It looks like yesterday was a productive day for many of our ’26 students!!
Yesterday D26 finalized her Common App essay, and we proofread it. It looks good to go!
She also finished up one of her writing prompts from Mines. We still need to proofread it. It was something along the lines of what element from the periodic table best describes you. She thought that was a fun one!! I wish more schools had fun prompts!
~2 more short prompts to go- both are of the ‘why us’ variety
~ She is also trying to decide if she is going to utilize the: “Would you like to share any additional details or qualifications not reflected in the application?”
She has one applicable topic that I think would be appropriate- she will be asking her counselor for their opinion. One of her LORs is mentioning it- but not all schools read/accept those.
Dad and I also sat down with her and looked over all her common app stuff. Doubled checked everything. She made a list of questions for her counselor meeting later this month. But besides a few small things - that is also completed!!
So far, she is on schedule for being able to submit her top choice apps mid-August.
(She really has lucked out that most of her choices do not require extra writing prompts!!)
Just chiming in to note that not everyone is ahead, lol. D26 is still working on her common app essay. She’s got a few versions of it written, but nothing that really sings yet. She’s got another idea she’s going to try out in the next day or so. Once that’s done, then it’s off to start on the actual Common App stuff. Then she’ll get to the individual college essays. Her school doesn’t start until after Labor Day, so there’s time. She’s not yet fully worried about the clock, but we’ll see how long that lasts!
D26’s summer was fun and gave her a nice glimpse of what college life could be, she got a nice taste of living in dorms and was challenged in classes. She would happily skip senior year and just start college now if given the opportunity. I am not sure where she is at with the common app, I do know she has no schools with rolling admissions so I am not concerned. She is currently recovering from having her Wisdom teeth removed, she has not left her room for two days! Next up consultation for knee Surgery. Not how she envisioned her senior year would start but hopefully the surgery allows her to fully return to her sport. We have worked really hard this past year to have her realize her sport doesn’t define her and that there are so many other things that she enjoys and many other activities that can fulfill her, but the struggle is real!
We had a decently productive day on the common app, too! Still have to input the Activities, and probably keep editing them a bit, but they are written in a google doc. He’s got a bunch of the other parts filled in, too.
S26 also kept plugging away at the common app essay. I worry he’s going to be waaaay over the word count—and he often falls in love with his words, so I expect editing to be a bit of a bear. I like the topic he’s picked but he still needs to make it sing/infuse it with meaning.
S26 took a spin through all of the supplemental essays and that’s when he got pretty overwhelmed. He did work on his potential ED school and essays a few days ago so that is excellent progress.
School starts in 2.5 weeks and I hope he will have enough time to finish common app and get to the UC PIQs. I know we have a decent amount of time before November but still—it’s a lot to do!
I am hoping we get some substance down on the essay outlines and activities today… best I can do right now. And hoping the essay coach can help C26 pull it together (they do look at the activities section too) - initial meeting tomorrow, and they’ve asked me to sit in on that one.
They are not the only one S26 has some essay prompts and writing guy exercises he worked on but nothing that’s definite. We are going to LA for a week visiting family and then his classes start.
I’m not too worried about it, though, because in her college counseling class at school, they spend part of Sept & Oct on college app essays. So I am purposely cooling my jets about this.
D26 currently has 3 schools on her app list and a total of 10 essays to write. How in the world do students handle this when they’re applying to 20? Dang.
It’s so school-dependent, really. Mine has 6 schools and only 2 supplemental essays on top of the personal statement. (Plus a video to make, which will take some thought.)
I find it so strange how different some requirements are. C26 is applying to 2 different schools in one public state system, the flagship and a likely admit. The likely admit requires more for its application than the flagship - the flagship doesn’t look at LORs.
Then there are other state flagships - admittedly not highly selective - that don’t look at either essays or LORs, while others in I guess the same kind of tier require both.
Chiming in as another in the not ahead camp in case that helps some who are lurking to know there are a good number of us whose kids will not be getting anything submitted in August (and likely not September either over here!). D26 has sporatically done work here or there on her main essay this summer, but shares absolutely nothing with us about the essay itself. She is supposed to have a draft for review by counselors in a couple weeks, and while I’m sure there will be a “draft” I’m not confident it will look like anything any of us would call a legitimate draft by that point. As far as I know, she’s done none of the other Common App stuff. Similar to someone else’s mention, she has class/workshops in the fall at school and I expect the structure of that combined with peers around her doing things, will motivate to get things done. My goal was for her to have a good draft of her main essay done by end of summer so it would just need to be edited polished after school started and then she could turn to the supplementals and everything else. That goal almost certainly will not be met. But, I’m not worried. There is plenty of time before the deadlines and I believe she’ll get it all done, even if not on the timeline I prefer. For context, I remind myself that I never got any of my stuff done early in high school (or college) and I always managed to pull it together. She can too. Full disclosure though, the fact that her second favorite college she’s applying to is an affordable highly likely admit with a 67% admit rate, probably makes it a lot easier for me to chill about this than if all her favorites were reaches or lower probability admits.
Small confession time, despite my daughter being primarily interested in LACs and the fact that I was a student athlete in New England in college, I was today years old when I learned what NESCAC is. I kept seeing it on these forums, and finally decided to look it up today. I am in California, so not something I hear about in real life. An athletic conference would not have been my guess from the context of most posts.
Haha! I did not attend a NESCAC school. If I was an athlete at one, that would have been embarrassing to not know what it was. But I knew a lot of people who did attend them and was friends with athletes from a couple.
I went to a big SEC school, but I had never followed college football, and my parents didn’t grow up or attend college in the US, so I had no context for athletic conferences or rivalries or anything.
Upon winning one of our home football games, the crowd started chanting, “SEC! SEC!”
I was so very confused, thinking, “Securities and Exchange Commission?” (I had an Econ class senior year of high school that I really liked, lol.)
We had our weekly college check in yesterday. When I asked D26 about timeline for getting that stuff done, she shared that her college counselors advised them not to do anything with the common app until they talk about it at their workshop next week. Apparently, kids sometimes look at all of the things and, supplemental questions and such that are ahead of them and get overwhelmed so they plan to discuss and strategize with them before they start. She also shared that one of her friends said she looked anyway, and was immediately overwhelmed. So D26 said she’s not even opening them until after the workshop. She also shared that she has a “draft” of her essay, but it is not in the shape that it could be and she could ask for suggestions at the workshop. I suggested that she not just “maybe” do that, but that she makes a plan to make sure she gets guidance on it at the workshop (that, after all is one of the main points of the workshop - essay support in addition to, moving toward finalizing lists and app stuff overall!) That suggestion did not go over well, and got a hard eye roll of annoyance of me being overly opinionated on this.
We still have zero idea what her essay is even about, what state the draft is in, or about much else beyond her tentative list of schools. I am so grateful that she has excellent college counselors who I trust to guide her through these parts of the process, because she is giving us very little.
It’s a fine line between pushing too hard and gently nudging them – a VERY fine line, as I’ve learned the hard way many times over, lol. My D26 frequently needs more than a gentle nudge. Thankfully she also has a common app workshop this week, and she’s really pretty close with the essay.
(So now she has to pivot to finishing the blasted summer AP Lit assignments.)
And it doesn’t end – my D22 is getting ready to apply to grad schools this fall, and I spent a lot of time helping her research schools that would be the right fit. But when I presented her with a spreadsheet of 15 schools, including due dates and application requirements and cost, with 6 schools highlighted that I thought would make the most sense from a cost and convenience and vibe standpoint, well, she got annoyed. (And I thought it would be helpful! )
)