Ugh, just found out a boy in D’s graduating class committed suicide over the weekend. She barely knew him, but some kids in her peripheral friend group were pretty close to him. Very sad. 
Same time as the tests? @VickiSoCal I bet a lot of the kids are irked.
@thermom How awful!
Just relax and breathe deeply…
If you want to see how different income/assets impact FAFSA EFC, @rgosula has developed a nifty excel spreadsheet, you could pm him. Or Collegeboard has an EFC calculator.
But if your FAFSA EFC is too high for Pell grant anyway, and since private schools often use CSS profile as well which has a different calculation, then the FAFSA EFC number is meaningless to you. What matters is what the individual school deems your need to be and how they meet it (net price calculator on college website can be helpful).
@JenJenJenJen It is the Saturday between the first week and second week of AP testing.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek You must be so proud! And – this is a smart move of USCar’s part, because they get better students accepting them back and attending this way. Win win!
Congratulations @Mom2aphysicsgeek that is fantastic news!!
I hadn’t even thought of power of attorney for my DS17 is it hard to do?
Oh, no. @thermom how devastating.
QOTD (although I’m a day late and a dollar short): Hoo boy, times have changed from when I applied to colleges. I only applied to small LACs and didn’t shoot too high – let’s not kid ourselves here – and got into most. Two memories resurface.
One, the essay I wrote was “imagine interviewing a historical figure” or something along those lines. Being a budding psychology major, I chose Sigmund Freud and wrote out – in play form – an interview between him and me. It was Freud…and the “interview” concluded with a literal d*ck joke! And I still got into a bunch of schools! Can you imagine? Also obvious – no one proofread my essay.
Two, I chose the college I ultimately decided to attend because on the weekends I overnighted at a couple other choices, it was raining hard and everyone stayed inside. It was a gorgeous spring weekend when I went to Skidmore, so I thought it was the prettiest campus. @-)
@carachel2 @illinoyz – Thank you for prompting me to call the pediatrician again. Confirmed that they still only have the Trumenba 3-dose meningitis B vaccine and no plans to get the 2-dose version. However, I was wrong about the timing – @illinoyz is correct and it can indeed be completed over 6 months. Will get DS in there in next couple of weeks.
@lbf – no, it is not hard to do at all. Just google power of attorney, and you will likely find free forms for your state online (if extra neurotic like some of us, you can do one set for your home state and one for the state your kid’s college is in). I’d suggest a healthcare POA and also a durable POA for finances/taxes. You can do it yourself, no need to wait for a lawyer. Will just probably need to get it notarized. Scan it all in and have electronic versions. Hope no one ever needs to use…
@Mom2aphysicsgeek – big congrats and wishing luck!
@thermom – how awful for the family, friends and comunity --so sorry.
QOTD - I lived in the Bay Area and applied to 3 schools in CA (as far from home as possible!). Two on the CU application (UCLA & UCSB) and one on the CSU application (SDSU). Both applications were paper and pen. I did it all myself with no help from my parents but occasional help from my older brothers and sisters. I was accepted to UCSB and SDSU but was declined by UCLA. I appealed as my older brother and sister were attending UCLA at the time but was declined again. I chose SDSU. My sister drove me down in August for move in, which was the first time I had ever seen the school!. It worked out just fine!
QOTD: I applied to one school (the one my older, graduated sister went to). I remember hand writing the application and then hand delivering it to the admissions office when I went for a visit. What do you think they’d do with a handwritten application if a student showed up with one today? 
Great news for @Mom2aphysicsgeek 's kid!!
Cruddy news @thermom. I don’t like hearing stories like that.
@thermom – very sad and disturbing news - sad for his family and all the students at the school.
@thermom So sad. My kids school had a suicide in the fall. Very hard on the kids.
@jpc763 what years were you at SDSU?
@thermom that is horrifying. So tragic.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek That’s amazing, congrats!!!
My college application story: I applied to six comprehensive and science-oriented universities in the Northeast and Midwest, plus a last-minute one to my in-state (Maryland) flagship. My high school didn’t (back then) send many kids to even our public flagship, let alone anything more selective, and my parents aren’t college graduates, so I had essentially no understanding of the process or cultural capital relating to higher education; I decided which colleges to apply to based on brochures they sent me, the Peterson’s and Barron’s guidebooks, and…well, that’s pretty much it. (I still remember one brochure—from Penn, I’m pretty sure it was—that had a translucent vellum cover over a cardstock cover, and the cardstock had a photo of an odd assortment of items scattered across a table, including a skull topped with a very drippy candle. Didn’t apply there, but kind of wanted to just from that image, not because I’d ever heard anything about the school. But I digress.)
I filled out most of the apps using a (excruciatingly heavy) typewriter on my living room floor. My essay for those that allowed something more free-form (which was most of them) was actually a creative piece I did, where the conceit was that it was a real-life experience, but couched in the style and imagery of the genre of fantasy. (I went back and read it a couple years back, and it wasn’t great, but IMO not actually bad for work from a 14- or 15-year-old who wasn’t destined to become a writer.) I got into Carnegie Mellon, a pretty selective college even back then (but nothing like it is now), and learned very quickly that I was quite unprepared both emotionally and educationally for the place.
That last is what I see as one big advantage kids, at least the upper- and middle-class (even lower-middle-class) ones, have now—they’re much more likely to be able to judge whether they’re academically prepared for what they’re getting themselves into, since there’s so much more information than just guidebooks and brochures about colleges they wouldn’t otherwise know much about.
As for paying for it, my parents said at the outset they’d pay for four years, and they did (though the financial hit from the one essentially wasted year at Carnegie Mellon was a decent-sized setback for them). My fifth year of undergrad I put on Visa, which i spent a few years during grad school paying off—like I said, no cultural capital, and so I had absolutely no idea about the availability of things like federal student loans and such.
@thermom I am so so sorry. Tragic and heartbreaking.
QOTD: Hi everyone! Sorry if this has been discussed before as I’m not so great at navigating these threads. My situation - son fell in love with a public univ. (Big 10) at which he is most likely going to be rejected. It took a lot of coaxing for us to get him to visit other schools - as we knew a year and a half ago that his 1st choice was a huge reach as an OOS. So, he finally agreed to do some touring and came up with a few alternatives that he seems happy with but I haven’t quite seen anywhere near the same enthusiasm as his favorite which makes me a little sad. I’m pretty sure he is feeling anxious as he just applied to PennState last minute - he had not wanted to apply earlier (I’m pretty sure because he didn’t want to get rejected at 3 Big 10s). Obviously, applying this late does not help so not too optimistic there either and the rest of the schools were waiting on are reach schools. So, my question is - has anyone or their child been in the same boat? Not accepted to their “dream school” and not seemingly over excited about any other choices? If so, how has it panned out? Has your child eventually gotten excited about another school?