@bayareamom2016 thats awesome!!! Just followed her in Instagram haha 
Sure we will both have a great time!!! and huge congrats to her for getting in!!!
@Music2023, @DrummerDad18, @jazzboydad and many others with recent final decisions. Congratulations!!!
Amazing futures await our children and I for one can’t wait to see all that they will do with these opportunities they have worked so hard for. Wishing you all a wonderful month of May and happy graduation celebrations ahead.
Congratulations to @Music2023, @DrummerDad18, @jazzboydad and any other recent deciders I may have missed! Feeling so excited for you all and anxiously awaiting the final few!
@DrummerDad18 I was honored to be on this roller coaster ride with you, especially in these final UNPREDICTABLE weeks! It was a crazy ride but, with a final decision in the bag and your very happy daughter, we can say it was worth all the ups and downs and was quite the exhilarating ending! I am also wondering how we will spend our time going forward. Looking forward to less drama, reduced stress and some breathing room, but thinking we may miss certain parts of this insane journey as we advance to the next chapters. I hope we all keep posting here to share the college prep stories, move-in adventures and updates of the college experience. This forum has produced a tight kinship and this is certainly no time to say goodbye to that! In other words, don’t leave me guys!
My daughter proudly wore her Loyola sweatshirt to school today (they have a special senior breakfast to show them off) and I still can’t believe how everything came together so perfectly in the end, including her heartfelt enthusiasm (knowing this was “the one”) and the great appeal results to seal the deal! I can’t express enough how grateful I am for all your support and advice along the way. I’m not even sure Loyola would have been on the list if it wasn’t for my research within CC so beyond indebted for that. Love this community so much!
@Music2023 congratulations on that wonderful result! Yay for two bumped awards! Best of luck to your son. Go Blue!
@PercussionMama These are two critical pieces of advice I hadn’t heard before – first, about the academic priority deadlines, and second, about the idea that the application would be “phased” and you’d have to complete one portion before even opening another. Thank you! (D isn’t going to be an academic standout at the most academically selective schools, but she will definitely be eligible for academic scholarships at many places and that’s a critical piece of our financial plan!)
Thank you everyone else who has been responding about EA – great info all around!
Finally had a chance to catch up (after dropping S off at his high school’s commitment day proudly wearing his Eastman t-shirt) and I am bubbling with happiness for all of you. @Music2023, @DrummerDad18, @jazzboydad, @Compojazzmom, @MomOD4, @AmyIzzy and all the other new logos – just, wow. Just as @SpartanDrew, @bridgenail, @diglass, @GoForth and so many other journeyers told us, our kids have made it through the wilderness of auditions, travel, forgetting their shoes (the prize for best one-sentence description of the whole experience goes to @Music2023, hilarious!) and found new homes where they will grow and thrive. And we can bask in the glow of their excitement while we cheer on the newbies, and oh yeah, go back to our own neglected lives!
For those at the very end (lookin’ at you, @meltedbutter), I’m sending positive vibes for a decision that will be even sweeter for being so hard won. And for those just beginning, keep those questions coming!
Cheers to all of your great kids on decision day today!! And hoping for great outcomes quickly for @meltedbutter!! Changing my logo again today in solidarity with you all and to bring some love to The New School haha!
@khill87, don’t have a lot to add on the EA front. As others have noted, the deadlines for prescreens and EA (non prescreen) auditions are within days of each other, so it wasn’t hard for S to be ready. He chose two options: one non-audition program at our state flagship (not technically EA but rolling admissions – this was to have a school we knew we could afford even without merit or academic aid) and one middle-of-the-pack school. The theory behind the second option was that, if he got admitted, he could drop any schools below it on the list from his already packed audition schedule. As it turns out, he only dropped one school as a result of this decision (he wanted to drop two, and I should have let him, but I was feeling especially nervous at that point). So both served their purpose.
Another general observation: whether you do EA or not, you will want to get applications and prescreens in on the early side. Most of our kids are super busy during the school year – AP/IB classes, state and regional ensembles, marching band (S was a section head, oy!), and so on. We did application essays in the late spring and summer (basically when school was out but before he left for summer programs) and submitted the common app within a few weeks after it opened on August 1, and we were REALLY glad we did. As someone else pointed out, some essays don’t appear until after your application is filed, and some schools have one set of requirements for the prescreens and a second set for the auditions! So we were somewhat better equipped to handle these obstacles when they cropped up.
