UIC already sent C26 a questionnaire like that, and they haven’t even applied yet! (That was how I learnt C26 had no interest in honors college applications, haha.) I’m not even sure how they got their email..maybe they ticked a box somewhere or had sent them an email before. We never signed up for a tour or anything like that.
1 Like
I don’t have athletes, and my kids are long-suffering but don’t really mind my posting, so I feel justified in posting about their academic accomplishments, LOL. I’m sure there are people who think I’m obnoxious, but whatever, they can scroll past.
Social media is filled with so much crap that I am thrilled to read about everyone’s kids doing good things, no matter what it is. Life is short – we may as well celebrate all the victories.
I don’t just post academic accomplishments, though. I share their funny hoco theme day outfits and a cool experience my eldest had meeting a well-known YouTuber and about college visits and lots of stuff about marching band. I use social media as a sort of journal. I figure people don’t have to read it if they don’t want to.
So if you want to post about your kid’s academic accomplishments, and it’s okay with them – I’m giving you an official pass to do so. 
2 Likes
My alma mater is sending an admissions rep to my kid’s high school next week and to make her mama happy, D26 is going to go to the info session. 
Even though she’s not going to apply (they don’t have her major and we couldn’t afford for her to attend there anyway). Still…it makes me happy!
Kid & I attended an online info session this evening for 1 of the schools on her list. Asked & got confirmation during that info session that you do NOT have to submit official AP scores to them until AFTER receiving an acceptance letter. So that’s great news because it looked from their website like it was required. That’ll save us $150. 
It kind of looked on their website like you had to send official AP scores with your application. Glad we asked.
College Counseling class today apparently started discussions about senior projects (which are optional). D26 told counselor about her medical restrictions due to the upcoming surgeries. Counselor said she has a professor she knows who will do all of the meetings online, so that’s great. D26 went from “I don’t want to do a senior project” to “I have an idea of something I might want to do.”
D26 is going to get started brainstorming a couple of “Why this college” essays this evening. 
D26 said that her history teacher today called her by D24’s name. 
And in the last week of history class at the end of Trimester 2, they’re going to have a potluck, where everybody has to bring something edible that’s a dish from the country you’re doing your big project/report on. Since this is a Middle Eastern Culture & History class and D26’s project is on Turkey, she’ll have to bring some Turkish food to share. Her BFF is also in the class…BFF is vegetarian and D26 said, “I want to bring something without meat in it so BFF can have more than 1 thing to eat in class that day.” 
D26 has learned some interesting things about her history teacher over the last week. He apparently served in the Marines and got stationed in the Middle East while he was enlisted. He lived in Washington, DC when 9/11 happened. He teaches college classes in topics of anthropology, Middle Eastern history, & comparative religion. He’s part of some archaeology society and has gone on several archaeological digs in the Middle East, including one in Jordan where (as D26 explained it) “this one time, they saw this pick up truck way up on a ridge and it had a black flag and was just parked there looking at all of them for awhile so 1 of them looked at the truck through binoculars and Mr ‘History Teacher’s Name’ said the flag was an ISIS flag, so everybody quickly packed up their stuff and they all left so nobody would get shot.”
I’ve been asked by D26 to make some of the special Christmas bread that I make every year over Thanksgiving weekend because she wants to give a loaf of it to History Teacher.
1 Like
Maybe think this in another way. If an athlete improve 5000M race from 16’1’’ to 15’55’’, this kid may proudly claim another PR. In the race, 2 sec fast means a lot, could be difference between 1st place and 2nd place.
But for academics, if you work hard and improve your GPA 0.05 or 0.1, you have much less impression on people to cheer for, and it may look no different to college AOs.
1 Like
I was thinking more like awards,not incremental improvements. National level subject awards, NMSF, valedictorian, etc. in my circles it’s ok to say your kid won an athletic event (or got the lead role in the musical or play, or whatever ) but somehow seen as bragging when they bag an academic achievement. But seems that’s not universal. (Again - I think it’s absolutely fine that parents are proud of their kids and post whatever achievement. It just seemed weird to me that some are socially acceptable to share and others less so)
3 Likes
I get your meaning of social acceptance, or prevalence.
