If that is his score just put it in and don’t worry about it. There is no chance it will be a issue. His certificate is probably sitting somewhere on a snail mail pile. I think at some point my D got a message to pick up something from the headmasters office, which she never did. It’s not like the NMSF letter that has info necessary to continue with the process.
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Cross posted. Driving to Michigan this weekend just D25 and I. Will drive through Hope College and maybe Grand Valley State as well.
Im excited for our next college tour this weekend. Fit is always important but finding it is even more so with D25. I have already learned that I can’t totally guess how she will feel about a school after a tour. Last set of tours the ones I thought she would like most dropped to the bottom and the one I added on just because we had time ended up being her favorite so far.
She thought she wanted a safe tight knit campus but Stockton was too isolated for her. Rider was fine but she has liked other schools more. I added on Saint Joseph’s which she hadn’t even looked at before we went because she saw “Philly” and thought it would be too urban. When the tour showed a nicer suburb plus compact campus and many service opportunities, she really felt like she would thrive there.
This weekend we are pushing to see how many acres is “too big” for her and seeing if she maybe does want a bit of school spirit and sports at Central Michigan U. Cost wise we could likely get it to around 20k/yr which would be within range. We are going to eat the residence hall food and go to a football game this tour. D25 is excited there is a Tropical Smoothie Cafe across the street from campus.
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I will be eager to read your impression and your D25s impression of Hope, any way it goes. Will you be there on Saturday Sept 28? There’s a big tradition (The Pull https://hope.edu/offices/student-life/pull/) that will be taking place off campus, although I’m not sure it will make much of a difference if you are visiting that day.
Fingers are crossed for you that you are finding good fits!!
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D20 met a good friend through a scholar program who attended St. Joe’s. The friend absolutely loved it and both she and her (now) husband both chose it in large part for how service oriented the school encourages their students to be.
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I have known a couple students who either went or are at Hope. It is a great school. Sadly we can’t take it too seriously as I don’t think finances would end up where we need them to be with her stats.
I teach at a Jesuit and I too think their approach would be a great fit for D25. Central Michigan U has “Alternative Breaks” and a Living Learning community/dorm group that does public service that she would be interested in and a way to make a bigger school smaller.
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Grand Valley does multiple service days where they bus people out to various locations across Grand Rapids to volunteer. They also have a lot of drop-in service opportunities on campus where a student can stop by for a short amount of time and make cards, dog toys, bracelets, etc., depending on the organization’s needs.
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Thank you for mentioning this! Turns out D25 is commended as well, and I just hadn’t realized it.
@2plustrio --do report back about Hope. D25 has it on her list and I think she’d like it, but we won’t get there before the app goes in. I’ve asked my friends originally from MI and they give it a thumbs up, but I always like confirmation from others!
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Hello! I wanted to introduce myself because I am sure I will have questions. This is actually my second year in a row - last year I helped DS with the college application process - he’s now doing great at Virginia Tech.
I got so into it I volunteered with ScholarMatch and am working with two first-gen students, one in NC, one in Texas. I am learning a lot as I go along, particularly trying to sort out how they can get maximum aid / minimize the amount they spend.
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On college board, how do we check what scores (or all scores) were sent to each school we selected? Thanks in advance.
The order confirmation email from college board listed the colleges and just one test date next to each of those colleges. Does that mean just that score was sent?
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D25’s teacher finally uploaded the recommendation so that application is now submitted. Should hear back by early January.
She is now working on all of the extra questions (why us) for the schools she’s going to apply to through the common app. The teachers are still having issues uploading the recommendations to the app though and one mentioned she thinks it’s still the college counselor’s issue.
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Y’all are so far ahead of us.
