S24 didn’t check his Wheaton portal right away because his sisters both came home last night and we were celebrating being back together. He was remembering how we felt after the ED deferral and didn’t want to echo that. But, he checked privately late last night and he got accepted! I’m relieved because I know he would feel welcomed and at home at Wheaton.
Congrats to your 24s, @ArtMom22 and @anonuser1234!
Great news! Congrats!
And once again, I am so impressed by your son’s emotional maturity and thoughtfulness.
Congratulations! So happy that your son has a place you and he both feel would be a welcoming homey place for him. I know the deferral is hard (my D had one this time last year that ended in a rejection in March), but it is already clear that he is going to have a great list of options in the end.
Hello, fellow CC’ers! S24 just finished his second quarter (no grades yet). He has been very chill about the college journey since getting acceptances from SUNY New Paltz and Wheaton. He is also curious about SUNY Geneseo and Hobart & William Smith (he was accepted but has not visited). However, he doesn’t want to do any accepted student visits until he has his regular decision answers.
We do have a question for you all. S24 has been a three season runner since freshman year. As a senior, he decided not to run track so that he could join Model UN. At his second MUN conference he won Best Delegate for the Human Rights Council (out of 25 kids on the committee from 12 high schools). He doesn’t have any academic awards on his Common App. Should he update his regular decision colleges with this information? If so, should he email his admissions reps, or ask his GC to include this in mid-year reports? Or maybe he should wait to see whether he wins more awards at later conferences…
Up to this point, his EC’s are all sports, but he is truly loving MUN. I think it may add something to his app. Ideas?
It won’t hurt but I also would not worry about awards.
The awards themselves don’t necessarily mean too much. It’s more - what has he done to achieve the awards. Many kids put awards - like AP awards - that mean little.
In other words, being employee of the month is great - but working at x place for 12 months is what he did, etc. Or AP with whatever means little - but getting X APs with a 3 or better mean something.
So I don’t think it will make a difference but if it will give him comfort, they’re not going to ding him…but only do if there’s an easy way to do so, etc.
Congrats on his acceptances and good luck with the rest.
Congrats to your son on all his acceptances so far and on being recognized in his newest interest!
Once his grades come out (assuming that the grades are good), I might send an update email to the AOs saying that the quarter’s complete and your son has maintained/increased his grades. He’s additionally become interested in Model UN and was recognized as Best Delegate for the Human Rights Council. If the college has a Model UN program, he could mention his interest in participating, if true.
So happy for your son!
MUN is big at W&M. Their team has won the world championships, and they host three conferences every year. S24 talked to his GC, who said he should email his admissions rep with a quick update.
His mid year grades are about the same as first quarter, so at least they show that he can maintain his GPA while taking two APs. He had an A in APES until the midterm. It was 100 multiple choice questions, which they make super tricky so that everyone does not score high. (Two answers that are both right, but one is more right. Or: Which of these is least likely to be an effect of x? and they all could be.) He would have done much better on short answer or essay questions. He ended up with an 89 for the quarter. Teacher does not round up. S24 likes the class and the teacher and is pleased with his grade (not a perfectionist like my daughters!).
He was also pleased to be accepted at Gettysburg College. They have a strong history department. S24 doesn’t remember much about the campus tour, but we have great memories of our bike tour of the battlefield in the pouring rain with a guide who was a welcome mix of enthusiastic and nuanced.
I think his favorite schools remain Wheaton, SUNY New Paltz, Conn College and W&M. The factor he cares most about seems to be vibe/fit. If no more acceptances come in, he’ll do some accepted student visits in April.
I hope everyone out there is doing well, whether you have a '24, a kid with learning disabilities, or not—may all our kids gain resilience and find places where they can thrive!
I was so hoping your post would be that he got the postcard that others have gotten! Deferral-land is such a strange place to be. Mine was deferred at Wheaton, but sent a great LOCI and got a personal reply right away, and she’s also adding a LOR and her grades this year are better than ever, she brought up her precalc ten points in Q2 and even made honor roll! Currently trying to figure out where her midyear report is, it still shows ‘waiting for’ on the Wheaton portal but the school said they had sent updates. If it hasn’t updated by the end of the week she will ask her GC to see if she’s all set and /or email her AO to say that it should be there (and mentioning the honor roll.) She also visited and applied to College of the Atlantic, RD, which is more selective than any of them and very different from many schools, but pretty local to us. I am still encouraging her to be ready for a plan C, especially if she’s not feeling the CC she’s been accepted to. I am just hopeful that in the fall she’ll be settling in at wherever she’s meant to be. No one can change that her development was slower than the preferred timeline when it comes to college admissions, but she’s also in such a good place this year than even last year, so I hope something comes through.
I feel like Wheaton is a school where those contacts with the OA will REALLY help. It just seems so truly vested in each of their kids, and having kid show interest and reach out (I think) will mean so much.