Generally speaking, many people (including me) may shy away from showing academics.
Just like many high schools are not ranking students anymore, even everyone is working hard for their GPA.
But all ECs, sports or none sports (debate, robotics, Mock UN etc), we are getting used to have a final ranking, and cheer for the winner.
there’s so much variation on the topic of ‘what to celebrate’ from 1 school community to another.
At our local high school just down the road, athletic achievements are valued more than other things. At the high school D26 attends, academic achievements are valued more than athletic. At 1 of last year’s end-of-term award ceremonies, a sophomore or junior won some huge scholarship at a ‘something something institute of technology’ school somewhere on the east coast and the audience erupted in cheers & applause as if a football team had just won the state championship game.
What I really really love are high schools where all types of students are celebrated, even the students whose post-graduation plans involve joining the military or going to a trade school.
I don’t really understand why it’s socially acceptable to share your kid’s athletic achievements, but it’s boasting/bragging to share your kid’s academic achievements.
I’ve gotten lip from parents for just choosing to put our kids in the school they’ve attended. 
Life is too short to worry so much about other people’s opinions, though. Everybody is running their own race.
D26 is our youngest kid and I intend to do what I did when D24 was a senior: celebrate and post on social media every college acceptance my kid earns, even to the college that almost nobody has heard of. All of our kids have worked so hard to get where they are right now. All of that deserves to be celebrated. 
1 Like
This. The achievers in both have a combination of natural talent and hard work to get to where they have. (Same with music, drama etc). I don’t see what makes some of these socially acceptable to celebrate and others not.
2 Likes
If I remember correctly, your kids were/are at a charter school. I was a school nurse at a charter school for four years. It is an amazing school that significantly out performs any of the local public schools in the town. Much higher test scores, much higher post high school college attendance and graduation, etc., etc. There are several hundred families on the waiting list. MANY local people hate that the school exists because they say it robs state funding from their local public schools. It has a been very contentious since the school opened. Though I have seen the same families who voted against the school walk through the doors the following year when their kid won a seat in. the lottery I think overall, at least here in my state there is a lot of hate for charter schools which is sad. Have there been some terrible ones? Absolutely. But there have been some that have offered amazing opportunity for students who otherwise would have attended their neighborhood schools that are terrible.
D26 hates it when I post her picture so I rarely do it. In fact, I don’t put much on Facebook period other than the odd Steelers game commentary or dog pictures. Our high school celebrates academic, art, and athletic successes equally which is really nice to see. I also think that, in our area at least, there are so many sports that there always seems to be something to post, where there aren’t as many other types of events. And our sports teams are extremely competitive and can usually be counted on to advance to district playoffs and often to states. But our school and community also made a huge deal when our mock trial team won the national championship a couple years ago.
Schools usually equally treat both academics and sports. Parents may be more cautious.
My D would be absolutely mortified if I posted anything on social media about her!
4 Likes
Our schools – my girls’ private school and my son’s public school – also try to celebrate all the events equally. My kids are/were mostly in music and theatre, plus my girls have gotten some academic accolades, and it was gratifying to see all of their successes mentioned in the school newsletter and on the school’s social media accounts.
That said, this is the south, and sports are big. It would be disingenuous to say that marching band gets equal billing to football!
For those of you who have schools where academic and athletic achievements are celebrated equally, you’re very lucky! Our small, private school in the south places such an emphasis on sports, and it’s disheartening for the kids who work their tails off on the school musical, Model UN, etc. My D26 complains that they have mandatory, all-school assemblies for the college signing ceremonies for athletes while academic achievements aren’t a big a deal - there won’t be an assembly to recognize National Merit scholars, for instance.
2 Likes
We are also in the South, in a suburban school district, where athletics normally rules. But our school’s FB page does a really good job of featuring every kind of school group. I regularly see posts about Model UN, BETA etc.
The same on my FB feed, I see parents post about athletic accomplishments right alongside NMSF, 36 ACT scores, band and theater performances, Boys State, everything seems to be represented.