This last week we had a big deadline: S25 had to turn in a recommendation packet to his school counselor. We sat down and got it done – I wrote a one-page parent letter in 9-pt font (hey, I follow the rules and they didn’t specify font size!) and the kid improved his resume with my feedback and together we hashed out the college list. He also had to submit a draft of an essay and folks, the essay is in worse shape somehow than it was before. I think the counselor we hired is doing more harm than good. And because we hired him for a lump sum and he’s been basically meeting with DS since January…I think we’re stuck with him.
My head space right now:
- Second-guessing every aspect of the list. Those big state schools are really big! We currently have Purdue, U Minnesota, Pitt, CU Boulder, Oregon State, Wisconsin, and UDub on our list. The only ones I feel confident about from an admissions perspective are Minnesota and OSU. I wonder if we should have looked harder at Colorado School of Mines but I keep reading that they have students commuting from the other side of Denver and I’m having painful flashbacks of winter driving in that area. Pitt seems kind of redundant given Minnesota (I think they are stronger in biomedical engineering, maybe, but that’s probably not going to be S’s major. And for some reason their physics department is really small.) We took Virginia Tech off the list for reasons that I can’t quite remember and now I’m wondering if that was dumb. Etc. Last night I was up until the wee hours looking at Jesuit schools with engineering programs, which have been suggested to us multiple times. Maybe Gonzaga? Portland? maybe Tulsa? (not a Jesuit school, but work with me here.) My friend’s kid went to Colorado and transferred back to Santa Clara but he much preferred the engineering program at CU. And S is still fixated on the idea of Occidental, which we’ve never seen, which has a small physics program and no engineering “but Caltech!” Mostly he just likes the idea of being in SoCal. I went back to look at Loyola Marymount but culturally I know-know-know that this isn’t going to be a fit for him.
- Trying to assess which schools are going to ding the kid because he hasn’t shown enough interest, and trying to sort out how and whether we need to try to visit them this fall (at the risk of f-ing up his grades…) Lafayette is one of these really-should-have-gone-there schools (fun story: the rep came to our high school and S went to meet her. She asked if anyone had visited Lafayette and he piped up “no, but we saw Lehigh!” face-palm) And since Lafayette is now, in my mind, the Goldilocks option – I really don’t want to screw around with this or leave anything up to chance. We also need to see Case, Rochester, and do a proper visit to Lehigh (as opposed to a drive-by bathroom stop and 30-minute campus walk).
If I could go back in time I would have engineered a perfect visit to Lafayette and gotten S excited about EDing there. And then, in this alternative universe fantasy, I think we’d be done.
So, lest this sound all doom and gloom, a few good things:
- S is doing okay – no, great! – in classes so far. He’s got a 98 average in AP Lit, which is a class he was quite concerned about. He has been acing his calc tests. And he’s having a lot of fun with creative photo shoots for AP Photography.
- He and a friend have started a cycling club that combines long exploratory rides and working after school in the bike repair shop with a teacher who makes it his mission to rehabilitate bikes for kids who need them. And that teacher is really happy with their work and offered to write them extra college recommendations.
- He’s enjoying robotics so far. He learned to use a lathe! He ruefully told me he wished he’d started in sophomore year. But got testy when I reminded him that we’d pushed that, hard.
But also he slept through another exec function coaching appointment this weekend. Sleeping through things is his super power.
Tell me it’s going to work out.
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It’s going to work out. It will!!
And Oxy is really nice. It’s a lovely campus in a trendy and fairly safe part of LA. (I live pretty close to it).
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I didn’t know that Oxy has a 3-2 engineering program with Caltech. Although I know cal tech is definitely not for everyone , it’s physically so close to Oxy (less than 20 minutes by car) that I bet it’s not too hard to maintain friendships etc from the Oxy part of the journey.
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So much material here, @goldbug !!
But first, LOTS of virtual hugs and a brown paper bag to breathe into. Yes, it is going to work out. And you’ll look back on this post and go “oh yeah, that week was AWFUL” and laugh a little and then move on to something more fun to think about. Like how happy your kiddo looked upon moving into the dorm.
Rockstar approach. Drop mic.
