Parents of the HS Class of 2022

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
7563

Stressful for sure, but better than what happened to D20 with one of her applications when she was applying for grad school. She was notified that application wouldn’t be moving forward because one of her letters of recommendation wasn’t signed and therefore her application wasn’t considered complete (well after deadline had passed). :grimacing:

Thankfully, she had other options and she decided that snafu was a sign that program clearly wasn’t the right one for her. Thankfully, she also didn’t need to rely on that professor for any other recommendations either.

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7564

My kid is applying to speech-language pathology programs, and most of them require the CSDCAS – which is a common app specifically for these programs. As far as I know, this question is not on this app. But she has three schools on her list that use their own application, so I don’t know if one of those will ask it – but I agree with you, it seems unfair and nosy and definitely not the school’s business!

Ugh, sorry your kid dealt with the same nonsense. I get that professors are busy, but sheesh. I don’t think this professor meant to leave it until quite the last minute – she said she submitted it earlier yesterday afternoon, but it didn’t go through correctly, and she didn’t realize it. Meanwhile my kid was nervous and couldn’t focus on the papers and presentations and what not she has due this last week of school before exams. Oy.

Because D22 doesn’t have a background in communication disorders, she needs about a year of leveling courses (prerequisites), so she applied to 3-year programs that incorporate these courses. If she doesn’t get in anywhere, her plan is to apply for a separate leveling program that can be done primarily online – and live at home for a year to complete it while also working, hopefully – then apply to 2-year programs for the following year.

Fingers crossed it works out for all of them! There isn’t much funding for SLP programs, but one of the schools she applied to yesterday is in-state for us, and therefore much cheaper. Which is why it was so crucial that the app actually went in on time!

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7565

I didn’t realize they asked where they are applying elsewhere! I do know from one of the apps they asked parents’ income. I wonder if it’s a way to reject them but say- hey you want to pay for a Master’s?

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7566

My son would totally do this, lol. We flew him and his sister from L.A. to Houston for Thanksgiving with the family, then we drove him back to our home 6 hours away. He stayed the weekend then flew back to L.A. A lot of effort and he spent most of the time working on all the projects he had due this week. But at least we got to see him.

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7567

When my oldest decided to apply to Grad school for school counseling she found out most programs favored psychology majors, while she was a sociology major. She applied anyway to a couple just to see what would happen, and was rejected. Thankfully she strengthened her application and was admitted the year after.

All the best.

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7568

What kind of things did she do to strengthen her application?

Mine is a linguistics major, which could be a natural progression to SLP, but of course all her knowledge is theoretical, and she has no clinical experience. (She has done some shadowing, but not much.)

If she’s rejected everywhere, then yeah, she’ll definitely have to figure out a way to get some practical experience in addition to taking the prereqs before applying again.

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7569

Big news: my Geology major will be starting her first ever professional job in January!

She will start on a part time basis while she finishes her degree.

She is only enrolled part time the next two quarters to finish her thesis and take one class for her minor.

She also passed her Geologist in Training professional exam on her first try!

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7570

She took additional college courses in psychology and counseling.

She already had experience in entry level college admissions, but she took on more contact hours with school age students by tutoring, and she also volunteered for an online crisis text line.

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7571

Congrats!! My S22 Geology major felt fortunate coming out of last year’s grad school application cycle with good offers for his PhD. It seemed that many in his cohort were struggling to either find jobs or funding at grad schools with all of the funding cuts. Hope her job will be enjoyable!

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7572

Congratulations on your son’s acceptance into a PhD program, and a year early. Very accomplished!

Yes, I agree that this year is not looking good on either the job hunting or the grad school front. It is heartbreaking and so unfair.

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7573

Congratulations @PurpleSunset24 and @InfoQuestMom and everyone else whose kid is all set.

@SpreadsheetMom Good luck to your daughter. Since master programs are a source of revenue, the schools are unlikely to limit the number of students they accept though there are likely more people applying these days given the bad job market.

@CMCMLM is your son all done with the applications?

I wish there was a common app for PhD. Instead, each school has its own form and requirements. It’s one thing to modify a SOP to fit the school program, but some are to be 2 pages long, some 500 words, some 1000, some 4,000 characters. Many schools require a list of classes with textbooks and chapters covered. That itself wouldn’t be too bad if one could upload a document, but many insist on entering it into their forms, one class at a time. Then there is the usual - employment, awards, research often entered as a separate entry too. It’s just a lot and very time consuming.

S22 got sick right after Thanksgiving. He has been taking exams and also proctoring and grading while sick. He should be all done tomorrow and hopefully finish all the apps due Dec 15. I wouldn’t be surprised if some get dropped last minute. And once he is done with that, there are a few more due in January :anguished_face:

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7574

He’s has submitted 5 apps so far. One was due today. He’s stressed with finals so 2 that are due the 15th probably won’t be done until this weekend. I agree with these SOP. One was no less than 500 words- the others are <1000. It’s a lot of work. Today he submitted one that was 500 words. I actually really liked his pared down version! I am thankful his 3rd reference submitted early this morning. I peruse the gradadmissions forums on Reddit and I really feel bad for students still waiting for their LORs to be uploaded.

