@itsgettingreal17 here’s the thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-delaware/1835638-delaware-class-of-2020-acceptances.html
D was looking at it (by D I mean me 
) for neuroscience and Honors. Sounds like a pretty campus, and the used to give a bit of money. Not sure on that. D now seems to want to go south, and we have enough northern schools that it is off the list. But check the last few pages of that thread. People are PO’d!
I think kids involved in state and national competitions have a serious advantage over kids who only view the world from their local area. Kids who compare themselves only to kids at their school really have no idea what other kids across the country are actually achieving. It can be a very eye opening experience to witness a hierarchy that you didn’t have a clue even existed. It can help keep college applications, acceptances, and denials all in perspective.
While part of admissions is definitely subjective, I think some of the shock about the process really comes down lack of awareness. (Conversely, those kids growing up in pressure cooker environments may not realize that that is not the norm for most kids.)
@srk2017 I am sorry for the disappointing results but would think making it to Nationals is a fairly huge accomplishment on its own.
@2muchquan 18 weeks is brutal.
I am new at this, I thought kids had to declare a school by 5/1? If kids are just hearing now, past 5/1, that they are waitlisted, what does that mean and how does that even work? Glad it is not on our list.
Thanks @jmek15 now I won’t be able to get that song out of my head! So they started calling the jury numbers and had about 6 cases that needed of at least 30-50 people each…I escaped being called! The room had at least 300 people. There are only 18 left. Hopefully it will be a quiet day for me. I can maybe finish my book the nightingale (have to get off cc first!)
@2muchquan @itsgettingreal17 I have a recent UD grad (comp sci), a current junior (English-French), and D taking Arabic (and Russia next year). I can answer almost any UD question 
@WhereIsMyKindle How did you find the admissions process back when your kids were applying? Are you IS? Are the issues UD is experiencing with admissions representative of the administration in general? Do Ks just love it? How many days a year does it snow?
I read Gatekeepers a couple of months ago. Totally depressed me (especially given that it was written 10-15 years ago and things have gotten so much more competitive since then). I had no idea what we were in for when we started thinking about colleges with S about a year ago. I was using my own experiences from 1985/6 as a guidepost, but now realize that the situation has changed considerably and my son (who is hands down smarter than I am) faces much tougher odds at the same schools I applied to :-(. We’ve been saving $ diligently so we could afford to send our kids wherever they want/get in (though costs have gone up soooo much not even sure if we really have enough for that). I know most people on here realized all this long before I did, LOL. It is easy to get discouraged in the current environment!
Yes, @262mom, the college application process is nothing like when we went through school. Our oldest graduated from high school in 2007. The process has changed a lot since 10 yrs ago when he was a jr. (I don’t even want to think about what it will be like when my Ker is a Jr!!). And, oh, my goodness, let’s not even go down the road about talking about how much college costs have changed just since his freshman yr. I recently looked at his college, and their costs have gone up significantly. We would have to cross them off the list now. 
OK, I just set up a Gmail filter to text me when D receives an email from a school on her ‘list’. I’m such a dork.
@WhereIsMyKindle Going to send you a PM.
We are impatiently awaiting results from the new SAT my son took. Next week, when results are due back, is a long ways away! He is hoping he did well enough so that he doesn’t have to take it again. I’m hoping so too. He took the ACT once and did OK, but he felt he might of done better on the SAT. If he did better on the SAT it would help his chances at a couple of schools he is interested in in regards to scores needed to get in.
According to our school’s Naviance data he is a total “bubble boy” with his ACT results. On the graph feature he sits at the exact intersection of where students have been accepted/denied in the past. Of the kids that have been accepted in his range they all applied EA. So, if he scored better on the new SAT it would hopefully improve his chances. Also, his gpa is going upward, ever so slightly, so that could help too.
