Parents of the HS Class of 2024 (Part 2)

S24 just had his first art school crit sessions this week and called to tell me about them in detail :heart_eyes: I hung on every word. Many moons ago I was in art school. It’s such a special, transformative experience. My heart is filled with joy for him. What a great way to end the week.

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Ugh. Something bad happened to D24 involving a ā€œmean girlā€ from high school who was already a member of a club that D24 wanted to join. Injustice was done, but I can’t get into the details. I have objective evidence of the bullying factor, but again, I don’t feel like talking about it. This is the hardest part of empty-nesting/letting any child go out in the world, as far as I’m concerned. I was having ridiculous fantasies of showing up at the university and giving this student a tongue-lashing! But that’s not our job–not even when they’re still in high school. My heart hurt a lot yesterday, but I think D24 is handling it better than I am! Living well is the best revenge, if one can do it.

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I feel for you. We had a very similar sitch last year. It was so hard. I wanted to swoop in and mete out justice (like that would even be possible or appropriate–it wasn’t/isn’t but still I wanted it badly). What I tried to remember is that this girl, at the end of the day, had the worst sentence imaginable: she had to go through life being herself.

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This is probably more appropriate in the 2025 thread but I haven’t joined and don’t have the bandwidth.

Noticed this on her school’s college profile today and thought it was a wise addition. Any other schools have something similar?

Our students are set a maximum of ten applications to ensure a careful selection of final university applications and well-researched potential destinations.

Heard it was 8 last year so upped.

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My understanding is that high schools with college application limits are rare and tend to be elite private high schools with dedicated college counseling staff. That said, if the high school has a limit, it makes sense for that limit to be stated in the School Profile document.

This may be a topic for another thread, but I’m not a great fan of limits as I don’t think that one-size-fits-all policies are applicable to all students. There are always exceptions to recommendations and rules of thumb. It was easier to apply to fewer schools before test optional policies increased uncertainty for students trying to determine reaches, matches, and safeties.

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Our HS doesn’t have a max # of apps per student, but the counselors definitely recommend to not go with a carpet bombing approach of applying to all top 20/top 25 colleges from the US News & World Report list. Usually every year, there’s at least 1 student who ignores this advice, does the massive app approach & only adds 1 in-state public to the list, gets rejected from all of the top 20/top 25 they applied to, and ends up going to the in state public.

There’s nothing wrong w/the in state public they got into. But it does turn out to be a very humbling experience for the kid, who had convinced themselves that they were GUARANTEED to get in to at least ONE of the Top X colleges. Some of the snobbery that came out of the mouths of 2 such students last school year in D24’s grade would have curled your hair. And guess what? They got rejected everywhere prestigious and are attending an in state public U.

When it becomes D26’s turn next school year to apply to college, we’re going to stick to what’s worked and we’re going to follow the counselor’s advice. Planning on visiting an OOS college this spring which has a really great program in a major D26 is interested in.

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Our school doesn’t have a limit but they suggest 8-12

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I agree, as well as those students who are chasing merit, especially with all the FAFSA craziness.

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So S24 revealed today he has made one travel club sports team, and has made it to the closed tryouts for a second (on Sunday). According to him the practice schedules and seasons are such that he can do both, and honestly I think he is the sort of kid where having at least a pretty busy regular schedule might be good. And I definitely believe the health benefits, stress relief, and social opportunities from competitive sports at the club level are great, as long as you can also balance that with classes.

But perhaps most relevantly given previously expressed concerns, apparently the kids on the teams are already explaining how they have contact lists for alums who love to hear from current students for networking purposes. I don’t really think that is WHY he should do these activities, but it is making him feel a lot better about the kids who are joining other activities he doesn’t really have an interest in for pre-professional purposes (not that there is anything wrong with that, but it really isn’t his crowd).

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Class started on thursday and S24 is already humbled by the amount of work at his LAC. Looks like the fun times for the orientation week were well done to get them settled and happy before the real work begins. He is auditioning for orchestra today and hopes that he is not playing the first cycle!

