Thanks @Sarrip and @ProfSD . I have two more in the school pipeline and I’m helping other students through the college search and application process as situations arise. It’s always helpful to have extra information like this for specific colleges.
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@EconPop Sent you a detailed PM about Lafayette.
One piece of information that others might be interested in: The Black students at Lafayette graduate at the same rate (or just slightly lower) than their white peers. The students we talked to all commented on how supported they feel by the admins and professors there.
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@ProfSD could you send me your thoughts on Lafayette as well? My next daughter is interested in primarily SLACs but is concerned with whether there will be a large enough presence on campuses of students of color so that she will not feel out of place (at the PWIs that she is currently interested in).
Right now, our children attend a high school that has fairly good diversity (60% students of color - largest cohort being East Asian and South East Asian, Black making up 8% and Latinos being about 4%, 40% white students), but there is often the case where there are many fewer students of color in the honors/AP classes that the regular College prep courses. I know it will be hard to get the level of diversity we currently have, outside some schools in California and Texas neither state of which my children are interested in attending, and it wasn’t an issue with my oldest daughter’s college list. But my next one is much more aware of this than my oldest so it is on my mind. Thanks!
Hello. I’m another 2020 poster and have a 2022 grad, so trying to stay in the loop. Happy to help and chime in as needed. But you can’t go wrong with the 2020 posters who have replied so far. They helped me tremendously. All the best Class of 2021. You got this.
Hope you don’t mind me dropping in here. I followed the class of 2020 thread from time to time and thought I’d say hello here since there have been few posters thus far. Strength in numbers, right? 
I have a hard time keeping up with the pace of many of the threads on CC, but hopefully now that it’s crunch time I’ll be around a lot more. D21, our oldest, is focused almost entirely on SLACs. We live in Silicon Valley and she’s eager to get out of the area and explore, which is a good thing since there are so few SLACs here in California. She does have Pomona on her list, but other than that, it’s a long list of east coast institutions. Her father and I are graduates of a NESCAC school, and she has several of those on her list, including our alma mater. We are currently struggling with how long her final list should be, given concerns about the many kids who are taking gap years this year and thus will be members of the class of 2025. Her counselor is encouraging a slightly longer list than in previous years. Anyone grappled with that yet? Unfortunately, we only had time to visit 3 schools before the pandemic lockdown hit, and as luck would have it, she ruled out all 3 schools. So, with the exception of the school my husband and I attended, she hasn’t visited a single school on her list (well, actually, she has one non-SLAC on the list, Santa Clara, which is local for us, and she’s been there several times). Ugh, this should be interesting. We are fortunate that she does have an ACT score that she’ll be submitting. Hoping that everyone who would like to take the ACT or SAT this fall has a chance to do so! @ProfSD I’d be curious to hear your thoughts about SLACs. Curious to hear how things may have changed since my time at one. And @EGHopeful my D21 is also at a small Bay Area all-girls Catholic school. Who knows, they could be classmates!
@goldenstatecat Welcome!!! I thought this board would never get any more Class of 21’s here so I actually moved on to others. Well if you are in Silicon Valley, nope, our girls do not attend school together. However, being born and raised in San Francisco I do wish she was closer to home. We are north of the Bay Area. I have family in San Jose so I know many of the privates and top publics in the area. People laughed when I started having D21 look at colleges early in her HS journey. Actually her public MS took them to visit colleges starting in 7th grade (the two northern UCs and a few CSUs). She hated all of them. So none are on her list. Our school district is pretty good but she wanted All Girls and is thriving even though it’s PW. She attended a week long college tour with her school to visit colleges on the East Coast.
From Penn\JHU\Georgetown up to the NY area. They visited 10 schools in all. She found her top\Reach during that visit which was great since I had ZERO influence. She attended with her friends, one of the guidance counselors and an English teacher. Which I thought was a perfect little group. Since school started, she has had a few virtual 1:1 with her college counselor. She does have a list of about 10 with a few Reaches/Meets & about 2 ‘Yes/Yes/Yes’ (Yes you can get in - Yes you can afford it - Yes you love it and can see yourself there). The girls are not allowed to call them Safeties they have to call them YES YES YES’s… It’s their counselors, they told them no one want to be someone’s safety. We also visited all the schools from our location down to Santa Clara. Spring break was supposed to be So. Calif visits but we all know what happened there. Funny, Pomona & Harvey Mudd are on her list. She was accepted into the FAST program for HM. Did your D21 apply for the Pomona Fly-In. D21 fell in love with Pomona as well after last weeks Open House. It was very impressive. She’s also applying to 1 other Fly-In. Regarding SAT/ACTs she was scheduled for March, June then Aug all cancelled so now Oct. We will see what happens. Well I’m very excited we have a tiny group of us… lets ride this rollercoaster together!!
