I don’t have any dogs in this hunt, but I’m rooting for St Olaf. I’ve heard so many wonderful things about that school. And Hope: it seems from your posts she really likes it.
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Ugh, mice.
Have several stories re mice and our cabin in Vermont (from horror movie to the comedy).
Then, none that I recall from our time in PA an NJ.
Then, at our current location, we just couldn’t get rid of them. It was absolutely absurd. After about 10 years, we tore down half the house (not JUST because of the mice) and rebuilt on the same spot. Years later, still no sign of mice.
Moral to the story: you gotta move or tear down.
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Thanks! It’s actually vice-versa–she’s never seen Hope. But her response whenever St. Olaf comes up, “I love everything about St. Olaf, except their dance program.” I just said to her, “Say what you always say whenever St. Olaf comes up.” That’s what she said, adding, “I really do love it.” And she really does–loves the friendliness, the campus, the academic rigor, the faith component but that lots of people don’t share her faith, chance to explore someplace new, etc, etc. Their dance just won’t prepare her for a pro career, so she is struggling with what her priorities will be. We’ve decided to just see what doors open and close by April and then let her figure it out then.
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Grrrr. Not even close to the way you want to start a day. I kinda hope you’re wrong and that someone else finds the trap has caught it, just so you don’t have to deal with it…AGAIN. 
Yeah, mice stories can run the gamut. My most memorable one involves a mouse-infested campground in Rhode Island and a hitchhiking rodent who apparently traveled with us (without a passport!) around the Canadian Maritimes and northeastern US in our RV. We finally put it together about our unwanted traveling partner when we realized the cats were unnaturally interested in the dash air vents every night, and we finally saw the little tell-tale turds on the dash.
I forget how we got rid of that little pest, but I know it wasn’t the “tear down” option.
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One mouse down…. Assumedly one to go.
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Um, I guess that’s good news? Good luck with the next one.
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Returning for a moment to the Glimpse video topic:
After December 15th, each student who has done a Glimpse will receive the opportunity to provide two Virtual Stars to two colleges of their choice as a way to signal their preference during Regular Decision. Being able to demonstrate your preference to colleges is often appreciated during Regular Decision because it is challenging to determine how serious applicants are about a particular college.
Students are often advised that they need to do things to “demonstrate interest” to each of the colleges they are applying to. This results in strategic behavior where a student might spend significant resources to make sure that they have “demonstrated interest” to each target college. The Virtual Stars, in contrast, provide students with agency in how they might express interest in a college during the Regular Decision period. While one small factor among many in the application process, the Virtual Stars provide students with a trustworthy, simple, and low-cost (or even free) way to express their preferences.
The same “Virtual Stars” tool has already been used by international applicants to US colleges since 2014.
All I see are the pitfalls. Rather than an opportunity to show preference, this is an opportunity to un-favorite schools you just sent videos to. If they don’t get a star, they will presumably know this, right?
I hope that this entire thing is still so new that the colleges won’t be paying any attention to that feature.
Can we assume that colleges that don’t track demonstrated interest would not care about the star feature? So, if one were to get into the strategy weeds, one would use the stars for the top two schools in one’s video list (which is far from all schools) that do track interest?
First you are forced to send an “optional” video to show interest and then you are forced to indicate disinterest afterward.
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The good news part is that the trap sprung after I was in bed but before husband came up… so I didn’t have to deal with it.
Mouse number two is smarter - she got the peanut butter off the trap without setting it off.
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Eesh. I mean again only benefits the colleges not the applicants! If people don’t do it then it won’t catch on, just say no
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Definitely a she. 
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Ugh. We live in a 110 year old house in a neighborhood with really small lots and rats are an ongoing issue here. We had a year or two where we kept dealing with them. They kept finding ways into the house and had an unfortunate episode with a rat ripping apart my brand new West Elm chair. But since we got a dog the rats have been kept at bay. Thank god! They are so gross. Hope mouse #2 meets her maker soon!
Ugh: re mice! We have had them off and on in our home, and it’s such an icky feeling.
Knock wood, we have always been able to remedy it pretty quickly with traps - though had a friend with a cabin in Maine and it was at one point left empty (with food!) too long and it was a long-term mess
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The kids pay the $22, but clearly the colleges are the customer.
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S25 got into Union with nice chunk of merit aid!
Also, Speedwagon is starting to get real feathers. Any bets on which one of our chicks manages to fly first?
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Congrats on Union! And Speedwagon is cute 
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Clearly. If a male mouse, they would still be licking the trap.
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Because I know you all care (also I’m bored and trying not to miss my big kid that we sent back to college this morning) - current mouse update:
While I’m confident that mouse two is the smarter female of the pair, she’s also lucky… this mousetrap won’t snap unless you put a lot of weight/force on the trigger.
My husband has now spent the last hour literally trying to “build a better mousetrap” and trying to fix the mousetrap (and the other one that was in the package that has the same issue). Too bad the MechE kid left three hours ago…
I think he’s just about given up and is ready to head to the store.
Meanwhile, in actual college related news, S25 has decided he wants to submit a letter of continued interest type thing to the honors program for Clemson to make sure they know how much he wants it. The notification he got said he’d be considered with other applicants (there was an early and a late deadline, I gather they only decided for the early applicants) so maybe this will help? No idea what to say in this or who to send it to.
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We live in an older house too…and mice are an issue every year at this time of the year…
I swear by these traps on Amazon…
Mouse Traps 12-Pack, Indoor Outdoor Use, Small Mice Catchers for Home Indoor, Reusable Mice Trap, Quick-Set Mousetraps for House
Thanks!
So back to the discussion of making videos for applications - my older son is currently job hunting for internships for next summer. Now two companies have emailed him back asking for “preliminary video interviews” which, based on the one he’s done, is sort of like this. You log into the portal, a question pops up on the screen, you make a video of you answering the question, you submit the video, a second question pops up on the screen, you make a second video, etc.
It felt very very strange. There wasn’t any time limit, so you could read the question and think about an answer and practice saying it before you hit record, but it just felt odd.
(And on that note, if anyone happens to know of any summer internships that are not in the Defense Industry for Mechanical Engineering majors, let me know so I can pass it on. He’s got a 4.0 technical GPA (he got a B in an English class, so his overall is 3.96), is a double major in MechE and CivE, has some solid internship experience doing CivE work and could get a strong reference (they invited him back for next year, but he really wants to try MechE stuff), has won campus wide awards for project work on geothermal and sustainable energy, worked as a teaching assistant, blah blah blah.
He’s sent out 90 job applications. Not a typo, Ninety. The most recent 50 of them are very recent - from Dec22 on, and a few clearly said no answers until March, so maybe something will come from that. But who knows. In a perfect world he’d be doing something involving renewable energy, and it would be for a company either in the DC Metro area / near him in MA / or offering relocation assistance. But at this point he’s willing to do most any MechE work except working on “weapons of war” and we’re willing to pay for his housing somewhere for the summer if need be.)
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