I don’t want to keep butting in on this chat when it’s not my year, but know that there are so many of us who go through this! Hugs.
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Congrats! My grad roommate went to undergrad at Denison–smart, cool kids!
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replace “math” for english and I could have almost written this post. Kid currently failing 3rd quarter math course, and says it is under control, but not sure it is 
. I also just learned they have a big paper due on Monday, that hasn’t been started and we are away for the weekend on an accepted student visit.
ARGH ARGH
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Count me in as another parent of a teenage boy with ADHD. It is HARD. I have made myself stop checking to make sure that his work is being turned in. It was seriously keeping me awake at night. And the nagging on my part was ruining my relationship with him. I WANT to be the fun mom. I really do. I was NOT.
He too tries his best. But ohmygod. I am a planner and a worrier, and it drives me mad. I have just had to let it go. He is at a private school with an executive functioning coach that has been his BFF and saving grace for the last few years. I think she would alert me if there was a major downward trend. I THINK.
I have not checked his grades since his last report card in Jan. He says all is well…we’ll see when his mid semester report card comes out in a few days! 
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Also, despite the fact that my ADHD kiddo has a 3.4 uwgpa (3.3 at the time he applied),
I am super proud of his efforts in applying to 15 schools. I thought he would decide to limit it to 6-8 schools, just so he didn’t have to do the extra work. He worked so hard on his essay and supplementals and created a kick-@ss portfolio (which in the end was only submitted to 4 schools, because most do not accept one).
He was waitlisted at his first choice, and that was/is pretty hard to swallow. He is still holding out hope. This is not a particularly selective school, so I think it really surprised him. He has not decided where he will commit and I won’t be surprised if he waits until May 1. In part because decision making is not a strength for him and in part because he is holding out hope for his waitlisted school.
As mentioned, I am a planner, so it’s hard for me not to know where he will end up next year. But I also know that he will be fine. He has lots of great choices. He is very social, has lots of hobbies and there is a lot to like about most of his schools.
Here is what I posted on the 3.0-3.4 2025 thread with some merit updates added.
Results:
3.3UW GPA at New England independent school at time of applying. He brought that up to just over a 3.4 after the first semester of senior year.
3 honors classes and 1 AP, though his school offers many. He was just not ready for the advanced level classes until second semester of junior year. Steady upward trend.
Applied as a design/industrial design/architecture major where possible. Otherwise, it was a mix of communication design and exploratory studies.
Involved in various club and school athletics, museum docent, leadership experience in our community, many community service hours, part time job but no extraordinary ECs. LORs were probably good. Teachers generally love him (even if he sucks at turning things in on time 
).
Submitted his 1270 SAT to only 4 of the 15 schools.
Also submitted a portfolio to the 4 schools that would accept one, was accepted everywhere he submitted a portfolio. Also interviewed at two schools, accepted to both (interviews are a strength for him).
The * indicates a portfolio submission.
Results:
Virginia Tech: Accepted EA
JMU: Accepted EA to the Industrial design program, honors college, Madison Award ($10.5k/yr in merit) *
U Denver: Accepted EA (Merit)
Indiana (IU): Accepted EA Comprehensive Design
Miami OH: Accepted to Architecture EA (Merit)*
Pitt: Accepted rolling
Butler: Accepted EA (Merit)
Utah: Accepted EA (Merit)
Colorado State: Accepted EA (Merit)
Providence College: Deferred EA, then accepted RD*
Elon: Deferred EA, then accepted RD
U Delaware: Deferred EA, then accepted RD*
Penn State: 2+2 guaranteed transfer program (has declined)
South Carolina: Deferred and then Denied
Boulder: Deferred and then Waitlisted (This is the one that stings…I sure wish they would accept a portfolio!)
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Sure, but she was saying last night that the point would be to playing the fight song that she grew up hearing. There is definitely an emotional connection to Clemson that grad school wouldn’t quite fulfill.
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Wow! He’s done great! Lots of excellent choices.
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Can I be a bit grumpy here? As part of helping D25 narrow her options I enlisted ChatGPT (and then didn’t trust it, so started doing it myself–what, you think I’m a little obsessive? Why?) to try to get her a 4 year plan at her top choices. One (maybe two?) are big state schools. The honors program at one of them requires some number of these “cores” instead of regular GE classes, but it is unclear how they fulfill the GE requirements.
Me: Email the honors program
Them: Here are two websites to look at
Me: I looked at them already. Here are my specific questions so I can make my kid a 4 year plan
Them: We can’t give you any information beyond the websites until after she commits and registers.
Literally, all I want them to say is “Humanities Core takes the place of this GE requirement.” so I can figure out if she could possibly graduate in four years with a double major and the honors program.
Lame. And you wonder why I am willing to pay for a private school? (Note: I went to a state school. I had a positive experience. There was no hand holding and I survived just fine. But I also had paper books and there was no way to look at any of this ahead of time.)
Grumble.
ETA: I inadvertently ruffled feathers with this post. I was venting without filter, and it clearly landed badly for some. My apologies–I said it below, but will repeat it here: I was not trying to paint all public and private schools with a big brush. My experience with this public school in this circumstance wasn’t fantastic.
This is an emotion-filled time for many of us, and I hope we can extend grace to each other in the midst of it.
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I will say, in the interest of defending my place of employment public universities, that the degree of guidance and assistance offered to students varies wildly in both the public and private sides of the higher-ed sector.