Good luck!!
@khill87 I am happy to answer your questions below and always reach out if you have more!
- How do you feel having an early admit changed the process, for better or worse? Was it worth the scramble to get the apps in early? Did you feel your admissions or scholarship offers were enhanced by applying early?
I am SO glad we did EA at Loyola University (November) College of Saint Rose (November) and Berklee (December.) We also did an early audition-her very first audition-in late October by request at Roosevelt CCPA (she planned a shadow day and they let her do the audition in conjunction with that and videotaped it to view during the normal review process.) Columbia College was a portfolio submission but with rolling admissions so she also treated that was as an EA, submitting everything in early October. She tends to be a procrastinator so this forced her to get paperwork in early and do some early audition prep. We had 4 solid offers before Christmas which was great. Three (Columbia, Loyola and St. Rose) were safety choices but getting into Berklee (and with a decent scholarship) gave her a huge boost of confidence as she prepared for the remaining auditions (CalArts in January, Frost in February, and City College & New School in March.) In general our spread out calendar of auditions, which was by design, worked very well for her. Obviously, everyone is different by when I was reading about 2 or 3 auditions in the same week for some here, some on different coasts and in the midst of tricky weather, I nearly had an anxiety attack thinking about it! So for our family, the EA’s and spread-out audition schedule worked out really well and I would personally recommend it.
- If your kid got in to their top choice early, was it worth the effort to go to all of the other auditions and then ultimately choose the early one? What led you to do so? Did you ever think about skipping the rest of the auditions if you already had a good school in the bag?
My daughter never really had a “top choice” and felt all 9 schools were contenders due to our research on each and she was open to each having the potential to be “the one” so she never even thought about dropping any from the list.
- If your kid got in early but decided ultimately to go elsewhere, was it because they changed their mind and an early “top choice” fell out of favor? Or did a better offer come in somewhere else? Was the early school more of a “safety” all along, rather than a top choice?
She ultimately chose one of the EA schools (Loyola) so I guess this doesn’t apply but the generous scholarship offered early (which increased later in the process) and her positive audition experience (NOT the flight delay nightmare but her connecting with the faculty and their sincere interest in her) definitely kept it on the table.
My general advice for ANYONE starting the process is:
- Get the common ap done in the summer before school starts (we had September 1st as goal.) I actually hired her favorite English teacher from 8th grade to work with her to complete the common ap and complete her essay. She is more than capable of doing this on her own and is a great writer so only needed someone to check her essay over. But my purpose was to set up structured time for her to work with a neutral person (whom she loves) by her side. They met at a bookstore and it took less than a week, a few hours per day. Keep in mind that each school has additional questions, sometimes requiring much writing, so when you think you are done with the common ap, you are not! So ALL of that was completed with this tutor. Turning in the common ap early also enabled us to schedule the EA auditions sooner. She had a few school-specific applications which were due later so I put that on my daughter to complete but gave her a deadline and knew her pass code (see #4) to check it.
- Schedule a few EA auditions if you can but with at least one safety school so he/she is not discouraged if they do not get into a tougher school or don't get a big scholarship. To me, the EA should be designed to boost confidence and reduce audition load/stress later.
- If your child is not properly prepared (emotionally or musically) and needs to focus on intense practice/extra lessons to master the auditions, do not feel you have to schedule early auditions. For some kids, that is critical skill-building and confidence-building time and that should be the priority. Due to my daughter's experience with vocal auditions and her background in theatre which forced her to cram a little for big auditions or performances, I felt she was in the right place to handle the EA's.
- Your kids will be asked to create sign-in/passcodes for each school, the common ap, Accept'ed (for some prescreens) and FAFSA/CSS profile. It's overwhelming, so try to come up with a common sign-in name (we used my daughter's email) and SAME password that you can use for all things (if it contains a letter, number and symbol you should be good for any.) Keep the passcodes in the notes section of your phone or somewhere that will be handy. Know your child's sign-in and pass codes! If they change it, make them share with you. I know this sounds invasive but your kids will thank you when you check an application and realize they are missing something! If colleges ask for your email and the child's that is great because you will get important info along with your child. But most just ask for one email. It's fine to ask your child to use yours but if your child puts his/her email down, make it clear that they need to forward ANY emails for the schools they applied to, even if it does not seem important. My daughter was overwhelmed with emails from so many schools she did not apply to but she was really good about forwarding the emails from the schools on her list. Please don't judge me if you think this sound too "helicopter parent-ish" but it was very helpful to be informed along the way since this is a very complex process and you don't want to miss something important. I recently found that Columbia had increased my daughter's talent scholarship by $3000 in the final weeks but she somehow missed it. Luckily, she had already decided on Loyola by then but if Columbia was still in the mix, that would have been quite relevant.
