I can’t believe how much gets tossed out at move-out the first year. Wasn’t just my kid, but the whole school–vans full of lamps, rugs, plastic storage bins, and lots and lots of throw pillows.
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snappity–“in-depth forensic investigation”–Please don’t leave this discussion after acceptance season. You are just my kind of detective-wanna-be people! 
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Said investigation led to me congratulating a coworker on her dad’s department’s award from the college - that he hadn’t bothered to tell her about.
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Absolutely…the best way to think about it is a match than a prize. but it’s natural for 17yr olds to feel dejected when what they think as a “match” is not reciprocated by the college. And what makes even less sense to them is they see their peers find a match more readily at the same or similar institutions when the metrics they are evaluated by is not clear. S24 did a really good job of picking his applications and has 7 acceptances so far. I am sure he will be very successful wherever he ends up but it’s going to be a rough few weeks to get past the rejections especially if they all come one after the other.
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We “inherited” a super cool orange corduroy swivel chair we called the Star Trek chair! Passed it on after senior year.
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Reporting in.
In the past week, D24 was accepted to Macalester with $25k merit/year and waitlisted at Pomona and Skidmore. Having felt fairly cynical about things for the past couple months, I think these are good results. Mac is a gem, Pomona would be a homerun, and we knew Skidmore was a longshot in RD given that we need financial aid.
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Those are wonderful results! I would argue that he’s already been rewarded for his hard work with 7 acceptances. The remaining schools releasing decisions this week and next are ALL lottery schools. Occasionally (very occasionally?) we get lucky and win the lottery, but that is how they should be viewed, in my humble opinion. Not enough high achieving kids receive this message. A few of my daughter’s friends were genuinely surprised they were not admitted to Pomona, Cal Tech, MIT, etc. 
It’s unfortunate more adults in their lives didn’t give them honest advice at the beginning of this process. These are kids with 4.0s, high SATs and great ECs. Best of luck to your son and everyone anxiously awaiting results.
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If they stayed in the dorms twice, they should be fine. The Admitted Student Day is not the time to judge the school’s normal vibe. If the school sends him a personal invite and they want to pay for roundtrip tickets, a hotel stay, and transportation costs, consider it. It is fun being fawned over!
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So I just had a conversation with S about him not wanting to do anything celebratory regarding getting in to his college of choice via ED. While he loves the college, was sure about EDing there and has no regrets, he feels there is nothing to celebrate as it was a high likely for him in the ED round.
He says we can celebrate if/when he gets in to Med school as that will be a real achievement. I am having mixed feelings about this. He is not big on celebrations in general. Is a bit stoic. Did not want to do anything for his 18th Birthday either.
He is enthusiastic about wearing the college swag though and is happy he got some merit money. ED students also get to take up to 2 courses for free in the summer which will knock off some core course requirements and save some $$.
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Wow the two free courses thing is a nice little incentive.
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Mine is exactly the same - we did nothing for his 18th birthday, he didn’t want to tell anyone when he committed to his school and still has not posted on the class instagram page about where he is going. He just has never been the kid to enjoy having the spotlight be on him. He also does not want a graduation party. He says he will just go to his friends’ parties. Kind of a bummer for us b/c we are excited - maybe we will host an adults only grad party!
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Mine suggested that his Dad and I take a week vacation and relax now that it’s over 
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Well, holy cow, in the last 48 hours, the amount of email and snail mail has increased from the colleges that admitted D24. Thanks to the FAFSA nonsense, it certainly is the season of “Holy cow, we don’t have enough students enrolled yet and we need to protect our yield. Quick, send out some more emails and even videos encouraging people to enroll.”
On 1 end of the spectrum, there’s UNM which sent out a video from their VP of student enrollment with him saying to contact him directly with any questions and him saying that they have a 6/1 enrollment deadline. And on the other end of the spectrum is Southwestern, saying, “We’re not changing our 5/1 enrollment deadline even though we know that none of you will get the final FAFSA financial aid award notifications from us until 2 weeks before that. Oh, and the enrollment deposit is $750.” And then there’s Centre College with 2 admitted students events in April, 1 of which has the option for an overnight stay for the admitted student.
