A couple of schools that your family might want to consider are:
My son is very interested in Mines- it is one of his top choices. What year is your son and can you describe more about what he liked?
The “Your College Bound Kid” podcast did some college spotlights recently on Univ of Redlands and Whittier College. It was interesting.
One of the relative (in-law side) was an alumni of U of Pacific.
He really liked the school size and location (easy drive to the Bay Area or Sacramento).
Sorry to hear your D24 is hating her job. My D24 has been working at a pizza joint for the past year and seems to like it. It helps that she only works 4-10 hours a week and they are very flexible. Would your daughter consider working at Kumon?
No. She doesn’t want to be a tutor. And her grades are likely not high enough anyway for them to consider hiring her as a tutor.
My D24 currently holds 2 part time jobs (1 that is her all year job and 1 that is seasonal) …, so she basically works 2 shifts per week at each. I think the variety keeps her from desperately hating either of them. Perhaps if your D gets an offer from any of the other places, she could consider not quitting McD’s, but just dialing back her availability and mixing it up a bit.
For those of you visiting colleges in the Boston/ General Massachusetts area this week, I apologize for the weather. I swear it is not usually like this. Especially in June! While I can think of a few years with rain and humidity for a few day stretch, I don’t ever remember it lasting this long or the constant thunderstorms. Especially ones that didn’t break the humidity.
Right? It has been miserable. And we live right by the beach so it has been extra depressing not being able to enjoy the only few months of warm weather we have here.
D24 seems to open up more when it’s just her and I in the car (compared to D26, who likes to open up when D24 isn’t home at all). Anyway, today on the way to & from this place near us called “Salad & Go” (which has amazingly good & inexpensive salads…very high quality for ~$7 each), D24 opened up a lot about a couple of other girls in her grade. She’s commented about these 2 students before. Super high achievers, lots of humble bragging comments lamenting how they “only” got 1490 or so on the SAT, commentary from 1 girl about stuff like “I HAVE to go to an Ivy. I mean, if I don’t, I’ll just DIE” and other fun stuff like that.
We’ve already had the money talk months ago w/both of our kids, at the advice of our school counselor. But lots of D24’s classmates’ parents just haven’t done that yet. Lots of them end up telling their kid the equivalent of “Just get in and we’ll figure out how to pay for it.”
D24 was complaining about how annoying & over the top intense these 2 girls are, how every time they ask her something about applying to college, what they’re really doing is using it as an excuse to brag to others about themselves.
Anyway, D24 said that in 1 particularly epic conversation at the end of this past school year, 1 of the girls was going on and on about Ivy League stuff. D24 & the other friends were listening, saving positive & affirming stuff (“Oh, that’s cool,” or “I heard it’s really hard to get in there, but good luck!”). D24 made a comment about making sure that you’ve run the NPC at some point so if you DO get in, then you’ll know if it’s affordable for your family or not.
And then the other student sort of went off the deep end about D24’s comment, even threw in a typical snarky teenage girl passive-aggressive comment about “well, SOME people are just a little SENSITIVE about how they can’t afford things” (the student’s parents bought her a brand new electric vehicle for her when she turned 16 and the kid is generally socioeconomically clueless, especially around other students in the grade whose families are not well off financially…this sort of class-conscious stuff from that student bothers D24 intensely).
Anyway, these 2 particular girls are very ‘prestige-aware’ when it comes to applying to college. And like a lot of HS students who are generally clueless about this whole process, they assume that if they haven’t heard of the school, then that must mean that the college is a poop school and not worth even looking at.
So I reintroduced my D24 to the concept of the Elevator Speech. I’m bringing it up here since not only my kid, but all of our kids, AND us parents are going to end up doing a lot of Elevator Speeches over this next year.
I gave D24 an example from all of the times I got poop from other HS students and parents for where I wanted to/was going to college (UCSB). I’ve lost count over the years the # of times people have pooh-pooh’d my alma mater for being a “party school.” 
They usually all shut up when I told them that I won a regents scholarship, was an honors student, could check out books from the library for the entire quarter, and that renowned physicist Stephen Hawking worked at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCSB for awhile.
D24 & I talked about how once school starts, everybody’s going to be talking about “where are you applying” and then “where do you want to go?” and then “where did you get in?” and later on “Oh…why are you going…THERE?!”
So in the car, we sort of brainstormed about some possible Elevator Speeches for a few of the schools she’s going to be applying to. You can see a trend here…involves a quick fun fact about the school or cool reason why The Child likes that school:
I told D24, “I guarantee you…spit out 1 or 2 quick facts about whatever the college is, and whoever you’re talking to will back off and be, like, ‘Oh…wow…that’s interesting. I didn’t know that.’” AND the other person will probably end up feeling like a bit of an idiot for putting their foot in their mouth because they’d just blurted out, “Oh nobody’s ever heard of THAT school, they must be willing to take ANYBODY!”
