D is stuck finishing all remaining scholarship essays during Thanksgiving break. It will suck, but she’s been stressed and just has no motivation to work on any more apps. One school (app already submitted) is definitely off the list due to recent events. She would love to be completely done and commit to the school that showed her the early love, but I’m still making her stick to the plan to have options in the spring. I’m definitely getting fatigued by the whole process.
@soxmom – just wanted to assure you that you are not alone. Son submitted SCEA app at 11:10 pm on Nov 1st and another EA app at 11:59pm. The second one would have been submitted two minutes earlier if the CA system hadn’t flaked out at the submit payment moment. Had to close out of CA, enter passwords again, and re-enter CC payment info…that one was really too close. Hope you are not facing the same at midnight tomorrow.
@payn4ward & jmek15 Thanks for the info on Boulder that will be useful to know. My son will be doing this app but regular decision. It’s the last on his list and won’t be doing it until Dec. Cal States & UC’s need to get done this month. OSU is almost done… Boulder is his only school that needs a counselor and teacher letter & that hasn’t been done yet. (His counselor & teacher know, and he’s on the councelor’s list to take care of in early Dec… She just has a pile of ED/EA kids with higher priority to get through first.)
My S also doesn’t have any true reaches. The closest would be Cal Poly Engineering. His reaches will be for some of the competetive scholarships at schools where he doesn’t get the guarenteed merit (for NMF), or for addityional funding at the schools where he does get the guarenteed aid. He is happy with his list, so there you go. Do I think he could reach a little higher? Yes, but he wouldn’t be doing it for himself.
D received a nice note today in her admissions packet from the director of admissions. Her response? But did it include a scholarship? lol She has a one track mind. :))
Thank you @nw2this
D scored a 650 on her SAT Physics subject test, and is wondering if she should report it for schools that don’t require subject tests, and on scholarship applications that allow you to self report? It’s like 40th percentile, so nothing to write home about.
S17 worked really hard to complete and to submit his Regeneron STS application last week…10,000 words (!!!)…
Tonight finished up somewhat pesky application for Robertson Scholarship at Duke/UNC with deadline tomorrow night.
I keep saying/thinking he’s done…can it be so now…at least for a few weeks?.. :-S
@appleMAC Is that the only SAT2?
@CT1417 Yes, I can log back into Common App and download PDFs, but I had saved to avoid logging back in 
Well, no photos in the camera card 
but I have posted a lot on FB so I have those FB photos, lower resolution. Orchestra videos are lost.
It seems that the size of the hard disk is increasing, but the lifetime is shortening. We have other much older hard disks and they have been fine for many years.
@IABooks Every school on our List is Fine by us.
I have this irrational thought that, well, for such and such schools, we could make it work with higher cost… By skipping those no merit OOS schools, DS is curving my irrational thinking. X_X
@payn4ward – agree that nothing seems to last as long as it used to last…
For a while, I alternated back-ups between two drives, so that if one failed I would still have the prior month’s back-up. Have become lazy and now just back up to this very large 4TB drive, which is probably now available for half the price and size, two years later.
I need to massively cull the photos…
Sorry you lost so much.
@soxmom Many schools give an option to upload supplemental materials on their portals after application. You can ask if you know someone who applied for that school and got the portal already or ask on CC board.
When I see those options on the status portals (here is another chance to upload your music!) I laugh because DS refused to record a piece for the thousandth time.
A friend said he now hates Vitali’s Chaconne because his daughter practiced it till death for college app. I would not want to come to hate Bach. =))
@appleMAC It depends. If D is applying for science or engineering majors or for selective colleges, I would not report it.
so a little late now for the EA schools but I just realized D’s essay was about 415 words out of 650. Yes it’s in the 250-650 range but most kids are closer to the 650 word count I would say. Hmmm, is this a problem? Or leave it be? I hate to even bring it up to her at all really. She’s just about had it with me and the (how did @dfbdfb put it?) nagging suggesting…
@Fishnlines29 For one of my daughter’s EA schools, she originally wrote a standard 250 word essay and then realized she had an upper limit that was considerably higher. She ended up expanding it but didn’t use all the words allowed. Her GC liked it so she sent it. If the essay is coherent and to the point, maybe it’s good enough?
I can’t speak for adcoms, but for me and a lot of other college professors, if given the choice between reading 400 words and 600 words that have the same level of content (and assuming there isn’t some stylistic difference that makes more length make sense), the shorter one makes us happier.
@itsgettingreal Not the only one, she took Math 2 subject test too, and scored well. So, she’d just have the one test we would report to anyone who didn’t require two. Or, we just report it. No uber selective colleges, and not engineering @payn4ward.
@mtrosemom Cal Poly Comp Science & UC Davis are my son’s reaches. So we are in a similar situation.
All of D2’s college apps are in, but she needs to do three competitive scholarship apps, two honors apps, and the UA CBH app (and maybe Blount; she got an invitation to apply.)
I know we’ve got a month until they’re due but she’s having surgery in a week. If they can do it laparoscopically she should bounce back within a week or two, but she’ll still have tons of makeup work. And if they can’t do it with a laparoscope… I don’t even want to think about it.
I’ve tried explaining this to her, but she’s convinced she’ll have time. I’m convinced that she may be heading toward college without an honors option (and that her mother will go bald from stress before she gets there!)
Personally, I would hate to have that nagging feeling that “if only she hadn’t had a typo, she probably would have gotten in!” for all eternity. It always helps to have someone quickly review work for silly mistakes. I hope my D always has someone to review major projects for her…now, in college, and beyond.
Of course, I think almost all of our schools would overlook typos, as they’re not super-selective. But D has to be more careful on the scholarship apps, because they’re just looking for a reason to say ‘no’. I review everything, and she says ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ to all suggestions. That’s on her.
@picklesarenice Exactly same here. D is focused on getting apps done, and on homework. She says she has no favorite school, and that she’ll look into her choices come second semester. She just doesn’t have time to investigate things right now. And, maybe it makes sense to wait until all choices are in front of her.