I haven’t read all the posts this morning yet, but got stuck on yours. What a wonderful and positive post!!
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One of our friends is a teacher in such a school and you are 100% right. The smaller class sizes 7-12 kid:teacher ratio, the extracurricular activities in arts, international travel etc is a very different experience than the public school experience in our area. There are some limitations with the smaller school, the music program is a lot smaller, school sports team are not competitive but from a learning perspective the teachers are generally better and the kids get a lot more attention. Also if you have concerns you can easily talk to the principal.
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Yay, congratulations!! That’s fantastic merit, and how great to get an acceptance from a top contender months before the rest!
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Congrats on the solid acceptances and big LAC scholarship! Oof, I’m sorry about the ED. Glad she’s encouraged by the one deferral, and fingers crossed it goes her way in the regular round so she’ll have some great choices.
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We looked into a small school like that for C26 after freshman year. I do think the academics would have been better but they absolutely nixed it because of the tiny size of EC cohorts in their areas of interest. We weren’t going to have a miserable child for 3 years to get a bump in grades.. and then they ended up doing pretty well after freshman year anyway, so any grade bump would have ended up being pretty small. That said, we’ve never had a problem with support at our public school either so there is that.
We are the same with cheer . Just this season alone we will have 3 trips to Orlando, plus Nashville, Houston and Indianapolis. The end of allstar cheer is like getting a massive raise! I will miss it though. Really hoping she continues in college even though it’s just sideline.
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I was just telling my husband that we should subtract like $15k from whatever we’re paying for college since we won’t have to pay for cheer anymore. We’ve got Atlanta, Houston and Orlando for travel this year. The rest are pretty local. Cheersport and NCA being only two weeks apart is kind of brutal when you have to travel to both.
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D26 finished up her last exams today. Of course the last, IB Chem was by far the hardest. Finals here are silly in that they rarely increase your grade if you have mid to high As and only drop if you don’t do well. But they are not allowed to exempt, even with As, until 2nd semester senior year so it becomes a big headache.
But she’s finished and ended up doing even better than expected . Plus with the ED admit and commitment to Duke she hopefully will take a few steps back and relax a bit. I am glad to never have to deal with High school finals again just IB exams.
Congrats to everyone admitted and committed this week! Such a great feeling to share together.
To those deferred I know it feels awful but remember in most cases it’s really not a soft rejection. Many acceptances will come it just is a long wait. We did this with S24 and the best we could do was get him to feel good about his choice until he heard back from the defer. It worked out but it gave him time to see he could also be happy somewhere else.
And to those of you with kids grinding out those last few RD apps, you’ve got this! Just a couple more weeks!
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Last 2 finals done, and that’s semester 1 in the books!
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It’s funny you mention the sports teams aren’t competitive. Circling back to an earlier theme, that is the only reason D26 was able to play freshman/sophomore sports at all. Because they were less competitive. At our local public school she would not have even made the freshman team. So a negative for those who have been competitive athletes since youth, was a big plus for us.
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Yep! She has two back to back meet weekends. And both of them are the travel meets. I think all of us will be glad to be done. Bittersweet though.
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D26 got admitted to her second EA school today! We were not expecting this one now. Good merit award as well. No matter what happens going forward, she has at least two options, which feels great to all of us. One more decision coming in January, then the rest in March.
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Hurray! That’s awesome.
The dreaded (for the parents at least) Friday 10 pm swim meet is over for the his senior year. One tradition that I’ll laugh about some day, but for now, coffee! Onto the second meet of the weekend.
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Told D26, who cares, you’ve made it. Skip a couple of days of school, relax, your grades dont matter anymore.
She gave me this incredulous look and said:
“This is why you werent a good student dad”….Which is 100% correct of course.
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Our HS coach was a bit of a lunatic (but then again he placed multiple swimmers onto NCAA school teams and was a two time State Champion Coach so… crazy but good) - His traditional Christmas break was 2 a day practices starting on the first day of the holiday break. We had a Christmas eve morning practice (no evening) - but the workout was one set after a few hundred yard warm-up… 100x100 on your interval of his choice for you (there was a written list… you scanned down to find your name and looked over for the interval…)… distance swimmers started on 1:05 or until they failed and move up an interval, otherwise it was on 1:10 or 1:15 or 1:20… So a 10,000 yard ‘set’ in a little under 2 hours - then warm down and go home.
Most of us got home around 10 AM and slept until 4 or so on Christmas eve - And then the next week, he’d give us a beat down of a morning workout, followed by the traditional "Alumni Meet’ that afternoon so that the ‘old guys’ would be going against the HS boys who were already dead tired. Fun Times.
