My kid would most definitely roll her eyes because that’s what teenage girls do. But she’d secretly probably love it.
When is the decision day she is especially waiting for? Is it mid or late December?
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I like the idea in principle but for C26 it would probably remind them that they’re waiting, rather than distract them from the fact!
The kids art camp that they volunteered for last year has released dates for next summer, and they will probably volunteer again..although at this stage (other than comic con, which they don’t know about yet) not really sure what other summer plans are.
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Hit the button on D26’s last EA applications last night, including one in her top three. She struggled mightily with her “Why This Major” essay but once she decided to reveal something very personal about herself, it all fell into place. I will say that after the pain of writing that 200 word piece, we may forego any more applications that have supplemental essays.
Sorry for anyone with travel difficulties! Glad everyone seems to be home safe and sound.
I love the idea of the “decision advent calendar”. I think it’s very sweet. It’s a weird limbo that we’re in now- hurry up and wait- so it would probably make the time pass faster for sure.
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This is a sweet idea! For my kid, probably fun and interesting snacks and candy would go over best, lol. Like I’d go get lychee gummies from H Mart and things like that. 
I’d want to put in uplifting notes, but yes, my kid would absolutely roll her eyes and accuse me of downloading Pinterest quotes. Because teenagers are the worst. 
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Oof. D22’s flight back to school was delayed as well, and she ended up getting back to her dorm at 2:20 a.m. I know this because I couldn’t sleep until I saw she was back safely, so I’m dragging today.
Glad to hear you had a great vacation!
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My D26 would love this-
If we had an actual day that we were waiting for I would do this. Very fun idea!!
But instead of a daily inspiration or such (cause my D would totally roll her eyes at that 
) I would do all distraction type of stuff. Like a daily puzzle or fidget type or small craft each day.
I would call it the daily distraction calendar 
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This seems like a reasonable solution, truly. I wonder why it hasn’t been implemented…?
Our kids Magnet School offers a lot of AP courses - as a magnet school in one of the ‘poorer’ areas of our city, it is also demographically quite diverse - with a comparably high percentage of East Asian (Japan, China, Korea, Thai) and India/Paki as magnet out of area students, along with a proportionately higher number of black and latino such that there is no ‘majority’ ethnic/demographic (“white” is a minority at 37%).
Ultimately what this leads two is a two schools in one environment - where high expectation parents with high performing kids skew maybe 30+% of the class to the far right (statistically) as they ratchet up their competitive environment in terms of rigor, grades, scores and ECs - while the bottom quartile of student performance drops each year (by comparison) - and then going from Junior to Senior year… a lot of those kids drop out of school or end up elsewhere - which drops around 25+% of the class numbers from the class rankings (mostly at the lower end) (example currently there are 760 Freshman enrolled but that number drops to 670, 586, down to 522 as seniors - and this is a historical issue). If you do the math on this - it means your class ranking percentage can drop significantly even as your grades improve!
Since the kids are awarded a 5.0 (A) for AP and a 4.5 (A) for honors courses starting with Honors and some AP as freshman - thus the Top 10% of the class will have a WGPA of 4.6+ at the end of Junior year, the top 25% will all be WGPA >4.3
D26 will finish with 13 AP/IB weighted courses and 15 weighted Honors courses - and this is considered around ‘average’ for the competitive pool of students from her HS (for applications to UNC-CH etc).
For our public school system, AP courses and the AP exam (taken in the term ending for the course) are zero cost, you may also sign up for an AP exam for a course you are not currently in/finishing, and the cost is I believe just under $100 for those.
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/mini rant incoming/
One of the things I like about this forum is that, mostly, I don’t have to put members on ignore. But I have reached my fill with car sales bama dude. I now have a grand total of one person under my ignored user section. lol
/end mini rant.
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D26 got a big envelope in the mail from University of the Incarnate Word. They awarded her a $17,000/yr scholarship. This makes tuition, room & board $35,740.
Not affordable.
Given the admissions office challenges with them I’ve posted above, I think that D26 is probably going to decline the offer. And we are totally fine with that. She still wants to wait until she sees what the other 2 remaining ones come back with (already got scholarship #s from UT-San Antonio).
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Last week one of D26 portals said something to the effect of “we have made a decision and can’t wait to tell you on 12/1”. This is not a top school on her list, but it is in a location she would love to live and if they give her enough merit, she would consider it. But anyway, she stayed up until midnight last night, despite my telling her that they will probably not put it out until 5 pm or later. It did not come. Well, it’s now 7:15p and it still hasn’t come out. And when we go back to the portal, it no longer says anything about 12/1 - just “we can’t wait to tell you your decision as soon as possible”. Pretty sucky to have told her a date and now went back on it.
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That would drive me bananas.
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Oh boy- I would be freaking out.
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I’m not happy. I’m disappointed for her that she lost sleep last night in her excitement. I think when the decision eventually comes, it’s going to be very anticlimactic now.
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That would really annoy me as well. They shouldn’t have said a date if they weren’t 100% sure they’d release then. Much better to underpromise and over deliver than the other way around.
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Whoever updates the school’s website is getting in trouble today!
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Weren’t we stressing a few weeks back about teachers dropping the ball on recommendation letters?
WELL. My turn to stress because D22 has two grad apps due at midnight EST, and one of the three professors has not submitted the letter. There is no grace period, and both of these schools require three letters.
She emailed her this morning, at which point the professor said I’M ON IT. But it wasn’t done by 8:44pm, so she texted her, and the professor said, “huh, I did it earlier, not sure what happened, but I’m in a meeting at the moment, so I’ll look when I get home.”
GAH. I’m sure my kid is sweating bullets. I know my husband and I are over here pacing.
This woman is a magister (house mom) for one of the residential colleges on campus (not my daughter’s) and lives there on campus, so I know my kid is fully prepared to walk over there and knock on her door, lol.
DUDE. She’s got 1.5 hours to figure it out.
UPDATE – It’s done! D22 was calling and leaving her a voice mail a few minutes ago, but then the prof picked up the phone, and she got the email notification that it had been submitted. Portal also indicates that all three are there. She tried to submit it much earlier today, but…user error, I guess. PHEW. 40 minutes to spare! 
Poor kid hasn’t been able to focus on some giant physics paper and presentation she has tomorrow. Oy. Back to the grind!
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Oh boy. What stress. Hope she gets it sorted out in time.
(PS is it not magistra for a woman?)
Yes! My bad. Usually it’s a married couple, and the students call them the house “magisters” – so I typed magister as the singular without thinking. I’m not sure if she and a spouse are jointly magisters or not.
(My Latin nerd kid would totally call me out, lol.)
D26 got her fat envelope from the school that admitted her right before Thanksgiving. It was actually adorable packaging and came with a little school memento as well. D26 actually lit up about it and felt great. It is really nice in this period for her to feel genuinely wanted by a school as she grinds out her last set of apps.
On the flip side of things, I just finished submitting a grad school rec for someone who used to work for me. With only one hour to spare. 
In fairness to me, I didn’t think it was due today because the automated email from the school on when apps are due that I got had the wrong date! I showed my former staff member the email. But, I imagine she was sweating whether I would get it done in time. Feel bad even though I don’t think it was my fault.
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