Same thing here. She applied to 8. No reaches. She is in at all 8. They all have parts of what she is looking for and it’ll be a tough decision. We’re waiting for scholarship info as well. And we have a couple visits to make still as well. It will likely be April for a decision.
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Some colleges make it difficult to decline. We looked for some and just ended up ignoring it because it was not easily found. And if you haven’t paid, then that’s it. Well, until they extend and give you another week or two to decide!
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OK, so, last day of apps, two left. And S24 was apparently up at 2:30 am working on them (I get activity alerts from the shared Google docs), and they still need work.
Let’s see, you have the most time total for these, and a really big gap from the last prior app, and so obviously you start seriously on them with under 22 hours to go . . . .
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Obviously! Duh! 
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“Some people do their best work under pressure” says s24 during the 11th hour of every deadline
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Mine is at 9 also, and I am so thankful that’s all she did. I honestly hope that only about half of those come in as acceptances so the final choice is easier. No analysis paralysis.
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My S applied to 8. We would be happy if he receives 1 yes from his 4 reaches just so he has some choices. He has 1 yes to his major; 2 - into the uni but waiting for his major;
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I made the mistake this morning of going back and rereading essays from an October submit that’s announcing soon. Wow, what a difference between October and December on the writing quality.
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I am convinced D22 would not have gotten in if she had gone REA.
People bash on lost of apps, but I think for a decent writer each application gets better than the next.
I also found that there was a lot of maturing in the fall in terms of goals and figuring out what really mattered - things that definitely helped the strength of later essays.
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My feeling is my S24 probably reached his peak-plateau with his REA school, which was his fifth application and had a lot of essays, which he put a lot of time into.
Since then he has done other good work, but I don’t think it is notably better, just different variations or new equally good things.
Of course I did just relate he doesn’t necessarily give each one of these a ton of time. Still, I think he has found his voice and his perspective on these things, and now it is (not in a bad way) just a matter of applying that to the specific essay at hand.
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REA haunts mine a little, he worries he didn’t show fit well enough and possibly didn’t come off as multidisciplinary as he is. I feel torn, I agree he didn’t express that as well as he could have in hindsight, but also not sure they would have bothered with a deferral if they really doubted fit.
Yeah, with an REA typically being very reachy anyway, it is nearly impossible to attribute causation in the case of a deferral or indeed rejection.
In my S24’s case, we knew deferral was the likely outcome even with his best possible essays, and so getting deferred was basically not a bad signal. And honestly, I think the idea of being able to write your way into, or out of, these colleges is a bit overrated.
Still, I will say I think he got “lucky” that he had to do two RD applications before his REA for merit scholarship reasons. I think this got him sufficiently up the learning curve to feel good about his REA.
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this^^
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S24 wrote a scholarship essay yesterday with the same word count as the common app personal statement. It took two hours to get to a strong, close-to-final draft. The personal statement took many days of agonizing, revising, and complaining. There is no doubt that he has gotten much better at cranking out these essays. Unfortunately, I‘m not sure that writing these personal narratives is a particularly important skill outside of college applications.
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I’d like to think this too.
I’m a parent of a 25 kiddo who is planning to do as many of her applications as possible over this summer. Fall will be very busy with IB classes and theater.
Now that you all are mostly through this process, what are your thoughts about that approach? I imagine it is practice writing the supplements, not just time passing, that makes them stronger. So maybe she can start with the schools lowest on her list or with the highest acceptance rate?
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We tried. That was the plan. Easier said than done. It’s awesome in theory.
Likely depends on if the kid is a procrastinator.
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I’m not sure many of the complete apps will be available. They may be able to fill in most of the common app, but may not be able to go further. Esp. since the common app “reopens” in August, if I remember correctly. Just something to consider.
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I think it is kid specific- and honestly how much essay writing experience they already have. My kids also did IB so entered the college app process with great writing skills. They literally wrote many of their essays the day they were due and got into all but 2 schools they applied to. I would just let the kiddo write them in the order they want to- they can always go back and revise the ones they wrote earlier in the process if they find they improve.
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This was our original intent/plan, but it didn’t go that way. D24 resisted and dug in her heels, flat out refused to start any essays until the school year started. I WAS able to get her to do some “College Essay Guy” writing exercises in order to get things going over the summer, but even that, there was much protesting and gnashing of teeth from my kid. College Essay Guy has a Youtube channel and a website…just Google it and you’ll find it.
I also made D24 spend a few min each week (before 12th grade started) looking up & comparing graduation requirements of different majors at different colleges that we (us parents + kid) were thinking of having her apply to. We put it in a spreadsheet so it would be easier to compare later on. Kid protested that, too, but it was only 15 min a week and after a few months, she had a lot more info than when we started.
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