Thanks for the welcome, @EGHopeful ! I’m surprised there aren’t more of us here, but I suppose we’ll see what happens as the year gets underway. Alas, yes, we’re down in SV, so no small-world same school stories here. Your D21 is fortunate to have had an opportunity to visit so many schools. Ours is really frustrated by the lack of in-person experience. Like everyone else, we had no idea how sideways everything was going to go! I’m really wishing we had taken some trips last year. It just seemed so early when she was a sophomore. We’ll definitely be doing things differently with her younger brother, although he’s a totally different story who will likely be running the athletic recruiting gauntlet (and it goes without saying that hopefully there won’t be a pandemic then!).
She didn’t apply for the fly-in program at Pomona—I can’t recall why, or maybe I never knew. I think she’s planning to apply to one on the east coast. She’s been working a lot with her counselor this summer and I am trying to stay out of it, since they seem to have everything well in hand. My husband and I are very involved with our alma mater and we don’t want to say anything that might make her think we’re trying to influence her in that direction. It’s a delicate balance. She’s been in all-girls’ schools since middle school and for a long time was absolutely adamant that she would not be repeating that for college. Interestingly, she has a couple of women’s colleges on her list now. It will be very interesting to see how it all shakes out. She swears she doesn’t have any top choices. I just hope that’s true, since things are likely to be pretty weird this admissions cycle.
Looking forward to the roller coaster and glad to have at least a few friendly folks along for the ride!
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Our tiny thread is so quiet. Oh well.
Hope everyone is doing well and the application process isn’t too stressful to anyone. FAFSA opens soon. yay
Has anyone applied to any of the Diversity Fly-In programs? Unfortunately they are all virtual this year. My daughter applied to 2 (Harvey Mudd & JHU) and was accepted at both. I’ll assume they are much easier to get into since there is no financial component for the colleges. We sat in on a Fly-In Virtual session put on by Greenlight with over 20 colleges, she only attended 2 of them (3 colleges in each session) since she was only really interested JHU was the only one that mentioned they will limit the second component of their HOME Fly-In program that was created this year called +Impact which is held the following weekend. The good thing about applying to JHU is that the essay is exactly the same as the one for Admissions. So she is done with that entire application.
Hopefully this thread will get more vibrant
Just dropping in to say “Hi!” I have a son graduating in the spring and I’m new to CC. I also have a son in the MPA program at UT, but I guess I didn’t really know about CC back in 2017. My senior is looking for a large university - he has several Big 10 schools on his list. He’s mostly grown up in Texas, so he can’t imagine going to a school that isn’t BIG into football. He wants to major in mechanical engineering. He’s already gotten into the engineering program at 3 safeties, so he’s happy about that, but now the long wait to hear from his top choices. He’s pretty lackadaisical about the whole college application process, so I’m constantly nagging him to get stuff done - now mostly doing zooms and virtual tours at the various school or going to the virtual chats with admissions officers at his school. My oldest was much more self-motivated. The nagging worked for the most part - he had all of his applications in by end of August (with the exception of the ones that didn’t open until September.) He’s still thinking about applying to a CA school when the app opens. He’s somewhat concerned about it with all of the fires raging right now.
It looks like most of the kids on here now are applying to SLACs, but hopefully there’ll be some more big school folks joining. Hoping this thread will pick up, too. Talking to other parents might keep me from incessantly checking the portals KNOWING that there won’t be anything there. LOL!
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Welcome @kim1118 First off, Congratulations to your son for his 3 acceptances! Your family must be thrilled and can at least breath knowing… He’s Going To College! And Mechanical Engineering, YES, we need more diversity in the STEM fields. We are in California and I know where all the fires are currently, as I live in Northern Calif. and I can tell you not one of the larger UCs are currently in harms way. I live pretty close to one and about 70mi from another. D21 will be applying to 3 So Calif UCs which are large colleges and one is a big football school. She does not like the location or campuses of the 3 No. Calif. schools.
She also thinking of applying to 2 SLAC if she doesn’t get into her top choice during the early round. She actually has a nice mix of sizes. For her it’s programming, location and feel. She doesn’t like any of the Northern UCs or CSUs and her focus is on Physics or Biophysics. It keeps changing but she has narrowed those choices down for application.
