Ok, can I whine? I swear that the school she submitted the arts supplement to last night just said to submit the video. Today? “Please give a 500 word essay why…dance.” Really? Could you maybe have mentioned this before? She has one for another school, so can edit and submit, but she did not need one.more.thing today. However, it’s a renewable scholarship for a sig chunk of change, therefore she’ll get it done.
/rant over.
My kid was just ghosted for a virtual interview with one of their top five schools. 
Probably a miscommunication of some sort. Just let admissions know he was not able to connect with the interviewer.
That happened to my daughter, but she contacted admissions and they set up a new interview. They were very nice about it. I think glitches happen sometimes.
Has anyone had their FAFSA processed through to a college yet? Just curious as none of our child’s colleges say they have it and we did it within a few days of it opening.
A few of ours say received. Some of the portals don’t show any of the financial aid documents or any kind of checklist which is frustrating!
I checked my fafsa today under my D’s account and it has processed with an SAI number. I’m not sure if the colleges have the info though, how would I check that? Calling the FA office?
About half of the college portals have it listed.
You can check the portals and see which ones have a Financial Aid document checklist.
I wonder if the American portal options to RSVP for orientation and the admitted students visit is portal astrology!
My child is crispy. Beyond burnt. They were never a gifted essay writer and now the essays they’re putting out are pure garbage. Although I wouldn’t admit it to my kid, the writing they just submitted to make the Dec 1 deadlines is embarrassing. This will be a good test to see what admissions values. Can the remainder of their application carry them despite a crap essay? We shall see. And there’s more essays to come (honors college, llc, competitive scholarships, etc.) I’m not sure we’ll survive.
We didn’t do ED. We’re full-pay everywhere, and since my child didn’t see the point of spending $350k-$400k on an undergrad degree, they focused on merit-hunting at colleges that have their niche major, and would be a good combo of “fun college experience” with solid preparation for career. Although my kid has the stats to apply to HYPSM, they didn’t apply anywhere uber-selective.
Can anyone give me a tutorial on how to quote several posts and respond to each all in one reply?
Maybe? We don’t have that in our portal.
was this from me? I edited my post, I think I was confusing the first time! The “RSVP for orientation” and such was in kid’s Temple portal, not American. It’s still like that 
fair enough, because yield is so low absolute numbers are like that.
FWIW I alum interview for a highly selective school, kids are nearly always unhooked (I have yet to get a recruited athlete!) I interviewed a legacy once (RD, he was WL then denied!). I am not sure I have every seen an RD kid get in and have been interviewing for ages. A number of ED applicants have gotten in. I totally realize that is anecdotal but biases my view point.
Oops, I guess I was confused by your post! Apparently no portal astrology at American.
Re: several posts, I don’t know if it’s the right way to do it, but I just do a series of cut and pastes. For each person that I want to reference, I do the @ symbol and then their name, and a link to them pops up.
Then while I’m typing a reply, I click the quote mark icon and a thing pops up that has the greater than sign and the word “blockquote”. You delete the word blockquote and copy paste whatever verbiage you wanted to reference after the greater than sign. It should end up looking like this:
Can anyone give me a tutorial on how to quote several posts and respond to each all in one reply?
If you only want to quote one person, and not several, it’s a little easier. Before you make a reply, you highlight the verbiage you want to quote and an option pops up to make it a quote, which, if you select it, will make a reply that is specific to that poster and that quotes the verbiage you highlighted.
Thanks everyone for the commiseration yesterday. I’m struggling a little still mostly because we’ve been down this path before and the one thing I’ve always said is that he needs to tell me as soon as he’s starting to feel overwhelmed or struggling, because we don’t want it to get to overload status again. And now, here he is, with a hole dug that is really deep and no extra time or days off in which to dig out.
@Rostov - thank you for the perspective. I do think anxiety is part of the trouble - he’s seeing So Much Work and it’s paralyzing. I spent part of last night and a good chunk of time this morning before school working with him to build a list of all the things, and then a plan for what chunks he’d work on, when, today. I’m hoping that by saying “during this time, work on this” and assigning it specific time that will work. His problem isn’t any essays - he’s done with all his college apps, and he did his one overdue assignment in English last night. The problem seems to be individually large assignments - like he has a BUNCH of lab reports that aren’t done for AP Chem. Like four. I think the issue there is that he doesn’t really know what the teacher wants or how to do it, so he’s just… not doing it. We talked and he’s going to spend lunch with that teacher today to get some direction and help. Then with AP Gov, he’s got a study guide to complete - it’s not hard and the questions aren’t complicated and he knows the answers. But it’s 10 pages long, and I think the sheer length is freezing him. I’m going to suggest he just answer 2-3 questions at a time, then take a quick break.