BUT you’ve put them in their place in a classy, assertive, and polite way. And a fair amount of the time, the other person just doesn’t know any better or is being insecure about their own choices/options.
What ALSO came out of that conversation to and from “Salad & Go” was D24 saying that she’s pretty interested in the 2 schools in Texas. She also commented that her BFFs also really want to go out of state for college. I suspect that her going on the school trip to France has given D24 a lot of self confidence because she’s stopped talking about how she wants to go to U of A entirely because she’s afraid that she won’t be able to make any friends.
Kiddo is taking orders at Mickey D’s as I type this. She’s even driving herself to and from work today. I wouldn’t be lyin’ if I said that I said a prayer asking for a bubble of protection around the car today. 
The quarter I spent at UCSB was magical: Santa Cruz Hall above an ocean bluff, 90% empty of students in the summer meant biking anywhere around campus was easy, and the engineering I learned there turned out to be of great long-term utility… even into retirement.
It wasn’t until I arrived at Brown from my very average SoCal public HS (where no one did the down-putting stuff : ) that I was exposed to snobby rich kids with no clue as to money management etc. I found them somewhat amusing, but in any event they were few and far between.
“got 1490 on the SAT / I HAVE to go to an Ivy / if I don’t, I’ll just DIE” 1490? Might want to start planning the funeral.
My D21 went to U of A and LOVED it! We are from CA and I was kind of surprised when she said she wanted to go to Arizona. She has been back home for two years and is sad she didn’t stay in AZ. But her closest friends weren’t near ready to live on their own for various reasons so she came home.
I loved my time at UCSB. Would have loved for one or both of my kids to attend, too, but, alas, we’re not CA residents and I’m not going to pay the OOS tuition! 
I lived freshman year in Santa Rosa Hall right across the street from the Psychology building. It was great. Lived in Isla Vista for 2 yr after that, and Ellwood Beach during senior year. Regularly would walk to the beach to study.
These days, those 2-story dorms like Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Halls now house 3 students in a room that used to be for just 2!
Walking to the beach to study sounds pretty nice!!
There was a Univ of Arizona online application launch event yesterday and today. D24 attended it. Part of yesterday’s session was basically a rah-rah commercial for all the reasons you should attend (45 min of the 2 hr thing yesterday).
Today’s session apparently was more helpful. Some highlights from the kiddo:
D24 said it was really reassuring that with a 3.0 unweighted GPA, you have guaranteed admission.
There was a Univ of Arizona online application launch event yesterday and today. D24 attended it. Part of yesterday’s session was basically a rah-rah commercial for all the reasons you should attend (45 min of the 2 hr thing yesterday).
Today’s session apparently was more helpful. Some highlights from the kiddo:
D24 said it was really reassuring to know that if you have a 3.0 unweighted GPA, you’re guaranteed admission.
S24 also found today’s honors presentation to be very helpful - not just for University of Arizona but also just for general application essay tips.
He said it was really unique how the presenter got all the prospective students to participate and give their input on the the essays and resume. He said it gave him insight into the types of people applying to honors by reading all the comments.
He had his application ready to submit but saw one of the answers in the Q&A that said if he changes any reported 12th grade courses, then the counselor has to report the changes. He now wants to wait till school starts and he has been in his classes a few weeks and is certain he will stick with his 4 APs.
D24 thought it was interesting that a lot of students’ feedback about the essays were that the sample personal statement essays didn’t talk enough about their academics. However, an essay is a great opportunity to talk about other stuff about yourself, not JUST about the academic part of your application. They can see how you did w/academics based on your GPA.
I concur. Repetition/overlap isn’t helpful to an interviewer in trying to digest a lot of information about an applicant in a short time, and I assume that would be about the same with an overworked AO.
The exception might be if talking about the “why” of one’s academics. So not just what they did (already there in the transcript), but circumstances or motivations which led to those academics. Typically that will involve interplay between academics and outside activities, e.g. a summer program which led to focusing more on science in the final two years. Things like that, which connect the dots between transcipt and ECs, can be very illuminating in getting a feel for a candidate.
S23 applied to an assured acceptance school (Iowa State) over the summer and it turned out to be a great decision to do so. It was a safety (obviously) academically, but also financially and it was a school that he was very interested in attending. They also published their auto-merit, so we did not have to wait to know what we would be paying. It took all of the pressure off and gave him something to match other schools against. It also solidified his decision not to retake the ACT’s. (Spoiler: He didn’t end up attending ISU)
If your child is looking to add an early notification, assured acceptance school to their list, look into ISU. For no other reason than that they definitely have the best acceptance notification. It kind of wrecked every acceptance after that.