Six weeks left:
Finalizing graduation plans, and trying to wrap up my Shutterfly kick. D’s going on her last church retreat this weekend, and has been staying after school this week working on college decision banners. HS creates an individualized banner hallway in April. They have a lot of Georgia State, UGA,Georgia Southern, but it’s also nice to hear about the outliers, whatever they are (UNC Wilmington, Howard, Purdue, Florida State, Brown)
Still no driver’s license!
Short notice admit days:
There was a school that paid for admitted student flights (D didn’t go), and they reported RD mid-March. Above and beyond, and I absolutely don’t think that should be expected, but I liked that they took ownership of the timing and the relationship to travel costs. It’s kind of crazy to me that some schools release results late March and then have admit events in less than two weeks.
We got lucky and flew into one nearby airport and got a return flight out of the other close airport for our single April rush visit. It also helped that there was info on cc with dates before the school communicated them.The afternoon after dates were released, the hotels in the area all had price spikes.
We are attending a Women of Excellence Dinner at Bentley this evening! Very excited that we could work this dinner in (plus a breakfast tomorrow for Women’s Leadership recipients). We are multi-tasking this weekend! We will be in Worcester by noon tomorrow to join the team for an afternoon regatta. Yah! Very happy my D gets to attend a portion of Admitted Student’s festivities.
@homerdog welcome back! Funny, I was just thinking about you this morning!
Admitted students weekend for NYU this weekend. Only starts tomorrow but we were doing other stuff in the village so we swung by to take a look… welcome flags out everywhere, looks gorgeous and welcoming, past attendees have told us its lots of fun, but it’s also starting to hit home. I warned D19 I might embarrass her by crying at some point during the weekend.
It was lovely weather today and Washington Square Park was full of spring blossoms and people and really quite lovely.
We went to Admitted Students yesterday and I thought it was nice and well organized for the most part, but certainly understated compared to some other days we have attended in the past. The best admitted students we attended was at NEU where they went the extra mile by freshening campus up, lots of signage, balloons, markers, displays, freebies, tours and events. They really did the best to roll out the red carpet for the kids.
Yesterday was more relaxed and not pompous in any way. They had a nice presentation from current students discussing “ Why this school?” and we went to an engineering event which highlighted some neat projects the kids have been working on.
My son was happy to listen to the current student’s experiences so far. The kids came from all over the world and were very smart, eloquent, and nice.
The crowd was interesting. I did not get the feeling we were surrounded by a bunch of snobby, rich people. In fact, it felt nothing like that at all. It was a very diverse group of people from all over. I have been to events at some other private liberal arts types schools and have felt differently, so that was refreshing. My wife noticed it too, and she mentioned to me “what an interesting mix of people”. It was decidedly "non-preppy”. The only funny thing my son noticed was some kid’s mom ( from another country) was wearing a pair of $1.500 high top sneakers made famous by some hip hop guy. He laughed.
Anyways, that was a good day. Definitely seems to be the right place for our son, he fits right in for sure.
D submitted housing application, created a parent account for me to pay for the next 4 years last night, and she is ready for her overseas spring break trip early tomorrow.
So my D is one of the “not ready to choose” kids. She has narrowed it down to three. We have one more campus visit to do next week. It’s a day trip so no getting on a plane or train. She wants to meet with the orchestra director to get a better feel for their music department. She’s probably going to minor in music so it’s important to her.
She seems to be ignoring all of the emails and correspondence from her accepted schools beseeching her to put down her deposit. It helps that she is still quite busy with her senior year and extra curricular things. She really wants to go out with a bang.
I feel for those parents who don’t yet have a decision.
Just completed Accepted Student Day. DS19 was in his element. Chatting with all the other students, making connections, looking into clubs and organizations. He is so happy. He can’t wait to attend. We also had the added perk of seeing his older brother for a short time as he prepares for the end of the semester.
Back from the east coast two college tour: a day at WesFest and then a day at Dimensions. After the day at Dimensions, our daughter took us to the swag shop and promptly bought a jacket and a four year membership discount to announce her choice. So that settles it. Even though I was exhausted at that point, it was refreshing to experience the amount of energy it gave having the uncertainty lifted and reaching the end of the search.
Not sure if this is the place to compare WesFest and Dimensions, but the differences were interesting. At Wes, the students had arranged a (loud) non stop protest in front of the Admissions office, protesting the working conditions of their janitors and demanding the hiring of 5 more janitors. There were well over 100 students in one march I observed and it definitely shows the passion of their students. They stood onstage carrying banners behind the President while he gave his welcome address. He handled it with a lot of grace and it did not detract from Wes as a destination.
