I told my husband that he gets to be in charge of the FAFSA/CSS stuff since I’ll take care of 99% of the other college support that S25 needs. Seems like a fair tradeoff to me!
S25 barely left his room all weekend. And when he did I got one word to responses to all questions. I was starting to worry about him, but this morning he came strolling out of the shower in his towel with a spring in his step and a smile on his face and a lot of “How are you? How did you sleep? Guess what happened at a party this weekend when the cops showed up? And do you want to see this video I saw on Tiktok of a pug that’s really funny?” I just smiled and soaked it all up. I think the word of senior year might be “mercurial” for S25!
Did you ask for a rewind about this part? Or is that one of those instances you wish had gone unmentioned? I’ve accepted that there are happenings I probably shouldn’t know about!
Being an introvert (read “nerd”) paid off, as he was not at the party. (It was an after party for the dance that he didn’t go to.) I’m hoping he will be a bit more social and spend less time gaming when he goes to college, but at least he’s not getting up to the antics that I was getting up to at his age!
I’m so sorry. I get that. My D23 had a rough 4 years with tons of girl drama and being left out but her experience at college has been a total 180. I joke to my friends that someone finally pulled the pins out of her voodoo doll!
The kid finally finished a full Common App essay draft, and I was granted a readthrough to see if it made sense to a reader. It’s IMO actually pretty good (and topically not what I expected). The plan is to let it sit overnight, then the kid polishes it tomorrow and the first wave of applications are ready to send out.
The kid’s school had them all invite recommenders through Naviance at the end of last semester. Does anyone know if we then “re-invite” them on the FERPA page on the Common App to connect the two? I saw on Naviance that one recommender already submitted theirs so it’s listed as In Progress. It would be nice to start getting some apps out to the schools that only require one, but I don’t want the kid to mess up the process.
If I understand the process as laid out by our school, the recommendation process is typically managed by the school thru whatever they use and that then feeds from school to common app/application system. So I’d say sit tight and don’t do anything or just ask the school.
Sigh…it’s just super frustrating because we are all set to submit at least 4-5 Early Applications, but our school doesn’t even open for another 3 weeks.
Your kid is in great shape! They can still submit the applications, the recommendations will be fed in when they have been submitted via naviance or scoir. hang in, we are also in the september start date for both C25 schools!
We’re in the same boat. S25 is going to submit the two for which earlier makes a difference tonight. The others he’s going to hold on until we get a week or two into school, just in case he changes his schedule (he’s got two classes that are not in any kind of progression or any requirement - if he doesn’t like them, he might swap them out for something else).
We figure the two that he submits early will have noted his work is done. And yep, the school will be later with transcripts and recommendations, but still well before the deadlines and his submission date should have gotten the ball rolling for review.
We are submitting through Common App, and we are doing it this way, but it may depend on how your school sends in recommendations. For us, Common App knows that our school uses Naviance. So when you are on the recommendation screen, it already has a checkmark next to “Counselor” and says “your school is using Naviance for transcripts, school reports, and teacher recommendations. Please contact your counselor directly and they will provide instructions specific to your school regarding these documents…” Same thing with the “teacher” category with the same text.
The only place it seems to want us to assign recommenders is “other recommender” which is things like coaches, employers, clergy etc.
So S25 isn’t using Common App to invite any recommenders. He’ll do it through the school Naviance system once it opens up in another few weeks.
Even if your school doesn’t use Naviance, the recommenders have to be able to send in recommendations independently without the students seeing/reviewing them. So I think there must be a way.
OH! Since I have the common app up on the other screen, I can see this potentially helpful Q&A:
Can I submit my application before my recommenders submit their forms?
You are allowed to submit your application before your counselor or teachers submit their school forms whether they choose to do so online or on paper. The Common Application system allows recommendations to be submitted even after the application has been submitted.
Before you submit your application, please follow up with your teachers and counselors to ensure they will be able to complete and submit a recommendation prior to the school’s stated application deadline.
Just a few more days left of summer! Pre-season is going well so far. Kiddo is enjoying his new team a lot and is getting pretty excited about the season. Such a relief that so far the decision to transfer is going well! He’ll meet his advisor and teachers next week, and I guess we’ll see how the schedule goes from there. It’s going to be a lot, but he’ll manage. For a moment, he was talking about working on Sundays, but I think he’s thought better of it. That will likely be his only day off and I think he’s going to need it to stay healthy and sane at least until the holidays.
I finally got to read his essay draft and I am so proud of the work he’s done on it! It came out really well, and I think it reveals a lot about how he moves through the world. He needs to cut it by about 50-70 words or so, I think, but that is very doable without upsetting the overall essay.
Thanks for all the insight into the common app and how it works! I’m curious (as in, not yet anxious but I could become so) how this will play out at a new school timing-wise, since they use Naviance. The old GC does not have a great reputation for submitting things in a timely way, so on the plus side, the new school already has his transcript, but he’ll have to figure out pretty quickly how the new school wants to receive his recommendation letters from his old teachers. Given that he is most definitely not the first senior transfer to walk through their doors, I’m sure that they have a system and it will be fine. I did finally corral S25 and sat him down to go over his common app account so far - there’s plenty of work still to be done there. Ha. And while I’m glad he is taking ownership of it, I did make it clear that one of us will look over his applications before he submits… he was less than thrilled at first, but I think he gets that an extra set of eyes reviewing it is a good thing.
Yeah, that (“one of us will look over it”) was/is the rule at our house too. S25 did the data entry, with the college counselor we hired answering any questions he had. But her rule (which I thank her for!) is that none of her clients can submit until they print out a hard copy of the common app application, and they and their parents review it for errors.
I suspect this is because a lot of her clients are ADHD boys, and there is typically a non-trivial amount of careless errors.
Nonetheless, I’m glad she made the rule, because if it’s her rule, it’s less likely to be argued with. S25 sent in applications to two schools last night (the two for which earlier applications might matter for either rolling admissions or housing purposes) and I had printed both applications off for us to review. We caught two things that weren’t errors per se, but that could and should be changed, so I think S25 understood the value of the review.
I think it may depend on school, to a degree, but I suspect they are told, too, to not judge clothing etc (some kids have nobody to tell them what to wear or may not be able to afford fancier clothes).
I think the more liberal the school, the less they will care honestly. If it is a very stodgy, more conservative environment (maybe catholic schools?) they will care more about appearance..
bear in mind this essay is very different than english class essays analyzing texts and literature…many kids can crank out a 5 paragraph essay and can’t come up with a college essay which is about them - opening up is HARD
(and you may still have crap english teacher, not sure, but wouldn’t assume so based on this!)
