How do I list my senior classes on the STARS record?
We encourage you to apply early, so senior courses should be listed but appear as “In Progress.”
What if my senior schedule changes after I have submitted the application and STARS record?
You can go to the STARS record and resubmit it for your scheduled changes to be reflected.
Thank you for your help! What a PITA the whole STARS thing was – her school insisted that she could just import the data, but when she did, it didn’t come through correctly. Her advisor said to just leave it, that Pitt must have requested it that way. (Whaaat? That was bad advice.) We ended up deleting all the imported data and inputting it manually.
Oy. She could have been done with this weeks ago if she hadn’t listened to her school about it!
Toured Stevenson University in Maryland yesterday. If I could give any recommendation to college admissions teams, it would be that if you are going to assign a tour guide with a completely different major to a one-on-one prospective student tour, try to schedule a few minutes with a faculty member or student from their field of study. Our student ambassador was a biology major and he was really terrific, but he knew nothing about the film/design school and talked about science classes the entire time. LOL.
D26 is very passionate about certain issues and comes down on both sides of the political landscape depending on the subject. We actually talked yesterday for the first time about the social leanings of the colleges that she is interested in and her concerns about going to a college that might be less welcoming of artistic, quirky kids like herself. There is a lot of pressure at her school to be what the students there consider “normal” and she feels like she can’t be herself. It makes me really sad because my high school experience was not like that at all; I was a theatre kid and always felt like I was accepted for who I was.
She is still stalling on the essay writing- ugh. But we did talk about applying to the BA program instead of BFA; both schools confirmed that she could move into the BFA program later. It takes some of the pressure off of her to come up with a portfolio so she can just focus on the essay.
D26 was telling me about how frustrated she is with some of her group members in her short story writing class who are using AI not only to write drafts, but even when critiquing other people’s drafts within the group during their workshop sessions. Apparently some people were just reading the AI critique off their screens without much comprehension. She’s worried that the prevalence of this sort of thing bodes ill for our collective future. “All of our brains are going to turn to mush!”
C26 got that too. I actually thought they’d get the presidential ($2k more) but I guess they worked the core GPA differently to what I’d calculated. Still - as you point out, it’s a generous amount.
So awesome seeing acceptances rolling in - especially those that come with good merit $$$$
She has gotten one in so far. Second choice safety that was totally expected (hence- safety)- but still exciting overall .
D26 got her 6th application in last night. She has 7 total- so just one more to go. That one is basically done- just wants to review the supplemental essay one more time before submitting.
And today is the day the counselor is supposed to start sending off all the stuff they are responsible for. (And then every Friday from here on out). So though D26 has 6 of her applications completed and submitted- some of them are yet ‘completed’ in the system.
Cautiously optimistic that all will go smoothly today- and everything will be sent over that needs to be sent!!!
Hoping we can get the bulk of C26’s common app ones in this weekend- still waiting for final review of the 3 supplementals.
Then we have to look at CSU application. I don’t have high hopes for those because architecture is impacted at both colleges they’ll be applying to but they want to give it a go anyway.
Here, no progress on the Common App, essays have been brainstormed I believe, but not started. And then our state’s office of student financial assistance, which is the administrator of our 529s got hacked, hurrah. Their website has been inaccessible for a week now. You can’t even call them. Officially they just have “technical issues” but since law enforcement has been involved and it’s been taking so long, I suspect a ransom attack or something like it. Fun times
We’re in the same boat of no further progress on Common App. D26 is working on her first supplemental essay. She has a few that need to get done for November 1. The thing she’s sort of waiting on is her counselor and teacher recs. Everyone has been invited and she had spoken with them all a while ago, but seems like that’s taking some time. Because of that, she’s just working to the Nov. 1 deadline.
We did do the FAFSA and started on the CSS profile, so calling that a win for the week!
D26 (and I) feeling super frustrated with guidance office and their lack of urgency and organization. There was a whole issue a few weeks ago with her transcript request payment somehow getting credited to a duplicate account (the school’s error). That got fixed apparently but Naviance is still showing “No Request” under transcripts. She asked guidance and was told “you are all set do not worry about what Naviance is showing”. But she knows nothing has been sent to any schools because she is getting emails from schools saying “we still do not have your official transcripts, counselor report, teacher recommendations or school profile and these must be in by X date to be considered for EA and merit”. It is totally stressing her out. She is scheduling an in person meeting with her counselor next week to go over everything and make sure she is all set for her 10/15 and 11/1 deadlines. It just really bothers me that these kids have the added stress of guidance not having their act together. Their department is a hot mess this year. D26 got scolded by head of guidance for “jumping the gun and completing the Common App before senior seminar” which by the way was only last week. The part where they have to put the total number of students in their grade was apparently wrong. I told D26 the number she put was taken directly from Naviance so it is guidance’s fault if they did not update Naviance correctly. Students should not be scolded for completing their applications in a timely manner. And they should not have to wait until the end of September to BEGIN filling out their Common App just because guidance can’t bother to have a senior seminar meeting until then. The irony here is that they push the kids to apply Early Action so I am not understanding the timeline they are going by. They also require all transcript requests be AT LEAST 3 weeks before the deadline. But then hold senior seminar past that deadline. Ugh. Rant over.
