@makemesmart “Lurking at the class of 2019 thread and saw a parent “bragging sheet”, is this something parents/kids prepare themselves to give it to the GC for LOR?”
Absolutely you create a “brag sheet” or “cheat sheet” and give it to not only the GC but to the teachers who are writing your LORs. Remember they are doing this for dozens, if not hundreds of students so you want to make sure your LORs are personalized and they convey the message that is consistent in your personal essays and college “resume”.
Thanks @lilmom for the book recommendation. @stencils. thanks for the info. NFW - I like that!
Me and H have no more vacation days this year. So planning to do tours next spring/summer - probably Midwest. We have a couple of colleges that’s 1-2 hours away that we plan to visit during weekends. Hopefully, S20 will work on the list to make it more manageable.
@makemesmart Brag sheets are a thing here as well. I started a thread here on CC last year ranting about colleges requiring GC recommendations. Our public school has 5 GCs for 1500 students (grades 10-12, roughly 500 per class). Makes me wonder how, even with a brag sheet, the GC recommendation from a large public high school becomes anything more than 1) a statement that the student has (hopefully) no disciplinary action and good attendance, 2) a litany of school activities pulled directly from the brag sheet, and 3) an explanation of anything unusual on the student’s transcript.
My D17 had 3 GCs in 4 years… one retired, and interim hire didn’t work out long term, and then one that finally stuck for the last year and half of HS.
Edited to add: your note about Baltimore is interesting. There was also a very active thread on CC here about a year ago about “sketchiness” of neighborhoods and how that should affect the college selection process. Disclosure here: my D17 goes to Temple U in North Philly, which is the poster child for discussions of college neighborhood. She loves her city school! But it’s definitely a personal decision for both parent and child in regards to what you’re comfortable with.
@stencils I’ll add a 4) to the purpose of a GC recommendation:
Provide a school profile (and class rank, if they do that), giving some context to the student’s stats and accomplishments. A 3.5 GPA, 30 ACT kid will be viewed differently coming from a competitive, high-performing school than a school in a low-income area where the majority of graduates do not even go on to college.
@cakeisgreat Absolutely! Check back with me in the fall and I will give you an update.
@beebee3 you may want to check back with me in the fall as well as I will have more information then.
Will say all that is in Elon is Elon University. The next town is Burlington and it has every retail store you can think of it. It also has many restaurants and a large movie theatre ( they also show free movies on campus in the communications theatre). They run shuttles to Burlington, many students bring cars and there are zip cars available.
Raleigh-Durham is about 45 minutes away. There also are lots of excursions (hiking etc) through clubs. There are also many clubs with activities on campus. Elon is also well known for its performing arts and they have a lot of performances on campus. There are full athletic facilities and exercise classes and they just built a new gym which they are very excited to play UNC in basketball this year ( they will get crushed I am afraid…lol). Elon does have greek life though students can not rush until the beginning of second semester freshman year. It also seems to be the kind of school where you hear about groups of students being invited to professors homes for dinners. While Elon is by no means in a big city there will be more for my daughter to do there than she if continued to live where we are.
As far as the Parent Brag sheet we were asked to complete that at the end of junior year and since our school used Naviance we did it right through there.
@MinnieFan your comments reminded me that in our school there were actually two brag sheets. One was a parent brag sheet that was hand-written or typed. The other was a student brag sheet, done directly in Naviance.
@stencils Could you please give some more info about Temple? DS is considering it. If you could elaborate on anything about the Music School, sciences, research, student life particularly housing, and the general campus. We may visit this month. We visited UPenn on Spring Break but unfortunately Temple wasn’t on the radar then so it’s back to Philly we go. Good thing we started early. We will try open houses in the fall and spring. They have so much more info than the information sessions/campus tours.
@MinnieFan Thanks! One more quick question if you dont mind - I read that housing is tough to get for junior/senior year…did they talk about that in the tour? It looks like they are opening a new dorm in the Fall so thats good!
I also added College of William & Mary to the tour list…but so far no one in our school has ever gotten in yikes! We are in Northeast, so only 1-4 applied each year but…uh oh :). I guess we will see!
Trying to figure out if we should look also at Wake Forest (for D19). I also have to figure out some more “B student” schools on the East Coast for D20 for Psychology/Communications. If anyone has suggestions, I’m open!
@SoccaMomma Yes, I think my list of tours is a lot! I hope my kids can handle it ha ha! I love touring colleges.
I will definitely post on Furman. So excited to check out all these new schools.
I’d love to hear any thoughts you bring back from your Northeast tours as well!
On another note…I forgot that I need to add S or D for DS19 and DD20, LOL…I was on CC a lot during 2014-16(ish) for my first two then took a break until now. Oops! Gotta get back into the lingo.
@cakeisgreat Check out Goucher College in Maryland. It’s a beautiful campus. The number 1 & 3 top majors are Psychology and Communications according to Niche. DS also got good merrit there.
@MinnieFan Thanks for the information, you’ve confirmed what it seemed like via the website (wasn’t sure if I was getting the correct vibe from what I had found). Nice to hear about the shuttle, but will love to hear more this fall! Congratulations to your daughter, keep us posted.
@SoccaMomma My D17 just finished her freshman year at Temple and has had a great experience. She’s an engineering major and in the honors program. If your DS gets into honors it’s a huge benefit. There is dedicated on-campus honors housing for 4 years. That’s a huge perk from my perspective, as Temple doesn’t guarantee housing, even for freshman, but the honors freshman housing is really nice. Other perks include dedicated honors sections of most freshman and many sophomore classes, and a stipend for a summer of either study abroad or research work. The honors sections are much smaller and usually taught by the better profs. All of her profs knew her. Her physics prof taught at MIT before moving to Temple.
