Ugh this is me too. Probably many of us on this board. Good kid for recognizing how hard you work! 
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I’m in a similar situation. Penn State has a great program for my student’s major and he’s admitted, but he’s turned on it for no good reason that he can articulate. We’ve visited and he knows it’s a nice campus and makes sense, but he’s leaning towards oos flagships. I’ve heard the “I don’t want to go to college with twelve kids from my high school” argument, too. Sigh. I feel your pain!
And that’s how you know you have done your part to make the world a better place: you’ve raised a good human being who cares.
And it isn’t just a terrific partner he’s going to be. A reliable and considerate friend that shows up means a lot. Good job, Mom.
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My husband and I wanted our son to love Lehigh so much…its close to home..and they give great merit $$…we did the tour and the dorms were such a turnoff for our son..
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Love seeing all these updates. I hope everyone is getting a chance to breathe and take in any moments of peace and health and happiness over the break.
I’ve been struck in the last few days how much stress these kids must be under. At our book club gift exchange two nights ago, the only topic of conversation for me or my husband was about what colleges S25 had applied to, what colleges he had heard from, what colleges he would prefer. It was the same for another parent of a senior, whose daughter had one acceptance in hand for a great major program with a “meh” in-state reputation, and three deferrals from three OOS programs. She is apparently heartbroken, but like S25, waiting to hear from the big competitive in-state schools at the end of January.
And then last night at a cooking class our family, when the family of 5 assigned to cook with our family of 3 discovered we have a senior, S25 got grilled with the same questions: where have you applied, what do you want to study, where do you want to go. I mean, these are complete strangers, what do they care?! I guess they have no idea what other topics they could possibly ask of a high school senior.
The one good thing was that they had older kids to had been deferred from the big in-state school, and they had attended another local competitive high school, and they were very encouraging about waiting until spring or even summer because they were deferred and were eventually accepted.
S25 handles it all well, but my heart just goes out to him for having to deal with it. Tomorrow morning the neighbors have a brunch, and I expect he’ll get all the same questions again. It must be exhausting, on top of all the work he is still doing over break. I just wish people would go with a different focus for a bit. “Any really good teachers this year? Any remarkably bad ones? Have any fun projects you’re really digging? What fun things have you got planned to decompress over the break?”
I know the kids will all make it through ok. I just want to give them big hugs and let them know they should be able to enjoy whatever they can enjoy, and they’ll make the best decision for themselves on May 1.
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Yes to all of this!!! It’s so much. It’s frankly why we’re skipping a lot of holiday gatherings this year. I don’t want my extended family or our neighbors to be pushing their thoughts or stressing out my kid.
I talk about college and options and next steps etc on here a lot. But that’s because I’m doing my level best to not talk about it at home. Our kids need time to work through whatever they are doing in school, life, and yes college planning. But this isn’t all of who they are and it shouldn’t be the total focus of their worlds.
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On the flip side, my kid is super excited for college and finds the process to be exciting too (although I’m sure a little nerve wracking when opening the decision letters). But I think that’s mostly because he’s had a rough few years in high school beyond normal teenage stuff and can’t wait to close this chapter. Which, as a parent, is difficult because you know they are never getting this time back. And it makes me sad that he didn’t have a great experience and is mostly just counting the days till he’s done.
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Sounds like the same fedex package my kid received a week or two ago! Shipping times likely take longer to Alaska than the lower 48. My kid’s main concern is whether Hofstra is too much of a commuter school. Thoughts?
We’d like to do 3 admitted student’s days but unfortunately, the deadline for c25 to commit to their niche major is Jan/Feb at two of the 3 schools. We’ve visited all 3 schools before, but not while school was in session.
I’m not crying, you’re crying!
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You’re singing my song with all of this post. 
Getting feedback like that from your kid - you need to write it out and frame it and stare at it every day!
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You gave me pause with this one! I counted, and we toured 14 schools, only one virtually, but S25 only applied to 5.
And like you, VT is tippy top on the list (at least for Mom, and I think it is neck and neck with NC State for S25).
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It probably arrived around the same time here, I suspect (maybe a day or two later), but we were away for my C23’s graduation.
A really good friend of my C19 goes to Hofstra and loves it there. He does say that there are a lot of commuters, but there are enough people on campus, including the weekends, that there’s still decent campus life. (He says that the university clearly is trying hard to get students to stick around by providing lots of activities/events.)
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I will be the first to admit that 16 is absurd! But his GPA is borderline for Engineering despite his super high ACT and course rigor. So we just weren’t sure where he would get into.
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Yeah, that about sums it up, right? It has definitely felt difficult to consider anything a “safety.”
Good luck, and we will all hope for good news in the new year!
