Waitlisted at Wake Forest today and waiting on W&L. Wake is not a big deal since he had already decided against it because of no direct entry for business so not accepting the spot on the list, but it is a great school and it would have been nice just for an ego boost after Notre Dame.
But Mom gets to delete another line off the spreadsheet!
This process is a killer. How is your child holding up?
Thank you for asking. They didn’t have high hopes for the ones tonight, but now they are worried about the four remaining because those happen to be the ones that they care most about. It’s really their #2, #3, #4 and #5 after their rejection ED from #1. All with only slightly easier admit numbers to the ones tonight…slightly. It’s brutal that all of the hardest admits are bunched at the end.
I’m so sorry you and all of our wonderful Fed workers are going through this.
The City of L.A. and L.A. County just announced likely job cuts and hiring freezes.
UCLA decisions at 5pm PDT. D25 is UCLA do or die. 
This cycle is so rough. Big hugs to your kid. Do they have any acceptances they’re excited about?
They have acceptances they SHOULD be excited about (Trinity, Union, Clark) but they haven’t visited those three, so they just aren’t. They almost applied ED2 to BU, but then decided to roll the dice and now are very worried. My biggest mistake was agreeing to take them to see a bunch of reach schools and not getting them to fall in love with a couple of targets and safeties first.
I absolutely did this with my D23. And my parents did it with me back in the day! Nothing like a tour at Dartmouth to set you off on the wrong foot 
Fingers crossed for the rest of the list and if not, they have some great options already, even if they can’t quite see that yet. 
Kiddo was waitlisted to Johns Hopkins. Consider that a victory! Had he ED would have prob gotten in but it’s all good.
S25 is in at Washington and Lee. Was not prepared for my husband to tear up. He’s a legacy and so is his late Dad.
Coming out of lurker-hood to say hello! I used to only check in on this group once in a while but in the past few weeks, as D25’s RD acceptances have been looming and then trickling in, I’ve been checking almost daily. It is nice to see the sympathetic voices there with me as we go through this process. I’m bouncing between so many emotions- worried about her not getting in, excited when she does, then worried how she’s going to make the choice. And in the background, the wondering how we are going to deal with empty nest next year (D25 is our only child).
I started writing this post and got called away by a screech- D25 got into one of her reaches! She knew the decision was coming in tonight and had steeled herself up for rejection. Tomorrow there are 3 more decisions due.
Congrats to her! We have an only as well. In denial about empty nest right now!
Last decision: In at Syracuse, but with not enough Big Merit Aid™ to make it affordable. (Not a surprise, but there’d been a chance, you know?)
C25 is very stressed about having to actually make a final call on it now (though at this point it’s pretty obvious that it’s going to be Hofstra, but knowing that saying so means it’s an actual real decision is scary), but hopefully that will pass and we’ll be able to tell friends and family starting tomorrow.
D25 waitlisted at UCLA. There’s still hope.
Accepted: UC Davis
Waitlisted: UCLA, UCSB
Pending: Berkeley, USC, Stanford
Considering: CA CC, then transfer to UCLA.
In support of Community College:
Our S17, D19, and D21 all decided to forego their UC acceptances, and really focus at our local CC. S17 and D19 ended up graduating from UC Berkeley, and D21 finishing up at UCLA.
All did/are doing extremely well at their respective schools, in large part to crushing each class at CC (which they had to do to have any hope of transferring to either UCLA or Berkeley. Transfer acceptance rates ~20%). And, of course, doing their first 2 years at CC saved us a ton of dough.
Thank you for posting the decision matrix! We slapped one of these together tonight and it was really eye opening to my daughter. She has been having a hard time thinking about how to choose a college, this matrix helps her untangle her thoughts.
Agree- thinking about doing this for/with D25. She decided not to make a spreadsheet, instead made a document where she could list all the pros/cons for each school. Good info but detailed and cumbersome.
I made this mistake too, at least for in state (CA) schools. All the CA schools we visited were reach for all schools. We knew that she would apply to most of the UC schools, so we figured that it would be easy to visit if/when she got accepted. It would have been a better idea for her to get excited about some in state target or likely schools. For out of state schools, we visited some targets as well as reaches and so far she has gotten into all of the out of state schools. Although she has some great oos options, I think she prefers to stay in state.
With S27, we’ll make sure to visit more of the target and likely schools and fewer of the reach schools.
This week has been a roller coaster for admissions. D25 was rejected from UCSB on Tuesday and Tufts on Thursday but accepted to UCLA this evening! She’s thrilled and I love that I might be able to keep her CA (and pay in-state tuition!). She has a rough line up next week with eight more decisions, all of them reaches. I’m hopeful that a UCLA win this week can lower the stress a little. We’re grateful that she already has several great options.
Congrats! We absolutely loved W & L when we were there in August. Son applied EA but got his ED1 so we’ll never know if he got in or not!