Tiny school. No academic dean. This particular teacher is the head of the dept though so I think he is the go to person. The parents are always confused when there’s an academic question like this. Nobody knows who to turn to.
I looked over my email again to make sure I hadn’t said anything that would be considered inappropriate. It was a very thoughtful email, not critical and no mention of grade change-just questioning the policy and its impact on students. I will reach out again though, so there’s no confusion.
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D25 got accepted to Gonzaga today! 
And she got the Academic Excellence Scholarship for $26,000. We will have to wait to see what the complete financial aid package shows, but the scholarship definitely puts it within reach. She has cheaper options, so best fit will really come into play for the final decision.
So far she is 4 for 4 on acceptances, but that will change in March I’m sure with her reach schools.
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S25 received an email last night that they are a semi-finalist for the MLK Scholars Program at Ithaca. The interview is in two weeks. They are interested but immediately responded, “I was really hoping I was done with the application process.”
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I would talk to head of school. My kid has gone to 2 tiny private schools and if nobody in middle, that is what I would do.IME when I have sent emails to head about things like this (which I don’t do often) I have gotten a call within an hour or 2.
If a kid gets a 100, they get a 100. What kind of weird lesson is that? I can’t see any rational for that policy.
I would apologize to your kid (that you didn’t tell them) and email the teacher saying you were asking about the rationale for the policy. IF they are offended to have to explain policy, that is on them.
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This whole process is so brutal and exhausting. My kid is just done. Doesn’t want to open the emails, attend virtual sessions, any of it. It’s so hard when you’re halfway there. And it’s not just about a decent application. They’ve gotta chase that merit aid, especially when it make the difference between being able to afford it or not.
Good luck to yours. I hope he gets it!
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It’s never ending honestly. Write 5 essays to get in, now write 3 more for the LLCs, oh wait now write 2 more for a scholarship. I mean for the love of all that is holy ENOUGH.
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Trying to get my kid to work on scholarships has been like pushing a boulder up a steep hill. Eventually I got mom to sit down with him and he cranked out a bunch. He then came to me with a list of remaining scholarships and I eventually said “do it if you want, but I would not apply to those”. So many scholarships have a long list of requirements, including special essays, LORs, etc., for like $500 or $1000. I have no idea who is making these scholarships but the requirements are not worth the hassle in many cases.
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I think this process gets students ready for the rest of college/their lives.
There will be plenty of hoops to jump through for internships, competitive clubs, fellowships, job applications, etc. This is the start not the end to this kind of work.
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I have a college senior, he’s never spent 6-8 months in any process in college or in applications, period. I mean the semester is only 4 months long so. My kid started this process in September. He’s written 41 essays for just applications. 3 LOCIs, 8 more for honors programs or LLCs. We are staring at about 10 for scholarships that honestly between his coursework and his ecs I’ve just said to bail on for his sanity. I can assure you my college senior has never written 52 essays in a semester even when he was taking high numbers of humanities classes.
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and mind you my college senior has between 0-3 hours of class per day this year. My current HS senior leaves the house at 6:45am and doesn’t get home until 8pm due to his ec, it’s entirely different the amount of time they have to get things done.
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YES!!! This waiting until “late March” is killing me. If it’s going to be unrealistic, I want to know now.
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I told my kid not to apply to any more low dollar scholarships that require essays. We’re done. The likelihood of getting them is low, the effort is high when he’s just trying to get through at this point, and $500 or $1000 isn’t going to make a sufficiently noticeable difference. If he’s got something already written that he can just re-use, fine. Otherwise, nope.
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The biggest change when I went to college, and what I fear for my kid, is the sudden change to have a ton of free time. 2-3 classes per day, maybe band practice, then just free time to figure out on your own. Hopefully to study or do something productive, or mean friends. But I didn’t do that, I went off and had fun and waited until test came around and crammed. Adjusting to all the free time will be a shock.
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yes, my oldest got a part time job working the desks at college, it gave him some down time especially the late shifts where he’d be bored and just do his homework ahead of time.
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I’ll also admit that I have heavily helped my kid with essays and scholarships. He is very left brained, math, logic kid and it shows in his writing. He takes pride is answering a questing in the least number of words possible, meaning zero adjectives or adverbs and thus no flow or feeling. I started by having him write three very different essays covering three parts of his life. Round one review was writing notes on the margins (expand on this topic) - (add more feeling and expression so the reader can feel what you were feeling) - (the paragraphs are rambling, try to reorder so it flows better). Then I showed him how to use ChatGPT to provide grammar and spelling review (but not to edit content since ChatGPT is terrible at that). After a few rounds, I went through and redlined the heck out of them and gave them to him to comment on and change. We went back and forth quite a few times to get a draft that he liked the storied, but I liked the structure and flow.
Once those were done, we have used those to turn into any other essay he needed for any application or scholarship. Once we had a base it was easy to edit done into subparts or shorter version. I think he now has around 30 different versions that were used for different purposes. But for many of the scholarships, I did the essay work by just finding and editing his existing essay to fit the purpose.
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My daughter got good advice from an upperclassman before she started - set a schedule where you are focused on academics from 8-5 (or whatever time makes sense) M-F regardless of class schedule. That means waking up at a set time everyday, going to class, study groups, help rooms, or doing homework during those hours. He told her to think of college like a full time job and that if she did that, she’d have evening free to do fun stuff and she’d never have to cram. I’ve heard her repeat that advice to younger cousins so I think it worked for her, especially her first year while she was getting her legs under her.
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I tend to agree with your implication here, that there’s MIT and then there’s everything else. 
But I already know I’m an extreme outlier for that view.
More seriously, I often advise students to try for MIT, but the next cohort of apps should be to R1 publics.
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That is great advice.
mine is too much of a perfectionist to let me anywhere near his essays. I can fill out applications with no essays but that’s it, lol.
That is my D29. But she is a writer and probably would do much better than I could.