I was under the impression that the common app essay topics wouldn’t change this year…don’t know how I got that, exactly…but if that’s not so, how is it that many kids are already getting started? Taking option 5 (topic of your choice)?
@inthegarden common app essays did not change. You can look at the ones on the current common app. Those are the ones.
The individual college’s supplements don’t always remain the same. Those will be updated on the common app on Aug 1. You can sometimes get the new supplements off of the college’s website before Aug 1.
Thanks@homerdog. Also, l got the impression that it’s possible to start working on other parts of the the common app now, yet it doesn’t come out until Aug 1. Is that because you can start an account and begin uploading some basic info in but not complete the whole thing? How does it work? Because it does seem that some kids are starting very early.
My D already has a score, but also I think TO will be “TO light” where they use it to take applicants that fill a need, but not for the regular applicants.
I’d suggest UGA and GT. Both are great in their own way. GT is obviously excellent for STEM, and they have solid school spirit. When we toured I was impressed with how much the students really liked Tech. UGA has newish engineering school, and it’s solid but not at GT’s level. The school spirit is elite and Athens is one of the best college towns. Because of all of the transplants in Atlanta both schools don’t have that deep south feel.
@inthegarden D “started the common app” but that just means she started her personal statement essay and did her activities list that she will copy into the common app after Aug 1. Activities descriptions are limited to 150 characters. Other than the main essay and the activities list, the common app itself doesn’t take that much time. It’s just info like address etc. There’s a place to self report scores too. The biggest piece that might change are all of the supplements. You have to confirm with the colleges that they will remain the same. If they do, you can see them on the common app right now but that’s the 2020-2021 application. I would just write essays in a google doc. Then copy into common app after Aug 1. I think it is possible that some info will carry over past August if you enter it now but I’m not having D enter anything now. I’m sure you can google that question and find out what carries over. I just don’t remember.
So, this is what I saw on the Common App blog: “Let’s not bury the lede: the Common App first-year essay prompts will remain the same for 2020-2021.” (https://www.commonapp.org/blog/common-app-2020-2021-essay-prompts). I am under the impression that the HS class of 2021 will be filling out the 2020-21 application. Am I mistaken?
@TXStuMom That is correct. Just to be clear, that is referring to the one main Common App essay only, not the individual college supplements.
Sorry. Yes
sorry. Yes. The kids are filling out the 2020-2021 application. If you open the common app right now you can view the main essay prompts. They are the same as last year.
@evergreen5 and @homerdog , thank you!
@havenoidea Brown is much as your daughter imagines. We visited when we toured schools with my D17. Nice campus and the surrounding neighborhood is lovely and historic with a Main Street near campus that has the usual coffee shops, inexpensive restaurants, vintage shops, etc. It’s also possible to walk to downtown and the government buildings. The open curriculum, shopping period for classes, and the relatively low-key vibe is very appealing. Both of my kids liked it a lot when we visited.
I don’t have firsthand current information on Northwestern (a good friend went there but that was a LONG time ago). My sense is that it has a slightly more pre-professional vibe than Brown. That and ED offers a significant boost to one’s admission chances. The journalism school is first rate.
Has your daughter checked out Mount Holyoke? I think an introvert might be happy there. Good merit scholarships there too and if your D’s grades are in line with her ACT score, she’d probably have a reasonable chance of getting one.
Those are large to very large schools. For the medium size, I would add Lehigh, Villanova and Tufts.
I would say that D21s list has actually gone a little bigger in the match/safety for admissions because she has a good ACT score but we are chasing merit and I wonder how TO will affect merit distribution. The majority of her list are admission match/reaches but merit is competitive. The ones that would be admission reaches, we can’t afford as we are in the full pay category. Makes me sad like @TVBingeWatcher2 .
We visited Brown with my D18 and it didn’t knock our socks off. Maybe it was the slightly rainy day, but the campus felt cramped and gloomy. The information session was the most “phoned in” we experienced in all our tours – the attitude was basically “We’re Brown, of course you want to come here!” The strong emphasis on open curriculum and optional grades was too much flexibility for my D’s taste. Our tour guide peppered her session with generic anecdotes you could have heard anywhere.
We know several students there now – two are thriving and one has struggled socially (but of course, that could be true for her at any college.)
My D also applied to Mt. Holyoke as part of her effort to chase merit, but we didn’t make it for a visit. She got a 1/2 tuition scholarship offer, and I think would have thrived there, but she then she also got 1/2 tuition offer from Scripps so if she’d done the women’s college thing, she had decided on Scripps b/c of access to the other Claremont colleges and, tbh, the better weather. My D has a friend at Mt. Holyoke who has really loved it. It seems like a really great campus and community.