That stinks. Really. Can you connect with the counselor offline without your kiddo to express your concerns in a “hey I just want to help my kid” kind of vibe to guide the counselor to being more helpful? Just a thought, since I did something similar with our paid advisor last week, and it helped my perspective immensely. If not, again…that stinks. Sorry.
Oh, kids. Those darn kids and their irrepressible honesty, and obliviousness. Keep in mind, yours is quite likely NOT the first student to ever say that to this rep. And she likely has to have a sense of humor about that, or else she couldn’t possibly be in front of teenagers.
Last three bullets sound awesome, especially the cycling club thing. So cool, and so good for your kiddo to be enjoying something active out there in the world.
It will work out. And you and kiddo will find that inner peace that is currently taking a time-out for all of us parents of 2025 seniors.
But seriously, lots of virtual hugs. ((()))
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Curious if anyone else on this thread has had any issues with test scores being reported when requested only through the Common App?
S25 found out today that one of his applications through the Common App is incomplete because the university hasn’t received his test scores. He had only put in the request for that school in his Common App application, not through the College Board website.
Just wondering if anyone else had this show up, or if it is just an issue for my S25 who only today set up the school-specific portal?
What do you mean requested through the Common App? I didn’t even know that was a thing. As far as I know, you can self report through the Common App but if the college needs actual scores you have to submit (and pay) through CB.
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Well, maybe that’s the issue, then: me misunderstanding, and not pressing S25 to get them submitted externally.
It makes sense, now that I think about it, that we are going to have to pay CB to send them.
Two of the schools on our list require them to be submitted externally from College Board/ACT and note that they will not accept them from the Common App or other self-reported method.
One of our schools will ONLY accept them through their own school-specific self reporting form, even if you ALSO send them via Common App and College Board/ACT.
The other schools don’t seem to care, and all took whatever we sent, however we sent it.
And there seems to be no reason or pattern behind any of this.
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Random update from the OctoberKate house - last week after our college visit to UTK, I had to turn around and less than 12 hours after getting home head out for a five day business trip out of town. It’s a new job, and this was my second week, so there was no getting out of it. And the trip was actually great and I did a lot of good work with my coworkers but… I came home with COVID.
I’ve been hiding in the guest room since getting home Friday evening and I am deeply sick of TV as I don’t quite have enough energy to read (and that’s saying something). I’m also really frustrated because my S25 wasn’t in as good a place as he said he was re: work when we went out of town for the long weekend college visit. And then he didn’t do any work while there, despite me asking him to.
So he came home to multiple late assignments and no progress on imminent ones. I talked with him from a timezone away to try to help him game out what he needed to do first to stop the bleeding, and he seems to have gotten it basically back on track, but he’s not caught up yet and sweet lord it isn’t even October yet.
His classes this year aren’t that hard, at least not compared to last year, and he should have time. But he’s become obsessed with his fantasy football team. The sprinters on the track team are in a competition - the top finishers win, and the bottom finishers have to run a 3200. For a kid who normally runs a 200, maybe a 400 if you make him, this is something to be avoided. He spent all Sunday afternoon refreshing the app to see how his fantasy team was doing. He’s never even watched a football game before.
What this makes me most nervous about is next year. I’m hoping I’m borrowing trouble ahead of time, but this is so him. He finds something that interests him and then BOOM, he does no work because he’s digging into the minutiae of random thing. He can’t do that next year because if he doesn’t have the constant accountability of recurring assignments, he just won’t work. Sigh. I really thought he’d gotten past this, but this weekend was a total waste for him, when he really needed to use it to buckle down and get some classwork done to catch up.
One of these days, he’ll figure it out. I just hope it doesn’t involve flunking out of college for the lesson to sink in.
(I am hoping I am catastrophizing because I can’t sleep with all my coughing, and not sleeping makes me cranky and crazy, but I’m worried that I’m not…)
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Thanks for this info. I was under the impression that all schools needed official scores from CB.