Love reading about everyone’s Thanksgiving/Winter break plans… we cannot even decide on the school yet LOL The good news, DS narrowed it down to two a while ago. One is in CA another in GA. I vote GA, and am trying my very best to not steer:) Both are awesome schools. Hope to make the decision by the end of next week and jump right onto the same exciting tix/hotels/vacations planning boat with you:)
DS gets a week off for Thanksgiving and he will come home… DD still hasn’t decided on a school, but I am sure we will fly her home for Thanksgiving her Freshman year regardless… Visiting 3 schools next week… if she doesn’t decide by next Friday, I will be in a panic.
@socalmom007 2k deposit for housing?
Man I forgot about that, you just gave me some deja vu I’m having memories of H freaking out about paying large chunks of change seemingly very early.
Does she know you did that? Lol.
@eandesmom yes, I cleared it with her first! It is refundable, but if we wanted a decent dorm we needed to jump in and put the deposit. Her OCD and fears of a disgusting cinderblock triple won out 
It did seem like an awful big deposit to require, I was expecting like $300.
@payn4ward Congratulations on the UT decision! I really thought he was going to choose Northeastern. What was his deciding factor? I have a couple of other friends with kids who are still trying to decide between UT or another school.
Thanksgiving break? My kid still hasn’t decided a school. He just figured out his summer plans (he got the job he wanted at a summer camp). He has 7 weeks to figure out how he is getting to his job. Once he chooses a school we have to figure out how summer orientation & move in. I’m not thinking thanksgiving at all yet.
My older D who went across the country, I brought home her first two years. And didn’t her last two… she went to relatives that lived close to where she went to school. This was just practical. Thanksgiving break her junior year was less that two week off the end of semester, finals were only half a week later. Didn’t make sense to fly her home & back. And then do that again less than two weeks later.
We always travel – and worse, by plane – from CA to NY for Thanksgiving. I imagine now that D17 will be going to college in a different state than home, she will fly too and meet us there. She’s been an unaccompanied minor on planes since she was 11 years old and she’s not even a minor anymore, it’ll be fine. She’s not allowed to miss Thanksgiving!
it’s official, Vandy is Dandy! DS committed this morning.
@srk2017 Congrats to your S!
Congratulations to @srk2017 's son!
All FB group members you don’t need to repeat here 
Congrats @srk2017! It feels great to know where our kids will be a few weeks ahead of May 1st.
We got back from Quaker days at Penn last night. D had a great time. She met three girls that could be potential roommates, ran into many friendly acquaintances, was given lots of swag, had lunch with a girl from her school, and did research Into whether Penn lives up to its reputation of being the Social Ivy by attending a frat party. She was invited by a family friend to the party and felt pretty cool getting some other prefresh in the door. The only negative was that all the Penn girls were wearing dresses to the party and she had no clue about the attire. She really liked the balance she saw between working and playing that Penn is famous for and can see herself happily attending. Penn did a great job with the parents side of events and had a really cool app that you could download to your phone so that you had all your event options at your fingertips. The only repeated complaint I heard from parents was the lack of access to see a dorm room.
We are off to Stanford this morning. She is concerned that they still have not put her in touch with her hostess for tonight. She wants to make sure she has the right attire for any potential parties. She called Stanford when we were leaving Penn yesterday and was transferred from department to department to department back to the original department she called and no one could give her the information she was requesting. Of course, I’m thrilled with anything that makes Stanford look bad.
Congratulations to your son @srk2017! That’s wonderful.
@socalmom007 Wow, a $2K housing deposit. Since it’s refundable, I suppose they have a high deposit to make sure only those truly considering attending would pay the deposit.
I’m still trying to get all of the logistics set for orientation, move-in day and figure out what to do about parents’ weekend and you have all moved on to Thanksgiving and winter break. Hmm…tempting to book those Thanksgiving tickets but I’ll have to think about this as he’s off Wed but now to decide if I try to fly him home on Tuesday (don’t know his schedule yet) or wait until Wednesday morning.
@botcom Same here. I knew within 30 minutes after we arrived at BU. He visited with the director of his program and when he walked back into the conference room where we were waiting for him, I knew. He’s very happy and can’t wait to get there.
@srk2017 congrats to your ds! We are off to UVA Days on the Lawn today and then to Vandy for Monday and Tuesday.
Hard to stay patient but hoping ds gets the answers to his many questions!!
@srk2017 Awesome news! Well, you’ve been saying it all along Congratulations!!
@srk2017 Congratulations! It’ll be even dandier now!
Got back last night from Penn Quaker Days - overall it was a very big hit - loved the campus and the engineering programs, labs etc - enjoyed meeting profs and students and sat in on a CS cyber security course. Only major frustrating thing we learned (I imagine there are more things we did not learn), is that the math (2-3 calcs/ required) and physics (he would place out of 1 or 2 if gets a 5 on the Physic C AP exam) courses are taught outside of SEAS and are HUGE with little access to the profs so many students get frustrated it seems – we’ll make some more inquiries. EE and other engineering labs are well equipped, He can double major in CS (a large program at Penn) and be in an orchestra if he wants to. It is not so far from home either! He likes it being in Philly and yet feeling like there is a fairly distinct campus too.
I think we’re down to two choices. Have to visit Tulane next week and make a final decision - RPI or Tulane. Darkhorses of VT or UA still available but not as likely.
@Testingearly and @CA1543 Did you meet up?!!
@testingearly that’s odd they haven’t contacted her yet, hope it all works out, or not 
@NoVADad99 good luck next week!