QOTD: I was at the bottom of my class at a very rigorous private school - with a B+ average. When I went in for my first college counseling session with the field hockey coach she turned in her chair, held up the “recommendation” she wrote on my behalf and said, “I had a hard time coming up with anything good to say about you.” At that time I had a merit based full ride offer from Hollins College in VA so I just went there. I hated it and left after a year. Never finished my degree but dabbled part time for years. I didn’t like school much. My dream job was always to be a stay home mom and I was lucky it worked out. However now I’m wondering what I’m going to do with myself in a couple of years! LOL I’ll probably be the nosy lady in the grocery store telling young moms how to raise their kids.
QOTD: I went to a very competitive boarding school where I was a middling student–did really well in some classes and not so great in others. I remember no input from home on my college list at all. I was an avid reader of the Fiske Guide and the Insider’s Guide, and pretty much made my list based on those books. I had a college counselor at school but not sure she had a lot of input either. I applied to 8 schools, got in to 6, waitlisted at one, and denied at one. Mostly LACs, and kind of a random assortment overall. My top two choices were the waitlist and one of the admits, so I went to the admitted student weekend for the one I got in to, liked it, didn’t go on the waitlist for the other, and committed to Middlebury. It was a great fit for me and I loved it there. Can’t imagine there are too many middling students from ANY school getting in there now, but at the time [mid-80s], 15 kids from my HS class went there. Pretty sure the next year they admitted way fewer. 
My D is a double legacy and there was still no way she was going to get in [especially since we aren’t big donors either of us], but luckily for her she wasn’t interested. My apps were all handwritten, and I don’t remember getting any help with my essays. Ah, the times, how they do change.
@thermom I’m so sorry what terrible news for the family and the community. It reminds me that this is such a stressful time for our kids and it will all work itself out. We just need to support them and love them!
QOTD: As a high school junior living in PA, I had Lisa Birnbach’s Guide to Colleges and a more serious Fiske-type college guidebook. I poured through them looking for the right school that was maybe a little more southern and warmer. I liked UMD, UNC-CH, Penn State, and some others. I was thrown for a loop at the end of my senior year when I was told that we were moving to Texas over the summer before my senior year. My parents also said that college was dirt cheap in TX and that Texas A&M and UT Austin were great schools. When we got to TX, I visited both schools and decided that UT was too urban for me. Texas A&M was the winner. I had a great time there!
QOTD: How many of you know where your child is going with great certainty? (I guess at least the ED accepted people.) How many have a clear choice among current acceptances, but might be swayed by future decisions? And how many just don’t know?
I’ve felt like things have been such smooth sailing for DD. Rose Hulman was her #1 choice, and she was accepted EA.
But recently she’s been mentioning “I don’t know if I want to go to RHIT”. If she were to get into RPI or WashU, maybe she’ll change her mind. Which is kindof ironic, because I’ve spent the last month or so deciding? convincing myself? that RHIT is by far the best choice for her.
I guess I will enthusiastically support her no matter what she decides, but it’s hard on me to switch my enthusiasm back and forth…
QOTD: I literally have no idea where my daughter will end up. She’s applied to over 20 schools because she and her boyfriend would like to stay near each other. Their plan is to get all of their acceptances, sit down, and make a decision together. His east coast schools are mainly ivies, but we don’t know if he’ll get in. She also had him apply to some of favorites like NYU, Drexel, and Fordham and is trying to convince him they would be great choices. I think UC’s could be likely, as well as Cal Poly slo. They also applied to Purdue, UIUC, U of Washington, etc… She has already been accepted to Seton Hall, Duquesne, Carroll College, and Mills college, all with significant merit. She’s also been accepted to SFSU and Cal Poly Pomona. Of those 6 I like Mills College, she likes Seton Hall because of its proximity to NYC.
QOTD: We have no idea yet. She has two acceptances; one of which is financially feasible (i.e. full ride which is obviously my first choice lol) and one which could be with an additional scholarship or some need based aid. We await the other 8 decisions so we can compare financial packages, etc.
QOTD: No idea yet. 8 acceptances, 4 of which are probably off the table for various reasons. Awaiting 3 decisions, which are reaches both academically and financially. So, I would guess it’s going to be one of the 4 current acceptances, but will probably be waiting until the last scholarship is announced in early April. ~O) :!!
QOTD: We know with 100% certainty. DS accepted REA to his top choice. Had also applied to a popular OOS huge public because I made him, but he withdrew that app after his REA acceptance because many others from his school apply to that public as a backup (and the school has been deferring/denying many kids of late). Decided during Christmas break that there was no reason to apply to other schools, so he is done. hallelujah.
Do I know? Absolutely not. Really, it largely comes down to money. She’s got more or less equivalent (in terms of net price) financial offers from four of the five schools she’s been accepted to, with semi-long-shot possibilities of more aid from the fifth, and six more schools (one of which she’ll get no merit aid from) still to hear from.