@snappity207 Many congrats to your D for bringing her grades up so much and making the honor role! Terrific 
! It seems highly likely that is exactly what Wheaton wanted to see. I also think it’s a good sign that she received a personal reply to her LOCI. S24 spent a ton of time writing one for W&M and only received an automatic response in return. (Thanks for your email, we get a lot of mail, etc.) I was hoping that his admissions dean would at least confirm that she received it. But it’s a difference I’ve noticed between the medium sized schools and the really small ones like Wheaton that have the time to connect.
As for the W&M postcards, thanks for thinking of S24! At least we were not expecting one of those. W&M has said that they read all of the regular decision applications first, and then they go over the apps that were deferred from ED. By the time they get to the deferrals, they have stopped sending postcards and are close to final decision release.
Your daughter’s upward trend in grades made me think about how being a late bloomer academically can be a really good thing. You don’t get burned out in high school, and you have time to develop other skills, like emotional intelligence and self-knowledge. I had great grades in high school and scored high on the SAT, but I was not at all ready socially for college. I wish I had taken a gap year!
I plan to keep up this thread in the fall, and would love to hear how it turns out with other 24’s. May they all bloom wherever the universe plants them!
Been thinking about your son. Any more updates? Based on your posts since this one, I moved Geneseo, H&W, and Wheaton to the accepted pile (hence the italicization of them).
Thanks for reminding me to update, @AustenNut ! Here are S24’s results thus far.
Deferred ED 1:
William & Mary
Deferred EA:
University of New Hampshire
SUNY Binghamton
Accepted EA:
Drew
Gettysburg
Hobart & William Smith
Marist
Mary Washington
Roger Williams
SUNY New Paltz
SUNY Oneonta
SUNY Geneseo
Wheaton, MA
Washington College
Regular Decision:
Connecticut College
S24 is surprised and pleased to have so many great acceptances! He probably should have kept his application list shorter, but he is a “keep all doors open” kind of person, and he liked a lot of schools. Plus, we really didn’t know what his results would be like as a test-optional student who disclosed a learning disability.
For regular decision schools, S24 decided to keep it simple and just apply to the favorite of the remaining schools on his list, Connecticut College. The other school he really liked was Lafayette, but based on the students from our high school getting into Lafayette, he thought his chances were very low, and he didn’t want to add another reach.
He did not end up sending an update to W&M about MUN. He did not receive any acknowledgement from his admissions rep after his LOCI, so he decided they are probably too busy with all their regular decision apps to read extra stuff from deferred students.
He is characteristically chill about regular decisions coming out in the next few weeks. He keeps working hard in his classes and is having a blast organizing our high school’s MUN conference. I am not chill, even though I know that everything will work out and he will thrive. I think it’s because this is a big transition for me—from 24 years of daily, in-person parenting, to something new (and still mostly unknown).
If anyone else would like to chime in with updates, feel free!
FANTASTIC RESULTS ! Almodt an embarrassment of riches 
.
Does he have preferences? Does he plan to go and visit a few of them?
In any case, congratulations 
Thanks, @MYOS1634 ! S24 feels really good about it, but a little guilty for applying to so many schools. He let several know before regular decision that he wouldn’t be attending.
His favorites where he’s been accepted are Wheaton and SUNY New Paltz. He has visited both, but would like to attend an accepted students day.
His favorites of those he hasn’t heard from yet are W&M and Conn College. He has visited both multiple times. If he got into SUNY Bing, he would want to visit—we haven’t been there.
It is wonderful to have so many good choices!
Having my daughter in that same liminal space that is “deferral” I get so excited when this thread is bumped, hoping your son has heard about W&M! Gah, hopefully soon the book can be closed (or opened, depending…) on those deferrals.
He should not feel at all guilty about applying to so many colleges – in today’s environment it is just too hard to predict admission outcomes. He was very gracious to pull some RD applications for schools no longer under consideration.
He is in fantastic shape with two great acceptances he is excited about! All best wishes moving forward.
I think it’s even tougher for deferral and waitlist kids this year with the FAFSA snafu. People are waiting a lot longer to make decisions.
S24 must have the luck of the Irish! 
. He has been accepted to Connecticut College! This acceptance is the first time I’ve seen him looking at swag online. He likes that camel 
. Conn is also the first acceptance I’ve teared up over. We visited three times, and I can really picture S24 there. Suddenly, it all feels real. My baby, whose preschool teacher could not understand a word he said, who couldn’t read until he was 10, who used to lie on a bench sucking his thumb at recess, and did years of PT, OT, speech, and resource room, is going to college 
.
Oh, congratulations! I am so happy for your son (and you!)
A HUGE congratulations!
As a parent you have done everything to give your S the tools he needed to succeed. And clearly your S has embraced the help and hard work it took to get where he is today…with a very meaningful bonus that he sounds like an incredibly kind and considerate young man. Well done all!
I wish him success and happiness wherever he ends up.