OMG, yes. I’m trying to take it one week at a time, but nothing is going to get accomplished unless I sit down and plan for the next month, and then the next six months. And then start executing, lol.
(insert whining about ALL of the many million things here)
I had this discussion with C26 a couple of weeks ago: sometimes it’s impossible to keep all the balls in the air, and the trick is to know which ones break and which ones bounce.
I’m thinking that if I feel this way, D26 must be feeling so much more frantic.
Summer break can’t come soon enough in this house.
We did the same thing with our older one, and will be using the same strategy with S26 - A ton of virtual meetings and tours and poring over the websites. Then we tour the top choices after admittance. It works for us.
This strategy saved us a bunch of time and money…
Sure, we would visit a campus if it was convenient on our way to/from or while someplace else (Soccer / Lacrosse Tourney, Summer vacation, visiting family) - but ultimately we thought it far more efficient to only tour schools they were already accepted to -and- felt like they were legitimately considering them.
There are a couple of more reasons why we’re going to wait.
After the fall semester, grades wont count so a little bit more relaxed in the spring (other than studying for APs).
I dont want her to fall in love with a campus, get denied and then feel like she’s settling.
I think that’s a good strategy. Certainly more cost effective!
My older one, and now D26, both struggle a bit with getting a feel for a school just from what they see online, though, even with a deep dive.
It’s less of a big deal for D26 because she isn’t aiming for very reach schools – but D22 would have really balked at writing three and four supplemental essays for each of 8 or so schools without knowing for sure that she’d want to attend there.
So, we toured every school on her list except for one. It involved two separate flights and several looong road trips.
The only school she was outright rejected from was the only one we didn’t tour. (Although that’s a little misleading on the surface, because it was the only Ivy and definitely the reachiest of her list.)
But yes, if we just can’t fit in any more tours before applications happen, then it can’t be helped. But I would love for her to have all the info she can before she decides to apply.
We can’t help that… D’s high school is practically on the UCB campus, and she hangs there all the time. In the statistically likely event that she gets denied, I know it’s going to be a bummer (even though she has been steadfastly saying all this time that she prefers Davis). And on top of that, now she’s going to spend the summer on the Stanford campus…
Lurking as my baby is off to college this fall!
Best of luck to all!
I saw the lists and remembered how both s23 and d25 lists changed many times! S23 ended up at a school we didnt talk to him really about due to cost but a last minute surprise made it affordable. We are lucky he was/is financially aware and refused to fall in love with a school we couldnt afford. We put in deposit end of April after visiting on the final admitted students day. I knew he would love it but wouldnt allow myself to get his hopes up. The second we were on campus he asked to buy the sweatshirt!
After several visits with big bro and for herself, we had a better idea of what d25 was looking for and it became clear what she did not want. She literally changed her major between August after submitting Common App and October which made us change the list again. On a whim I forced her to visit a school I thought would check the boxes for most of what she wanted but may have pushed the limit on how big she was willing to go (we figured out it wasnt number of students but rather the acreage of the campus). I honestly did it to preplan other college visits. Well, that school she had never heard of became her #1 and shes headed there in August. But of course mom knows nothing!
Enjoy the ride!
Been lurking (and occasionally posting) in the 2025 thread and as your kids all finalize where they’re going, it’s hard to believe that it’s us next in the process after over 2.5 years of this thread!
D19 and her friends used to hang out in Berkeley and around UCB a lot in high school, but all of them wanted to move out of the Bay Area for college (although one did end up graduating Cal via a circuitous route of a CSU then (pandemic lockdown then) DVC and transferring in in junior year.)
LOL. My daughter is most likely headed to the college I talked her into applying to. “The application costs nothing,” I said. “You may as well apply”.
When I see threads like this I never know if this is a form of humblebragging or if the student is genuinely under such academic pressure at school/from parents that they feel they need to be taking MV calc in sophomore year of high school. Going back to my post of the weekend where we have seen some tragic consequences of academic pressure (and sadly we seem have at least one of these somewhere in our district every year - and it is a very good district but it’s not one of the hyper competitive ones so I can only fear for the pressure elsewhere).
As a btw when looking at colleges - for those (like C26) who are trying to minimize gen ed requirements, I’ve seen over the last couple of days two colleges where taking one course can satisfy more than one gen ed requirement. I don’t know how widespread this is, but it’s maybe something to look out for/to ask about on college tours etc.
S26 did two summer music programs on the Stanford campus and was so disappointed by the dorms it took Stanford right off his list of interest. The rooms were hot and old, there were ants, the door didn’t lock properly etc etc. So you never know spending time on a campus might change their minds in a different way.
We’ll see! Her program isn’t residential, so she’s just going to be in labs and classrooms.
I attended Stanford myself, and wasn’t a fan of the campus (I prefer a more walkable / urban environment) but lots of people do like it.
Stanford is too pricey for us, so she won’t be applying in any case.
Oof. How does someone even get to Multivariable Calc by sophomore year? My D22 had it senior year, but it was a natural progression of taking Alg 1 in 7th grade. So this kid took Alg 1 in, what, 5th grade?
Yikes.
Or they accelerate somehow else, possibly by combining years. Honestly, unless your kid is so gifted at math that they are sailing through this, I can’t imagine why anyone needs to be doing that in sophomore year. He/she claims it is normal at their school?!
I actually doubt that particular post (about MVC) is for real. To me it has the feeling of a reddit joke post.
Right? D26 hasn’t even taken Calc yet, it’s on her senior year schedule. Slacker athlete, I guess.