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My son, Thing #2, applied EA to the following schools:
We started him on the process in August with the hopes of having all the applications done in early September. (What were we thinking?) He got his last application (UW-Madison) done just a couple days ago after he finally finished the school-specific essay.
He has already seen MSU (his Mom is an alum), and attended two summer programs at MI Tech. This weekend we fly to Denver for him to see Boulder and School of Mines on Monday, his top two choices on paper. Stand by for a “what schools moved up or down your list after visiting” post.
At least the pressure is off with the MSU acceptance. Thank God for rolling admissions.
C26 has applied to 2 rolling and 4 EA.
Rolling: ASU and Pitt - accepted at both, which takes a lot of pressure off, especially given a relatively short list of schools.
EA in rough order of preference: Boulder (current top choice and the only one we’ve managed to visit by this stage), UIUC, UIC, UMN-TC. UIC decision should be out by mid-December and the rest are due around end-January.
Applications were mostly in by the end of the first week of October, though the teacher rec letter for those schools that use it only got uploaded/sent yesterday.
Will reassess options after all decisions are in and decide which admitted student days to attend - at this stage don’t see the value in visiting until we know where else they get in. I suspect UMN will drop off the list as they have competitive secondary admission to the major and the Pitt acceptance already means there is a school (pending visit) that they are excited about that won’t have that stress.
Our students have some overlap, and they would have had more if my son hadn’t eliminated ASU because of the heat and UIUC because I’m an alum and it is in the middle of nowhere.
My older son applied to Pitt for engineering as a likely admit (are they safeties anymore?), and we were pleasantly surprised during the campus visit. For a mid-sized (26,000 students) public the campus feels small and manageable, and Oakland is a nice neighborhood. Pitt also has a cross-registration program with Carnegie Mellon, which is right next door, so your student might get to take some classes at The Nerd Farm. If your student decides on Pitt, look into their honors program where students get priority for registration, research opportunities, and - I think - some monetary awards.
C26 would be doing BS Arch at Pitt and 2 of the courses are taught at CMU. Unfortunately they have no interest in honors colleges anywhere because of the extra work required over what will likely already be an intensive workload. Pitt was not a sure thing and UIUC is a reach.