Not sure about a gift yet (maybe a new phone), but we are taking a two week trip to Europe to celebrate (that’s a gift for all 4 of us).
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Speaking of confetti, did anyone else notice a shortage of confetti this year? I imagine it was just the schools he happened to get into, but a lot of his acceptances were just a letter with no fun stuff to indicate acceptance at all (I believe Macalester autoplays bagpipe music, and my biggest disappointment about him not getting into Macalester is not getting to hear the bagpipes. Which made me cry at his brother’s graduation, so…nostalgic). His Colby letter he actually said, “nope. Oh, wait–it says congratulations” …but then he got used to needing to actually read the first few words to figure things out.
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She’s getting a new bike for campus and full subscriptions to things like Microsoft, Grammarly and whatever else might be helpful to have on her laptop at college. And of course, a pet pillow!
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S24 got to pick the country and basic vibe of the annual family vacation (no, Scotland didn’t count, that was just an admitted student visit, don’t be silly). And he chose Switzerland with a lot of alpine adventure fun. I’ve promised paragliding and helicopters and such, and I have been warned this time I have to deliver (this time? what was the last time? that is a story for another occasion).
But is that really a gift, since we would be going somewhere anyway? Well, I was looking at the menus at some restaurants near one of the places we were considering staying (we like to make sure there are convenient good dining options), and I happened to glance at the price for a cheeseburger at what was reputed to be a casual family place. I did the conversion to USD twice just to be sure, and yes, it turns out picking Switzerland is VERY much a gift, a quite nice one in fact.
On the plus side, I started calculating the cost of things like helicopter tours in cheeseburgers, and it turns out they are actually pretty reasonable in cheeseburgers! So I just have to persuade the kids that too many cheeseburgers would overload the helicopter . . . .
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Switzerland is so expensive! The following summer after we went to Switzerland we were in a restaurant on Shelter Island. This was about eight years ago. S21 was looking at the menu and saw a $28 cheeseburger. His comment is now family lore…“wait, is this in US dollars?” 
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Basic confetti on the portals still seemed like a thing for S24, but at this point it appears to be no more effort than clicking a button on whatever off-the-shelf portal software they all seem to be using.
Rochester, though, had flying bees. Hats off to them. Including because it probably terrified 0.5% of their applicants!
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Grinnell had tiny squirrel confetti…which seemed to charm me more than S24
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S has started getting emails about info sessions and advising around pre-med track already. It’s getting real!
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We are doing a gold bracelet for D24. She was originally asking for a trip to Ireland with friends, but that friend group has sort of imploded. We will also be traveling to Europe this summer as a family, so we are trying to pawn that off as a graduation gift as well. I’m also trying to put together a photobook for her high school years, but will wait to add photos from graduation
We have revisit day on Friday, near Boston. DH & I will be flying from the southeast, D24 will be taking Amtrak from NJ. Im keeping a very close eye on the storm headed that way, and really hoping that a) we all make it and b) the weather isn’t atrocious on the actual revisit day.
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We loved the bees!
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Leaving today for our trip to all the midwestern colleges S24 has already seen! Oops. In a perfect world, we’d be heading northeast right now instead to see the ones he either hasn’t seen or only saw back when his oldest brother was visiting colleges. I planned too early and also we need to be in the midwest in a few days anyway to meet back up with my husband and youngest son for the eclipse. We’ll also get to stop in Nashville on the way to take S22 out to dinner. So much driving. My life for the past few years is one endless midwestern college trip, it seems.
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Delaware had confetti blue hens!
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A computer that can do the heavy lifting for engineering/CS - he has a school issued one now - and iPad update. He prefers paper and pencil, which I appreciate, but not sure how long he will be able to stick to that. I am thinking he may like a ReMarkable. Not the same as paper, but closer than an iPad.
The actual gift for each graduation is a family trip to the destination of choice. D22 was Scotland (highly recommend), we are debating between Chile or Austria… something with day hikes sprinkled in. Unfortunately between everyones summer commitments we are limited to a short 2 week window in August, so it will have to wait a bit.
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Clemson was tiger paw confetti and University of Florida was gator head confetti.
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Also taking summer family vacation overseas - to London/Scotland for 2 weeks.
Our “gift” was we’re flying business class round trip. It’s a bit of a splurge but we’ve never taken any real vacations (other than 3 trips to Disney) due to work schedules so we want them to have a great experience. Plus the hotels are free for us because we’re using points at Marriott/Hilton.
I’m scrounging around for hotel points because London/Scotland point redemption is really high and we need 2 rooms every night,
Have to redeem over a million points just for this trip.
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Absolutely! I’m pulling for St. Olaf.
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Question: How long does it generally take for people to receive acceptances and financial aid packages in the mail from the time schools post their online notification of acceptance?
We still haven’t received anything from any of D24’s five accepted schools from 11 and 13 days ago. Granted, we live in a rural community with sometimes slow mail, but that’s slow even by our standards.
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S24’s have mostly taken anywhere from 1-2 weeks. We’re suburban, but our current mail carrier doesn’t seem to feel particularly passionate about actually delivering mail, so things can be quite slow here, too.
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True fact.
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Finally our school received the FAFSA, hopefully it doesn’t have any errors.
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