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7575

Mine has three due on Dec 15, but she also has two final papers and two exams for school to finish, plus she’s a TA for a class where she’s hosting a study session before the exam on Friday.

I believe two of the schools have one long SOP, and the third school has FIVE essays. Oy.

But good news, for one of the apps she submitted on Dec 1, she has a Zoom interview next Tuesday. But it was odd – it’s a 10-minute interview, and the email specifically said it was for them to ask her questions, but there would not be time for her to ask questions. (Email said don’t worry, if she’s admitted, there would be plenty of time to get all her questions answered.)

So she’ll be scouring Reddit to see if she can glean what this program asks in their 10-minute interviews, lol!

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7576

My S22 called last night and we had the most hilariously awkward conversation.

To give backstory - I shop at a grocery store where, for every $100 you spend you get 10 cents per gallon off gas. So whenever I build up a lot of money, we take both cars to fill up at once. I drive the lead car, my husband pulls up right behind me, he fills up the tank, stands there holding the nozzle, I move both cars up so that he can now fill the second tank. It’s a huge PITA, but last night I had $1.20 off per gallon, so it’s worth it to stretch that across both cars.

So husband called me to say he was on his way to the gas station and I needed to leave the house then to meet him there. As I’m walking down the stairs S22 calls me for his weekly check in. I’m trying to talk to him while putting on shoes, coat, getting keys etc. I get in the car and the phone transfers to the car ok. We talk for a few minutes before I get to the gas station, where I see husband already waiting. I drive past husband to pull up at the pump and all of a sudden, S22 is GONE.

As I drove past the other car, my phone transferred to that car. I realized what happened, so picked up the phone to try and bring him back, which took a second. Then I get him and he’s all, “I don’t know what happened, I was talking to you, and then all of a sudden there was some man singing”. Apparently when he busted in on husband’s car, husband was in the middle of singing along with Livin’ on a Prayer. :joy:

So I’m trying to explain to S22 what happened, while also kind of dying laughing, while I pull up to the pump and husband pulls close behind me, and it happens AGAIN. To try to fix it, husband doesn’t hit the button to transfer the call back to the phone, instead he just disconnects, which hangs up the call on every device.

So then I get out of the car to get the gas started and S22 calls me back with a vaguely annoyed tone of “what is even happening here” and at this point I just can’t stop laughing at all of them.

I eventually just told him I’d better go because there was too much going on at the gas station. I texted him later to apologize for all of the hullabaloo/

I’m a little frustrated, because he really was talking and sharing stuff, and lately he hasn’t had much to say on the phone, and here he was trying to impart information and I couldn’t follow the thread of the conversation as it kept bopping between devices and my poor concentration.

But what I think I heard was: He’s got a final project done for one class; for a second class there appears to be a project for this week, but the professor hasn’t assigned it yet so he was going to talk to him today; for his year long capstone project/class he’s pretty frustrated with how the research is going and the snags they are running into; he’s in charge of new member education for his fraternity and it’s taking a lot of time, but it’s about what he expected; he’s kind of stressed out with all of that and the extra time it’s taking to job hunt and he really really needs his winter break.

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7577

Really funny, my spouse is really bad at technology, would have had tantrum lol. Regards to shorter phone convo similar things happening here, I am just giving her space.

7578

So funny! We’ve had that happen at home where I’m talking to someone and DH pulls into the garage and now my phone is connected to the car. Last year, we went to Nashville for Thanksgiving and S22 met us there. We met for lunch first and parked a few blocks from each other. When I was getting into my car and trying to set the GPS to the hotel, it would not work right and disconnected. Turns out, S22 drove past me and his phone connected instead! I was so annoyed with my car and phone!

7579

We had a similar thing happen on a few occasions when picking up a car from the mechanic. When I pulled behind DH at a traffic light, his podcast would start playing in my car. I found it hilarious, but he wasn’t impressed :wink:

@SpreadsheetMom congrats on an interview! Fingers crossed for you daughter! How nice that she heard back so quickly

@CMCMLM I follow the same Reddit forum. It’s awful to read about students whose recommenders stood them up. That’s completely unacceptable. BTW I can already see myself refreshing Gradcafe obsessively starting sometime in January.

S22 took his last two back to back finals this morning. He should be home later tonight, and then it will be all about grad school apps. At least some of his Dec 15 schools are still missing his third LOR :roll_eyes:

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7580

I never heard of the gradcafe website until reading about it in the gradadmissions forums. Now I will have to watch that one, too, to see when his peers are getting invites. I hope we both hear something by mid January! For some phds (like Northwestern which I am shocked) there is no interview! I hope your son’s recommenders get those recommendation letters in!!

7581

Congrats on the interview! Next step will be those spring fly-in visits!

7582

I don’t think my son had formal interviews last years. However, he did start at least 6 months before the application deadline with networking to get to know various potential advisors and had numerous conversations with them all that fall prior to his acceptances, wrote project proposal applications with some of them, etc. So they were already working together so not much need for interviews I guess.

For what it’s worth…..many people didn’t hear anything until March of last year due to all of the uncertainty of funding cuts. And then some people had offers rescinded before they accepted (again due to funding cuts that came after offers were released). I really hope that all of these students have a much better cycle than last year!

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