<p>We are wrapping up the school year - finals are next week. So far, S has only expressed interest in applying to large state flagships (Mizzou, U of Iowa) which require neither essays nor LOR’s. Makes things easier (and less expensive) than if he were interested in LAC’s. On the one hand, I’d like to see him in an LAC setting, with smaller classes and more personal attention. On the other hand, he has said that he doesn’t care about small classes,and doesn’t want too much personal attention. And there is that cost factor. DD is at a wonderful LAC - had a great first year there - but she got a large merit scholarship which made that doable. S does not have those stats. So it’s probably just as well that he and I disagree on what would be best for him!</p>
<p>Cooker…</p>
<p>OOS tuition/fees/room/board at UIowa is $35,500.</p>
<p>If interested, I can identify quite a few LACs and smaller universities that would probably be significantly less than that even without stellar grades and test scores.</p>
<p>You might also take a look at Iowa State University. OOS fixed costs are only $27,600.</p>
<p>Idahomon, why yes I do have a child at Willamette, a soon to be junior. For ease of travel, I was hoping to have both of them in the same place, but the younger one wanted to forge her own path. The California sunshine was a factor too.</p>
<p>Longhaul, classes at Redlands are small. Freshman seminar had 18 kids. French and calculus and art had under 20. The biggest classes for my daughter were bio and chem as there seems to be fair number on the pre-med path. Even then, there were 38or so kids, and lab sections were half of that. Not sure how much discussion there is in calc and sciences, but I can tell you most tests were essay -only one scantron the entire year, and that was the chemistry final as all chem sections took the same exam. French midterms and finals were both written, and a one on one oral exam with the professor.</p>
<p>Johnson, either you love it or hate it. You can search on the website and find published final papers by students to see the kinds of programs they pull together. Not my daughter’s cup of tea, but a great option for those think outside the box kind of kids.</p>
<p>You can pm me with any questions.</p>
<p>FWIW…my S1 told me at the beginning of the summer before senior year to nag him into getting his essays done before school started. I nagged him enough that he got good drafts done for the 7 essays he needed for his applications and he was so happy when he went back to school and his friends were all stressing about getting their essays done on top of all of the work they had to do for school. It’s not easy, but it’s the advice I give to all my friends who have kids finishing up their junior years now.</p>
<p>@heavylidded, good luck to your D today! </p>
<p>I wanted to tell you about a great book to inspire her with her essays --it’s called: On Writing The College Admissions Essay by Harry Bauld (written by former Brown U. adcom). You can order it on Amazon. My oldest son read it before writing his essays in '10 and it’s golden. We both read it cover to cover while on vacation that August, and I do recommend that you both read it too. It will give her a clear idea of what NOT to write about, as well as inspire her with what TO write about (author mentions all the “cliche essays” that adcoms have seen a million times such as the “death of a pet essay”, the “I’m going to save the world since I traveled abroad essay”, the “parents divorce essay” and many, many more overly submitted essays. We loved this book and my D will be reading it this summer too. There are plenty of similar books, but this one was my favorite 
(very funny read).</p>
<p>The Common App. releases the new 2012-13 version Aug. 1, and many of the schools will change their supplement prompts too, so have to wait on those too. They don’t make it easy on them, do they? :(</p>
<p>How many colleges are your kids applying to? It seems like many “A” students apply to 15 or so schools, perhaps because so many of their choices are “lottery” schools.</p>
<p>Would 2 safeties (academic and financial), 3-4 matches, and 3 reaches (either academic or financial, but not both) be reasonable? Too many, or not enough?</p>
<p>Somehow I can’t break myself from looking at more college websites. The Duckling desperately wants to go to her top choice (match academically, reach financially). She knows that we won’t let her go in debt, and she’ll look at other schools, but she isn’t falling in “serious like” with others. I want her to fall in love with some other schools.</p>
<p>My S13 is interested in the University of San Diego, Chapman, and Santa Clara. Does he have any real shot at any of these schools? </p>
<p>He has a 3.3 average with all Honors classes and 2 APs this year (the first they are allowed to take in his school). He has mostly Bs , one C in AP Calc AB and another (I think) in Pre-Calc. He is the kind of kid that will get a 92 one quarter and a 87 the next thus getting a B for the semester. He has As in graphic design and some other non-academic classes. He is also a varsity soccer player, all 4 years in student government (Pres of his class, Pres of his class, Secretary of class, and finally for next year Vice Pres of the SGA). He has volunteer hours and an internship at a small publishing firm. He wants to major in Business. </p>
