Our school asks students to complete one application by November 1st.
So if that school is CA school, then the essays get done by Nov. 1st.
They also asked to put down 5 potential teachers for LOR in Naviance a few weeks ago so that is done but I do not know when the kids ask the actual teachers. Well be fore Nov. 1st I presume.
We are hoping to get to the magic 9 schools, but it seems pretty tough to narrow down the list.
I have been looking at the Naviance data, scattergrams and school stats. My eyes are pretty tired, maybe even cross-eyed, after toggling screens between different schools. lol.
@payn4ward Why 5 teachers for LoR? That seems like a lot, especially since they are normally supposed to be recent teachers.
Does your school limit you to 9? Is that why itâs magic?
I wish I could zoom in on the Naviance scattergrams or turn off some of the icons, so that I could see the data better. The orange triangles for EA hide whether there are acceptances or not.
@payn4ward 5 teachers for LOR? Whoa! Do the teachers then get to pick and choose for whom they wish to write letters?
My older two (not homeschooled like current dd) who attended different high schools asked their teachers ffor recommendations in May, in kind of a first-come first-served situation, and gave them the âcheat sheetâ form in September.
I admit I donât want to think about who dd, the homeschooler, will ask for her recs. She used the director of her Arabic Concordia program last summer for NSLI, and her current Arabic prof for the other summer program. I guess she could use someone from this summer, whevever she ends, and her current Arabic prof for college apps.
@morningside95 - My S does Original Advocacy (California only event) and Expository - He is a science kid, so canât think of doing other events. OA is a 10 minute speech in which you identify a real issue and propose a solution. He doesnât do too many competitions though. Last year did 3 local, 2 invitationals, state qualifier and state tournament. This even less due to schedule conflicts. I am familiar with DI, two of his friends does it.
@Ynotgo Great advice about Naviance --I didnât know that section existed. One of my D23âs schools had an optional parent essay on their app and it was fun to fill out.
Also with her, we learned the hard way what you mentioned about LoRâs. Two of the three teachers gave her copies of their letters. Her English teacher wrote an amazing letter which clearly showed that she knew D very well and found her to be an extraordinary student. Her advisor, whoâd known her for four years and who we all thought would write a great LoR, wrote a fairly plain vanilla letter without much detail that would certainly have no positive influence on an admissions committee. By chance, D17 found out the two teachers she had planned to ask are the two most popular LoR-writers in the school. This should be a good sign, and also a sign to ask them early!
@Ynotgo No, there is no limit in applications, but people talk about 3+3+3; 3 matches, etc.
And the application fees certainly add up.
Agree! I cannot see any thing with all the squares and triangles overlapped in a narrow area in scattergrams. Since our school is small, it seems that the data display more than 3-5 years of data.
@payn4ward â each HS can decide which Naviance features to use and how many years of data to display. Our HS had been reporting application history back to 2007 and finally dropped the older data this year. They still include data back to 2010, so six yearsâ worth.
I have looked at Naviance of friends from other towns/states and the info reported is all over the map.
Re: LORs. Our students are encouraged to request the LOR from teachers by April break, IIRC from first child. A couple of the teachers impose limits on how many letters they will write and one or two even have a form they hand back to the student to complete.
We have a student Jr packet and a parent Jr packet to complete, but I think these only go to the GC, and rumor has it that you should choose your words carefully in case the GC decides to lift a sentence from the Jr packet.
Guidance requires that students submit their list of schools 30 days prior to the due date, so Oct 1st for the Nov 1 EA/EDs. Naviance is linked to the CA and it all seemed to work when my older son applied, even with the debacle of the new CA, so I trust that it will work again.
I agree with the scattergrams in NavianceâŠway too small. We have a large school, so for some schools itâs pretty crowded.
We donât have a maximum number of schools, but they want us to give 3 weeks notice for transcripts, which seems excessive.
During last weeks teacher conferences my Dâs math teacher gave me a copy of the form she should use in case she wants him to write a LOR. Nice to have a proactive teacher with this stuff.
My sonâs GC said that they shouldnât ask for letters of recommendation until August but that seems too late and reading these posts really makes me wonder about that advice. Something to think about and follow up with the GC about later.
It looks like there are some other foreign languages kids here. My S gets info on undergraduate language programs all the time. I came across an interesting one today: http://indiana.edu/~swseel/
It looks like you can go as a high school student if you are already 17 and working at the college level. My S is not that advanced yet in his languages but I think some of your kids are. They also list ways to get funding to cover the costs. Maybe it is an option for some of your kids.
Has anyone here toured UT Dallas? Iâve heard good things but we havenât visited yet and donât know when we would be able to take a look until summer. If anyone knows more about it, Iâd love to get feedback.
