I’m glad to see my D is not the only quiet, smart, inside-the-box grinder here! Regarding fish, I’d say she wants to be a medium fish in a small pond (especially within engineering).
Like @curiositycat333 I also have a soft spot for Princeton (though none of my kids could ever get in!) D’s best K-8 teacher, who she had for three years, was a Princeton grad. My kids have all had many excellent teachers (we live in a great school district), but he was the best. I’m sure he would have been equally good no matter what school he attended, but how many Princeton grads become public elementary school teachers?
@thshadow, yep, I’m on board! D is really starting to stress and worry, which is unusual for her. We’re awaiting four EA decisions, as well as an HC decision and some merit. Helpful is for hugs! >:D<
I am holding on tight! We are waiting for D17 ED and we aren’t sure if its coming out Friday or sometime next week. UGH :((
@RightCoaster My D applied to Tulane and didn’t fill out the fasfa and in her admittance letter she was awarded a merit scholarship. It was very nice to just get something without applying for it.
Good luck to everyone waiting for ED/EA. Hopefully no hugs are needed.
Great post @thshadow! I’ve been trying to post both the good and the bad here and/or FB group. This has been a safe space to do so. I don’t feel comfortable sharing more widely and will only share her final decision with the rest of the word. My close friends get the exciting news only.
My S17’s #1 school is U of Wisconsin. He loved our visit and is very excited about the possibility of going there. I looked online and saw many of the scholarships that are offered so we submitted an app. They will begin sending out decisions next week.
Last week we got an email encouraging us to sign in to the scholarship site. We eagerly filled out his profile and matched exactly 2 scholarships. One for a possibility to get a stipend for study abroad (he is not interested) and one that he actually does not qualify for because we are not considered to be in need.
Looking at their COA, there is no way he can go there without scholarship. I am not sure he has fully realized that yet, but I am quickly coming to that conclusion. Bummer.
He does have some great options and some irons still in the fire, but this will be disappointing for sure.
@jpc763 Don’t give up hope. My S has received some scholarships that we were not expecting. His stats are no where near most of the DC on this thread. It is healthy to set your expectations lower but don’t count him out yet. Wishing you lots of Big MAC!!!
@greeny8 good luck on ED notice! Thanks for note regarding not filling out Fafsa. I’m glad to see others are getting some $$. I don’t know why son17 didn’t at least get offered the minimum award at UNH in his letter. His ACT score is way above the requirement and his GPA too. Maybe with UVM, he’ll get something in the mail at a later date. I was hoping that he’d get into a safety that was at least closer to in state flagship cost with some merit. We can afford the safeties either way, but it would be nicer to have a cheaper option that he likes. Oh well, I’m still sending him somewhere regardless, he got in!
@carachel2 - yes, the PSAT scores come out on Dec 12. So those of us with D18ers will be able to compare SI’s to last year’s to see if they’re in the hunt for national merit and such. As always though, NMSF results won’t come out for 9 more months or so. This past week many GC’s have been giving scores out to students & loading them on Naviance - so many of us already have the info in hand.
@DoyleB – yikes!! You have a sadistic streak (love it) - so glad I did not start this year’s thread - finally recovered from that whole experience - an my DS missing NMSF by 1 stupid Frederic Douglas point! >:P
@thshadow – thanks for your post about posting disappointments and helpful hugs too. we likely will get a BIG disappointment next Thursday night.
I’m thinking about a passage in ‘The Admissions’ where this extraordinary girl who spent her whole childhood preparing to get into Harvard (all the right classes, leadership positions, test scores, sports, community service, etc.) didn’t get in and then flew across the country to confront the AO who told her that the extraordinary had become commonplace. To get in now (he told her) you have to be “beyond the extraordinary.”
That’s why I always tell my kids (both stellar students, but with no tags for urm/legacy/recruited athlete, etc.) that their acceptance at such schools would be (for them) truly like hitting the lottery & that they shouldn’t feel the least bit upset about any rejection letters.
Side note: I remember an AO at one of those Ivy League presentation nights telling S15 that every kid should be able to brag to his/her friends that he/she got rejected by Harvard. WOW.
DD has received a couple of EA admits so far. She really doesn’t seem to have a favorite yet, or at least is hiding it well. Several RDs in progress, but most of those we won’t know about those until late March.
My question: These early admits have actually stressed her out a bit. Maybe it has to do with the reality of the next life step appearing in the form of big envelopes in the mail? Has anyone found that getting admits actually causes some stress rather than relieving it?
Catching up after almost a week away - apologies if I missed anyone’s big news!
D is awaiting her ED decision on 12/15. I would say she is at least putting up a good front of not seeming too anxious about it. I did have her hit submit on any free applications she had on her list just to have a few more irons in the fire, while applications with fees, CSS Profiles and any Slideroom costs for other schools are on hold pending a thumbs down next Thursday. Alas, given an overall 11% acceptance rate for girls at the ED school, thumbs down seems like a pretty good bet. I honestly have no idea how much of a boost being in the ED pool makes for an otherwise completely unhooked applicant. :-S
Fortunately, there are a few other options she feels very good about where her chances look a bit better in the RD round. I am a bit regretful that I didn’t crack the whip harder to see to it she made some unrestricted EA deadlines at schools where she had better odds rather than having the first decision she’s facing be a likely rejection. Lessons learned for D23!
@dfbdfb Among the women colleagues I personally know, I am one of the very few who has kids and ever or still married. Successful academic career is definitely NOT family/marriage-friendly especially for women of my generation.
I made several unorthodox choices along the way.
I opened the mailbox yesterday to see a big, thick envelope in it, with a logo ending in the word “College” on it, the rest obscured by the rest of the mail. So I pulled it out, knowing that Earlham College is one of D17’s EA schools, and found it was…
…a packet from Smith College addressed to my wife and me, telling us all about the benefits of sending our daughter to an all-female college.
To twist the knife a bit more, there was a thick packet from Earlham in the mail, but it was a viewbook rather than anything relating to admissions. At least it was in a clear wrapper letting us all see what was inside before opening it, so hopes didn’t get raised by it.
I love the talk of the “quiet / introverted grinders” here. D’17 isn’t really shy, but she does not like to draw attention to herself.
When I win next multihundred million dollar lottery, I think I will set up a foundation to make awards to the grinders. On the application form, I’ll add space to list your loyal and committed followership activities.
(Not knocking the leaders out there, I know that takes energy and risks too!)