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I don’t disagree that the kid should email, but I doubt admissions counselors know ins and outs of detailed curriculum substitutions and honors programs etc.
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Y’all, on the ADHD front…I’m not sure what’s worse:
a) being a hyperfunctional/normal person trying to help your kid struggle with stuff that seems so basically doable to you, or
b) having the same affliction and knowing exactly why these things are hard for your kid…and feeling powerless to help because understanding that you’re both in a hole together doesn’t make it any easier to climb out.
The struggle is real, either way.
Re: our decision process, I’m living vicariously through all of y’all who are either working through this with your kids in some kind of organized fashion (decision matrices etc.)…or seriously considering any of the schools that I think my kid is about to reject.
I have always felt fairly strongly that he’d be better off in a smaller school setting and he’s gotten so many compelling offers from such places. But he has always been the kid who intuitively resisted whatever it was he thought we wanted him to do and I’m just no good at playing it cool and using reverse psychology here. Insufficient impulse control (see ADHD, above).
If I could choose for him from his current set of choices, I think I’d push him toward WPI or Case (with a long lingering regretful look at all five liberal arts colleges that accepted him, as well as Brandeis, Rochester, and RPI). But if you were to ask him today, I think he’d probably accept UW sight unseen. It’s the school his friends think is cool. But these friends? they are way more functional than his is. Anyway, we’re going there, and I’m sure he’ll view it all through cherry-blossom-colored glasses and gloss over any fears about competitive access to his preferred major, etc.
My biggest fear is that he’ll never leave his dorm room and that no one will even notice. But I guess we’ll never know if he doesn’t try.
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My S25 got admitted to Rice!!! And, even better, the financial aid is great!!! 
The shock is unbelievable. S25 was convinced he would be rejected, and I was convinced (based on aid offers from other schools) that the price would come in higher than we wanted.
He is very excited about this, but still not quite ready to make a decision. 
When he visited last fall, he didn’t talk to anyone from his department of choice, and I think he knows a bit less about Rice than he does about some of his other choices.
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Hey, I’m not sure we’re reading the same post here but I didn’t see @illneversaynever say anything about all public schools. I think they were just describing their frustration in trying to find accurate decisional data to support their daughter’s decision process.
From my perspective, we’ve gotten a lot of very personalized attention from regional admissions counselors from a few of the private schools that S25 applied to…and that kind of personalized touch does stand in contrast to the experience that @illneversaynever is describing here.
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It’s funny, I think our kids have some overlap in their choices.
My kid loves UW and at the beginning of this journey it really was his favorite. I think he has since realized that maybe a small school might better,(ADHD and all, plus a little social anxiety) and Macalester is one of those - and if I remember right your kid also got into Macalester. It’s on S25’s hot list of 4 or 5 right now, but UW is still just sitting there in his peripheral. He can’t let go yet. 
We are so far from a decision, but that’s ok. He’ll get there. I hear you on the worry about sitting in the dorm room though. The social stuff is actually more of a concern for me than the academic. Good luck and I hope you have a great visit at UW if you go.
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Please see above.
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@Massmomoftwins , @dfbdfb , @L_NewEngland and anyone else I may have offended–I apologize. I was neither trying to paint all public colleges nor all private colleges with one big brush, despite the wording of my post. I was just frustrated, and my wording got sloppy in the midst of emotion. My child is highly likely to end up at a big state school, and I will jump for joy when she commits.
I don’t think I’m the first parent to make a sample 4 year plan for their kid; multiple others on this thread have done so. And sure, D25 could have emailed the program. But she, like all the other seniors here, has a ton on her plate, and these “secretarial” emails are so far down the priority list I don’t even think I can see the scribble. So, in the vested interest of having an informed decision made by May 1, I tried to gather info so she could make a decision. If that was inappropriate, I’m willing to take the heat for that, but given that it was generalized information not directly about her, it didn’t feel like such a big deal to me. Thanks for giving me a different perspective on it.
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FWIW, I don’t think emailing was inappropriate. That said, I also sometimes send emails from my son’s account for the more ministerial things (I do talk with him about that first, and he’s ok with that). And I’m pretty sure what I’m doing is worse (if we’re saying either is wrong) than what you’re doing. Information needs to be gathered, and you’re just trying to do it.
For the school where you aren’t getting help, I’m guessing they only have a “required courses” and not a “suggested course plan” or a “roadmap” option? For an example, see this page at Virginia Tech (this is my son’s major, and I was just looking at it, so it’s handy) Building Construction Major | Virginia Tech See how there’s a tab (mid screen) for “program curriculum” and another for “roadmap”? Here you can actually see it on the curriculum tab - they’ve also laid out the Gen Ed courses that aren’t fulfilled (they call them “pathways” and how some of the major required courses fit into those requirements. Other schools (I’m thinking of Clemson) have a “roadmap” tab that will show suggested courses per year/term and then you’ll see plugged in Gen Ed A, Gen Ed C and Gen Ed F… which suggests that Gen Eds B, D, and E were taken care of major required courses.
and FWIW, you aren’t the first parent to make a sample four year schedule - I’ve got them set up for two different schools. Partly so we could see if it would be possible to add a language, partly because at one point I thought he wanted to do a semester abroad and I was trying to figure out if that would be feasible.
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