Hello Everyone - it’s been several weeks since anyone posted on this thread.
Here is an issue that we are dealing with at our BS and maybe someone can offer advice, or maybe support (no snark please ). Is anyone else having difficulties getting teacher rec’s? So many of the teachers my kiddo’s teachers have left or retired. Also, 2 of them were teaching fellows and left - one said they would write a rec but have not heard back. Two teachers declined request because the courses were only 9 weeks last year and (although kid did well) didn’t know them well enough. One teacher politely declined because “I don’t get paid enough to do this s……”.
Here is what we are sensing (could be wrong, but this is how it feels): The teachers my kiddo had (except for one this year) were burned out and exhausted by the COVID situation on campus. It was just bad timing for CA to advise students to secure teacher recommendations at the end of a really tough year. It was our kiddo’s experience and also ours (from webinars/conversations) that a few teachers (as well as dorm parent) were resentful of the extra work they had to do this year. In the past there were one or two openly snarky and resentful teachers, but this year it seemed to have gone full tilt.
We, thankfully, have not had that experience. My kid asked two teachers back in May and both of whom said yes, and one has never met my kid because they were virtual last year.
What about asking your kid’s college counselor for a letter of rec? Or their advisor possibly?
I’m not entirely sure, but I think kiddo got commitments from teachers for recs last year. One of them has left the school, but I think she is still on board? His were pretty easy gets, though. He had both teachers as a 9th grader and then again in 11th grade. Plus the same advisor all this time. All very obvious choices. So the remote learning didn’t get in the way, fortunately.
Driving him to school this weekend. Sigh. We are officially in the home stretch.
After a very difficult and dispiriting college season, my daughter has decided to attend Syracuse. Don’t get me wrong - she is elated that Syracuse came through (at the very end); she was admitted to a highly selective program, into a major that she’s been dreaming about for years. But it was preceded by waitlists and rejections that we never would have expected from her large, varied, and sensible list of college apps - including a rejection by her in-state “safety”. This was an insanely challenging year for these covid kids. Two full years of remote classes and pass/fail grades and block schedules and compressed terms and the fallacy of test-optional colleges (IMHO) took a toll.
We are extremely proud of her and of all the class of 2022 for their perseverance. Go Orange!
Waiting until after an accepted student day and some deep thought before kiddo is going to decide. He has a few schools he is considering, but two are front runners. I have my fingers crossed for one of them. I am waiting to say anything until he has decided. He has been very private about this process, and I am trying to respect that. It is soooooo hard, though!
It has been a weird, and surprising/rough application year. There is a lot of disappointment out there, and we have dealt with some ourselves. At the end of it all, I am pretty happy with the options - and none are Ivies, Stanford, MIT - but they are excellent for him. Funny looking back - he started with almost no super elites on his list, then some snuck on somewhere along the line, and he ended up with acceptances that look a lot like where we started.
It seems really obvious to me. Like really really obvious. One school is close to perfect and has been on the short list since the beginning. The other is a late comer and will give him great opportunities and allow him some freedom that he craves. But it isn’t as perfect - though comes with enticing merit.
Funny - when he was home for spring break I insisted we talk about expectations of how much input we would have. Glad we did. His response was “none?” I told him that was the wrong answer. He wanted to know why I thought we would have any say at all. Uh, we are paying for it, Kiddo. “Oh, right, that is true…”. This is the down side of BS teaching him to make his own decisions, I guess? Fortunately all of the schools he applied to are ones we would be ok with. It is just that one obviously fits better than the rest.
We had to convince our son that it was okay to choose any school regardless of cost because we had saved for that purpose and he should just go with academic and social fit. He was struggling because he felt compelled to pick the cheapest (or at the very least, not the most expensive) option because he felt guilty knowing there were cheaper options. In the end, he accepted that we meant what we said and he attended the more expensive school (and is graduating in June!!!).
). Is anyone else having difficulties getting teacher rec’s? So many of the teachers my kiddo’s teachers have left or retired. Also, 2 of them were teaching fellows and left - one said they would write a rec but have not heard back. Two teachers declined request because the courses were only 9 weeks last year and (although kid did well) didn’t know them well enough. One teacher politely declined because “I don’t get paid enough to do this s……”.
I told him that was the wrong answer. He wanted to know why I thought we would have any say at all. Uh, we are paying for it, Kiddo. “Oh, right, that is true…”. This is the down side of BS teaching him to make his own decisions, I guess? Fortunately all of the schools he applied to are ones we would be ok with. It is just that one obviously fits better than the rest.
(but is oh so hard to walk away from all that 
)