I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions. Now that this part of the journey is over, I need something to occupy my time anyway! Lol.
@AmyIzzy Super helpful! You do NOT sound like a helicopter parent at all! My husband and I often double up receiving emails or notices on household things ourselves, because when you’re getting dozens of emails a day and some may also go to your spam folder, it’s easy to miss something important and nice to have a second set of eyes on the lookout for stuff. I’ll definitely ask her for her usernames and passwords for these applications, and may suggest a weekly “inbox zero” practice for her just so we are sure every email is getting processed.
And I really like the idea of hiring a neutral person to help with the essays, because although my daughter is also a great writer, she sometimes gets “stuck” in the planning process for writing – not exactly writer’s block, but more like “organizer’s block.” Once she has a plan, her writing needs very little proofreading or editing, but having someone to work with in the idea stage and who could help her structure the process would be a relief. (I do communication for a living and was also a professor for many years, so I know “what” to do to help her, but I’m not necessarily the right person to fill that role…The mother-child dynamic is a bit complicated, as everyone on this board can relate to, so having another person involved would be really good!)
Decision made. Actually was made way back on 4/12! Relieved that the entire process is over and over the moon that things worked out so incredibly well at his top choice.
@TxSker amazing!! Congrats on a great choice!
@khill87 and others, re emails: we had S create a separate email for apps/college stuff to which we had access. That way we didn’t mess with his privacy but got everything we needed to. For most of the process he rarely checked it, but we discovered he’d been watching like a hawk when decisions came around!
@khill87 - we actually ‘outsourced’ the entire process to a college counselor. Our public schools are so understaffed we knew the school counselor would be useless AND I know Mother-Son dynamics would not let me do any of the usual prodding. I like to say I outsourced the ‘nagging’ and it was worth every penny. She kept on top of deadlines, reviewed all the applications and essays so everything was turned in on time.
I wish we had done the separate email for college stuff - that’s a great idea. I just had to pester. A lot.
Congrats @TxSker!
Things that can be done now that you are set:
Pratice harder - maybe you have band/ensemble placement auditions upon arrival, or maybe you just love to practice.
Map out a 4-year course plan as best you can. You may find that certain courses are offered at the same time and you were planning to take them in the same semester. You may find one course satisfies two requirements, while another one you were thinking about only satisfies one. See if you have all the advanced-level courses and such.
Learn about what courses can be tested out of and study for their tests.
@SpartanDrew so happy you changed your avatar. I felt kind of lonely:) We checked all dorms on admitted student day. I cannot say im impressed, but we have no choice for first year. my D wont have time to commute almost 2 hours each way every day. So we stock with dorms for the first year. I think next she will what your D did find a roommate to rent an apartment. it will cost less defiantly. Hope @meltbutter will join us with Mannes avatar soon:)
My son FINALLY made a decision last night! Deposit made this morning. Talk about last minute. He will attend the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University. Thanks to all for your messages both publicly and through PM. I’ve enjoyed gaining information about this process and learning about different perspectives. It was hard for my son to decline other great offers, but also feels great to be committed and move on.
I love the avatar changes, but I miss a bit of the uniqueness and ability to quickly identify familiar “faces”
Congrats to @TxSker and @CompMom21!
@pianomom74 D is in Stuyvesent Park residence this year. It’s actually a decent dorm and a beautiful location. The rooms are pretty big and they have a full kitchen and common area. Expensive but it was great for D meeting so many other jazz kids there. She went into the process blind and was paired with a Parson’s student from Hong Kong whom she adores! They have become such great friends! And 2 of the 3 suite mates have also been great. You know there’s always gonna be that one sour apple lol. I highly recommend doing the first year in the dorm if you can afford it. It’s a great way of camaraderie, meeting other current students and finding their way around. D will be moving to Brooklyn next year, not my first choice for her honestly due to the commute but she is living with 2 musicians in her band and that’s what they can afford so she is going with them. It will save us a bundle honestly!
@SpartanDrew my NYU D did the same Brooklyn trek and it was fine. Brooklyn is the place to be for these kids!