<p>We are on the east coast so I know very little about these schools. He is interested also in Miami University, Case Western, and U of Wisconsin.</p>
<p>Random comments on some of the above posts. . .</p>
<p>Re: number of schools to apply to, we haven’t set a number, but rather wait to see what shakes out after considering a lot of possibilities, making some visits, . . . . DS#1 applied to eight; DS#2 applied to 14, although he had a very mixed transcript from two different high schools. My best bet is DS#3 will apply to 8-10. Highly recommend including some schools with rolling admissions and/or EA–it is quite a relief to have some acceptances in hand relatively early in senior year.</p>
<p>To MuppetMom–FYI, DS#2 just finished his first year at Miami (we are not in-state). Despite his up-and-down academic history, he was a direct admit to Farmer. It’s a beautiful school with a very strong teaching reputation. He’s very excited to return next year. (I got my graduate degree at Wisconsin–love Madison! I don’t know if I’d be concerned about how really huge the ug school is or not. Coincidentally, here’s an article from today’s Washington Post: [Public</a> universities pushing ‘super-seniors’ to graduate in four years - The Washington Post](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/public-universities-pushing-super-seniors-to-the-graduation-stage/2012/06/01/gJQAvbyZ9U_story.html]Public”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/public-universities-pushing-super-seniors-to-the-graduation-stage/2012/06/01/gJQAvbyZ9U_story.html) .)</p>
<p>I read the Harry Bauld book and while I enjoyed it, I doubt my s would read it. For him, I’ve bought “Conquering the College Admissions Essay in 10 Easy Steps”. I’m not really betting that he’ll read this one either but the information is presented in chunks via the 10 steps which I think is more palatable to him. I’m just praying he gets a big portion of the essays done during the summer. If not, I doubt he’ll apply to any school that requires any essays beyond a personal statement. His senior year schedule is rough.</p>
<p>Woo hoo Heavylidded!!</p>
<p>My son just finished his freshman year of hs with a 3.1 gpa. He is interested in majoring in theater in college. I know we are way ahead of the curtve, but we began visiting colleges this year.
He takes some honors classes and some accelerated at a private college prep high school. We have looked at SUNY Purchase and Emerson, and plan to visit many more. I know he has a lot of time to improve his gpa, but would like some ideas of schools if his gpa doesn’t improve much. PSAT score was 159 I think.</p>
<p>Idahomom, D will not be part of the Johnston program; this is just an option at Redlands. They were generous with financial aid but we also have another child in college which reduced our EFC. Redlands also offered her an on-campus job, which she will do. </p>
<p>We visited many colleges in Cali and Redlands was the only one she got really excited about. We hit the jackpot with her being accepted and getting such a nice financial aid package. I really think that no matter how the college looks on paper and with stats, getting your child on the campus and seeing how they react to it is key.</p>
<p>S1 applied to 10 schools total. He was NMF, so there were some schools that were targeted for NM scholarships. </p>
<p>Mamaduck, I think you have a good number with the safeties/financial safeties. We used an excel sheet with all due dates, required materials, when scores were sent, etc. It seemed to keep everything organized and he knew what to work on each weekend through the fall (which schools’ supplements were due first, etc. --one supplement generally took him an entire weekend, so keep that in mind when planning it out). Shockingly, I didn’t have to nag him, so I think the excel sheet was worth the time to set it up. He was done by early Dec. with most apps, but did have one last one in Jan. </p>
<p>My D1 is planning to apply ED to Warren Wilson, but she’ll need to be ready with the Common App. already done just in case (WW has their own app.). Right now she’s thinking that Hiram would be the first to add if not accepted to WWC, since it’s rolling admissions. She really struggles with writing, so I know her list of schools will be shorter than my older son’s. Right now she only has a list of about 4-5 other schools, and we’ve visited 17! </p>
<p>@Jaylocole,
we looked at Emerson and SUNY Purchase too. How did your S like these two? Just trying to get a feel for what he likes or doesn’t like. My D liked Emerson, but didn’t care for Purchase. You might want to look at Goucher. </p>
