One of D23’s volunteer activities starts back up June 15, and she has already started on her research project for the summer. Her competitive sport is now meeting outside in a park for practice (with 10 feet between everyone at all times…just drills for now), and her main EC starts again next week. So luckily, only one of D21’s activities, a different volunteer gig she has done every summer for three years, isn’t happening this year. She’s going to have a full summer anyway with all the essay writing and college app stuff. She feels lucky neither her summer nor her spring semester has been that affected. She still can’t see her closest friends though, since they live just over the state border and that state has a stricter SAH policy than ours does.
It has been difficult watching a ton of people we used to respect defy SAH policies to go do whatever they want, using whatever excuse they could think of. My teens lost faith in a lot of adults over the past couple of months.
@nichols51. My kid also hasn’t been to martial arts in two months and it’s a very big deal for her both socially and physically. We are not comfortable with her going back yet. She’s been doing online classes which are not the same but better than nothing.
@homerdog I tested my masks today while doing office paperwork and the kind that @inthegarden describes is less distracting when you look down. If you google “Olsen mask” you can get a visual. They are pretty snug around the perimeter of the face but have a bit of a pouch over the mouth area that make it easier to breathe and talk.
I feel bad for all of the kids missing their ECs - especially the ones that are also their exercise. D21 was planning on going back to dance classes this summer and now they are all remote. She doesn’t have it in her to do barre every day from afar but she’ll have to do enough to be able to produce a video dance audition. She said that, after 13 years of ballet, she could pull off an audition video as long as she stretches out first. Lol. It’s all muscle memory I guess.
I’m feeling lucky that all S19 has to do is run. Easy to social distance and get his training in.
@homerdog - Olsen is the name of a pattern that somebody invented for home sewers. There are many variations on that theme to be had on the internet. I also think that the mask can be a hard sell if peers aren’t wearing them. It adds self-consciousness or possibly being hassled (for wearing or not wearing) to lack of comfort. I get it!
@homerdog My mom made D small (D is very petite) satin masks with the seam down the center like @inthegarden mentioned. Also D wears glasses and they don’t fog up. @inthegarden our D’s have the same vision, astigmatism and contacts only for special occasions.
But your D is fortunate she does not need a score for merit like so many of us, that have no choice to not wear a mask while testing.
Both Ds have been good about wearing their masks anytime they go into buildings. On our trip to FL to move D18 out of her dorm we were some of the few to wear masks into the rest area bathrooms. D21 wore her mask anytime she left the hotel room in Charleston, SC when we stopped there on Friday- hardly anyone in Charleston wore a mask.
We went to a graduation party last week. It was outside and everyone wore a mask. There is definitely a peer pressure thing about it. If you are with people who wear them you will too. With all that said, D21 went to a birthday party last night. It was outdoors and none of the 8 kids wore a mask- ugh. Our zip code has only had 32 cases, most are recovered out of 37,000, so I think the risk was low, but I see problems with kids and masks.
Yes - it is the same for our D23. She is usually at the martial arts studio 5-6 days a week, including Friday nights until after 10PM and Saturday mornings by 8AM (to clean the studio before teaching the younger students). We had a long talk with her tonight, and she took it all well. She was disappointed but understanding.
Does any body have a list of recently dropped ACT/SAT requirements for schools in the east coast? DC getting nervous as the tests getting cancelled, so trying to have a few ones researched up so we will all feel better, thanks.
@Herefortwo if you google fairtest they have a list of all schools that are test optional, both for 2021 and permanently.
D can start soccer practice next week, but only 9 girls plus coach at a time so they have to sign up for slots. The first available for her is June 14. She has been working out some, but I’m guessing that she (along with most of the other girls) will be hurting by the end of practice.
S19 is a tougher case. He is a wrestler, so there isn’t really a good way to do that sport and not get some exposure. I will say that due to the nature of the sport any remotely contagious condition is a constant threat, so they have better hygiene and other safeguards than you would think that are baked into their training anyway and are second nature to them. He has a small group of guys he is working with. They aren’t in college with him, but all are college wrestlers that are home for the summer instead of training at their schools like they had planned. We basically made the call to let them treat each other as family. IDK if it was right or not. Although at this point he is an adult so I’m not sure it is completely my call anymore anyway. The number of cases immediately surrounding us is low, although there are pockets that have made national news 40 miles away.