If he doesn’t get the SAT result he wanted, I’ll have him retake the ACT in June, which he is bummed out on. He’s got a lot on his plate then, schoolwork, finals, lax playoffs, he refs soccer on weekends, etc, Not a lot of time to study and prep. But he really needs to just improve his science score and when the school superscores the results he should pick up an extra point or 2. Several schools he’s looking into stated they superscore the ACT results from all the tests a kid takes. They take the best section scores and come up with a new composite. He did well on all sections except science. He said that section confused him, so he just needs to review it some more.
Hopefully, he can just be done with sat/act test taking and focus on college app stuff instead this summer.
Spring has sprung here in the PNW and poor Spykid is really suffering from asthma and allergies. Just what he needs this week. School excuses students from classes after AP testing, which is nice because Thursday he’ll need to come home and study for APUSH. Plus, he could use the break. He rarely misses school so we support mental health days.
I missed this discussion. What dishonesty?
@RightCoaster My dd is right there with your ds. She is counting down the days bc she is also hoping to be done. If not, she will be taking the June test, bc we both want her done before fall.
@Agentninetynine I believe that reference is to the fact that their percentiles are a farce and not based on the real testers.
Has anyone requested having the writing section of the ACT rescored? If yes, how did it go? We are considering doing that for S, but I am waffling. Our family is really more of an SAT family, and I don’t know if it would help his composite score enough to be worth it. One more point would have put him in range of some of the larger scholarships at schools he is interested in.
@Agentninetynine That discussion took place on the PSAT threads. The PSAT percentile charts released by Collegeboard led many students to think they did better than they did. Speculation is that the charts, which were not based on actual results gave inflated percentiles so that more kids would take the SAT based on how well they believed they did on the PSAT.
My son did fairly well on ACT with a 29 on 1st attempt. ( I know it’s not a 35 or 36 like some of you with your super smart children) He had around 30 on everything, but got a 25 in Science. He normally aces science tests, so he just had a bad day I guess. He said it was confusing?? His writing was low too, like a 22 maybe? Seemed low. The schools he wants to go to don’t require writing anymore, so we are not going to worry about it. I’d just like to see him get his score to 30 or 31 and be done. Need to figure out some way for him to practice science section more before the next test. With his score of 29, he is not held back by the number, but if he had a 30 or 31 I think he’d move to the 75 percentile or above and I’d feel better about his chances.
@Agentninetynine What @Mom2aphysicsgeek said. The percents listed for each section are based on a “nationally representative group of U.S. students”, not the group of students who actually took the same test at the same time as your child. So they are not actual percentages.
@Do you mean the actual ‘Writing’ section of the ACT? That is not factored in to the ACT composite score. I think that’s why people are not too concerned, in general, with the lower Writing scores this year. Most people seem surprised with their scores…but many have receive higher re-scores from what I’ve seen on CC.
@RightCoaster Have your S look at some ACT study guides. The Science section on the ACT is not really covering ‘Science’ per se. It is really just another set of reading passages, and there are some strategies (even found on CC) to doing better on this section with little effort, if he did well on the Reading section. I believe it’s very similar.
And, by the way, 29 is a very good score…
@rightcoaster the science reasoning test is not a science test. It is a very reading heavy, data reading test. My very strong science math kids have both been dyslexic (testing w/o extra time) and by the time they hit the SR section they were in reading exhaustion. The SAT was a much better fit for them. I asked dd and she says even with the new SAT being more reading heavy, she doesn’t think it is as reading speed intensive and that they would still do better on the SAT.
We did, but only because (a) my daughter scored a 36 and a 35, respectively, on the English and reading portions of the ACT, making an 80th percentile score on the writing section a little surprising, and (b) good writing is a hard-won point of pride for our daughter, since when she was in middle school she couldn’t write her way out of a wet paper bag. It isn’t factored into the composite score, and it wasn’t actually all that bad of a score anyway, but we figured that since the ACT won’t drop your score on a rescore, and we were good for the $50, so there wasn’t really much to lose on requesting it. That’s only been a couple weeks ago, though (it was a district-wide sitting of the test, not a regular test date, so she got her scores at an odd point in the cycle), so she hasn’t heard back yet.