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@EGHopeful Thanks for the welcome! I appreciate you putting the CA situation in perspective. I’ll share with my son. Great to see that your daughter is interested in STEM, as well! Love her choices --there’s definitely a shortage of African-American women in the Physics fields and I don’t think she could go wrong with either.
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Hello out there! Just reaching out to see how everyone is doing and are your S’s & D’s keeping sane during the application cycle. Lots of acceptance on the FB page I follow as well as the normal class of 2021. Nothing here
Well D FINALLY got two applications in. She decided to ED to her top choice (actually, if it were up to her she would only apply to this 1 school) and was supposed to EA to another but thought she wasn’t allowed to and hit submit before she told me. Oh well, luckily it’s a rolling admissions app and they were BOTH free due to a waiver for the ED school and free for the rolling.
Now to wait just over a week for the UC & CSU applications to open. Those should be pretty simple since we are instate and her essay is done for the UC and there are none for the CSUs.
Well hopefully we get some traction on this page.
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Hello! I’m new to posting on cc and discovered this thread after scrolling thru the 2020 class. I have a DS21 and we’re trying our best to navigate the college application process. Whew! So far he’s applied to 1 ED and 7 EAs, then 5 RDs to complete during winter break. This is a beast! So funny how that college list changes from freshman year, to junior year, then application time, lol!
Hope everyone else is having (or has had) a successful application season!
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Welcome @lifewithcharlie. I thought this poor thread was going to collect dust. I’m so happy you found us.
Sounds like your DS has a great number of ED/EA/RD which is smart. My daughter missed any EA’s but she did do 1 ED, 1 Rolling (already accepted) and has completed 5 RDs and will do the remaining 3-4 RDs if the ED doesn’t pan out. And yes, it’s amazing how things change over time. Before, she was NOT leaving California with all our wonderful weather and location to mom, now her top choice is on the East Coast after visiting with her school/friends prior to 11th grade. I’m glad she was able to visit over 10 schools on the East prior to COVID and without my input so that was nice. Out of 10 schools only 1 made the Yes I will Apply list. I did question her on why she made the decision and her responses were pretty sound. I was very proud of her. And she did a lot of research following up after her visit, attended MANY virtual session & applied to their FlyIn. So I felt after all that (and running the NPC) applying ED was an OK option for her.
Thanks for joining and I’m rooting for a successful application season for all.
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Hi @lifewithcharlie , welcome to this great little thread. This is usually a smaller but close-knit group of parents (and sometimes students) helping each other through the college application process and beyond. I think that the migration to the new forum software has sort of stifled participation for the present because the threads don’t “pop up” as they used to.
I went through this process with my S20 last year and still check in on last year’s thread as well as this year’s thread. S20 did a lot of apps, including ED and EDII, a lot of EAs and RDs. It’s funny looking back a year later and not being inside the hurricane of activity for the first time. Hopefully, it will be a more controlled hurricane for D24 and D26.
What are your son’s most hoped for choices?
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Well now that the complete shock has somewhat subsided, glad to share D21 was accepted to her ED school. And she was ALSO accepted into their BME program which was not at all expected considering it’s ranking. I’m so proud of her. Well we are done, no more essays to write and to start thinking about her next chapter. I hope everyone hears good news soon!
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Hello everyone,
I’ve been a lurker on CC for many years but never posted.
My son is finally finished with the application process. He applied to several schools including College of Wooster, Bates, Colgate, Skidmore, and Case Western.
So far he has been admitted to Hofstra, Michigan State (Honors College), University of Tampa (Honors College), and University of Dayton. He has gotten nice merit offers, but we are hopeful he gets into one of his reaches.
My son is a highly motivated student. High GPA, 7 APs/all honors, decent extra curriculars including 4 years in the performing arts department (lead roles in the high school musical, chamber choir, jr musical intern as well as a couple of years playing the bass and in marching band)
He is also in National Honor Society, FBLA, and works part time at Chick Fila.
His ACT score is the issue. Particularly the math and science sections. He scored well on the English and Reading. He did go test optional for most of the reach schools so we shall see.
His recs are strong and I think his essays were really well done. Now the wait.
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Just got accepted to Columbia Class of 2025!
Any other black Columbia class of '25 students feel free to message me
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Congratulations!
My son was admitted to Fordham Rose Hill Gabelli School of Business today. He is so excited.
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