@morningside95 I had to look up âduo interpretationâ after reading your post and it sounds like it would be really interesting to watch. It also seems like not having your regular partner would be very challenging. Hope your S and his new partner will knock it out of the park!
Iâm impressed you are all getting this out of your GCâs already. Our juniors have gotten nothing so far. I suspect it is coming but will be asking a few parents today at a non related meeting. I checked S17âs naviance last night and the school has zero messages in there for them. Based on the docs in there it looks like they suggest 2 LOR and itâs in Oct but there is very little information overall. It does look like they are tracking 3 years of data. I did get the schools heâs thinking about updated if nothing else.
It makes sense to me to ask for a LOR in May-by August the memories of your kid will have dimmed in that teacherâs mind, I would think. Especially in our school where there are 3k kids. Our school doesnât use Naviance, which is a bummer-it sounds like a good tool.
@srk2017 - S just joined Speech in Early Nov, so did not start competing until Jan, once they had created their duo. Seems like his new partner must have watched their Duo enough that she picked it up quickly. Sheâs super smart, adv everything at school. They are performing a bunch of diff scenes grim a show and playng diff characters. She bought him a red shirt because she thot the color fit their characters. So, they have competed about 6 times so far. All regional. Next week they compete to go to Nationals. I donât really understand, but it appears they donât have a state level tournament. This is his first year on the team. They have made the finals every week, even w his new partner and his new partner is committing to extra practices w S, even though she has her own individual events to prepare for too. They are competing right now but we wonât hear how they are doing until this afternoon.
Your Sâs science eve U sounds very interesting. Iâll ask my S if they have that at their competitions. Good luck to your S!
Speech sounds like it would be fun for DS. They donât have it at his school. Mock Trial rules all at his HS and sucks up almost anyone who would consider speech.
DS does Debate (Public Forum), but it is a low-stress thing at his school without an experienced coach. They only go to 2 events per year (if they donât conflict for DS with STEM events), and they team up experienced with novice debaters rather than teaming up the two most experiences debaters. He enjoys the weekly meetings at lunch, because they debate (or just argue) about current events. He recently joined a new Model UN club, but itâs looking like the events they attend with all conflict with other things. So, itâs mainly something fun to do at lunch and some new friends.
Re LORâs. Our GC told S16 to ask in May, while still in the teacherâs class, and give them the LOR form at the beginning of the Sr year. Esp for teachers who get a lot of requests - usually Social Science and English teachers at our school. This sched makes sense to us.
They had a meeting last Nov to explain Naviance to the 2017 parents, along w other seminars about standardized testing and Fin Aid, etc. We have a high number of kids to attend college, so our GC office is a well organized. They also use parent volunteers to help handle paperwork, etc.
RE # of schools, S16 applied to 10. And only 1 was an Add on school, right before due date. It depends on your S or D, but I think 9 or 10 is reasonable. We followed similar advice: 3 âsafetiesâ (which heâd visited, liked and would have gone to, 4 matches, and 3 reaches. But really, the âreachesâ were not really that far from matches. He felt it was a waste of his and the schoolâs time to apply to a really reach school, where he had little chance of getting in. His GPA, even w 7 APs by Jr year was going to be a problem. We was at or above the 75th percentile at least for test scores, at all his schools. We needed merit aid too, so that was a big factor in deciding his list.
I recommend Googling âCoomon Data Set 2015â for every school your student is considering. It not only has admissions criteria, it also has financial aid info. Just keep scrolling through the sections, or clicking on diff tabs (schools set up their documents in diff ways. Some are PDFs and some are Excel, etc.) I also like College Navigatorâs website for a good source of stats for each school. Even Net Prices for diff income brackets. Although that info is usually a couple of years old, but you can compare it to the figures you are getting on a schools Net Price Calculators.
Sâs counselor just sent parents a questionnaire through Naviance to get some info about our kid. She asked what we thought their greatest strengths and weaknesses were, asked about ECs, and also asked if we have any concerns with the college process. I believe that LOR requests are done in April too so the teachers can think about them over the summer and write them when they want to.
Sorry to hear that @eandesmom! They have a meeting in Soph year, so the kids know which classes the are going to need to complete by Sr year to qualify to apply for college admissions. The entire class meets at least 2x in Jr year. Once in a large group and once w each CG and their group. We have 600+ students per grade, so we made sure our boys set up Indiv meetings staring in Soph year. They continued to set up their own meetings since then, so she knows them both well, Very happy w our CG experience!
An individual meeting with a guidance counselor? There is such a thing?
Large public school with >600 in their class. I/we are doing ALL of the college planning. D does go check in periodically with her GC for class planning but thatâs it. Iâve never had the impression that one on one meetings with parents were even encouraged.