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We’ve only visited 3 of the 12 schools he’s applying to and a few of the others these information sessions online which all seemed to blur the same. It got overwhelming and repetitive for my son. So he says he’ll visit when he gets into places.
That said so far it’s been disappointing. Deferred at 2 schools, in at one (which is excellent for his major but overall not anything you would expect for a kid at his level), waiting on the other 5. He is a 4.0 UW student, all 5s on the APs he’s taken and 1570 on his SAT, he’s heavily involved in the arts and has lots of high level leadership there.
He still has 4-5 more applications for schools in RD that he decided not to apply ED to, that’s going to be fun to remind him daily about over the break. But he needed time to focus on his coursework and his other main ECs after the applications were due, then we rolled into mid-terms, it NEVER EVER ENDS.
I hate everything about this process but mostly that my kid worked so hard and really within the things he could control (grades, class choices, ECs, etc) he did the most he could possibly do. At the end of the day none of it will likely even matter and that, more than anything, is exactly the wrong message to be sending. It has made me cry more times than I could count and I never ever in a million years would have though this process would be far more brutal for my youngest than my oldest. But here we are.
I just want to get through it. I want him to be happy but I have this utter dread he won’t be. I hate ED because I feel like he had to decide to get into some of these schools but we didn’t want to do that because of the money aspect, I’m not going to be beholden for 80K because it gave him a better chance of getting in.
Anyway, I hate this process, the lack of transparancy about what these colleges actually wants (like they never ever tell you what their institutional priorities), I hate that peoples response is always “well, clearly your essays must have sucked” or something equally as obtuse and blaming these kids.
I also want to scream every time people talk about the mental health crisis in our youth that this is the kind of stuff driving it.
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I’d like to get the tours done in the next couple months on the most interested of the couple acceptances that came in already, and then we have three left waiting on decisions from in Jan/Feb, but those are the reaches/hard target. One we already did the tour way before applications, the other in the works planning, and then there’s the Clemson deferral.
I’m not sure yet how to tackle doing a tour on a deferral, if at all. Apparently that decision comes out mid-February or so, about the same time as I think UVA does and that’s our last we are waiting on hearing from. For planning the few tours on the list, the logistics is a bit with work and putting in leave, a travel plan, plus plan around kid’s school calendar. So, putting the deferral on the calendar for an unknown decision late unfortunately seems unrealistic at this time.
it also breaks my heart that things like not being a first gen college student hurts him. I was a first gen college student. The only reason I got to go to college was because my tuition was free because my mom was a secretary at the school. Otherwise, my family wouldn’t have been able to afford it. And yet, because I have a college degree, that hurts my kid, in what world is that fair? I don’t know anymore. It’s this mom guilt I feel like maybe if I hadn’t of taken advantage of that for myself he’d have some advantage in this process beyond things he could control.
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It is a tough process. Even though I didn’t go directly to a 4-year traditional college from high school, I just don’t remember the process being that difficult when a senior. I certainly don’t remember counselors even talking to me about college either, we didn’t have career fairs at school, no colleges came to visit the high school. Competition seems a little bit fiercer, earlier. Or, is that the forcing of a decision earlier? Hard to say, either way, whew this year was a learning experience for me on college applications and the year 2025.
Yeah, same. When I applied to college (in the stone ages before widely available internet), I completed 3 applications (on a typewriter!). I applied to UVA, VA Tech, and NC State. The idea of creating an application “strategy” with optimal timing and an array of safeties, targets and reaches wouldn’t have ever crossed my or my parents’ minds, and my dad was a high school principal! Our strategy was that I would get good grades and try hard on the SAT, my parents would save money, and the colleges I applied to had to be affordable. 
So complex now.
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I took my SAT once with zero prep, I applied to exactly one school (where I knew I’d get free tuition) and my parents likely never laid eyes on that application. I went to a test in science and tech magnet high school that was highly competitive and I never recall talking to a college counselor.
Even between my '21 grad and my '25 it’s gotten even more ridiculous. If my youngest applied then I wouldn’t be nearly this worried.
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I have some thoughts on college admissions reform. If I were Queen of All Things I would do the following (as a start!):
- Eliminate Early Decision
- Set a single date for all applications to be in - maybe January 1st or February 1st - I think senior year grades should matter
- Eliminate test optional admissions (both of my kids were test optional btw - I think it should be up to the schools to determine how much they weigh the tests but I think they should be submitted.)
- All decisions posted on April 1st and financial aid released at the same time
- May 1st decisions
- At least one directional state school in every state that has an auto admit for 3.0+ students.
I know the colleges would never go for it and there are all kinds of debatable issues with my thoughts but if I were Queen this is what I would do.
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