@cshell2 Ha! We were there for Carlson and we must have had nearly 1000 students and parents in two separate lecture halls. Our tour of Carlson compromised of walking across the skyway to the lobby of CBS, looked around and went back. Took about 5 minutes. He’s actually going to apply LCA (econ) instead of Carlson.
Our campus tour was actually OK, but we were tripping over other groups left and right.
I hope the tour of Iowa State goes well!!
No essay title in ours either.
OMG, I’m 634 posts behind! I’ve tried not to stress too much in this process. It’s my 2nd round in 2 years. I thought I’d learn something going thru the process last year, but now I think I totally screwed something up.
One of my take-aways from D19 was that I should have had access to her email to keep tabs on things. So for D20, I set up a joint email account and we used that when signing up for all our school visits. Well, yesterday we realized her HS set up her common app and used her HS email address.
So, will schools know that she visited if it’s not the same email address? She’s planning to mention in in the addl info section, but I’m worried their systems won’t make the connection, and she’ll get no credit for demonstrated interest.
Did I totally mess this up? Or is there a way to fix it? Or am I freaking out over nothing?
@momzilla2D good question. I was concerned about this for D20 as she has like 3 different email accounts and last spring she made the decision to use the same one account for all correspondence with colleges, her high school, etc. At the end of the day, I think most (but not all) colleges care very little about demonstrated interest and are selecting students based on GPA, test scores, class rigor, and essays.
How many colleges on her list care about “demonstrated interest”? Maybe just reach out to them on a case by case basis and explain the situation or at least write about the college visit in the supplemental essay, why “college X”, etc.
@socaldad2002 Good point. I’ll look thru the CDS’s for the schools on her list and see which ones consider demonstrated interest.
@momzilla2D You can call CollegeBoard up and change the associated email on the account if you are worried about it. I did this with D17 after her scores were not matching up with her previously-created account. They are very accommodating. Has she already sent apps out?
I dont think my kid’s emails match up either. But i assumed her name and mailing address is what uniquely identifies her and not her email.
@bigmacbeth Uh, hadn’t thought about her scores. The email she used for SATs were consistent with what on the common app, so if we change it, they’ll be out of sync.
I’m wondering whether she should email the admissions officers at the schools that consider demonstrated interest, and ask them. Seems like the contact would even add to her demonstrated interest.
@momzilla2D Not sure what you mean about scores being out of sync? She will only have one CollegeBoard account. Scores will find their way to the right file when sent to schools. Email is just one field they may match on. Don’t fool yourself that every kid has created an account at all the schools they are applying to using the same email address as their CollegeBoard account. Often (as in our case) kids send scores to colleges months before they apply. I would say a good number don’t use the same address, yet the student file does get matched to the scores. Don’t over-think things. 
@bigmacbeth
Ah, I see. I misunderstood. Thank you. I’ll have her look into changing her email address on her college board account.
@momzilla2D I think you are over thinking this. When she signs up for a tour, she most likely includes her high school, home address, phone, etc. There are many more things that they can match up in order to tell it is the same student. Probably the best way to let them know is to somehow incorporate the visit into an essay.
We’ve been to college presentations where schools talk about the amount of money they spend and data scientists that they employ to look for students to market to. Even then, there are a decent amount of their entering class that was never on their radar until they received the application.
This is my first post on this thread but I am breathing a big sigh of relief. DD just hit submit on all of her applications - 1 ED, 1EA, and 8 RD. Financial aid forms are complete and being submitted after one more reading on Monday. Nothing much to do but sit and wait until mid-December and the ED notification. I think this is a bittersweet milestone - relieved to have this huge item checked off but feeling somewhat sad because she is getting closer to leaving the nest and all of the time we spent visiting, interviewing, editing essays is now time without a scheduled activity.
@helpingmom40 Feeling the same here. I am doing my best to be around during some of this extra time. So far, I’ve gotten a movie, a walk, some puzzling, and lunch out of it. Trying to cherish the moments that my DD is still living at home.
Relieved to say that DD20 has now found her “love your likely” school. Our visit gave her plenty of material for the “why this school?” essay and she will easily get the application wrapped up and submitted by the 11/1 deadline. She has another that was OK but now she understands why she needed to keep looking. This school may also be the first one she hears back from so the holidays are likely to be much merrier!
Had an amazing visit to Iowa State yesterday. Now my poor kid that was sure UMN was everything he could ever want is in the middle of an existential crisis. He was just visiting Iowa to “check the box”, and was very skeptical going in, but two hours in he turns to me and said, “I really love it here, what am I going to do??” It’s going to be a tough choice and I’m glad we’re got it down to just these two schools.
^^ cshell2 we have close friends whose kids have gone to ISU and LOVE it. We toured it with my daughter in 2016; but she wasn’t interested partly because we had a horrible speaker for their design school. I still want to take my S20 to visit; just not sure what the price would be for us. And that’s why I’m writing - once you get the financial aid back, it might be easier to make decisions … . remember those price differences are x4 years!
@bgbg4us - I know. That’s what I told him. It isn’t even so much the 4 years that worries me, because I think they might be close there. It’s that FIFTH year I’m worried about! The year when all the scholarships equalizing the cost are gone. They were pretty upfront in the visit that the average is 4.5 years to graduation in engineering with quite a few going 5 years due to internships and the rigorous schedule with not much room for error to get done in 4.
cshell2 - Are students charged tuition for internship or co-op semesters? are scholarships for Years or for hours? just curious!
They said you had to register for an internship class to keep your full time status for the semester but it was a 0 charge class. From what I can tell scholarships are by number of semesters and if you are taking an internship it’s deferred, but I didn’t confirm that with them while we were there. There were so many break out sessions to go to that we were interested in that we skipped the FA one.
My older daughter is in a 5 year program where the fourth year is full time work for a company and we have to pay full tuition. Ugh.