We had an EA school just ask for quarterly grades! D forwarded the info to the GC, who took care of it.
Iâm annoyed by quarterly grades at the moment. My daughter got a B on any quarterly grade reports because she had a B in one class going into the final week of the quarter, but then was out sick the last three (out of four) schooldays of that weekâand so the grade had to be submitted to at least one school by their deadline (which coincided with the beginning of the second quarter), even though sheâd done makeup work and brought her quarter grade score up to an A by the end of the following week.
Oh well. Itâs a school my daughterâs quite more enthused than me about, so maybe I shouldnât be annoyed, after all.
@CaucAsianDad Thank you for your advice. You definitely have a point. âŠI guess there are two schools of thought. , Just because the merit scholarship bucket is limited, I am afraid they might assume that because of our income we can pay for college without any problems, and give that merit money to someone who qualifies for both merit and need based. Hmmm⊠now I am torn and even more confused on whatâs the right thing to do:(
@educationfan --are you talking about automatic merit or competitive merit?
@carachel2 I guess itâs automatic⊠the ones that are available to all students applying during early action
OhâŠI absolutely wouldnât worry about those.
Itâs the more competitive merit that I tend to worry about. I donât know why though, Iâve seen threads here saying it didnât matter. Iâm just paranoid. We look fantastic on paper right now but that was not the case 3-4 years ago. I feel like I should get that printed on a shirt!
How refreshingâŠreceived an email today from UCHICAGO just letting S17 know that his application âwas completeâ. No need to check the portal, or fret otherwise, the school actually closed the loop for usâŠliking those maroonsâŠrefreshing, like I saidâŠ
As I sit here with all the rest of you checking application portals and complaining about those that are clunky (UMD),I was just thinking back to spring of my senior year. I attended HS in a town very similar to the one in which I live now, so almost everyone went to college, and we all lived through the process together.
Fed Ex was in its infancy and seemed an expensive indulgence, so most of us just mailed the applications for Jan 1st or Jan 15th. These are the same apps that we received by writing away for them or somehow calling during the school day to request the app. A few friends applied ED, but most of us anxiously awaited the mail delivery on April 15th.
I remember some friends scheming to leave school early to check the mail on April 15th. I didnât share quite the same anxiety as I had received a likely letter the month before. (Didnât know what a likely letter was until I showed it to my GC.) Everyone had exactly two weeks to decide where to go and mail in a deposit. I do recall discussion of wait lists even then, and one friend moved off a WL in August and ended up enrolling at the WL school. Another friend was shut out of all schools, so her mother packed her in the car and went on a new tour April 16th.
Some friendsâ parents were more involved than mine. The neighbor across the street happened to be home from college in late-April, so my parents had me drive up to school with him. The university provided me the names of two freshmen who hosted me on their floors for two nights. I had a great time, decided that college would be fun, and then traveled home by myself via Greyhound bus. I had never been away from home before, but I guess my parents figured I would be going to school four months later.
No real point to this post. (Perhaps I should be over on the FB page!) Just musing that the process was a bit less crazed back then.
I was having the same thought this evening. It was so much easier than it is for these kids. I applied to four schools and away I went. My friend and I were not applying to the same colleges but we would both request an application from the otherâs list. That way we had an extra app so we could avoid using white out if we made an error on the app. I remember typing my essays and cutting the paper to fit over the app to see if it would fit. Life was easy back then.
I am really behind on reading this thread. 5 pages back, there were discussions about needing to fill out FAFSA for being considered for merit-scholarships. Which schools require that?
@4beardolls - I donât recall specifically, but I believe some of the publics do. Also, were there to be a change of circumstances in future years, it is easier to get FA consideration if you have applied in the past.
There have been a few threads about this in the FA and the parents forums.
Dissenting voice here: Maybe itâs because I didnât really come into the process of college applications with a lot of (read: any) cultural capital related to it, but I still remember it as among the most nerve-wracking extended periods (read: a few months) of my life. I suspect yâall are right and itâs worse now than it used to be, but my daughterâs dealing with it a lot better than I did, since sheâs going into it knowing the game.
I received one late admission from grad school by TELEX. Mail person delivered it.
I donât know if anyone remembers what that is.
I already had an email then but it was not common. Admission office did not have an email.
When DS went through this process 3 years ago, I thought, âDid I just forget how complicated and hard this was? Did I just block it out? Or is it really alot more complicated now than it was 30 years ago?â So I dug around and found my college applications. Done on a typewriter (that part I do remember ⊠trying to get the text on the typewriter to line up with the various lines/spaces I was filling in). I applied to UMD, VT, and University of Delaware ⊠all schools that my kids have or are applying to. Out of those 3, I wrote one short essay, which wasnât even an essay â it was one paragraph â for the UDel honors program. The rest of the applications were name/address/high school, GPA, class rank, list or check off your activities, list your awards, list any work experience. They were 1-2 pages each. I recall getting transcripts from my GC in sealed/marked envelopes, and LOR from my teachers also in sealed envelopes, and putting them with my application in a big brown envelope, and sending them off in the mail; they had to be postmarked (not received) by the application deadline. And then there was no checking up to be sure it was received; you just waited. And sometime in Feb - April, a big envelope arrived from each school.
