This waiting for Thornton is killllling me!!!
Now I have to admit my situation is somewhat different. I was admitted to USC last year as a non music major, chose to defer admission, and am trying to transfer to thornton. In other words, I will be actually recieveing an admit pachage from USC no matter what, but I rely wish I knew if I got into Thornton or not!!!
And by the way my previous post was the 3000’th on this thread ?!
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@Lyoder2051, based on your posts to date, I like your chances and look forward to hearing where you end up!
@lkbux64 I thought they werent to bad either…until I learned thornton is only admitting 6 piano undegrads this year (usually 12)!
For those on green circle/Miami watch - the thread indicates that last year’s wave came out at 6 pm (that schools are trying to go live later in the day when students are out of school). My S is at rehearsal for the school musical - hopefully oblivious! (Edit - now someone said they called and admissions indicated it would be the end of the month. Oh my goodness.)
The spawn left for San Diego for a Jazz Festival so no college news till he gets back Sunday. Not hearing a lot about the fabled green dot since @WestOfPCH got one last night. My operating theory is that they put a green dot on the files that are being reviewed by the main Admissions group (even if they call it ‘application complete’), and then the decisions get noted as as the batches get finalized.
…I’m just killing time with random analysis since no work is going to get done.
@leejay22 people called admissions at Frost last year and got the same answer right before the portals updated an hour later… don’t fret. It will be end of day tomorrow at the latest and my money is still on portals updating tonight. My crystal ball has been out of the shop and in working order recently. SO I expect it’s still good! Haha! 
@khill87 - Thanks for the good advice about follow up after declining offers. D already knows she will need to send personal notes. (She sent one this week to a school that wasn’t her top choice, and that was hard enough.) Hadn’t thought about intentional follow up later on though. Not the kind of thing that introverts come up with on their own. 
Also, I read back over last year’s thread for late March and April, and there were also some helpful posts there.
@AmyIzzy - that is amazing news from CalArts!!! Wowser. I’d say that is very exciting stuff! Our very picky pants daughter has a friend there and she said it’s too far from LA - which is ridiculous. It’s only 45 minutes away! I’ve heard wonderful things about it. I had a long online discussion with a bassist who goes there - I can dig out that conversation if you decide she’s interested.
@dsinha - you aren’t stalking your spawns’ email? I got so tired of my spawns missing important college emails so a few weeks ago I got their email log in info which they gladly gave to me. Still can’t believe that my daughter saw an admit before I did yesterday 
I think everyone is doing pretty well with the Frost and the USC results coming tomorrow. We have none expected this weekend but look forward to hearing all the news!!!
@SpartanDrew - what date did the New School notify you last year?
@tripletmama So we found out on the Monday after Frost. Others in Cali didn’t find out for a couple days after that so early next week is my guess.
The College of Saint Rose sent a letter that there was a change in our financial aid award. At first I thought it might be lowered (we didn’t get much to begin with) but it was an additional $2000. Now she is actually pretty close to full tuition there. That was welcome news and I wasn’t aware that adjustments like that are made sometimes. It helped with the “green circle blues” I was suffering. Lol. My daughter still hasn’t received the CalArts phone call but hopefully tonight or sometime tomorrow. She is very excited!
Can any of the pros help me with what to expect from Stage 2 of this process after all decisions and financial offers are in? I’m sure my daughter will have a million questions for schools as she is deciding. I think she has a designated admissions counselor at each school. Would she just call or email them? Were most schools good about staffing enough people to handle the general or financial calls? Were you on hold for hours? For those who successfully lobbied for an appeal, does any of that have to be done in person? I heard that students should write the appeal letter but parents should follow up? Is that correct?
Really looking forward to the action tomorrow. Hope it’s good news for all!
Since most of S’s offers are in, his dad and I are having a meeting with him over the weekend to hear his current thoughts and to share ours. This may be the first of several such discussions. We’ll find out if he wants to attend accepted student days, get his current priority list, and figure out which schools are no longer on the table so he can contact them next week. I’m hoping he knows his first choice, or perhaps first and second choices, but I’m actually not sure what he’s thinking. It’s exciting but nerve wracking to have so many good options!
@AmyIzzy what an awesome story!