<p>@muppetmom, do you have scores yet? is the GPA unweighted or weighted? It’s hard to tell what kind of shot your son has without this info. I like to use college data dot com for “chances”. They use the most recently updated Common Data Sets which will give you a much more clear answer as to how he will do in admissions according to their own stats. We used this for my S1 and it was extremely accurate.</p>
<p>@jki Muppetson got a 1310/1600 or a 1950/2400 on the SATs or a 29 on the ACTs with writing. We are not sure which one we will use. We are contemplating him taking the ACT again. </p>
<p>The 3.3 is a weighted GPA. His school only gives 0.5 of extra weighting for either honors or APs. I think that is ridiculous given how difficult both of the APs were. Also, a lot of kids don’t take any honors or APs just so they can get As and thus a higher rank. He will rank in the middle of his class somewhere. He has taken the most rigorous curriculum and has learned a great deal. However, he doesn’t look good on paper. His teachers love him and they use him as a school ambassador for recruiting. He is also on the honors council.</p>
<p>@myLB Right now Muppetson really wants into the Farmer school. Were your sons grades as bad as mine? The thing that kills me is that he worked really really hard for those B grades in the honors classes and APs. But there is no way on paper to show hard the teachers grade or how high the expectations were. It’s a small catholic school and the kids who take honors have the same teachers for all for years…the same math teacher, the same history teacher…etc. Those teachers really understand the kids and know what they are capable of. </p>
<p>Any idea anyone(?) about the University of San Diego or Miami University (Farmer School of Business)?</p>
<p>I just used collegedata dot com at jkiwmom’s suggestion. It came up with different responses than either princetonreview.com or CC’s supermatch tool.</p>
<p>We’re going to be in Texas in a few weeks, and I had thought about stopping by Trinity in San Antonio. Then I thought Duckling didn’t have a chance based on the other search engines, but collegedata puts her as slightly less than middle of the road. She has an okay gpa for Trinity, but they seem to like ACT scores in the upper 20s, which she doesn’t have. Do any of you have any knowledge of Trinity?</p>
<p>MuppetMom–I think your son looks great on paper! Colleges don’t just see the GPA; they see the entire transcript. His sounds impressive to me. My son had a very mixed hs transcript–started out okay, took a sharp downward turn, was diagnosed with depression, transferred from public to a private hs and repeated a year, and did pretty well his last two years at the private (~3.5 with just a few APs–I honestly have no idea what his GPA from the public was, but it was not good). His SATs were a bit higher but what I really think had a <em>lot</em> to do with his admission to Farmer was the fact that he was OOS. MU is mostly Ohio kids (I think about 2/3), with a lot from IL, some from NY, . . . . We are in VA and I honestly think that helped. I would definitely encourage your son to apply and take a trip out there. When we went out for freshman orientation last June, DS walked out of the parking garage and said, “I think I’m going to get spoiled being here the next four years.” I thought maybe he was talking about the good education, . . . ?, but it turns out he was talking about how beautiful the campus is. (And the business school itself got a new building ~two years ago–absolutely stunning.)</p>
<p>Sorry to drop in unexpected - just checking out this thread! Question about sending SAT scores - since the common ap is not available until August, is it common to send SAT scores this early? I guess I assume you only send them if you are certain that your child will not be retaking the test? Is doing so simply a way to jump-start an application? Are colleges accustomed to receiving scores months before any other material?</p>
<p>Also, if S/D not 100% of college list, is it common to send scores and then later, if S/D decides not to apply to that school, simply leave the ap “unfinished”, and not send the remaining pieces of the ap?</p>
<p>I know there are different schools of thought re: sending the four free scores, but we’ve never done it. Not really so much because there weren’t four schools the kids knew they’d be applying to but really just cuz we wanted to see what they were first. I know schools have different requirements re: superscoring/getting one complete sitting/getting all sittings, but I’d rather pay the $$ and wait to see what they are before sending.</p>
<p>Liked Emerson, thought Purchase had a strong program but not a nice campus so he wasn’t too thrilled with it.</p>
<p>rossnrachel - My son’s first set of SAT scores went to a completely different set of schools than his second set, none of which were schools he sent his ACT scores to. Of those 12, he will maybe apply to 5. The colleges are used to getting scores before applications and are also used to application files that never get completed. That is one thing I say you don’t need to worry about :)</p>