Hey! I grew up in the DC area, and vehemently disagree.
Yeah, not a lot of overt cuddliness like you get some other places, but certainly no meaner (or nicer) than anywhere else.
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Yeah, and when I think about it we live in a metro area and we have very consciously not moved to a few towns nearby, in part due to fears of this sort of vibes…I don’t think it is unheard of around here, though not as much in my micro-community as in others.
My street is FULL of adults (and current students) who attend(ed) top 20 universities and don’t feel like this. Lots of people are stressed about admissions, though it is uncool to show it. ..I also think “success” is definitely beyond job title..maybe as we have a different set of industries? who knows! I may just be lucky (or oblivious to the meanness) 
D25 submitted her final college app last night!! (Due today). So happy for her! Now she has one more scholarship application packet to do and some documents to send in, and that’s pretty much it!
Now she can just focus on class work and the school musical. It should be a great distraction while awaiting decisions 
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I meant the website not the people in the area! I love DC and went to college right outside in Northern Virginia. Again, it’s the online forum that is mean, mean, mean!
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awesome!
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Oh - not the people in the DC area - it’s a message board - DC Urban Moms (DCUM) - and it is not a healthy place to spend time…
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Every once in a while I’ll google something that leads me to a thread on that forum. WOW. It’s the kind of place where people are trashing the kid going to Vanderbilt because they got waitlisted at Yale. Super unhealthy and I’m sure there’s a whole element of people on there that are just bomb posting for kicks.
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I just have to laugh at DCUM 
Those people are crazy! I don’t take it too seriously and would never ask a question, but it’s like reading a reality tv show! When that WSJ article came out in the fall with move over Harvard, kids want to go to school in the south now, oh boy
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And if you say “Where should my B+ student go to college?” you normally get answers ranging from “community college” to “trade school” to “you should be ashamed of yourself for being such a terrible parent.” And not that there’s anything wrong with community college or trade school, but there seems to be a lot of glee in making others feels bad.
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Yes the online tr0lls are strong there for sure.
But some are very real
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Ah, got it! (Which means that at a meaningful level, the toxicity of DCUM’s rep sounds like CC’s rep back, say, ten-ish years ago when I first joined.
)
And in C25 news, a small envelope came today from Nevada containing a card with “a small pin for a huge achievement”—a UNR tie tack/lapel pin (a decently nice one, too) affixed to a card offering congratulations on being NMSF, and a reminder of their (moderately generous) national merit scholarship.
C25’s response was “I ought to save that in case I go there.” I hadn’t realized the kid considered UNR that likely of a possibility, so that was interesting.
And seriously, there’s a reason UNR officially calls their admissions office the “Office for Prospective Students” rather than something blander like admissions or enrollment—they have, at least for high-stats applicants, a laser focus on admissions as recruitment. Their steady drip of different sorts of interesting "Hey, remember, we’re here"s after the offer of admission is only matched, in my experience across four children, by Alabama’s (ultimately unsuccessful, but it was close) efforts to get my C17 to go there.
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My kid surprises me like this too, sometimes. Out of the blue added a school to their list that I was thought off their radar, and as admits are coming in, they have surprised me greatly on where they want to revisit!
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D got an update on the financial aid from Susquehanna. It’s basically the official offer with the federal loan added. They gave her $1,000 grant for filling out the fafsa. The other merit awards are the same except they raised tuition by $3,000/yr. So instead of COA $29k it’s now $31k. I’m not happy, it’s still a decent price and I’m willing to pay but jeez what a bummer. If it’s her #1 in April I might ask for a bigger talent scholarship especially if one of the other schools comes in cheaper.
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that is super frustrating!!
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S25 is in at Furman with a Townes Scholarship! Makes it a great option for him.
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My D is keeping an admission decision and Honors college acceptance secret to not hurt a friend who got deferred. I am really worried she is checking the college off the list just because she doesn’t want to tell her friend and deal with it.
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Just learned that Purdue’s first-year engineering program is closed to additional applications. That does simplify things and it was a super long-shot anyway but S25 is going to be bummed because he’d started to get excited about it. (He didn’t submit back in November b/c he hadn’t done enough research to write any essays about it. sigh)
His cousin, who I think is probably a stronger candidate, was deferred EA cycle so it almost certainly wasn’t going to happen.
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Had a few moments like that during my chat with D25 last night. These kids change their minds and mature every hour it seems!
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Yeah. I noticed this. We get scholarship awards and some include a financial aid award…but they say on them that the tuition is 24-25 because they haven’t set a 25-26 price yet and then they update. $3k seems to be the general increase. Most have sent the letter, but not the financial aid package because of this price not being set.
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That’s really hard. It’s great that she’s such a caring and compassionate person that she cares about her friend, but not great if that college would be the right one for her. How good of a fit do you think the school is? Was it likely to be one of her top choices? If not, maybe it’s ok to just let it go. But if it was a strong contender for some reason, then maybe talk with her and brainstorm ways she can let friend know. Like with everything, it will only get harder to tell friend if she waits longer.
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