My Ds Temple experience has been a little different than a typical because she’s both an athlete and an engineer (which is an odd combo at Temple). I think she has musician friends (I’ll ask her later) and I believe the Boyer college music has a great rep. I was at my D20’s last school band concert tonight (she’s a bassoonist) and one of the graduating sax players is going to Temple/Boyer next year.
Mostly she loves the buzz of city life. There was a subway stop a block from her dorm, and they would regularly take the train three stops into center city and go to chinatown, the Reading market, one of the parks, or just for coffee or ice cream with friends on weekends.
I’ll also mention the elephant in the room that immediately comes up any time Temple is discussed. It’s right in the middle of North Philadelphia. It’s an area that’s improving, but there are the typical city issues that come with a neighborhood with a high poverty level. The school is self-contained, and my D liked that it was a city school that still had a sense of campus. As with any city campus, your kid will need make smart choices. My daughter says she has never once felt unsafe.
@cakeisgreat Elon does not guarantee housing all four years but that is not a problem as there many student only apartment complexes and house in the area as well as greek housing. Many students also study abroad so there is lots of subletting going on.
The school is working to a goal of providing housing for 75% of the students. They do already have (really nice) townhouse style and apartment style complexes. As you mentioned they are opening a new dorm neighborhood this fall (East Neighborhood) which will house a little over 300 students. My daughter is very excited because she was asked to join a new student program and will be living there this year when it opens and has the option of living in it sophomore year as well. Even though housing is not guaranteed I have no concerns…unlike some I had at some of the city schools she was admitted to with no guaranteed housing.
First post here, but I’ve been reading these posts for a few months now.
D20 is a science-math whiz who also loves music. Her main high school extracurricular activity is marching band, and she’ll be drum major next year. She wants to do marching band in college, too. She and my husband are headed to Univ of Alabama this weekend, because she’ll be attending band camp there. It will be her first time at UA. My husband and I are secretly hoping that she likes UA, because her current grades and test scores could get her plenty of merit there. We will be searching for merit throughout my D’s college search. They will be doing an official tour of the UA campus at the end of camp.
I can’t believe she’s touring colleges already. It feels like just yesterday was her first day of kindergarten.
We are from Suburban Chicago and my daughter school has three girls going to Alabama. One of them was a National Merit Finalist and got $200,000 in scholarship money to go there.
Welcome @hgtvaddict ! There are several participants in the parents of class of 2017 forum who had children attend UA, although I don’t think any were marching band as well. If you have any questions after the camp/tour, I can prod one of them to post about their kid’s first year experience over here.
My D17s roommate was in the Diamond Marching Band at Temple University. I know the band went to Temple’s bowl game in Florida at the end of the football season. The band was practicing on a nearby beach, which they enjoyed coming from Philadelphia in late December.
There is no way I will ever catch up on everyone’s posts but this is my first time posting here. I have an S19 that is well into the college process as he goes into senior year so I figured I needed to shift my focus to the next in line! My S20 is now gearing up for test prep and all that junior year will throw at him. He loves chemistry and biology but hasn’t quite figured out what path he will pursue. He has gone along on a couple of college tours with his brother but we will wait to see where his test scores come in before we fine tune his list and start touring. He is registered for the 12/1 SAT. For all of our kids (we also have a D26) we are chasing merit and looking OOS so it is a lot of research for all of us.
@hgtvaddict - we toured UA last winter and my S19 loved it but S20 wants something in the NW. I will say that after having UA roll out the red carpet, I had to let the boys know to lower the their expectations as most college tours aren’t set up the same.
@cakeisgreat , chiming in on Elon. Just visited last week. LOVED. Their communications program is very strong. My son wants to study Psych, certainly didn’t hear as much about that dept but it didn’t matter…the Elon philosophy and culture as a whole seems fantastic, indvidualized and a great experience for any major. When we got there, DS was very put off by the town of Burlington…the part near campus is a typical old small town, lots of closed storefronts and one place to eat. Right next to campus is “downtown Elon” which is one side of one block, but does have amenities for the college crowd such as coffee, tacos, maybe ice cream. Back to Burlington… nearer towards the highway are the other places that were mentioned above, all the chain restaurants, stores, etc. in more of a suburb type retail section of town look. We talked about this (things to do, tiny size of Elon/Burlington) with both of our tour guides and neither said it was a downside or a problem; they said that for a bigger city experience many students head to Greensboro about 20 minutes away (one had a car, one didn’t and was an incoming senior…she said that rides are super super easy to get and there is a shuttle to Burlington but she never needed it). So went to Greensboro and it was, to us, a true city atmosphere, cool, lots of people walking around on a Monday evening, cute shops, restaurant bars etc. DS honestly felt better about the Elon/Burlington tiny-ness after the tour because the college was so great, but the trip to Greensboro helped alleviate that as well (for reference, we live in Columbus Ohio…not a huge city, but definitely a city).
@Nicki20 , is your child an incoming Junior or even sophomore? Is there are reason you are having her take both ACT and SAT? I think it’s common for kids to only prep for one. For what it’s worth, we found that taking an early ACT to see where DS stood and/or what he needed to focus on was kind of a waste. Especially mid summer if she is not motivated. Better to prep, take it when you are motivated, then use those results to refine if needed. Also once my son was looking at schools and seeing their ACT ranges, it gave him the motivation to work on the prep.
Gotta get back into the lingo.