@eandesmom congrats to your son for UVM acceptance. I think he would really like it there, from what I’ve read about him. I think he would fit right in immediately and enjoy everything about VT. His snail mail will come in about a week. You’ve got to tell him!
@paveyourpath thanks for reminding me and keeping us in the loop on thise great scholarship opportunities. Sound awesome! Continued good luck! We kind of went with your strategyof just applying to almost every school at EA deadline, whethe or not r it was RD app. So everything has been sitting there for 2 months now. Twiddle thumbs.
For those of you have maybe applied to UMass, according their twitter EA results start coming out on Friday. That’s my son’s last true safety kind of school. The rest are all match/sort of match/reachy. I’m pretty certain son17 won’t attend UMass, but we had him apply anyways just in case. It would SO cheap. He just doesn’t dig it. He doesn’t hate it though. Chance of attendance 1/10.
JOTD, part 1: I’m a linguist, so a linguistic(ish) one: Please provide the past tense of the following sentence: I live in Tokyo.
St Thomas: @MotherOfDragons, nearly 100 posts (that is, about 6 hours) ago, you asked where St Thomas is. There are a couple by that name, but this one’s in St Paul (any more saints? anyone?), Minnesota.
George Mason: Tomorrow’s George Mason’s announcement day, which they’ll do via their portal. Interestingly, whereas D17’s portal page used to have a (very!) brief blurb thanking her for her application and saying it would be reviewed, as of yesterday it’s…blank. I mean, utterly blank. No text, no nothing—just the header image plus password change and logout options. It’s kind of disconcerting, really.
Decision shirt day: What about the kids who are truly undecided, though? I mean, D17 has three offers (hopefully four by tomorrow!), and after having talked to her about them, they’re all (including St Thomas to a greater extent than I’d thought, @Atyraulove!) still very much in the running. That said, @RightCoaster, yeah, she’s very much a “Show me the money!” girl—any of them would win her immediately with a full-ride offer.
Alabama’s super-secret double honors programs: D17 is annoyed by the every-couple-days reminders to apply to University Fellows. Dudes, she applied three weeks ago, you even thanked her for it. This is not a good way to impress an organized person.
@thshadow Yup, I agree. I was just surprised there were as many as there were. And, I was talking about only ED/REA/SCEA, not regular EA. It’s all about the MAC!
@paveyourpath Awesome about Pitt. I vaguely remember that exchange, and I’m glad he liked it. It may not make our final list, but we liked it a lot. Sounds like you have many options. We, too, are waiting for the final numbers from USCar that won’t come until sprng.
@eandesmom --congratulations! Happy to have another potential Catamount among the ranks!
@RightCoaster–the price is definitely right for UMass in-state. Maybe a match for my D, but definitely not a safety. My D applied RD, so we won’t hear until the spring (and UMass is notorious for their late notifications, so I’m trying not to even think about it right now). My D liked it a lot when we visited; after the fact, though, she became less enthralled–hoping to keep it in the mix as a viable contender, but it will be among our last decisions if ED doesn’t pan out. :">
D17 only needed it for MIT, if I remember correctly. It was a Slideroom portfolio. She has a blog about the stuff she creates, both in school and out, so most of it was an adaptation of the blog, links to her Github account, and some other stuff.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek I hope the Tooth Fairy and Santa don’t run into each other!
Volunteer hours-school does not require it but D17 and D18 do a lot of volunteer hours through TSA, and D17 tutors kids for free during her free period at school. I used to volunteer a ton when they were little, so it’s part of our habit to help out where we can. I loathe mandatory volunteering, though.
So I asked D18 to wrap her dad’s 3 gifts before he gets home from work. I happen to look over and she’s found a big Amazon box, shoved all three (wildly different) gifts in it, put some tissue paper in, and was about to wrap it. A battle ensued over the right way to wrap gifts, culminating with me pointing to a big Amazon box (as yet unopened) and saying-should I just put a bow on it, write “to D18” in big letters on the side, and call it a day? 8-} You’d think this kid has never wrapped a gift before, sheesh.
