Standing by for all news today.
@MotherOfDragons I had to lol when I read “may try to”–not very committal :)) Good luck on your exam and resisting social media!
Can’t wait to log back in tonight and hear all of the news–good or not so good at least the decisions will be out.
Good luck to everyone who gets news today!
Good wishes to everyone today. I’m posting a QOTD to help distract us all as it’s going to be a long day before results come out.
QOTD: If a classmate contacted a school that your child applied to ED to provide information on the student (i.e. sabotage):
(note: the student sabotaged is not my child, it’s a classmate.)
I would want my son’s college counselor, along with a high level administrator, to call the AO and discuss this. What if they just tossed the letter though? My son said that of the 4 examples provided, 1 is a blatant lie. The blatant lie is the one, in my opinion, that would prevent someone from being accepted to a college because it is the one that would raise concerns that the kid is a sociopath. The student received a detention. I don’t know if the school will be notifying the schools of this infraction but thinking not. The situation is not a relationship gone bad. It’s a super competitive student who is not well liked because she is so overly competitive and in a nasty way. Her actions prove what they’ve been telling her. She applied ED to an Ivy so it was not self-serving. It is a very highly selection school.
The kid could be a jerk and engages in pranks. Nothing dangerous, just annoying. His pranks are the type of thing that make you shake your head but your secretly laughing when you walk away. The administration frowns upon these things.
Good luck to everyone today. I’m in the camp of pull the band aid off and don’t send a deferral but one of the EA schools applied to only accepts or defers.
Good luck to everyone waiting on decisions today!
** QOTD: ** Wow, ED sabotage. That’s a new one for me but I suppose its not surprising. Unfortunately, even if high-level folks get involved to clarify, the situation is strained/tainted and there’s nothing anyone can do to change that. AO’s may just think, “this isn’t worth the hassle.” Very unfortunate for the applicant. Reminds me of when an attorney “accidentally” gives information to a jury and they are told to strike it from their memory - not happening.
Having said that, if my kid was the victim of the sabotage I would raise holy hell.
ETA: Best of luck to everyone expecting a decision today!!!
@dfbdfb awesome news, congrats!! <:-P <:-P
Love it! My new favorite word.
D is impatient and decided to give her thank you cards to LOR writers now rather than in the spring. We went with $25 Starbucks cards, Lindt chocolates, and handwritten notes in a festive holiday bag.
QOTD: I think the guidance counselor should get involved and contact the college and explain that the letter is full of lies. I also think the GC should contact the girl’s Ivy school and let them know that she did such as thing as the Ivy would not want a girl like that on campus.
Good luck to everyone waiting on decisions today!
@paveyourpath --wow that’s so crazy! I don’t know what I would do. I would be tempted to leave it all alone since reacting just creates more drama IMO. But OTOH you can’t let blatant lies possibly hurt a decision result.
We have a kid who applied ED somewhere and I know at least a few kids thought of sending in pics of this persons racist tweets and also tweets about how their parents frequently help them plow through AP homework. Hmmm… But as far as I know no one actually did anything.
I have a question that I should probably ask in the FA thread but they are scary so I will ask it here first. If D17 is applying to several schools that ask for the FAFSA and the CSS profile for financial aid, and we know that we aren’t eligible for aid, but still want her to be able to take out federal loans [I don’t, but my ex wants that to be an option]…can we just file the FAFSA for those schools and not the CSS? Or will they see that as an incomplete FA application and not offer the loans?
@kt1969, we dealt with this, and while I think it’s probably prudent to follow up with each school specifically, the feedback we got from our ED school (a CSS profile school) was that the PROFILE was for institutional need-based aid, FAFSA is for federal need-based aid, so not filing the PROFILE shouldn’t have any effect on any federal assistance, including loans. FWIW, I also asked if not filing the PROFILE this year would impact our ability to file in subsequent years if our financial situation changed and was told that it wouldn’t. Again, this may be school specific, so I would shoot your question in an email to the FA office at your schools.
Just want to vent here.
for the good news D17’s friend got Duke ED.
D17 hears from Elon EA next week. Also gets back latest ACT score, but even with tutoring doesnt sound like she will get it above 28 (her best score). Math was harder than previous (several kids said this) and that is the one score she needed to raise badly. Meanwhile she passed her College Algebra class with a C, but the reach schools are not going ot like that. Granted it shows up in her transcript as a weighted 82, but still. WE are still waiting for the other grades, probably a B in econ, A in Government, but Lit is the big ?. Could be a B or A.