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DH is down visiting S24 this weekend for the football game (his alma mater is playing S24’s school). He reported that S24 looks great and seems happy. You can only imagine what a huge relief that is for me to hear after everything a couple weeks ago. He took him out to dinner last night and saw him briefly this morning (S24 had to be at his frat house by 7:30 this morning). Anyway, wanted to update since my previous post a few weeks ago was such a downer. I get to see him in two weeks for Parent’s Weekend.

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How wonderful! Congrats! Club sports are a positive, healthy activity. My S24 is waiting to hear if he got into an arts activity club–which would be perfect for his expanding his interests and hobbies. Fingers crossed! No news has been revealed to me yet…

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The slower information cycle is taking some getting used to. I really, really do not want to make it feel like we are placing any expectations on S24, and he is in fact communicating in his own time, so I don’t want to pester him constantly for updates.

But knowing that, say, a tryout was on Day 0, and not hearing how it went until Day 2, is currently . . . uncomfortable.

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My kid (rising college senior) does a travel club sport and it has been the most impactful, best community we can imagine for her. The other players, the coaches, the network of alum who played for this team - they are an extremely close knit community. She was offered an internship and other possible job connections from an alum in her same field, after just a casual conversation at a social event. Best of luck to your son, I think it’s one of the best experiences a college student can have and will build lifelong friendships.

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Our high school does an online once-a-month ā€œcoffee talkā€ with the school principal. 1 of the school counselors emailed me and asked if I’d be willing to speak about our experience w/D24 applying to college at the Coffee Talk scheduled for later this month.

So I said yes!

And then I nerded out last night putting together a 20 min Powerpoint presentation.

I’m excited about this because I know there’s some 1st gen families at our school and maybe hearing about the process from a parent’s point of view might help a little bit. I’m also hoping that it’ll give some stressed out parents a little bit of hope that their kid can and will get into a good college even if you don’t have straight A’s and perfect test scores. :slight_smile:

Meanwhile, D24 is spending the weekend w/Roommate’s family on their family farm. Can’t wait to hear all about it when she gets back to school tomorrow evening!

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That is great! I did travel debate in college and it was a fantastic experience, including the lifelong friendships, but there was no real networking component (or not as far as I knew). So when we first started really looking at club sports as part of S24’s college search, that was about the limit of what I had in mind (well, and more exercise I suppose).

Your kid’s experience, though, is exactly what my S24 is now hoping for. And maybe a little reminder (one of many) that some things might in fact have change since back in my day.

Speaking of changes since back in my day, supporting my S24 it quickly became clear to me that navigating the current college landscape was just so much more of an information load for parents. So I think it is great you are passing along things you have learned.

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I feel this a lot. I’m essentially going from knowing where my kid was every minute of the day to… I don’t even know where he is right now?

And the whole not responding to texts is really driving me batty. While he has never been good at responding to texts, it’s been particularly worse this time. Of course he has told me that he is busier now and really is not married to his phone anymore.

But I would like to know at least that he is safely in his dorm at 11 at night? But maybe that’s not feasible. This college thing is hard. LOL

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It’s an adjustment, certainly. For my older kids, usually, the only time I ask for texts about being safely back in their dorm is when they fly back to school after having been home and I want to know that the airport-to-dorm trip was ok.

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One of my S24s is pretty good with updates (and by ā€œpretty goodā€ this is the one where I have no idea how the application to the arts activity is going…sigh) and the other S24? Well, let’s just say that I showed a text ā€œexchangeā€ between me and him to a friend a few days ago. She took one look at it, started laughing, and said ā€œā€¦remember that horrible 00’s book ā€˜He’s Just Not That Into You?ā€™ā€ :scream:

This is taking a LOT of getting used to. I’m reminding myself that they are supposed to be independent, that I don’t want to place expectations or pester as you wisely say. Feels like sitting on hands. I’m doing a lot of stress baking. Plum cake is in the oven right now.

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are they at least at the same school? :laughing:

I probably need to pick up a hobby.