And then emails every 2-3 days from ASU. Urgently worded emails from U of A saying, “You need to sign your housing license agreement by 4/1 or else!” and everything in between.
Meanwhile, will my kid say where she officially wants to go? No.
How am I going to channel this frustrated energy? No idea because there’s no more weeds to pick in my front or backyard.
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Still thoroughly enjoying all the happenings in this thread while S24 continues his coast to graduation following ED acceptance.
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I’ve got weeds like you wouldn’t believe. Happy to help however I can!
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I’ll be right over! 
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Ok, I found something to temporarily occupy my mom-brain for a little bit. Item 1: reading the thread about Kate Middleton altered-photo-gate.
And item 2: walking D26 through some Univ of Arizona info about majors in their College of Applied Science & Technology.
While D24 is a biology kid, D26 loves history plus likes computer stuff. But doesn’t like computer stuff enough to want to major in engineering or computer science. And she’s looked at the MIS major requirements and doesn’t like how much economics and accounting classes you have to take.
doesn’t want to be a history teacher when she grows up. Is thinking of maybe some day going to law school. Got really turned off by the super competitiveness of VEX Robotics. Liked the programming and building parts and collaboration with team mates. but the actual competition part of it, she totally hated.
Anyway, so apparently starting Fall 2024, the College of Applied Science & Technology is going to have majors available in person (whereas before, it was only online and based out of Sierra Vista, which is where Fort Huachuca is located…about an hour south of Tucson). There are 3 majors if you’re attending in-person in Tucson:
- Intelligence & Information Operations
- Applied Computing
- Cyber Operations
Then we browsed through the sub-specialties of these. And all I’ve gotta say about that is duuude…there’s a lot of concentration options. For example:
Cyber Operations majors can have a subspecialty in any of the following:
- Cyber Engineering
- Cyber Law and Policy (she liked this one)
- Defense and Forensics
Applied Computing majors can choose one of these concentration areas:
- Artificial Intelligence
- Cloud Computing
- DevOps
- Information Management
- Network Operations
- Software Development
And the Intelligence & Information Operations majors can choose 1 of these concentrations:
- Operational Intelligence (she liked this one, too)
- Information Warfare (and liked this one)
- Law Enforcement Intelligence
It was so great to see D26’s face light up while she was reading some of the course descriptions and saying stuff like, “Oh, yeah, that sounds really cool.”
I told her, “Hey, it’s only spring of sophomore year. So all of this is just food for thought. You don’t have to do anything about this now. It’s just something to think about. Maybe this might be a career path that you might be interested in.”
And then we stumbled across this intelligence major-focused newsletter that the college publishes a few times a year. Pages and pages of it full of internship leads, how & where to apply, detailed course info, articles about new info or trends in the topic/area/major. One of the internship descriptions was for an intelligence analyst intern at the CIA. D26 just about lost her mind in excitement over that one.
So who knows? 1 of my kids wants to PA while the other one either could end up as a lawyer, an IT person, or a spook. Or something entirely different. 
I don’t know about you guys, but I am just so thrilled and happy when my kids discover something that really gets them excited and interested.
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I am back from a busy OOS soccer tournament with D27 and had so much fun reading all the good news here 
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DH and I received an ecstatic FaceTime from our D24 Friday night in the hotel. She was accepted to Fordham (likely or even safety), into the Gabelli business school, AND received the NMF full tuition scholarship (this was the reach component). It was wonderful to see her truly happy about an acceptance. It was a bummer not to be here to hug her.
3 more schools we are waiting to hear from.
Phew. I still have anxious energy, but not so much I want to weed lol.
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So thrilled for your daughter! My S22 is at LC (but not Gabelli) on the same scholarship. PM me if I can be of help in any way. Best of luck on the rest of the applications and congrats to your entire family.
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I love this perspective and 100% agree. Told D24 that she can’t expect results better than S21 despite having better stats. He may have been a match with his schools vs. her and they both have different takes and personalities. That notion is so beneficial, either way. She got into one of her dream schools and she’s loved the idea that they were both a perfect match for each other vs. like she won the lottery.
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