I feel so bad for her. With an LD, nothing comes easy. To even get to take honors or the one AP:class she took she had to fight the school on. Luckily with her semester abroad last year, she took some real college level classes(has actual credit from Gratz) . This is why I let her go. She is a hard worker though. I look at S19 where everything comes easy and will take all those AP’s next near, did fantastic on his PSAT, and if he put forth effort would be a 4.0 student and it kills me how hard she has to work. I am hoping that all her EC’s and leadership roles help. It also kills me that S19 is not reaching his potential. That he is socially and sports awkward and doesnt have much in EC. I want one of those kids I read about here on CC (note that I was that kid, went to CMU for engineering degree). Love my kids dearly, but a combo of book and street smarts in one kid would have been nice.
Now for Dilemma. Dream school is GW, but we did not go ED because I could not say for certain that we could come up with the $. EFC from FAFSA is high, and still have not done the CSS. Merit would probably not be in the picture with reach school… Also, all RD is March/April for the reach schools. If she gets accepted to Elon, she will probably choose over IU. Elon requires a deposit to be part of freshman weekend in either March or April. I have thought about if she gets into Elon having her accept, but if her dream school(s) work out to pull the acceptance and then accept the dream school. If done before May 1st, is that bad? I know if wait listed you can do this, if done right. Well it could all be moot anyway by next Tuesday.
On a last note, whenever I suggest schools where she could get tons of merit and get in easily, she gets all upset. She knows that the 60K schools may not happen, but there is enough to do the 40K schools. she wants to go to the best school that she likes that will accept her for her major (international studies).
QOTD: @paveyourpath, this really happened? Did the letter become known because the prankster bragged about it?
If this is true, then as a parent I would hit the roof, or my head would explode, or both. This goes well beyond “prank” and IMO teeters into the legal arena. Isn’t there some criminal or civil liability for fraud or libel here? I’m not sure I got the facts exactly right, but the way I read it the applicant is not a nice person. However, this does not in any way justify the maliciousness of the action. At the very least, the HS (and not the GC but the headmaster or principal) should contact the college AO and professionally inform them of what happened. They do not have to review the truth of each point on the letter, that’s not the point. It was inappropriate and should be disregarded entirely. The applicant is a victim. The “prankster” should at the very least be suspended (possibly expelled) and the disciplinary action reported to all their schools. OMG this scenario is so disturbing!!
^^Adding more to say that the FA office told us that if our EFC per the FAFSA is greater than COA (which in our case it was), they wouldn’t need a CSS Profile on file to verify that we are not eligible for financial aid. They said that if admissions is wondering why we didn’t complete a CSS Profile they would explain it to them. Also qualifying my response above to say that not filing the first year doesn’t preclude us from filing in subsequent years, but that D would have to file an appeal to be considered for need-based grants in future years–not sure how onerous that process is, but there really didn’t seem to be a point in going through the pain and suffering of filling out the CSS Profile when I know we wouldn’t have been eligible for any institutional need-based aid.
@kt1969 yes but you may need to file CSS if you want any kind of merit aid too. best to check with each school for their policy/requirements…
QOTD: I don’t think admissions officers would accept any letters from any students for this very reason. If they read it and have any questions, they will call the school and the child’s counsellor. Very disturbing on all levels.
Good luck everyone.
@dfbdfb --It’s always a good to have the acceptance! But I’m with you…if it’s not a school they are totally pumped about, the modest merit takes it off the list. Likely that will be us for Northeastern today. Her original pipe dream was going to school in Boston so she threw that application in for fun. I don’t see her getting much more than token merit there and since she isn’t in love with the school we would never break back over the next few years trying to make it work.
Agreed. This morning we woke up to a nice email from FSU with the heading ** Congratulations! You have been awarded financial aid! ** So I went to his portal and…$5,500/yr unsubsidized federal loan - nothing more. Booo!
FSU will be dropping off the list.
Don’t get me wrong, I will certainly appreciate the federal loans at some point, but lets be real… “Congratulations!” =))
@paveyourpath Thank you for the clarification regarding WUSTL. Sorry if it seems I put you on the spot I just worry about anything sent US Mail to us as many things have been lost over the years. My D never got her NHRP notification and certificate earlier this year. I had to call to verify. Her Pitt merit letter came a few days late. In this day and age I wish schools would send an email notification if they send something important in the mail.
My D is taking a ‘sick’ day to study for her Calc final and wait for SCEA decision at 3. I don’t think she would have been paying much attention to anything at school anyway. One best friend is also staying home and waiting for the same decision and same Calc final and another is staying home because now the Calc class will be on her GPA since she got into Penn.
My angst is that this is the first decision involving the total application. Tough school to judge it against.