@sbinaz so very sorry for your family’s loss, but thankfully your MIL is no longer suffering. Hugs to all of you.
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So sorry to hear about your MIL 
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So sorry to hear, hugs to all the family!
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S23 was warned about this but did it in a very unique way (also wrote about a very unique sports experience). It was actually really well received. He read it as his prefect speech and many people stopped us when we were on campus the following week to tell us how impressed they were.
If you TRULY believe in what you are writing and that it gets to the core of who you are, don’t worry about what GCs are telling you.
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I’m sorry sorry for your family’s loss. 
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I absolutely agree with this, 100%. IMHO, the essay is an opportunity for the reviewers to hear the student’s voice and try to understand who they are, aside from (or even, in spite of) the transcript, test scores, list of extracurriculars.
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oops might have to change name
First time posting but feeling a lot like I did in the days leading up to Christmas when my girls were little. I’d creep into the back of my closet each night and pull out all the gifts to be sure I had enough to make their eyes light up in December. Now I’m looking at our list and taking out each school thinking are these the right ones? Does she have too many or not enough? Come December, will she be shouting with joy? I feel like I need just one more “likely” to tuck into her stocking…It’s going to be a long couple of months:)
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Visiting schools - especially reach schools that are relatively far.
Is it ok to apply to schools and if admitted, visit them to make sure that you are still interested?
Here, you’re losing the application fee and the time to apply.
We are debating in this case, FSU.
Of course. With D19 that’s exactly what we did. He applied and we visited the schools he was accepted to. It just wasn’t feasible to try to visit them beforehand. D21 was applying during Covid of course, so he applied, enrolled, and moved in sight-unseen.
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We visited as many schools as we could for D24, but with scheduling conflicts and changing priorities, that has ended up being about half of her current list.
Places we have not visited in person, she has done online tours and zoom info sessions.
We will visit/revisit her top 3 acceptances in the spring.
The application fee is a drop in the bucket compared to how much it costs to visit places (especially when flights and hotels are involved). No real need to hype a reach school.
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S24 has 10 schools on his list. He has seen 5 of them. Depending where he is admitted he will visit the top two contenders if he hasn’t seen them yet.
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D24 submitted her NMSU application today. No application fee if you apply by 12/1.
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School visits, S24 is applying to 6. We have visited 4, and have scheduled an open house visit for number 5. School number 6, we’ll visit if he is admitted but I don’t know why it’s on the list as of now. I think his heart is set on a few already.
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Definitely ok. I did this with S20. We visited several campuses in-state and/or within a 4hour drive. Didn’t plan to visit any that were further out until an acceptance was in hand.
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My S22 also went to his school sight unseen. I couldn’t believe he was ok with it but he didn’t mind at all. We just couldn’t fit the time in our schedule and he wasn’t terribly engaged in the process until it was decision time. Seems to be working out just fine!
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S24 is planning to go to an open house next weekend at USF/Tampa campus. For anyone interested, they’ve open houses at other campuses as well in the near future.
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Thanks for all the encouraging inputs. S24 visited UF, Miami, FGCU, FIU, FAU, USF, UTampa, St.Leo.
We also spoke to a current USF student that we know.
Based on the visits, we shortlisted UF, FAU, FIU and USF. S24 decided to apply to FSU as well. We couldn’t visit FSU.
He has decided to apply to FGCU, UCF, St.Leo, UWF and UNF late, based on the first set decisions.
Based on our research, we are hopeful of atleast 1 or more acceptances from his first set of schools applications.
UF and FSU are reach for most students and S24 understands that it is definitely a reach for him.
Our fallback option is 2+2 pathway to these schools.
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Like they say in investments (especially for retirement), we need a balanced portfolio of schools that they apply.
If they have a right mix of reach, match and safeties, they’ll be in joy come this Christmas 
The unknown in the back of my mind is the competition this year. We don’t know how many kids with better stats will apply to the schools we choose and that would be the deciding factor in our outcome.
That said, there are lot of colleges and as along as we help them to be open to the world of opportunities, it will be a positive outlook.
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Remind me again- rule of thumb for test optional: if composite is at or above 50% submit? We have one school where his math is at 25% but English is above the 75% but then composite at 75%. Just hard to know what to do in the situations.