WesFest was spread over 3 full days while Dimensions was mainly the PM of one day and the AM of the next. The shorter time-frame seemed to result in fairly large sized groups in each event (tour, etc.), but not so much to detract from what was being presented. In some ways they seem such different schools - Open Curriculum vs General Education Requirement, Semester Based vs Quarter Based, minimal vs large Greek presence. But my daughter commented that they are extremely similar schools based on what she saw. As it turned out, she had more in-depth interactions with the Dartmouth students due to the logistics of overnight stay and the initiative taken by the Dartmouth students in the process. She liked the aesthetics of the buildings and the layout of Dartmouth with the Green, but also liked the smaller campus of Wes.Both places emphasized not creating limiting boxes in terms of majors and future careers. At both schools, I saw deep questioning of the status quo.
Both seemed amazing places to be and I would not have been disappointed with either as my daughter’s choice. Her perspective is that she would be happy at either place and her day to day experience would likely be extremely similar. Trying to get a window into her process, I asked which she would have chosen if Wes had the Ivy tag. She didn’t hesitate to say that she would have chosen Wes — if the Alumni Network was close. This question and answer has me reflecting on topics of human nature, social justice, and more - perhaps a result from being on campus again.
It was an exhausting, but joyful few days.
I’ve been trying to keep up with reading the conversations for the last few days. Too many to name individually, but congrats to all are have decisions in hand and to all who are still in process… you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
@rmsdad Congratulations on your daughter’s decision! I love that moment of clarity when they make their decision. I’m sure not all students have that, but my D was like yours. Once she finished the last visit, she just knew.
Congrats on the decision @rmsdad! That must feel wonderful!
Awesome news @carolinamom2boys, that seems like it would be amazing to be there to witness your son so happy. How nice to be at his first choice, a great school, and with his older brother. Congrats!
I am a parent of a junior (ds20) reading here to keep my finger on the pulse of admission changes so we are prepared for next year. I just wanted to say that y’all have triggered my PTSD of dropping off my oldest at school several years ago. I am reading your angst about drop off and sharing of “lasts” and tears are streaming down my face like I dropped her off yesterday. I know many of you have been through this before but I just wanted to add for those parents of oldest children that they will be OK. Many will thrive and grow beyond your wildest imaginations. Others will second guess and re-evaluate their choices and may change direction in the middle of this journey. Some will cling to you and home, and others will turn around and not look back. All perfectly normal. Good luck as you navigate this amazing time.
@homerdog Im a bit of an occasional stalker to this page and was bummed when you were gone as it seems our sons have had similar paths. My son is strongly considering Bowdoin as well but has the lead in his last musical and was unable to go back to any visits so I would love to hear thoughts from your sons visit.
FB keeps showing me articles from Grown and Flown about dropping your kid off at college and stuff.
Prom was last night. Such a fun day, from the hair appointment, to the friends coming to DD at Grandma’s house to do makeup together, to the pictures and Grand March. Grandma’s is home base since we live in the country, so she gets to be in on all of it. DD’s seam ripped during pictures so it was back to Grandma’s for a fix. So many good pictures, I just keep scrolling through them on repeat. Sigh…
I’m officially losing track of this thread as I was out of town for a few days and now am completely lost. Went to The Masters golf tournament and feel like a jet setter but am all behind on anything related to social media!
I ordered and received D’s grad announcements from Shutterfly but I messed up on the return address envelopes, but thankfully the customer service lady I spoke with helped me out for a minimal cost to re-do those. I got an awesome deal on announcements, so I went ahead and ordered thank you notes with photo on them as well, and still got out of there for under $50 (even with the re-do envelopes :-)).
We have prom coming up in the middle of AP exams, that should be interesting. Found a dress on nordstromrack.com and shoes online too, so that’s done. Also found D a dress she likes for graduation, so that’s done too, just need to find something for myself.
I too took a walk down memory lane, by looking for pictures on my Costco Photo account that I had downloaded though the years. I used to get them printed all the time, but in the past few years, not so much. We are having a graduation party w/ my D and her friend around the corner, so we were looking for pictures of the two of them. It really is feeling real now.
On the FB parent page I’m on for ASU, someone mentioned using a credit card to pay tuition even w/ a 2.4% fee. Per each $1,000, that’s an extra $24. It would make sense to use a credit card if your rewards are greater than that amount. So I just spent a little bit of time looking over some options. Wondering what anybody recommends. So far I’m thinking the Capital One Venture card looks pretty good for us.
And we finally have a decision here: my D has happily committed to Binghamton University! She is absolutely thrilled with her decision and we couldn’t be more proud of her. She went 10/10 with some really wonderful acceptances and merit scholarships. In the end, she picked not the highest ranked school, or the least expensive, but the one that offered her the most for the best price.