Guys, what do you all think about the “party school” debate? I get that no one wants to shell out college fees to have their kids drop out of school halfway through freshman year because they partied too much, but I’m starting to think this is all a bit overblown. Possibly an issue for students who might be susceptible to peer pressure for this but I look at it the same way I look at everything else: you’ll find your people at college, regardless of what kind of school it is. Is anyone letting it prevent their kids applying somewhere? C26’s top school has a party reputation but they are not a party kid and I’m sure they’d find their tribe if they end up there. (Also… college students are allowed to have fun, right?!) Possibly I also view this a bit differently being an immigrant and being that almost everywhere else in the world drinking age is 18, sometimes below for wine and beer. I mean, at Cambridge every college has its own pub! But no one would call Cambridge a “party school” I am sure!
*fun fact: the one person I know of who did actually drop out of school freshman year because she partied too much (and yes, yes, it is a known “party school”) got her act together and graduated from Berkeley a few years later.
I think pretty much any school has the potential for a kid to party too much and find themselves in trouble because of it. If you have a diligent, hard-working student whose goal is to be surrounded by diligent, hard-working students they will find their people. They can apply to the honors college and have an amazing scholarly experience. And I know plenty of kids that were not partiers at all and went to schools that did not have a party reputation and still ended up drinking and finding themselves participating in shenanigans just because they were there and it was happening around them.
I think that the party school debate is a bunch of horse manure. Let me explain.
So back in the Land Before Time, I went to UCSB, which has ALWAYS had a reputation of being a party school. Yeah there were some pretty kick butt parties there when I attended and there still are even now.
But it was a big enough place where you didn’t have to party, and could still have a super active social life if you weren’t a partying kind of person. My next door neighbor in the dorms freshman year didn’t drink and wasn’t into attending parties at ALL and she did social stuff ALL the time and found her crew of people no problem.
Even the elite of elite universities in the US - places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT - all have a kick butt party culture if you’re looking for it. And a lot of people gloss over the turbo party culture at Dartmouth. Their frat parties are pretty legendary. They’ve always had that reputation.
It’s there EVERYWHERE if you want to find it.
D26 isn’t a party kid. She’s really introverted and has never been to a school dance. Her first choice school right now has plenty of parties available to find BUT it also has a pretty big nerdy crowd of students, too, and I’m confident that she’ll be able to find her crew of people there. Will finding “her crew” just fall right in her lap? No. It’ll require some effort and it will require her to get outside her comfort zone to go in person to club meetings, continue to try out different things in order to find what fits best for her.
But it’ll happen. She’ll find it.
And to my sister, who was a total snob in college about college rankings, who used to snottily brag in front of me that SHE was going to a higher ranked college, I used to snark back at her, “Oh yeah? Well UCSB has more Nobel Laureates in residence than your school. And Steven Hawking came to work here in the physics department. He didn’t work at UCLA at all, did he? I didn’t think so. So there ya go.”
Consider ASU:
ASU has a huge party reputation. Ok, big deal. But you can also get a great education at ASU. My work colleague’s son just graduated from ASU this past academic year…did a master’s & bachelor’s in mechanical engineering in 5 yr thanks to an accelerated master’s program and now the kid is working at a big silicon chip manufacturing company. Like, had a job lined up before graduation.
But could you party like a rock star your entire 4 yr, major in hotel management/hospitality and minor in Greek life & tanning (that’s sarcasm)? Absolutely. It’s your money…do with it as you please.
Every parent who gives you or your kid lip about the kid applying to or attending a “party school” can go pound sand. They’re just misinformed. So let them think that they did a better job because their kid is going somewhere that doesn’t have a party school reputation. Meh. Their opinion isn’t any of your business.
Like…DUDE…even at D24’s small LAC of ~ 1300 students has parties.
In general, I’m not worried about a party school reputation. All the big state schools have this rep. If you were concerned that it comes at the expense of getting the academic experience you need, then that’s something – but I doubt that’s true most places.
And agree with @sbinaz that even the most rigorous schools have big partiers. There was a scandal at my D22’s school a couple years ago when too many ambulances had to be called for overconsumption at one of the big public parties. And it didn’t help that the theme of this party was “NOD” (Night of Decadence) – the idea was to show up as scantily-clad as possible. Playboy did an article decades ago listing it in the top 10 of college parties or something, no joke. The school shut it down after this incident, and not only that, they canceled all public parties for the rest of the year. It was all the FB parent group could talk about, lol.
My D22 is not a big partier, and showing up in her underwear to a party was not her idea of a good time, so she missed the whole mess. And then she asked me, “What are the parents saying about it? I want to know the tea.”
Anyhow. What does give me pause is the occasional comment I hear about schools where the drinking culture is so pervasive that there isn’t much to do outside of it. I’ve heard this about Lehigh and about Miami Ohio. I’m sure it can’t be 100% true – surely there are kids at those schools who do other things. But a comment like that sometimes sends me down a Reddit rabbit hole to see what else I can find.
Oh, and one more thing – in D22’s opinion, the more the school tries to police the parties, the more kids will “pre-game” in their rooms and drink too much, too quickly – and that’s where the overconsumption issues arise.
This is coming from the view of a 21-year-old, mind you – I don’t think she’s seeing it from the administration’s point of view. But she’s not necessarily wrong.
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