<p>Congratulations to your son, Snowflake! I love to hear this type of thing when we are all waiting anxiously for college responses. Gives me hope my D might get one of her reaches.</p>
<p>Yay snowflake! My best friend is a St Lawrence alum and her D is looking very closely at it - ironically also UVM. I drove through St L campus last summer and thought it was beautiful.</p>
<p>WOOT! WOOT! That’s great Snowflake… when I first read your post I was in a panic because my S also appled to St Lawrence and I thought the RD acceptances were out… I then realized that your S applied ED… I guess my S will have to wait a bit longer :-((… I am hoping he gets one of those leadership scholarships as well… my S is also an Eagle Scout and has tons of leadership in scouting… 1500 CS hr… here’s hoping. My S has never visited so would love to hear what your S loves about it… I know our boys share a few of the same schools so they must be similar:-))</p>
<p>Yay for Snowflake! Love to hear good news. Congrats!</p>
<p>Small correction – when I arrived home from work I read the merit aid, and it was Presidential Achievement, not the Leadership. I don’t know if they gave him the Presidential Achievement instead of the Leadership, but we celebrated just the same. He even let me post his acceptance news on my facebook so I could make sure the relatives could share in the good news. </p>
<p>Now I am done with this part of the process, but I will be happily reading your S and D acceptances in the next month and I can’t wait!</p>
<p>5boys, I hope your son gets in! My S knows another Eagle that applied RD … they are not from the same troop but know each other from summer scouting events. Your son sounds so strong. We are only 1 state away so my S interviewed on campus (plus an alum interviewed him locally). I did not go but my H and S traveled to Canton. Both raved about the beauty of the campus, very tidy and well maintained. My H observed that the students seemed very approachable and well spoken; of course, being boys traveling together, they also made jokes that the girls at SLU were better looking than the girls at another school they had visited. They also had lunch with a guy that had gone to our HS, so they got to ask questions about he teachers as well. The best comment that the student we know told my S was that the teachers at SLU were all like their favorite teacher at our HS, so that was the straw that pushed my son into ED versus RD.</p>
<p>That sounds GREAT SF!!! I am keeping my fingers crossed for my S and will keep you posted… I am hoping by the middle of next month he should hear something.</p>
<p>I’m happy to read about all the acceptances here! My DD (a junior) has scratched her way up to a 3.4w GPA with an academically challenging courseload. She’s not a great test taker - on her first SAT attempt she scored 470m, 540cr, and 500w (total 1510). She has come up with some great schools that I think will be a good match for her record, and some are test optional. DePaul is her number one choice. </p>
<p>Now I’m getting really concerned about money - they are all private schools. She is eligible for tuition exchange (for children of college employees), but that is competitive and treated as a merit scholarship, just with a small pool of eligible candidates. So, please reassure me and let me know what types of merit aid awards your kids are getting at private schools.</p>
<p>mamaduck there’s a nice thread about colleges with good merit aid here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/52133-schools-known-good-merit-aid.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/52133-schools-known-good-merit-aid.html</a></p>
<p>and a nice article about financial aid strategies with privates here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1293298-real-deal-financial-aid.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1293298-real-deal-financial-aid.html</a></p>
<p>I misposted this in the 2013 thread so I am reposting here…</p>
<p>I am having some last minute anxiety regarding the schools my D has applied to. She only applied to 6 and not one of them is truly a perfect fit. Each one has an aspect that makes me uncomfortable. So far she has been accepted to the 2 safeties so we know she can go away this fall but neither one is without flaws. The 4 we are waiting on are reaches and even those are not without a downside. I started looking for schools that are still accepting applications and when I mentioned it to my D she told me to “just stop”. Is it unreasonable to expect a perfect fit?</p>
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<p>Your D sounds like my S :)</p>
<p>I don’t think there is a one-and-only perfect fit. If D is happy with the options she has, then I’d call it good (and in fact have, with my S). Do I wish he’d applied to a couple of schools that he didn’t? Yes. But it wasn’t my call and I have had to accept that it still isn’t.</p>
<p>Thank you for that. I guess I just keep hearing kids talking about their “dream school” and D never really had that attitude. She won’t even discuss the schools she has applied to until she knows exactly what her choices will be. She didn’t want to go further than a 6 hour drive from home and she didn’t want a small LAC so that narrowed down her options here in SoCal. I guess I will just have to let it be and let her figure it out.</p>
<p>S is the SAME. He has a 2-3 favorites among the ones he applied to, but he doesn’t seem interested in falling in love until all the accepts and FA letters are in. Thank goodness for that, actually, because if he fell in love with an unaffordable choice we’d have a big problem.</p>
<p>It may be that your D doesn’t want to be disappointed so is saving her enthusiasm for when she knows she can do that without the risk.</p>
