Parents of the HS Class of 2024 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
9473

I’m going w/D24 to admitted student day stuff. It’s an opportunity for Kid & I to share a cool moment together in her life AND is an opportunity for me as the parent to sort of guide her through the decision-making so it’s not quite so daunting or intimidating.

Edited to add:
That being said, we are only going to 1 admitted student day. The other 3 colleges we are visiting…2 of the 3 are not on all-day event days, and for the 3rd, there’s 1 hour of the event that is dedicated to admitted students (rest of the programming for the day is geared toward both potential applicants and admitted ones).

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9474

I will be going to admitted student events with D24, as she wants me to go with her. My older child is D20, so we never got the chance to revisit any of her schools so I’m looking forward to attending these revisits if we can make the timing work.
As a funny aside, D20 is applying to law schools and DH and I attended a law school admitted student event with her last week (family members were highly encouraged to attend). It felt like a full-circle moment as we hadn’t had that opportunity for her undergrad decision, and she was happy to have us there with her.

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9475

Good morning all. After a few deferrals, DS24 has reviewed his Common App. He has concluded that his personal statements could be improved and wants to redo his last RD application due 2/1. Redo is the key, as he submitted his application in December (? - I guess he was eager to be ahead of the game) and is now unsure of the best way to go about it. He will be reaching out to the university on Monday morning.

DS24 has suggested simply canceling his current application and submitting a new one before 2/1.

Question - has anyone ever run into this scenario before?

9476

Unless it’s filled with typos, not sure I would go this route.

I’d ask.

Make sure that if you withdraw your app, that they allow you to reapply. Some schools will not allow.

Good luck.

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9477

Yes, I do understand your viewpoint, and it’s definitely a nice gesture.
What I meant is, the reason the school is asking where you’re enrolling is that their model does not expect early declines.

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9478

With my D18 I went with her as she was still deciding. My D21 both my wife and I went for a visit outside of admitted students as she knew she was going to attend. More about my wife seeing the school as she hadn’t been there before. I had.

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9479

A therapist friend of mine is fond of noting that “No.” is a complete sentence.

Yes there are definitely some programs of these types with stuff explicitly for parents. For those, yes I think we’d go. Absent that, we’d go if it’s a school/place we’d not yet seen, if only to be able to visualize our kids there once they’re away. Otherwise, kids are going solo. The wildcard is if they’re still deciding, in which case we’d defer to them but lean toward going.

We have everything from 20 minute drives to 7 hour flights + connections as potential itineraries, and 2 droids who may very likely need or want to visit different schools, so it could get “fun.”

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9480

Thanks, and that’s a solid point on the inability to resubmit. I understand his desire to correct what he sees as an issue. This may be the case that it is better to submit semester one grades and any additional honors and activities. To get his application current to 2/1.

9481

I’m going with my daughter to admitted students day. The trip involves a flight, car rental and hotel. I did debate about going since she’s already committed (ED), but in end it’s something we both want to do and are able to budget for. We’re going at the end of her spring break and using it to not only to attend the college’s programming for students and parents, but to have a little vacation together and explore the location, as we didn’t have time to explore in depth when visiting last June. We’ve really enjoyed traveling together - for college visits and one really special international trip – this will be our last trip together before she launches. She and I are quite close, so I’m looking forward to making some more mom/daughter memories.

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9482

Thanks everyone. I think that I will try to follow D24’s lead, and at least at the moment, it sounds like she wants me to go with her if she attends any admitted student days. It would be nice to have a bonding trip. Time is passing so quickly already. I want to savor the kid who wants me around (so unlike D22).

That said, I just thought the whole thing through and did some internet sleuthing. The two furthest schools seem to have offered some travel assistance pre-pandemic to families who need it to attend their accepted students days. So crossing my fingers that they still do so, which would help financially. Then there are two colleges near cities that will be easy to access even if I don’t go with her, and her older sister is at one of them (and probably more fun than I am). I’ll just have to wait and see about the final two places. I am a planner by nature and I like planning travel in advance, but she does have friends from high school currently attending one of those two so she might not even need to visit. Or perhaps she can just arrange a weekend trip to hang out with them.

Really, I don’t think she should miss that many days of classes in order to do admitted students days anyway. She’d fall behind. Given the rigor of her courses this year, she should probably visit on the weekend if at all rather than skipping school. Besides maybe by April, it will be clearer where she wants to go and she can preemptively narrow the list without even visiting in the unlikely even that she gets accepted to multiple places this spring.

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9483

I wouldn’t want to miss going to the Admitted Students Days. One school’s sports team is hosting my son for an overnight and we are still going down and getting a hotel. It’s a bit of a victory lap for us all. That said, we can afford the travel. Also I look at it as a ratio – in round numbers if college costs 200k, then spending $10,000 on travel - just 5%- lowers the risk of making a poor decision on the overall nut. As a parent I will see things through wisdom that my 17 yr old doesn’t yet have.

I think there’s more chances you’ll regret not going, than the opposite. Of course, don’t jeopardize your income stream to do so if you are concerned that could happen.

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9484

Either my husband or I will be traveling with D24 to admitted student days because most likely they will be far away from home. She is also missing a week of school for unified auditions. Hopefully.she will stay on top of her assignments. One class DE English it says in the syllabus that work is due on the due date even if you’re not in class. They only issue is a peer editing class that she will miss so she is going to ask if I can edit.

