My DD is away all summer as a counselor at a sleep away camp so no applications happening here other than RMU as it didn’t require an essay. She comes home on Friday nights and leaves Sunday before lunch so not much time to do much of anything other than laundry and runs to the store for various items she wants to bring back to camp with her. College application essay has definitely not been on the top of her list! But she does plan to do EA for all schools that have it, so once she’s home I suspect she’ll get on top of it.
Looking for opinions. What do you think schools prefer, their app or common app? Quite a few of D’s schools added common app this year. She is trying to decide which way to go. Our main reason to skip common app is that she wants to submit soon (rolling admission), and the school won’t let her submit through common app until she takes a ‘class’ to learn how to use it. That won’t happen until mid September. On the other hand, transcripts and letters of rec aren’t going until mid September anyway. There are just too many balls to keep in the air. Thoughts?
So, DS was all proud to tell me he applied to Iowa today while I was at work. He applied to University of Iowa…not Iowa State like he was supposed to…and paid the $40 application fee.
I have no idea if schools prefer one over the other but mine plans to do Common App for all her schools that offer it as an option. It will just make the process easier. My S18 applied to 5 schools and did Common App for all of them and I was thankful that he didn’t need to take the time to input his info each time.
My D20 has 9-10 schools she plans to apply to and I just don’t want it to take even longer to input all the needed info if she does the application through the school’s individual application. I’m not sure when her letters of rec will be available (she asked her teachers in the spring but I suspect many don’t get them turned in until the fall) but I’m hoping by the time she’s done everything she needs to do, that they’ll be ready too.
@MuggleMom my two cents, since the transcripts/LORs aren’t going to be ready till mid-September anyway, I would just focus on the common app (essays) now and wait till September after the “class”. It will still be very early for most if not all colleges. I don’t think the colleges themselves care what application portal you use at all.
@cshell2
lol and smh. I can see my DS20 do the same thing. But I have to say, there are many schools with similar/confusing names.
The application fees are painful for us, otherwise I wouldn’t care so much. Part of the reason for the 4 school limit. But, he’s working on the right one now.
@shrimpburrito@myrna97 congrats on those acceptances! @cshell2 oh no! Hopefully now your DS will doublecheck its the right school, from now on. I could definitely see my son doing something like that too.
Well S starts school in 8 days- a Thursday. We were able to fit in a tour at Duke the Monday before. I cant believe how time is flying.
@MamaBear2001 - Wow. I can’t believe he’s starting school already! My son starts the 19th, which I thought was really early. All the other schools around here don’t start until after Labor Day. But he also gets out in mid-May.
I’ve calmed down about the wrong application thing and said to him wouldn’t it be funny if he ended up going there after applying by accident? It wasn’t so funny at first though. I’m really struggling financially right now and that $40 is needed for things like…food.
I’ve been there. I’m usually there, in fact. Can he get a waiver for the rest of the apps? I don’t think we paid for any with D19 and fingers crossed we won’t for D20 either. I felt stressed about the CSS costs last year and my daughter had to carefully decide who needed to get that info.
I just looked at the fee waiver criteria and I’m over the income limit to qualify, not by a lot, but over. I’ve just had a really rough last 6 months. My house flooded (after just having it finished off last summer), several major vehicle repairs, my riding mower broke down, and now last week my well went out and I got a $7500 bill for that. I’m just overwhelmed and wish I could take advantage of tapping DS’s 529 for his final year of high school tuition, but my state has not adopted the federal law allowing you to do that.
Daughter’s school starts on the 12th. The school’s mandatory band camp is this week. 9-6 Mon-Thurs. 12-8 on Fri. My spouse calls it child labor. Works Sat. and Sun. Tuesday is Freshman kickoff which her band has to play at the front door when the freshman walk in. Their playing at the local minor league baseball teams game that night. Still planning to go visit UM-Twin Cities on Friday.(a six hour drive. Hoping to catch a Twins game.). Probably has to work the weekend after that too. I think going back to school might be restful.
DS did apply to Twin Cities last night as well. I hope he self-reported all his grades correctly. He hates filling out that part and I could see him rushing to get it done and making some errors, and since GPA and test scores are mainly what they’re looking at there, it’s pretty important to not screw it up! Maybe we’ll sit down tonight together and just run through it to verify. It’s the only non-safety school he’s applying to and he only has a 50/50 shot as it is, so probably should give it a second look.
He said they asked for best scores from each subsection for his ACT. I didn’t realize they superscore, but must. Not that it helps him any. All his best scores were from his second testing.
My D20 just submitted her first application to the University of Alabama. Its not at the top of her list but offers great merit aid. Things are starting to get real.
@WasIDremin Just FYI, Bama has not yet released their merit awards for the class of 2020. They are supposed to be published around mid August. Hoping for no big changes. ?
@ShrimpBurrito - I was scratching my head for a second because I knew I had seen the class of 2020 merit awards already, but we’re applying to Huntsville. They’ve had theirs up for a few weeks now.
Which reminds me, I’d better clarify with DS to apply to University of Alabama - Huntsville and not just University of Alabama!
DS is still visiting families out of the country, so no applications here. His school starts in three weeks, he will be going to a college application “camp” for a few days next week, hopefully that will help to “jump start” his senior year. I hope he is enjoying a brief calm/peaceful time presently before all the hectic work starts to pile up.
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