<p>Snowflake, CONGRATULATIONS! I am also hoping my D will decide to apply ED ('13), so your post is especially inspirational. We are visiting schools like crazy to see if there is a clear ED school next fall…</p>
<p>love hearing this update 
(and with a merit award too!)</p>
<p>Thanks, jkiwmom. Ping me next fall and I’ll let you know how my S is doing.</p>
<p>Samsmomo - I know I wrote that SLU was my son’s ‘dream’ school, and right now it is, but he didn’t really let us know how badly he wanted it until he decided to flip his application to ED in January, and then he really let his happiness and relief show once he was in for sure. If your D is like my D, now a Jr in college, she won’t show where she really stands until she knows her accept options, and then a ‘dream’ school will emerge in terms of what really grabs her about a college. If the worst happens and she has to choose only between her 2 safeties, I wouldn’t be surprised if she realizes all the features that her safeties have that will make her college experience just right. But for now, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you and her on the 4 remaining colleges.</p>
<p>samsmomo: </p>
<p>My D1 had a “dream school.” It fit her excellently in so many criteria. She also just had a gut feeling of true love for it. She did go there - and she still feels it was right for her. BUT there were always details that weren’t so perfect. And it cost a lot, which she sometimes regrets. She also is a very practical person, so if you ask her about what was good or bad about her school, she’ll tell you that she decided from the get-go that she was going to make it work, no matter what. She knew the good outweighed anything that was a disappointment.</p>
<p>My D2 had a dream school, too. Unfortunately she was rejected. I was relieved - I think there were lots of things about it that she didn’t understand could be problems once she was there. And it was very costly, too. The rest of her schools all had something that wasn’t quite on her “dream” list. And at the school she is attending, it was hard for her to get over the big deficit in what she wanted, at first. She isn’t quite as practical as D1, much more idealistic, and she was frustrated that she couldn’t “get it all” at the perfect school. Now she’s in her second semester, and she’s plenty happy. She won’t say that the deficits went away, but she will say she has found how to get past them, and all of the other great things that make up for anything that isn’t “perfect.” </p>
<p>Any kid, any school, anywhere - reality will intersect the dream eventually. You just never know. Sometimes they just have to learn how to make the equation work, and for some kids that is quicker and easier than for others. I believe that if D1 had had to go to a school where she “compromised,” she just would have jumped in and decided it was her dream school after all. And if D2 had gotten into her dream school, she easily could have been as unhappy there, or even unhappier, than she was as she adjusted to her “compromise.”</p>
<p>We all like to dream, and teenagers especially. In the end, it’s just 4 more years of life, with ups and downs. And it’s over before you know it. It’ll be OK - we’re all in there with you.</p>
<p>Thank you for this thread. I have been reading the posts and my S is like so many others here, very bright but an underachiever in HS. He had a 2.94 GPA at end of Junior year and 2100 SATs for his college applications. He has ADD and has been taking meds since 2nd grade. He generally did well in tests but would lose points for late assignments etc. He took the hardest course work and I think learned more than his grades indicated. Had 5’s in two AP exams last year. He was accepted at Pitt, Temple, and University of South Carolina. He has really pulled it together this year. Had a 3.85 first qtr and a 4.0 second qtr! This is really making him feel good about himself and he’s getting quite ambitious. I pray it continues into college…</p>
<p>Keep the faith everyone!</p>
<p>Pittpride
Thanks! It is always reassuring to read success stories.</p>
<p>Thanks Emmy and Snowflake for your comments/advice. I think D may be holding back her emotions until she sees the options. She realizes that she has limited her choices by her geographical preferences so there may have been the perfect fit out there that she just wasn’t willing to consider. Like Emmy’s D1 my D is very practical and hopefully will see the pluses in her choice rather than thinking about the minuses. Emmy, I love your comment about adjusting to the compromise! Oh, this too shall pass.</p>
<p>In a general sense, I think kids whittle their college list according to individual preferences - location, size, cost, majors, ease of travel, facilities (like arts or recreation), ECs (like music or sports), food, etc., etc. Somehow they figure out other concerns that are harder to measure - what kind of kids are there, what the “culture” is, religious resources, etc.</p>
<p>I think it’s pretty common for kids to come up with 3-5 really important characteristics, and they usually can come up with a list where all of the schools fit those pretty well. The others will end up having to be negotiable - or just dropped. When they are weighing their choices in the spring, they find out how important those characteristics really are - and sometimes their preferences become, or have become, very different.</p>
<p>Then once they get to school, they have to face the aspects that maybe were on the less preferred side of the scale. We hear constantly about how “everyone” is perfectly happy at their school - but usually that comes out of a long process of figuring out what they need, how to get it, and what to do if they don’t. And sometimes the deliriously happy kids we all hear about, at their “perfect” school, have a big letdown when reality hits. Maybe it’s better for some of them if reality would hit a little earlier in the process.</p>