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9485

I would be curious to see the stats per student (so that both grade inflation and number of feeder students is taken into account) but it is hard for high stat kids to get into flagship schools in most states- I don’t think it is unique to CA. You hear WI, VA, WA, GA etc. kids getting their hearts broken because they did not get into the flagship State school and some States only have one big really high ranked State school.

9486

I saw your post in the Wake thread. Thanks for letting us know. I was told by Wake early Feb. I am a little frustrated as S24 checks all the boxes plus and had alot of great schools he was considering but REALLY liked Wake and applied ED (accepted). We are new to this and I was told they often ignore ED for merit scholarships and use for kids that have not committed. Unfortunately we did not take that advice. The right thing would be that those that qualify for the merit are considered and you would think they would want kids that REALLY want to go there. This is disappointing

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9487

DS is on the fence about going to the revisit day being a recruited athlete. It will depend on if the team is planning on doing something or he really wants to get off campus for a few days. He does not want us to come. I’m still hanging on the hotel reservations I made in case he changes his mind.

9488

I don’t know at Swat but when we attended admitted students day, aside from Welcome remarks, there was separate programming for parents and we didn’t really see our student until the end of the day.

ETA - the parents programming involved a lot of “we got your kid!” But also information on resources, logistics, etc.

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9489

As a California resident, I have to say that I disagree with you about “how bad it is here” in terms of a college education.

California has 9 UC’s that all ranked in the Top 100 colleges, 23 Cal states, 81 Private Universities and 116 Community colleges. There is a college for every student in CA that wants to attend. I do agree with you that most of the students (not just top students) are focused on the same UC’s and the few CSU’s along with same competitive majors so of course there is not enough room for all these students. At the UC Counselor Conference, the UCSB admissions officer stated that 10% of the Freshman applicants applied for Computer Science.

So California Parents/Students you need to ask these questions: But why only these schools when there are so many options available? Social media? Parent’s expectations? Peer pressure? All I see are students stating they want a top 20 school or bust.

UCLA received a total of 145,882 Freshman applications last year with 90,747 CA residents while UC Berkeley received 125,874 applications but 72,656 were CA residents. UCI, UCSD and UCSB received more CA applicants than UC Berkeley. Other states and other countries understand the quality education these schools provide so it is no wonder these top schools are so competitive.

https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/content-analysis/ug-admissions/ug-pages/applications.html

The Cal states give priority to the local admission area applicants so you are going to see schools like SDSU and Cal Poly SLO deny plenty of 4.0 students again to due impaction and capacity limits.

Only 7 Cal states are fully impacted, so that leaves 16 CSU’s where most students with the minimum GPA and CSU requirements have a chance to attend barring some specific impacted programs such as Nursing.

I have helped many students over the years with their UC and CSU applications and the majority of these good to excellent students have actually ended up attending either their local CSU or another CSU and were happy and thriving.

I will just say overall I am thankful my son’s, my nieces, nephews, friends etc… had wonderful college options in California where they could get an excellent education and succeed.

Remember one student’s Safety is another student’s dream school. Setting realistic expectations and getting students out of the mindset that there are only a few UC’s and CSU’s worthy of them attending needs to be emphasized.

My 2 cents worth and everyone’s opinion is valid but as noted by @KDEGKDEG this issue is not exclusive to CA parents and colleges. “The grass is always greener”.

Here is a link to last year’s UC Vent if anyone is interested. Again, the same points keep being brought up I always say that where you go for Undergrad will not define you, it is what you do with the resources given that will make you successful.

https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/t/vent-about-uc-decisions/

Another article about CA schools: Why California’s Public Universities Are So Good

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9490

Not sure if anyone knows but maybe they told us Feb as admitted students either get smaller merit scholarships that don’t warrant an interview or perhaps they wait for a response on students that have not committed yet to see how many will attend? Learning as we go…

9491

Hi all - just to clarify for future “searchers” who find this - my freshman at Amherst (non-athlete) tells me that there is a culture of clubs/orgs/teams having a “formal” at least once per semester, funded by student affairs, in which the org members go out to eat (paid for, limited to members+1), including goofy toasts, celebrations of inside jokes, etc., followed by returning to campus for the “party” held typically in one of the residence hall social areas - and this part is typically open to whoever. The orgs also host other parties through the semester, but less formal.

Not clear to me if the quoted tour guide was bragging or complaining about team parties … ? But n=1, no complaints about being excluded from any athletic parties (instead, a strong sense that many teams were trying hard to get non team members to attend) (and a strong belief that the obvious best parties are hosted by the orchestra).

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9492

Yes, we are going with our child to admitted student day. But we have a 3 school limit if the admitted student event would involve taking time off, flying, driving hours and overnight hotel etc. and logistically the dates have to work with taking the time off. For the trips involving a flight, only one parent is going.

As a side note, air travel has been so wild lately that it seems like everyone I know has gotten stuck with flight delays once at airport or over a day to get where they need to be with flight cancellations and re-booking. Even back in the day I remember as a 17 year old having a connecting flight home canceled at JFK with no explanation and no one at the airport willing to re-book the flight because that airline had no other flights leaving that evening. I called my parents collect from a pay phone in an absolute panic and they had to be on the phone however long to get them to re-book me on another airline that day.