Same! The school really leaned into outdoorsiness–maybe as a marketing/identity thing?–when we toured, but all the kids on campus didn’t look like camping kids. It takes all kinds, right?
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How about Univ. of Virginia? I know nothing about Linguistics, but they seem to offer “Linguistics” as a major. Further, I believe that they are one of the few publics that meet need and I believe have several merit scholarships.
For UMD, make sure you do early action. They take most of their class from the early pool, and it is much harder in RD.
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They’re good, but don’t offer the type of linguistics C25 is after. (Specifically, the ability to focus at least somewhat on semantics and pragmatics while gaining some exposure to methods of accounting for linguistic variation.)
(That’s a danger of being a professor’s kid, I think—if your interests run more or less in the same direction as the professor parent, you know in detail what your interests are, and have opinions on that way too early.)
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We may change up our NJ trip a bit and do a true trains, planes, and automobiles day. D25 really wants to see Julliard even if its just the outside of the buildings. So we may surprise her and fly into Philly (we got cheap unchangeable direct flight arriving at 8am), rent a car (which we need anyway), and take the Amtrak from Trenton to NYC and do 1 day in the big apple. We would have to take the morning train then back to Trenton to get to Rider Day at 10am. It would be whirlwind crazy but she would love it.
Also, she agreed to do a tour where I work. I actually don’t teach on that campus and have never toured so it will be interesting for me as well to see how they market things so to speak.
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Take the train from the Hamilton Train Station. It’s 10 minutes from Rider with good parking. It’s where we always drive to when spending the day in NYC.
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Have fun at that airport 
. It’s so sad and depressing
But good luck 
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I’m so impressed by how on top of things you are. Would you like to help my kid figure things out?!
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It’s my fourth time around. By now it’s just kind of what I do.
(Well, and it’s a fun hobby, TBH.)
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FWIW, one of the beautiful things about Pitt is the rolling admission. I think my older son knew before the second week of October that he’d gotten in. Doesn’t mean they will tell you about merit aid that early (my older son heard in about two weeks, but I’ve seen other people not hear for several months. I think part of it was his major - that year they gave much more merit $ to engineers then they did liberal arts and sciences - and part was because it was so early when he applied there was more money to go around.)
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Maybe everyone else already knew this, but I’m digging around today on admissions pages to some of the schools S25 is most interested in, and I’m seeing that letters of recommendation are not required – and in some cases, they aren’t even considered. From what I can tell, for engineering majors anyway, Virginia Tech, University of Alabama at Huntsville, Auburn, Penn State, Pitt and Purdue all don’t require them And NC State says they’re not required, but they’ll look at them.
Not a big shock that the reach schools (WashU, UVA and University of Rochester) do require them, but wowsers…consider my mind blown. 
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Junior year 
D25 had her last final today! After the SAT on Saturday, she can take a break from academics for a while. However, she won’t be lounging around. She’s scheduled to work 35 hours next week lifeguarding and teaching swim lessons.
I’m also gently encouraging her to start looking at the Common App essay prompts to start generating some ideas. We’ll see how that goes!
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When are you all having your kids do the rough draft for the common app?
Rough draft for the Common App: Next week? Or maybe July? We’re being kind of chill about that at the moment.
Tweaking the shortlist: The kid has expressed interest in including a Canadian college or two. So there’s a new wrinkle. The likeliest adds on that score would be the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Queen’s, York, and maybe McGill.
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Mine has expressed interested in Memorial in Newfoundland too, weird.
A number from their HS go to Canada (8?) going to many places from UBC to Dalhousie to U Toronto to McGill… Also a few each year go to UK or english-speaking schools in Italy and France. I think it is cool!
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Okay, if we end up with two kids from this board’s participants going from the US to MUNF, we’ll know that the simulation is glitching.
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Note, youtube keeps showing us travel ads for newfoundland and it looks gorgeous, that, I suspect is part of their sudden interest in the area from kid…and then they started looking if they had colleges.
We shall see if they actually apply, though.
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Oh wow that’s so cool! Everyone at my school just goes to Rowan lol not anywhere particularly exciting
Occasionally a kid or two gets into somewhere crazy
Hmm…is this a bit like being “test-optional” where if you don’t submit letters, they make assumptions? Anyone know? Shoot, I wish schools would just be more decisive.
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FWIW, the Virginia Tech website said they don’t ask for it, and they won’t consider it. Same with Penn State. NC State said the letters aren’t required, but they will be considered. Auburn and Purdue just said the letters aren’t required. So…yeah, now we get to look at those application issues a little more closely than I had thought!
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