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It’s a bit of a mixed bag here this weekend…but mostly it’s looking like a set up to a good holiday season afterall…
D26 received her UNC EA decision and just like her older sister and brother before her, she was wait listed. Which for UNC is supposedly a form of ‘deferral’ to the RD (they don’t use deferral in EA - it’s just Admit, Decline, Wait List) and a few EA Wait List kids will be admitted around the RD times, the rest are on Wait List (again)… but it’s really not so much of a soft deny as it is a pretty hard one as historically less than 3% of Wait List students get an offer.
Older Sister has finished her UT-Austin undergraduate degree a semester early and saved herself around $22k in tuition (from the college money we’ve set aside) and is now looking at Masters program which have been hit by the federal cuts as schools are shifting their monies to the humanities programs that some of which were completely de-funded to $0. (Not to get political, just noting what’s happening on the ground) - so the Masters offerings in her field(s) of study at the more sought after schools are down by 2/3 with much of it in limbo still… And she’s evaluating law school and job opportunities… because I’m paying for an apartment in Austin til August and then… it’s Job, Grad School or Home! But she’s home and re-bonding with her mother over baking and cooking which is nice.
Our Son finished his semester at UNC, did quite well academically but having a bit of Sophomore slump in terms of his social/personal happiness aspect - promptly went on a 6 day ski trip with friends family who had never been skiing before and came home happy but covered in bruises (we went for a swim workout this morning and he’s all sorts of shades of bruise recovery all over).
I was a bit worried about D26 and the UNC wait list - but she has been in good spirits, a bit too good I was thinking… but they she revealed she’s not terribly upset by the UNC EA thing as even though she’d said it was her number one choice, turns out she felt like that was her #1 choice because of it’s value (in state tuition in about $9k/yr) and because I did grad school there… but now that it’s unlikely she feels like she can say that either Purdue, Florida or Texas would be in front of it if money wasn’t a factor in her choices (or this is just a coping mechanism…if it is it seems to be working). Granted Texas is a looong shot (but we have one there already obviously) and it ain’t cheap for OOS and her brother did his first year at Purdue and loved it.
So on the whole, she is content with her UGA and UTK EAs, her UNC EA Wait List and has Six other EA decisions coming in January to look forward to…
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Hugs to your D26. That’s kind of an odd way for UNC to do it – I hadn’t heard of wait list instead of deferral from EA. I’m glad she isn’t too upset.
I feel you on the in-state option being top choice because of cost considerations. We have sort of the opposite happening here – my D26’s top choices are OOS, but then she got into her in-state option, so I think she’s starting to realize what a huge cost advantage it would be. I’m trying to keep my mouth shut and let her weigh her choices without influence (one preferred school doesn’t come out until end of January).
I related to your post, too, because we have three kids in similar stages of life drama, lol. My D22 will graduate in May, and she is in the thick of grad school apps. She’s finished five, has five more to go, although we just found one more program last night that she might (should) add.
S25 finished his first semester of college, and it was mostly successful – he finished with As and Bs and is in no danger of losing his scholarship. And he dealt with a health issue and learned some hard lessons in terms of finding the right friends, etc. But this is a kid that we weren’t sure would ever go to college or live independently, so in our eyes it’s all a huge win.
D26 is hanging in there. She’s gotten into four of the seven schools she applied to, waiting to hear on the other three, so we know she’ll be going to college somewhere!
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D26 got her first non-decision yesterday. UChicago deferral. She’s actually really happy with the result, lol! She says, “At least I’m a competitive enough applicant to not get straight denied!” Anyway, she’s gonna roll it over to RD and see what happens. She decided definitely not to do ED2 for it or anywhere else. Still wants to see what all her options are.
In the meantime, she’s waiting for potentially one more EA decision before the holidays, but it’s for a safety and with RPI in, it’s likely out of the running. And she’s got her tea party to worry about for tomorrow as lots of little finger sandwiches get made.
Next up for us is our S29s and trying to figure out what they want to do with their summer. I’m encouraging jobs. We shall see!
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Ack- I need some last minute Christmas gift ideas for D26 that we can find in stores before the 25th! I was planning on getting her dorm stuff, like a laundry hamper, bedspread, etc. With the stress and craziness of getting our son back from Brown this week, I obviously missed out on shipping deadlines. We have already have sheets and the memory foam pad, and I did get her a hair dryer and bathrobe. Any suggestions for things I might be overlooking that I could pick up locally over the next few days? Oh- I did find Bananagrams on sale, so she’ll have 1 fun game to bring to college.