Also, I’m sure you wise CC folks know this, but just to say it – my D was very proactive in seeking these merit offers. She reached out to both Scripps and Mt. Holyoke for interviews with her regional rep. When we visited Scripps she found a biology faculty she wanted to meet – turned out she was the faculty senate chair that year, lol. She drove 30 min to meet the Mt. Holyoke admissions rep. b/c she wasn’t coming to our (small) school. They talked for 45 minutes in a coffee shop. While my D was a high stats kid (4.0, NMF) w/ great ECs, I think it was her proactivity that generated the $$ offers. (Fyi, she also got a large merit offer from Grinnell but wasn’t as proactive with them) Being a geographic diversity pick for all these colleges also helped, no doubt.
@homerdog @inthegarden on a Facebook live q&a with a college counselor she said kids should keep their Common App info on a separate word doc to transfer into the Common App after Aug 1. Not sure if it wipes out everything or just some, but safer bet is to do it separately.
That sounds like a great class. DS took AP Phys C this year but they did not do many of the labs. His mom has a CycleOps bike stand she uses and he is planning to turn that into a electricity generator once his online Research finishes next week. His uncle asked him to help build a solar system for his off-grid cabin so he has been busy trying to figure out a relatively good, inexpensive system and has almost all of the parts to assemble it. If all of the above turns out ok, he hopes to build a waterwheel to get some power on a small pond we have. Interesting projects if he can pull them off. Unfortunately I have no ability to add much or help so we will see how it goes.
@AlmostThere2018 Funny, how that can happen. I remember that “which schools went up or down after a campus tour” thread and people’s experiences can be so variable depending on who gave presentations on a given day. We had a great student tour guide at Brown - very smart but also very down to earth and she presented the school well. Thanks for the advice about being proactive.
@havenoidea I forgot to suggest that you encourage your daughter to try to move past the fact that Oberlin is in Ohio. The town is charming and feels similar to established small towns you might find in the mid-Atlantic states. While Cleveland is not Manhattan, it does have a lot to offer and the college is trying to strengthen ties and expand student opportunities there. Oberlin draws heavily from CA and the Northeast as well as having a significant number of international students. The creative writing program is very well-regarded. While the media loves to depict it as full of intolerant SJWs, I have not found that to be accurate. There are certainly plenty of activists to be had, but the students tend to be kind, sincere, and embrace their classmates’ individuality.
@yearstogo That is beyond awesome!!!
The admissions folks at the cc let me know yesterday that they would greatly prefer it if D21 and D23 did not travel to MA beginning two weeks before class starts (dual enrollment). They normally go to MA to see their father for visitation (he has rented a place near me since mid-March to see them close to home instead). Makes sense and we will of course comply. Now to figure out how the girls will see their dad all next school year. I REALLY REALLY REALLY do not want him at our home as he and I are oil and water. (He has a property in our state but the girls do not want to visit him there for complicated reasons I won’t get into here - but let’s just say it would be incredibly stressful for them to go there and no one wants that). He is getting tired of paying for basically a third property though.
Then of course there is the fact that their best friends live in MA and the thought of not being able to see them in person all school year (or at least the fall), after barely having seen them since March is going to be very difficult for them.
AND I guess that means their regional competitions for one of their ECs can’t happen next year. They are used to traveling through five states all year, every other weekend. This is going to screw up D23 more so than D21, who already has a track record of championships on her activities list…D23 won’t have that chance for sophomore year. Chances are high those competitions aren’t going to happen anyway now, but I was kind of holding out a bit of hope. If they are going to happen, D21 and D23 can’t participate - their classes are more important, and we will abide by the rules.
As for admissions, I now have no idea what D21’s chances are at any of the colleges on her list except her true safety, our in-state public. Which is a great school, so we’re lucky. Before COVID, she had as good a chance as any other unhooked high-stats, great EC, white-bread girl from the northeast, and we could go by the College Data for admittance rates etc. Now with some colleges allowing more gap years than normal for the 2020s, who the hell knows. But then again, full pay will be helpful and maybe many kids will stay close to home. BUT test optional means more apps overall. I think demonstrated interest is going to be more important than many colleges let on during this next cycle fwiw.
Colleges need to be HONEST with this year’s class if they allowed far more gap years than normal. 2021s need to be able to make a list that has real safeties and matches on it, and if some places are allowing unlimited gap years then that can substantially change a list. I worry some colleges are just saying that the 2020 gap years won’t affect 2021s’ chances so they won’t suffer a decline in apps. But if a school’s realistic admit rate is going down to single digits instead of staying in the upper teens, or going into the teens instead of staying in the low 30s, etc - we need to know.
@homerdog We are in CT. I just checked Naviance and it looks like 10-15 kids apply to UVA every year with one or two kids accepted. So not great odds!
@Mwfan1921 @AlwaysMoving @eb23282 Thank you for the suggestions! Syracuse, VA Tech and Villanova seem like they might be a good fit for him. I’ll have him look more closely at the others suggested too. Right now he says he wants a huge school but I’m not sure he realizes how big some schools really are. Being able to do college tours would have made finding the right “type” of college so much easier for my procrastinator kid!