As we are all on the brink of getting those final decisions over the next week or so, I wanted to express my gratitude for the support of this community. I have learned so much from all of you and am grateful that I found this group early enough in the game to guide my son through the logistics of the audition process. I have enjoyed hearing of everyone’s successes and have felt the sting when things didn’t go the way that “our” kids had hoped. I wish all of you good luck and am looking forward to this thread blowing up with good news over the next 24-48 hours!
What @lkbux64 said! I’ve got my happy dance shoes on and I’m ready to jump for joy as your amazing kids start their victory laps. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to travel this road with all of you. May our kids find communities as supportive as this one!
As we deal with green dots from Frost and wait and hope for big white boxes from Thornton, here’s a new development from a different school . . .
Ever since S finished his live audition at NYU a few weeks ago, all of the line-items (e.g. High School Transcripts, Standardized Testing, Steinhardt Artistic Review) showed a green check next to the word “Received” . . . until I checked S’s NYU portal 10 minutes ago because, um, parental college curiosity obsessive compulsive disorder (look it up, it’s a real thing).
Anyways . . . my constant browser refreshing revealed that the “Standardized Testing” line-item was changed to a grey check with the word “Waived” next to it. . . . Curiouser and curiouser.
We submitted all of S’s test scores – 32 ACT, all five of his APs so far (two 5s and three 4s) – which had been listed as received until this recent change. So I double checked the NYU website and these are their testing requirements (cut and pasted below to be thorough):
"NYU has one of the most flexible testing policies of any college or university. To be eligible for admission, you must submit ONE of the following:
- SAT; or
- ACT; or
- International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma; or
- Three (3) SAT Subject Test scores; or
- Three (3) AP Exam scores; or
- Three (3) IB higher-level exam scores if not an IB Diploma candidate; or
- Other international examinations that show you completed, or if submitting predicted results show you will complete, your secondary education. You can use our International Qualifications Tool for information about credentials we accept from the country in which you are enrolled in secondary school
Applicants to programs in our Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and our Tisch School of the Arts requiring an audition or portfolio are not required to submit standardized testing for consideration and doing so is entirely optional."
Sooooooo . . . the new waiver is either completely meaningless or is a good thing, right? Can’t be a bad thing, because if the Steinhardt folks didn’t want him, why bother changing the status; just reject him and be done with it, right?
Anyone else seeing something similar?
Does anyone know if there are certain instruments that take longer to send out notifications? Seems so strange that we haven’t heard from two schools while others have.
As we continue to wait, I found the funniest show on Netflix. In case anyone needs a distraction, It’s called the Derry Girls. It’s a laugh out loud Irish comedy.
Congrats to all on the new offers and more scholarship money. Woo Hoo!
Well, I don’t want to stir your already nervous mind but I do have something to share about the white boxes. My son applied to Thornton last year as a high school junior but was not accepted. This was my observation about the white boxes from last year.
@pdxtigermom Yes, you nailed it. Thorton has its own admission process which I would think the Thorton applicants would be aware of. You are obviously on it. They are the only ones that were tracked because they are sent out separately from the 60,000+ other regular admissions that could not be tracked. On here it was two people of the thousands of posts that said they could see it. A couple posts just stirred it up for hundreds on here and these kids were confused all day playing with usps and getting stressed about packages that could not be tracked. Anyone could call USC admissions and they would tell you they cannot be tracked and many many posters said that.
So, @pdxtigermom, you are saying that Thornton acceptance packages are tracked and viewable on USPS Informed Delivery?
And this is from a veteran USC parent from last year,
Thornton School of Music handles their acceptance notification separately and sent some packages independently (an insider confirmed this). Apparently only two people of the many thousands of posts on cc mentioned that they received a package and were able to see their packages in USPS, and it was because they were from Thornton. (Very few admits, small program). No other acceptances saw the package in USPS because USC did not enable tracking. However the rejection letter, which is a standard white envelope, was scanned in certain places but not everywhere.
USPS Informed Delivery is a new program just started in 2017 last year, so it had no impact on decisions last year. This year we see that 99.9% of the packages were trackable, but letters may or may not be. Who knows what will happen next year.
Internationals and DHL - you cannot inquire. The one guy got lucky from Turkey this morning. At our house, we know our DHL guy well, and in a pretend scenario, I know I could ask him to look up in bound packages, but you can’t just call DHL without a tracking number.
Frankly this post is sorta a note to self for next year.
(Thanks @pdxtigermom for catching the Thornton thing.)