QOTD: No idea. 6 acceptances, awaiting one decision. One has been cut for financial reasons, another is on the bubble for a variety of reasons. We will tour 3-4 of the acceptances and see what the last result brings, and go from there.
No firm decisions yet. D17 got into her SCEA school but hasn’t visited it yet and there was no FA 
. All things being equal, it seems to be her first choice right now. She also got into her safety, but that probably pretty much off the table.
She has a bunch of RD apps still out there both at peer institutions as well as other schools with merit possibilities (some with some full-ride or full-tuition lottery-type scholarships).
Hopefully she’ll have some tough choices to make down the line.
QOTD: Not a clue. D applied to 17 schools. 1 is off the table, because she didn’t compete in the lottery scholarship by choice. Another is off the table because she didn’t win the lottery scholarship. She’s still waiting on 2 admission decisions, and all others are still in play. With each new scholarship opportunity, D gets very excited about the school. There seems to be a current favorite, but I would not be suprised if she ended up going elsewhere. The picture should start to clear up at the end of February when we’ll have more scholarship decisions in hand.
QOTD S17 has 1 acceptance in hand to safety state school with honors program admit as well; 4 deferrals from reachy EA/ED2 schools; 10 RDs (mix of match and reaches and merit $cholarship apps) and 1ED2 in the hopper. He is committed to ED2 obviously should he be lucky enough to get in. If ED2 is a no, then we wait until April 1 to see what “cards” he will have been dealt to play with. All the schools are viable options really…he has visited them all except 1& can see himself happy there…that’s how they got on the list in the first place.
QOTD. S17 isn’t sure. 2 EA acceptances - 1 is a possible, the other a state safety that he doesn’t want. He was deferred EA from his top choice and is waiting for RD results from 8 schools.
Thank you everyone for celebrating with us. Dd beamed all day yesterday.
@thermom So sorry for that young person’s family and friends. So tragic.
HINT of the day: For those of you with younger kids, a suggestion I sincerely wish someone had given us–Have your child save files of all their applications and exactly what essays, supplemental info, etc they submitted to specific schools. Dd classified essays by their prompts and would tweak the essays for different ones. But now she can’t remember which prompts belonged to which school and what was exactly submitted. With all of her interview weekends coming up, knowing exactly which essays were submitted where would be helpful! (She saved them all as hername.pdf). Everything starts to blur after a while. For non-CA schools, I don’t think there is a way to see the application.
QOTD: It has definitely narrowed. We have to sit and talk to start clarifying. Of the schools she has heard from, she has 3 top contenders. (Technically she has 5 she is seriously considering, but I think she needs to drop 2. It’s difficult bc we haven’t visited them, so there is that element of what if.). I am happy she has great choices amg clearly affordable options.
QOTD – DS has been accepted to 4 schools - waiting on 8-9 others. Very happy he already has some strong options for his areas of focus – EECS and some merit scholarships. Now he has to decide about applying to the honors program at one of them - due before he will get many other decisions back. Yes it (of course) involves several more essays. Also has 1 interview at least coming up and likely will have 2 more.
QOTD Where?
She applied to 5 schools, 4 super-targeted schools based on her academic needs and our state flagship (where she already studies Arabic and Chinese). She’s been accepted to 3 so far, all three w basically auto merit. One will be practically free but that’s currently ranked third. She has a clear number one and is crossing her fingers for additional competitive merit. Number two will either stay in that position or fall off the list when scholarship weekend finalists are announced.
We will not qualify for need-based aid at these schools.
HINT of the day response: DD did all of her essays/supplementals in her google docs with directories by school before copying them into the applications. DD has used google docs for everything written since 6th grade, and still has it all, in directories by grade and class. She is both super-organized and a pack rat. After the self-plagiarism discussion (several hundred pages ago in this thread?) I had to tell her that self-plagiarism is a thing of which she needs to be careful, since she has kept this giant repository for so long (not that I think her 6th grade essay on A Long Way from Chicago would have anything particularly useful for one of her college humanities requirements).
Second HINT of the day: If your DC uses google docs, but uses a school provided account, make sure they move any documents etc. they’d like to keep to a personal account before graduation when the school purges the accounts of graduated seniors.
As a follow-up to the self-plagiarism discussion, I talked with my wife’s brother who has a masters in lit and his wife who adjuncts at a local college in the English dept, and both also acknowledged the dangers and inappropriateness of self-plagiarism. I never knew!
Hint of the Day – The essays & supp submitted can be retrieved as PDFs from Common App and the noncommon app schools DS applied to. He reviews before interviews. I think DS18 will have a completely different list of schools. We have learned a lot through the process though that will certainly help - especially to jump on any supp essays earlier and really try to put together a good list of schools to visit and get a sense of which ones are reasonable matches - hard to believe- but here we go again even before DS17 has finished the process.