Parents of the HS Class of 2017 (Part 1)

Parents Forum Class of 20xx Community
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So this isn’t up there with the Harvards and Rose-Hulmans statuswise, but D17 got a purple bubblewrap mailer from the University of St Thomas today containing a purple t-shirt that reads I’M IN in huge print with the name of the university beneath, and a very nice card (with her name handwritten! on its envelope in purple ink, plus purple* and silver mortarboard confetti) that congratulated her on her acceptance, and said that further details would arrive shortly.

  • Notice a color theme? The biggest takeaway from when we toured the school was “Nice facilities, but if you don’t like purple you should stay far, far away.”

UST was a clear safety for her—her grades and test scores are all well above their 75th-percentile levels, and they admit ~85% of applicants anyway—but it’s her first acceptance from a school that doesn’t auto-admit based on stats, and even though she’s unlikely to go there (though they do have a full-ride+ scholarship she’d be competitive for…), she says it feels good to know for certain that she can get past a “holistic” reading of an application.

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@dfbdfb Congrats!!! Very cool acceptance package! Best one I’ve heard of so far this admissions season.

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DS was accepted to Colgate today! Very happy boy. Unfortunately, DD was rejected from Notre Dame yesterday. Fortunately, she was accepted to engineering at Santa Clara today. She still has several EA schools we are waiting on. Fingers crossed.

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@NoVADad99 congrats on Colorado

@Atyraulove big congrats on Smith being done! <:-P

@Calimom3 congrats to S on Colgate and D Santa Clara (hugs for ND)

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So much great news from you all. What a group! ^:)^ Congrats and hugs all around. And thank you for all the well wishes.

@MACncheez If you recall, I was kicked out of Faber. Something about a horse. :blush:

@Mom2aphysicsgeek We’ve been to Houston 30 times, but never visited UH. We’ve been to Rice, which was nice. I’ll start coaching him on speaking to folks at the engineering department. Good advice, thanks.

@RightCoaster S has done very well, thanks. We took the shotgun Big MAC approach. All mid-tier* Big MAC schools with somewhat simple applications and/or low app fee…and engineering. Still no word from SUNY Binghamton, they will be his benchmark against which all other offers will be compared…hopefully.

@dfbdfb Thank goodness for the holistic approach. I think my S has squeaked through many a “stats-filter” with his essays and his story.

*By mid-tier, I mean CC mid-tier. To the rest of the world most would be considered top-tier.

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Congrats on all of the new acceptances! I had a busy work day yesterday so almost impossible to keep up with all of the news here.

Yes to assignments over the holiday. Most teachers at DD’s schools don’t assign it but the IB kids are “different.”

DD’s friend, and school val, was accepted to the Croft Institute of International Studies (Ole Miss) yesterday. Just learned about the program after her acceptance; it looks interesting.

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@dfbdfb Very cool package! As an alum of St Thomas I agree purple is a very popular color! The school is amazingly beautiful and has a great alumni network in the Twin Cities. Your child will always feel like she is wanted, with lots of personal touches as demonstrated in her acceptance. I hope it stays in the running for a while!

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Re: Fake Kid/Fake School

DDs HS has a “decision day” in spring where all the seniors wear t-shirts for their planned schools. DD swears she’s going to wear a Hogwarts shirt to school that day.

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@BlueAFMom Croft is a great program. Dd did not like the Russian dept there at all. It was a huge downer bc Croft would have been a great fit. Congrats to her friend!

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@stencils My oldest daughter has a sticker for her back car window that says, “Hogwarts Alumni”. Almost every time I borrow her car to go to the grocery store or something someone notices it and comments.

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@STEM2017 wrote

Oh my goodness amen to that! As a family we’re good at maximizing the hand dealt to us, but we all suffer with the unknown. D17 and I were talking last night and she’s hoping for a yes or no from MIT, not a deferral.

All of this would be a lot harder for me to take if D wasn’t in at a safety that she was happy with-I’d seriously be losing my “stuff” right now. Going forward the advice I will offer people who ask me about college is to have a safety in place before all the stress of lottery/reach stuff starts rolling in.

D17 got a cute holiday card from UA a few days ago and it made her smile (a little bit because it was a non-denominational “happy holiday” vs “merry christmas”, which she likes because it feels inclusive), and I think that’s a key part of holding onto sanity right now for the two of us.