Not sure if his sport will occur at all at all this year, I’m sure it will be the very last thing they release. I’m hoping that he gets an extra year of eligibility if that happens.
@kanfly wow. What a list. @Herefortwo I hope you can find some schools here that will ease your concerns. Seeing all of these schools on one sheet is pretty amazing. Must make College Board and ACT shudder.
I think BC is the only school on D21’s list that is not TO now.
I wonder if colleges will ever share what percent of kids applied TO and what percent they accepted. I also wonder if there will be any geographic trends if certain areas of the country have more testing available than others.
I don’t want to be a buzzkill, because it is notable that so many schools have gone TO.
BUT, many schools do limit the number of TO applicants they accept, because USNWR’s ranking methodology dings schools where greater than 25% of matriculants are TO. Some schools are upfront about these limits, some aren’t.
A Tulane AO said on a counselor webinar they will limit TO acceptances this year (their first as TO) because ‘Tulane’s Pres and Trustees care about the USNWR ranking’.
Of course things could change…USNWR could change their methodology this year, for example. Or some schools could say they don’t care about the impact on their rankings. But, the ranking methodology does influence college admissions behaviors at many schools. Unfortunately.
@Mwfan1921 but what if 50% of Tulane’s applicants send scores? They’ll still take 75% of their class from that 50%? That’s not truly giving TO applicants a fair shake. That’s a good question for each of our kids to maybe ask each AO.
@Mwfan1921 I’v e heard a number of AOs now who have said, then they look at a TO applicant, that they just weigh the other parts of the application more. That’s not being truthful if they can only do that for a certain number of applicants. I’ll need to figure out how to get to the bottom of this!
What this essentially means is that TO applicants are only competing against each other for 25% of the acceptances. So acceptance rates could be really low in that category of kids if a ton of kids apply TO.
D was selected as a Furman Scholar. Furman will only be within reach if she receives one of their more selective scholarships next year which I hear are very competitive. I made a thread to ask, but not getting a lot of response, so I thought I would ask here: Is this an honor that D can/should list when applying to other colleges or only list when applying to Furman?
@1Lotus I’ll be curious what answers you get to your question. I don’t know any other college that has a program like Furman Scholars. My gut says that, no, it’s not something she should list on other apps. All of the criteria needed to be a Furman Scholar will be seen on her app regardless. Colleges can see her GPA and her scores (two of the main criteria for Furman Scholars) and they can also see her EC which make up the remainder of the criteria. I wonder if all kids over the GPA and scoring benchmarks get that Furman Scholar distinction.
It reminds me just a bit of how we look at National Honors Society here. All of the criteria needed to be in our NHS will be seen on D’s app but she didn’t want to jump through all of the hoops to apply even though she was nominated. S19 didn’t bother either and it didn’t affect his college acceptances.
In the case of Furman Scholars, it also calls out that your D is likely applying there and will get merit. For any other schools with a holistic approach to admissions, they will know that and I would be afraid that they would think your D is likely to choose Furman because she took the effort to apply to Furman Scholars and will now definitely get merit money.
@Mwfan1921 That’s very interesting. I have to admit, I don’t know the ins and outs of the USNews ranking system. I posted earlier that Elon went TO, but wants a test score from every matriculating student. Maybe that’s why.
I wonder if a school like Tulane doesn’t want to take too big a hit on test scores because even if they simply request “a” score by May 1, they know that the TO applicants will just take the test in February (or whenever) for that reason only and the scores will be lower than what they would normally submit (just because it’s a checkmark on a to do list, not the end-all-be-all that test scores normally are). So, Tulane will take the highest actual scores they can for those that submit and balance them out with the lower TO kids’ tests and hopefully end up in the same place. That doesn’t really help my kid who will submit her “just over 75% score”, which should be fine, but isn’t high enough to balance out a score 4 points lower than the middle 50%…
Unless Tulane separates out the TO applicants and only compares them to each other, I don’t see how they will know how to get to the 25% limit. So they would need to have a separate pile of all TO applications and then know how many they can admit from that pile. That is not in the spirit of TO. Sours me on Tulane.
I expect they will incorporate a TO variable into their predictive analytic model. That will allow them to cut the applicants by those w/ test and TO, as well as by likelihood of accepting an admission offer, if accepted.
And, it’s likely other schools limit TO acceptances, not just Tulane!!