyway, no one listened to me, and those words remained.
My kid is an excellent writer. Although she will major in Neuroscience, she is also very much into writing - she debated for a while whether to minor in creative writing or dance but decided on dance, since that is the only way she is sure that she will continue dancing at the intensity that she needs. I am actually sorry that I will never know how well her essays would have done at getting her accepted to colleges.
@rmsdad The problem is that there are so many things that we cannot know. We can figure out what things increase the chances of acceptance and what things harm them. However, at the end, acceptance is not by percent, it’s a yes/no result. A kid who has a 99.5% chance of acceptance can still be rejected, while a kid with a 0.5% chance can be accepted. Neither violates any of the rules that are stated by admissions, or figured out here by CC members.
The former may have perfect SAT scores, UW GPA 4,0,15 APs, all 5s, 6 national awards, and three non-profits, while being a URM from North Dakota. Unfortunately, that year, three people from ND with similar stats applied, as well as two from Wyoming, three from Idaho, and two from Montana. So they decided to only take two from North Dakota. The latter may have a 3.6 GPA, 1400 SAT, White, Middle Class, from a Chicago Suburb, whose only real EC is working every summer in a travelling circus, and he writes the most amazing essay about his time travelling with the circus, and an admissions person reads the essay, is blown away by it, and by the idea of a circus performer in the class of 2024, and recommends him to be accepted, and he is. We will never know it, and nobody can predict it.
@rmsdad as non-sporty as I am, my comparison is to sports. You put it all out there on the field or court, everything you have and the best that you have. Sometimes everything goes right and you “win”. Sometimes you put all the same stuff out there and you still “lose”.
I mean, we’ve all occasionally seen the best teams’ shocking upsets. All sometimes seen the underdogs triumph.
All you can do is put your best out there and see what happens.
Nope. Trying to make sense of it is the path to crazy town. To me, its like casting a play. Directors know what they want and their decisions are not random, but from the actor’s point of view it really can seem random. You see someone get the lead who really can’t sing as well as the person in the chorus and you wrack your brains trying to figure out why. The director had a reason. Maybe it had to do with the chemistry between the actors, or one actor’s personality fit the director’s vision for the role. Maybe someone bribed the director or made a large donation to the theater company. All an actor can do is hone their craft and keep moving forward.