Yes, it is much more complicated now. The applications are longer. And there are more of them â not just to more schools, but now there is the application, and the honors application, and the scholarship application⊠It is also much more competitive now. Back then, UMD was at the bottom of my list of schools ⊠it was okay, but not great, and they were literally begging instate students to stay; getting in was a cakewalk. Now, theyâve been told they need to be sure theyâre not shafting instate students on admissions in favor of out of state money. Getting in is by no means a guarantee, even for good students.
I am with @dfbdfb my college admissions process was pretty stressful. I applied to 9 schools all over the country, visited many, many schools from junior year through spring of senior year and had a very hard time making a final choice. I was looking for Big MAC.
For one school I declined my offer of admission after scholarship notification deadline passed, by sending back the postcard saying I wasnât attending. The very next day I received a telegram (only one Iâve ever received) from that school offering me a full ride. Needless to say I was on the phone right away rescinding my decline of admission. But they wanted an answer in 1 week, and I still hadnât heard about scholarships from my âdreamâ school.
I think a lot depends on where you live, both then and now. There have always places where college admissions is complicated and stressful, I just think that those areas are more plentiful now. But there are still plenty of places where the kids apply to the state school and attend there because it is what everyone does.
Small town East Tx here. Great grades, showed up once for the ACT and scored dismal. Had no clue what I wanted to do. Went to the local JR college X 2 years while working and living at home.
Spring of Soph year, applied to the state flagship, got in and move in before classes started. Zero stress, zero looking around. EFC was <$1,000 (only figured this out last year when looking at old tuition bills). Got a Pell grant, small Stafford and away I went.
@4beardolls, one school I knowâŠGA Tech requires FAFSA, CSS, and their own form for merit consideration.
@vandyeyes Congrats on the notification on the complete application. I appreciate it when the colleges send out a notice. So far, a few have. And two sent mail/email when something was missing and the deadline was closing in. St. Olaf wins the prize for sending out handwritten notes in the mail.
Applications back in the day - I donât remember too much stress. I applied to 2. One wasnât affordable but my parents didnât let me know until after my acceptance came in, oops! So I went to big impersonal state U as opposed to bucolic select LAC. Big impersonal state U had an interesting honors program designed by a bunch of professors that had come out of U Chicago. So I ended up doing the thrifty version of the Core and made lots of friends who were smart and interesting and enjoyed learning. Great profs too. It wasnât what I thought I wanted but it turned out just fine. I need to remind myself of that as my daughter moves forward in the process.
I think my parents were pretty clueless about the process, especially the financial side. Dad was an engineer, mom was a housewife and he said we didnât qualify for need based aid. I had good stats, including NMF, but hunting for merit never came up. My public HS offered both college prep and vocational courses and the GC steered us to in-state options, except for the football players that were good enough to be recruited.
Just found out the first quarter marking period ends on Monday. The school calendar implies it is a week later. The grade/report card portal says it is Nov. 17th -10 days after the actual close of the quarter! DS has 2 tests on Monday and an English paper, not sure what else - time to make sure everything is in order.
@dfbdfb â your daughterâs situation sounds similar to an experience we had last year - it got fixed eventually on the transcript. But very frustrating if it gets sent out that way. I would imagine if it is a school of interest that a correct version could be sent when available but you seem ok about it since not a school you really feel the love for, right?
QOTD â I can see on the common app that schools want the mid-year report - which will include grades through then (late Jan for us). I am not aware of any of DSâs EA common app schools (Case, GATech, Northeastern) wanting first quarter grades - I do not see anything in the Common App â can we trust the common app or do we need to go examine every schoolâs website? UMD, MIT & UPitt have their own separate apps but do not seem to want 1st quarter grades, best that I can tell. Anyone have different info?
@educationfan
UCF will pay for high stats. They know they are not the first choice for high stats kids so they offer Florida weather, the Bunentt Honors College and merit $$$. An example is how they offered an unsolicited full ride to @paveyourpath NMSF son. I am sure they had no idea of the families financial situation, he was on the list of NMSF, fit a demographic they wanted so they offered.
UCF has more students willing to pay full price than they can ever accept. Over 150 will apply from my Dâs HS alone, most will end up in the DirectConnect program at a local CC. What they need are high stats kids to bring up their averages.