1st semester senior year transcript sent...now what?

Applying to College
1

My eldest child is a senior and the 1st semester ended before the New Year in fine fashion (straight As). The high school took most of January to update all the seniors’ transcripts and only recently sent them “automatically” to all the colleges my senior applied. Interviews are pretty much done … just waiting for one or two schools to hopefully email with a local representative. So I have a few questions:

  1. The high school tells me the transcripts were sent. Can this be double checked by my kid through Naviance? If not, should I call all the schools to which my kid applied to make sure they received the transcript?

  2. Is it likely that the colleges will want an update from the high school guidance office on how my kid is doing with second semester? If so, what form will this take? Q3 final grades … or some kind of interim report? (the idea of an interim report scares me because, although my kid has been a straight A student in terms of overall semester grades, the grades fluctuate wildly on PowerSchool and sometimes dip low enough to nearly make my heart stop! lol).

  3. Anything else me or my kid should do between now and March? I could make my kid send a letter of “continued interest” designating some recent, though not breath taking, accomplishments. For instance, my kid is likely to win a few local awards similar to those won in grades 9-11. For instance, my kid has again won a local, annual athletic award (but is not a recruited athlete) and has again participated in a local math contest (the team did not place) and this weekend will participate in a local science fair (won second place last year and may repeat similarly) and will write the AMC 12 math test in February (won the top award for kid’s high school last year but still did not score high on a state or national level and I would expect a similar result this year). So nice things to report but nothing particularly new. Should my kid send a letter spelling out these activities? When should this be sent? AMC 12 results won’t be out for a while … should we wait for those results which are likely to be excellent locally but no more … or should a letter be sent as early as next week in case admissions committees are meeting (and deciding) now that they have the semester 1 transcript?

Thanks for your advice!

2

Basically it is sit back and wait time. The college your child ultimately chooses to attend will ask for the final transcript (to insure no tremendous fall-off in grades, that the student graduated etc.).

Since the new accomplishments seem to mirror past accomplishments I don’t expect they will move the needle on admissions. So if your child decides to send a letter of continued interest, I’d keep it short and sweet (not more than a paragraph or so). Admissions officers are swamped right now and are not looking for lots more to read and the top schools will assume that students who applied are interested in attending.

3

@happy1, thanks for the feedback! I agree with your assessment and plan to ask my kid to proceed in this manner.