@VTMom03 - thank you for the commiseration, although I’m sorry you’re there too! I honestly think a huge part of the problem is the internet and the fact that all assignments are on the computer, all reading materials are on the computer, all sorts of hyperlinks need to be checked for everything. He’s never not on the computer, and the temptation to do something else - or to fall into random YouTube or Wikipedia rabbit hole, is just really hard to ignore. It’s not his phone, it’s the school laptop, so it’s not like I can take it away. Sigh.
@murray93 - thank you for this. Did you EF coach meet virtually? If so, would you mind sharing their info (you can DM me if you don’t want to post it). We’ve tried EF coaches before and just never quite had the success with it that I had hoped for - the first coach was clearly geared towards much younger kids, the second wasn’t the right fit and when the school year ended we just let it go. But we need to try something. And thank you also for the story re: your son. I’m really hoping that when my kid gets to college, and is taking classes he want to take, that things will be easier for him. That said, I can’t quite not worry about this. If he gets into his top choice school, there are a lot of gen ed requirements, so will he be more invested in those? And if he gets into his second and third choices, they have a bit more of a non-academic / social vibe, will he get sucked into that and not work at all? I know there’s nothing I can do right now about either of those things, so I’m just trying - hard - to model for him how to set up a schedule that will work, how to go ask for help, and what kinds of resources exist so he knows to ask for them. I’m just so tired of this cycle, and I know he is too. I wish this just weren’t an area of struggle for him.
My DS applied ED bc it was his top choice and we are full pay everywhere. He applied EA to his 2nd choice and if #1 is a denial he’ll turn that EA into an EDII. As soon as we decided to do ED to that school everyone in the house relaxed. It allowed him to do fewer early apps and focus on school. Hearing before Christmas week will be a godsend.
He’s struggling with the work load. He spent all of the holiday working on AP Research. It was actually due before the holiday but the teacher allowed them to turn it in late as long as it was in before they went back to school.
That being said, he won’t have enough time to work on RD essays between the ED release and January so he’s already having to work on 3 more apps. Ugh!
Highlight the section you want to quote and you will see the option to quote, edit, copy quote, etc. Select quote. It will open a new reply window and you can type your response to that quote.
Leave the response window open and go to the next post that you want to quote from. Do the same thing. Highlight the section that you want to quote and select “quote” from the options you are given.
For example, I grabbed this statement from OctoberKate’s post, highlighted it and added it, and it was added to my response where I previously quoted you.
Sometimes I’ll copy text from a website. To hyperlink the website, I’ll type what I want to say then go back, highlight the word and select the hyperlink icon from the menu at the top of the dialogue box. I copy and paste text from the site, highlight the text and choose the quote icon from the menu at the top of the dialogue box. That will put the text in a grey box so it is obvious that it isn’t my wording, but is a quote from the website. As an example:
From the UC Application.
UC Berkeley and UC Merced are on the semester system calendar while all other campuses are on the quarter system calendar. All campuses are open for the fall term, but only some may open for the winter/spring term.
S just received four different personalized financial aid emails at once, including two that said his non-custodial parent waiver has been approved (PHEW)! It looks like those offices are kicking it into high gear. I am also so relieved right now since if two are approved, it’s likely most will. I can breathe a little easier.
This summer my D had quite a bit of work to get through. I had her put all on a single google doc list but also subdivided each with bite size (~15 minutes) checkboxes. So say it was 30 questions for Gov, she would add 10 check boxes (if the goal was 3 at a time). The important part was printing it out and sticking it to her wall. Her goal was to check (physically cross out) at least 1 box each day (this also allowed me to keep up with progress).
It was rewarding to do so, and having everything listed clearly allowed her to plan but also work on whatever she felt like. It did not matter as long as she checked one box each day and sometimes she did more.