For those who applied ED and have received an acceptance, I am so happy for you. It must be an amazing feeling to have this process behind you. For those of you who applied EA and have received acceptances as DD20 did, this is also exciting, though our journey is not yet over as she has also applied RD. For those who will soon or already have your RD applications submitted, what are you doing/planning to do to distract yourself or keep your mind occupied for the next few months and to keep from obsessing/stressing about the outcome? For me, I’m relieved that DD20 can relax from the essays and editing and can have some down time to decompress during her break. On the other end I am having some anxiety as a middle class parent regarding financing this education. While I’m aware that stressing, obsessing, worrying etc will do no good and will not benefit or change the outcome, it’s not that easy for everyone to put the process on the back burner until March. I will probably start with that new Stephen King novel that I received for Christmas, the Bonefish Grill and Amex gift cards but could use more ideas. I’m practically an empty nester since DD20 will be going back to her prep school next week.
Oh gosh. Good luck. S19 applied to only one EA school and 12 schools RD so I remember how long winter was while waiting. While this may not be a helpful suggestion, I did spend a little time looking at last year’s threads to find the dates the RD decisions came out last year and wrote them on our college spreadsheet so we had a little bit of an idea which schools released on which dates. Helped us feel like we had more of a handle on it. The dates we got answers were very close to the dates from the prior year, most of them being on the same day like the second Friday in March or the first Sat in March, etc.
I also tried to find info on admitted student day dates for his RD schools so we could start to think about how we could get to some of these. Some overlapped. Some were on dates that conflicted with track meets for him. Seeing those dates in black and white also helped. We could start thinking about what if’s. Like, if he was accepted to the first two schools to get him an answer, did we start making plans to go to their admitted student days or wait for other decisions…and which decisions? It helped S19 put things in order a bit.
And then, yes, I tried to stay very busy. S19 was of course crazy busy at school with academics and ECs and I think I was counting the days more than he was. I will say that the couple of days before each decision was released was pretty stressful. In our case, he was getting a few every week in April. He did start feeling a bit immune to clicking on his updates I think. He just wanted it all to be over.
Luckily, he was accepted to one of his first choices in very early April so, while waiting for the rest was still stressful and we were crazy curious, he wasn’t as stressed out after that early April top choice answer came.
Good luck! Time will drag and it will go fast at the same time.
Thank you so much for the ideas. Because we are on the hunt for $$$ and the best FA package we applied to 17 schools. 5 EA and the remainder RD. I anticipate that she will be really busy with school, theater performances and dance. It’s me who needs to occupy time 
.
Awaiting to hear from Baylor and TCU for RA decisions… It is nerve-wracking. I have not seen any posts about these schools. I have heard its a “rolling” decision which I am assuming its on a first come, first serve basis. I am in the same boat except I have 2 younger children that will be going through this process! I hope it works out for you all.
“Distracting” ourselves was easy. For my son, he still had to keep up with his academic work without let up while he added more to his EC interests. Adding more to his already full EC activities meant more chauffeuring and other support work for me, so that kept me super busy. My son’s music and sports activities were mostly out of town events, so we were out a lot. Looking back, I don’t think we even had much leisurely time to think about the RD announcement of results. Time flew by.
DS20 finished his 9 RD applications with one EA deferral, No acceptances yet. He could see himself happy at any of the schools he applied to. We will be happy as long as he is.
Similar to @TiggerDad’s @homerdog’s DS, DS20 has a very busy spring term EC-wise. I only need to have the fingers-crossed that this yo-yo-winter season does not bring too much sickness to our area/school.
I am starting a new volunteer work with some weekly training, along with my other volunteer activities and a long list of books to read, I think I am covered.
I want time to slow down! And I want to enjoy this period with DS as much as possible.
We are still waiting for one EA decision and 2 RA decisions, with 6 EA acceptances in. I’m very curious and anxious to see what will happen with the last 3 schools, but I suspect that the ones D20 already got are going to be the most realistic for us financially.
We are awaiting one EA, one rolling, and two RD. We had a nice little flurry of activity pre-holiday, and now… crickets chirping.
@taverngirl - I hear the crickets too. Holiday was a blast having everyone home. Now that we are back to our empty nest with DD20 back at prep school I’m trying to get a life again but I can’t help but do the countdown to Feb 1 when the last EA decision comes in and then Feb 3 when the FA for one of the other EA’s come in…and so on.