Our counseling center keeps reminding students in its weekly newsletter that the teaches know the deadlines and will meet them. Even so, I agreed with C26 that a gentle ask/reminder to the teacher just to check that everything is on track a week before due date is fine. It’s a week to go to 11/1, I think it will be fine for your son to do that.
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I think an email is fine – or perhaps an in-person check in with the teachers at school on Monday?
He could say something like, “I just wanted to touch base and make sure you don’t need anything else from my end for the recommendation letter? It’s due this weekend, and I’m nervous about getting all the application pieces in on time.”
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Arghggh. There are five admitted students days between now and the end of March at Pitt, and none of them work for my D26’s schedule.
We could go for a regular visit (not as good), but none of those work, either. (They haven’t listed any beyond December yet.)
I was thinking maybe we could make December 1 work, but she has head shots (could possibly skip and do them later), but because that’s the Monday after Thanksgiving break, plane tickets are $900 each. For a two-hour direct flight. What the heck.
Oh, and Pitt has the same spring break as her school, so we can’t go then, either. 
I love theatre for my kid, but must it take over her entire schedule? Good grief.
Fingers crossed that they have tours on the Monday of president’s day weekend in February, because that is the only day I’m seeing that will work.
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One thing that’s been suggested around here is to go for a regular visit and then make appointments to see the extra stuff that’s important to your kid. This makes a TON of sense to me. Whenever we’ve done the big open house type of events it’s just been too big and too busy. I’m worried that Pitt would feel like that on a regular admitted students day - just over-crowded and busy. So when we visit, we’ll probably try for something a little lighter and then make appointments as needed.
ETA that I’m pretty sure the big open house event was what turned D26 off of Seton Hall, which would have been a great safety not far from us. So I’m a little reluctant to put her into big crowds at the outset.
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That’s good advice, thank you! And really, she just needs to get a vibe for the school and the city, plus maybe talk to someone in the interdisciplinary program she applied to. Band director could be an email, lol. But it would be good to see the stadium so she’d get a feel for where she’d be marching – I think the scale would sway her one way or the other.
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I think that partly depends on what they do on admitted student events vs what you can do on your own. For example, NYU doesn’t show dorms on regular tours, but on admitted students day the students got to visit all the freshman dorms, and of course the vibe is a lot of fun. So trying to find out if you’re missing anything that might be insightful rather than just the extra swag is good. Then again,for something like band, more specific insights are probably better than seeing the inside of the dorm buildings before you choose a dorm. (I have no idea what Pitt usually does on their admitted student days.) I would imagine they have more later in the year though so students who have been waiting for RD decisions to shortlist can compare? Maybe browsing last year’s Pitt thread would give an idea of when they schedule later days.
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That’s a good point.
I briefly looked at the agenda for an admitted students day last night, but that info is not on the public website – you can only get to it through the portal. And I don’t have the kid’s password for the portal, and I’m not going to wake the beast anytime soon, lol. We’ll have to sit and look at all the options later today or tomorrow.
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D26 got accepted to Pitt too! Super excited for that first one. She said “I guess there’s nothing majorly wrong with my application!” haha.
We also have not visited. But will wait and see if they give her any merit before spending time and money to visit. Without merit it will be out of budget.
@SpreadsheetMom it looks like the Admitted Student days include tours, student panels, informal meet and greets, eat at the largest dining hall, see a residence and see academic spaces. It appears maybe it is only for Dietrich admits that day, but not sure.
I am also hesitant about whether to do Admitted days or regular tour. I figured Admitted Days she can see other students who may also attend and get a vibe check that way. But sometimes they are on a Saturday and I’d want her to also see what a normal weekday looks like. Appreciate hearing the different theories on here.
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In my opinion, any visit is better than no visit when a student is trying to decide, once acceptances come in, where to attend.
With D24, we did a mix of attending on a formal ‘admitted students day’ and visiting on a regular day w/o a special all or half-day program. Both types of visits were fine.
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Congrats!! 
It’s funny, Pitt was kind of an outlier for us, and D26 applied on a whim – the rolling admissions thing is such a boost – but now that we’re looking into it more, she’s genuinely interested. The major she wants says Dietrich, but we just attended a virtual info session for the Computing school that went into detail about this major. It’s interdisciplinary between computer science and English/arts – but I guess it’s classified as Dietrich?
Are you guys a flight or drive away? I do like all the extra stuff offered on admitted students days, but I see @beefeater’s point about it being overwhelming. For us, it may just come down to when D26 can make it work with theatre rehearsals – right now, it looks like never, LOL. But we still need to make it happen.
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One advantage I can think of for a weekend visit is that you can see what the campus life is like then. Some colleges have a reputation of being dead on weekends, which may not suit incoming students.
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Good point!
We are also a flight away. Aside from cost if no merit, it’s an ideal school for her - in a city, good school spirit etc. She did the virtual tour and attended a virtual info session and really loved it!
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Thanks, that’s nice wording. He tried to check in with one teacher, but she was out, so I’m thinking emails and then check in! 
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Same! 
A complaint for today:
I’m frustrated with how many public universities rely on online education in order to teach content to students.
At 1 of the public universities on D26’s list (an OOS one), about half of the courses she’ll need to take are online-only. How in the world are you supposed to be able to connect with people, make friends, etc. if so many of your classes are totally online?
At the in-state public U that she’s applied to, there’s also a lot of online courses, but she’d be in the honors college, which would provide priority registration (i.e., could easily register for the course section(s) which are in-person) AND her major has in person classes, too.
D26 is very introverted. Speaking from a mom’s point of view, my kid will need the experience of attending class in person (not majority online) in order to make connections with people.
So I’m going to add this to the decision criteria.
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I’m totally with you on that. How do you find out which classes are online? Do you look through an online catalogue? I really hadn’t thought of this but S26 hates online classes.
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My D also hates online classes. I figured we would sort this out after she has her offers in, though. With S23, at the point in the process where he had the offers and knew which were affordable, we made a spreadsheet with his curriculum at each college he was seriously considering, looked up everything in the online class schedules, and examined all the details such as where AP credits could be applied, how often were classes offered, class sizes and wait lists and how hard it was to get classes, if any classes were taught online, etc.
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Thanks for this information! I believe the college of nursing is part of the downtown campus. Is that an actual campus, or just part of the city? Thanks again, really appreciate your information!!
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Also curious how you find out which classes are online, especially how you find out if they put overflow students in. Though I suspect this will be less the case with most architecture major classes (and obviously won’t be an issue for studio classes).