@phoenixmom congrats! It really resonated with me when you wrote about the deferral a few days ago-it was the same day we got D18’s PSAT scores back, and I was really sad about them. It was hard to read in the parents 2018 thread all the kids who made NMSF with killer scores. It took me a bit to recalibrate my expectations and be ok with her numbers (they really weren’t bad at all-660v 590m (down from 620m last year) ), but it means I need to learn new strategies for her to help her find her best fit. But yeah, it can be hard to read sometimes-I can’t go on the Harvard thread at all because I feel their pain too much.

Fake kid definitely needs to apply to Hogwarts. I don’t know if the girls’ high school does decision day, but the ornery part of me would absolutely advise them not to wear the college they’ve picked, because what about the kids who aren’t going to college? I know 94% of kids who graduate from their school do go, but 6% is still about 50 kids who don’t get to wear a shirt.

D17 got an invitation to Skype for her Olin interview since no alumni live anywhere near us-her interviewer is in Cali!

Speaking of far away, @dfbdfb is that St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands? I just finished a book by Alice Hoffman called ‘Marriage of Opposites’ that is set there. I didn’t love the story, but I did love the background about St. Thomas (the island-no mention of the university. If there is one there, lol).

I’m still obsessing about the dog in the rescue place, btw. They open today. H is like “no dog”. I’m like “no promises. Plus, you poop bigger than him, so you’ll hardly notice”. Cue groan from H.

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@Daykidmom --thanks for dropping in to let us know.

@STEM2017 @HiToWaMom @DMV301 @phoenixmomof2 @Atyraulove ==CONGRATS!! <:-P

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I’m obviously not a huge HP fan but wasn’t Hogwarts a high school?

ETA: Ok probably a dumb question. It’s just a wizard school. They all looked so young.

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@Ynotgo So I confirmed with D last night that (junior year), if you simply TAKE the AP exam and simultaneously get an A or B in the class, you are exempt from the final exam. I think senior year is different, you have to have an A average to get out of the final.

@NoVADad99 Congrats on the acceptance to Mines, yea! <:-P

@Atyraulove Congrats on Smith, nice to be done for sure!

@dfbdfb Oh, that’s great news on UST, congratulations. Now you should just paint her room purple haha

@Calimom3 congrats on Colgate and Santa Clara, at least she had those to soften the blow of ND.

@BlueAFMom congrats on Ole Miss, the program could be interesting!

@stencils I love the Hogwarts idea. That’s perfect.

QOTD: Seniors having decision day where they where their new College shirts? Nice but what about kids who can’t/don’t go to college? I’m thinking it could make them feel very bummed out.

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QOTD:
I’m torn. I like the idea of Decision Day. I man–athletes get to have their big deal signing day at the school. Don’t even get me started. No one worries about the other students who didn’t get to sign and be an athlete in college.

These kids have worked incredibly hard and they need some fun and a little bit of reward. Our school has a healthy balance of kids going to the regional flagship and then kids going “off” to other parts of the state with an occasional OOS kid.

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Need some advice. My son is awaiting his EA result but in anticipation of a deferral, I am interested in thoughts about other reach schools for him. I think we r set with safeties and matches. Money is not an issue. GA resident.

He is top 1-2% of his class. Very good ECs to include national competitive summer science program. All State chorus etc. Attends public performing arts magnet. NMSF. Heavy focus on math and science. 11 APs inc calc bc and physics c. 2300 plus SAT.

He has acceptances already to Bama, Mich State U, UGA and Oklahoma. He has applied EA to GaTech.

He is a quirky science oriented kid who loves being around other smart quirky kids. Loves to be immersed in a smart culture. Loves to talk about science but listens to hard rock on vinyl.

Any ideas on other schools?

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@MotherOfDragons Same here, public HS class of 500 and most, but not all of them go to college. I don’t know if the t-shirt thing is official or unofficial, but wearing the Hogwarts shirt is a way to say it’s OK to take other paths in life.

@caroldanvers I wonder if they sell “Hogwarts Parent” window stickers!

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@Biotechgirl What does he want to major in?

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have you thought about Carnegie Mellon? I went there for engineering back in the 80’s.

Though with his stats GT should be an acceptance!

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@Biotechgirl Carnegie Mellon, Rice, and U Rochester come to mind.