My new favorite thing to do this week is to argue with millenial telemarkers, who get SO butthurt when you tell them they didn’t pronounce your name correctly, and then tell them they failed and they should hang up in shame until they can do their job better. It’s pretty funny. NoMoRoBo gets 99% of them, but for the few that manage to sneak through, I do not make their day better, lol. >:) I need a pressure release valve and they’re it this week.
Surprise today! S17 forwarded an email he got from San Diego State University both DW and my Alma Mater. We expected that he would get in, but he was accepted today! That makes 7 of 11 decisions in the bag with 6 of 7 accepts! He has choices!
OK, so apparently the 'butthurt; train left the station without me as a passenger. I’ve seen a boatload of butthurt memes in the last week, and now our local verbalist, @MotherOfDragons tosses it out. I need to get off CC.
Congrats @jpc763! Love the weather in SD! Congrats @eandesmom, love UVM for the same thing, different reasons.
@itsgettingreal17 : Maker portfoilio. DS did one for MIT and will probably do one for CMU. :!! I’ll try to avoid Greek.
Slideroom is just a separate website that some colleges link to for creating and submitting various supplements. I think the prompts in Slideroom are different for each college and for the different types of supplements. I suppose some colleges allow maker portfolios done other ways than through Slideroom.
For example, MIT lets you use Slideroom for maker portfolios, research supplements, arts supplements, and a few others I forget. (DS did the first 2.) The kids create an account and answer various essay prompts. (I think there were about 3 essays each in this case.) Then they upload images, videos, PDFs or whatever as needed. The research supplement only let him upload one PDF for a research paper. The maker portfolio let him upload a number of items and provide text for each item to tell them what they were looking at. You could choose which department should evaluate the portfolio. There was some ability to reorder the items in the portfolio, but not any control over formatting the display of the image/video and the text as you might expect with a PowerPoint or whatever.
We had to pay something like $5 or $10 to Slideroom for each supplement.
P.S. GitHub is online storage of coding projects that you can make publicly available if you like.
@Motiv8tedmom23 Congratulations on your child’s acceptance to Umass Lowell Honors program. My son got accepted by email about a week ago, as well. They said a letter would be coming in the mail, but we’ve received nothing. Have you gotten anything in the mail?
@klinska and @RightCoaster We are waiting on Umass Amherst as well. It’s a bit of a reach for my son.
Congratulations on everyone’s acceptances and good luck to all!
Has anyone used www.raise.me? It’s a micro-scholarship program, in conjunction with limited schools. My understanding is the student will receive the greater of the amount accrued on raiseme’s site and/or any aid which would have been awarded by the school. We completed it for Umass Lowell, but I haven’t been informed of any aid yet, so I don’t know if they will honor the amount they originally stated. (The concept is a little confusing, so my apologies if I did not explain it well).
@collegeboundmass congrats to your son also! What is he hoing for? No snail mail yet, I’m thinking we’ll see something this weekend based on D16’s experienxe last year.
@Biotechgirl Sounds like good suggestions you’ve gotten. My son also wants to major in physics and be with other smart, quirky kids. Agree with others that an undergrad degree in astrophysics might be somewhat limiting for grad school, though of course it will include all the same math.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek 1st tooth brings back sweet memories. I hope I get to be a grandmom. :-* Not sure nerdy DS17 or transgender DS20 will cooperate.
Decision day: Only 40% of our school goes to 4-year colleges. 54% say they are going to our (highly-ranked) community college, but the school doesn’t track that after graduation. So, there isn’t any formal decision day, though some people may wear t-shirts unofficially.
Hogwarts: My kids are still bummed that they didn’t get a letter when they were 11. Though I guess now they know they should have been looking for one from Ilvermorny.
Miskatonic: I love the crafty way you suggested that @snoozn. There are some great t-shirts on Amazon. “Miskatonic U Department of Astrophysics: Devouring worlds since the dawn of time” >:) >-) 8-X