4 Likes
Random question about commuter campuses. Should we be looking at % of students in dorms (the traditional measure), or should we be looking at the total number of students in dorms?
Thinking about one college C26 is considering- it’s a commuter campus as in, less than 20% of undergrads are in dorms. But when I went onto the housing page to have a look at the dorm options, I thought - that’s a lot of dorms for a commuter campus, so I looked for some numbers, and it turns out they have almost 4000 people in dorms, including over half of freshmen (and as is often the case it sounds like a number of “commuter” students are upperclassmen who don’t live too far off campus). 4000 is I think more than the entire student body of a number of LACs? Surely that’s enough to be social with? The commuter aspect was my one main reservation about this college option, but (especially given that the arch department is apparently pretty tight-knit, as they tend to be) I’m feeling maybe that concern was overstated.
Short answer to your question:
I don’t know.
Longer answer:
Sometimes it feels like one has to read the tea leaves on this. And it’s something hard to do sometimes when you’re trying to figure this out when you’re a distance away from the college.
For example:
U of A (#1 on D26’s list currently) has ~ 22% of its students live on campus. So technically, it’s probably a commuter campus. However, I do know that there’s a boatload of apartment buildings around campus that lots of students move to starting in sophomore year. And most of those are about a 10-15 min walking distance from campus. U of A has 23 dorms.
According to their 2022-2023 CDS, 63% of freshmen live on campus (~5713 students). But overall over all undergrads, it’s 22% who live on campus.
UT-San Antonio is also on D26’s list. 33% of its freshmen live on campus (so ~1939 total students), and for all undergrads overall, 89% live OFF campus. UTSA in local circles is apparently considered a big commuter school.
UT-Dallas has a total of 21,858 undergrads according to its most recent CDS. Out of that, there’s 4196 freshmen, 2139 of whom live on campus. But overall across ALL undergrads, it’s 22% of students who live on campus.
So then comparing the 3:
- U of A - 35,000 undergrads w/5713 freshmen living on campus
- UTSA - 30,000 undergrads w/1939 freshmen living on campus
- UTD - 21,858 undergrads w/2139 of 4196 freshmen living on campus.
U of A & UTSA have about the same ballpark of total undergrads, but very different total #s of freshmen living on campus.
I know that in Tucson parent circles, a lot of families do have their kids live at home and commute in order to save on room & board expenses. Same occurs a lot w/ASU in the Phoenix metro area.
I’d probably prefer that my kid not attend a college where most of the student body runs home for the weekend every single weekend, but that’s me and this isn’t ultimately MY decision. It’s kind of hard to figure this out when you really think about it.
…makes me think that when we go on college tours over the next few months, I’m going to ask the tour guide what students like to do for fun on the weekends. I did this on D24’s college tours and we used that info to kind of guess at how dead or not a school was going to be.
Even if my kid ends up going to U of A, ~ 2 hr drive from where we live, the rule we’re going to have w/D26 is that she isn’t allowed to come home to visit for at least the first 6 weeks of school. I’ve seen far too many situations where the student goes home every weekend or every other weekend and because of that, the student ends up lonely and has difficulty making friends (usually also magnified by the student choosing to ONLY go to class & the dining hall & rarely ventures out to make efforts to meet people).
1 Like
Same! I don’t think she’d love that I’m on here!
And fwiw, we don’t post about our kids at all on social media. In fact, we more or less deleted our account (“our” because the other half and I have always just shared one). We have no pictures, no posts, nothing at all. But we kept all the contacts and connections with the account open “just in case”.
What we have done is have all our kids call grandma nightly and tell her anything new. So, when D26 won an award at school, it got communicated to grandma over Facetime. D26 felt like she was celebrating it a bit, grandma liked to know what was going on and loves celebrating her granddaughter’s accomplishments, and we didn’t have to tell anyone else anything, because grandma would be happy to toot a horn at the various relatives she spoke with regularly!
5 Likes
AAAHHH! Just got an email from Common App for ED Parent Signature!!! Almost there!!!
14 Likes
I might be just a little bit envious that you are almost at the end of this journey 
5 Likes