Welcome @PugsleyAddams ! I also have a kid interested in theater, also tech, like @OrangeFish … she probably won’t do a BFA either, as she’s also interested in a handful of other unrelated subjects – but it’s still early yet!
@Gatormama – based partly on your detailed reviews of both Ohio U and WVU, both schools stayed on D’s colleges list. 
We made index cards of all the schools and made notes about programs (not just theatre tech but other majors, including a new addition of web development) and took some off the list altogether. So we have a BFA group and a BA group (clustered into “tier A” and “tier B”), with some notes about Naviance GPA/testing info, enrollment, as well as NPC $. D seems to like the low-tech method of moving cards around a tabletop.
D has decided to give the ACT another try in June. So she’s registered for that, too.
First set of interviews/portfolio reviews will be in January. 
I would love to hear more about your portfolio as it takes shape. D is so far behind the 8-ball on that one. Sigh.
We don’t get access to Naviance until second semester of junior year - wth.
Her school is filled with rich kids whose parents obv. don’t have to worry about how to pay for college.
(I’m in a bad mood, so plz excuse that last snarky, bitter remark.)
That’s great progress @orangefish - wait January of 2018? Is it typical to do interviews in junior year for art majors?
S19 and I had a repeat of the “what do engineers do” conversation last night which consists of me feeding him wildly inaccurate sentence fragments about what I think they might do although I clearly have no idea. Based on this misinformation, he likes civil, electrical and materials, but refuses to look at an actual real source of info. Still no clue what lies ahead for this one.
The lack of Naviance would drive me crazy @Gatormama! We get it from the beginning of freshman year.
Hm. Index cards. Interesting idea.
@Gatormama – will be happy to share her portfolio once she does some “curating.”
And I’m with @eh1234 – cannot imagine doing anything we’ve done thus far without Naviance. And you have to wait until 2nd semester? That’s maddening!
@eh1234 – D will be attending an in-state theatre conference, where juniors and seniors can audition/interview with attending colleges. Theatre tech folks have five minutes to present their portfolio. Not only will she be seen by some in-state/nearby colleges, but she will also get some good practice. One of the tips we have heard over and over is never do your first interview/portfolio review with your favorite school. So she’ll get some of these interviews done and hopefully get any kinks sorted out.
@ninakatarina – my D has ADHD with anxiety, and I think there’s some sensory something-or-other thrown in there, too. She has always seemed to prefer tactile senses, and staring at a spreadsheet on a screen did not seem to be working for her. That’s why I tried the index cards. We seemed to make much better progress.
Yeah, the Naviance thing does drive me nuts, but in a sense, I don’t miss what I don’t have. I do get jealous when I see everyone talk about the knowledge Naviance gives them, but then again, our school is so small (and wealthy, with us definitely not among that crowd) that I’m not sure a lot of useful information can be gleaned from the outcomes part of the data.
A theater conference, @OrangeFish? That sounds so useful!
FWIW, Ohio U offered D the chance to “apply” for a scholarship – fill out the stuff and go before the committee – purely as practice. We could not get it together because of a ton of other things going on in September, so she had nothing to present and we just didn’t do it. (Plus, I’d hate for her to decide that’s “the one” and have done something memorably bad at the “practice.”)
I would love to hear more about your portfolio as it takes shape. D is so far behind the 8-ball on that one. Sigh.
We don’t get access to Naviance until second semester of junior year, wtf. Our school is filled with a bunch of wealthy kids who don’t have to worry about how to pay for college.
( I’m in a bad mood right now, so excuse that last snarky, bitter remark.)
Reading the above posts about portfolios and it reminded me that when we were at DD’s “back to school night” her teacher was talking to us parents about our kids’ portfolios and how she had such great expectations for them! I smiled and nodded and then got home and asked DD what was she talking about?! Apparently the art class for seniors is mainly for those who planned on pursuing it in college, and DD hasn’t mentioned that she doesn’t plan on doing so, ( but she will have a nice portfolio
D19 had a great meeting with McDaniel College yesterday, who visited her high school. No one else had signed up for the visit so she had 30 minutes with the admissions rep one-on-one. Right up front D asked about merit awards (good job! 
) and learned about their generous aid packages based on test scores and GPAs. They also have strong supports for ADHD kids. So McDaniel gets positive marks and we’ll need to plan a visit. (It’s a short drive away for us.)
Has anyone “bought” College Kickstart services? It seems, I am guessing, like Naviance? But since I don’t have Naviance access, I’m not sure. It does seem to offer a plethora of useful data and probabilities…
@Gatormama no. What I found with S17 is that he wasn’t applying to Schools where Naviance was useful, is thy I relied heavily on the common data sets to see where he stood. I did look at total acceptance % as well as just the stats and what each school seemed important to help determine what bucket I thought things fell into and things seemed to play out pretty spot on.
I’m still intrigued.
https://college-kickstart.com/blog/item/college-kickstart-and-naviance
@Gatormama – I had not heard about that tool before your post. Personally – and may I am just cheap (or frugal ) I think much of what they claim can be done with their “patent pending methodology” can also be done with a spreadsheet and Common Data Sets.
I also think if a student has a set of different programs (such as BA vs BFA) it is next-to-impossible to throw that into an algorithm and some out with the secret sauce on the other side.
Cool to read about the tool though – I hadn’t heard of it before.
Anyone here have info to share about Muhlenberg? (Yes, I’m posting in this thread instead of the main thread, as we’re not in the “SAT scores are only 1590 but with a 4.4 GPA” circumstances.)
D’s grades are much higher this quarter than the past two years, but she’ll never hit a 3.5 (or higher) unweighted at this point due to the first two years of grades. Muhlenberg has holistic admissions, but I’m wondering if less-than-main-thread GPAs/test scores have a chance of acceptance as well as significant merit.
@Gatormama we also have naviance a little earlier. I used as a guide for our older child. However, it was only one tool. It showed where our school’s students were getting and what they needed. However, that was always different when comparing it to another district’s. It can also be a little off if it is self-reported instead of controlled by the school. It also wasn’t as helpful if you needed to apply to a specific school within a college. We found that even though naviance showed one thing, to get into the specific school it was a lot different. We found the common data set for each school a very big help. It broke down everything. Best wishes on everyone’s college journey!
@OrangeFish - here’s my spreadsheet info on Muhlenberg’s scholarships:
Scholarships: Muhlenberg Presidential Scholarship-Value: $10,000-$18,000; Commitment to Excellence Award-Value: $2,500-$9,000 (leadership/comm. serv); Talent Grant-Value: $1,000-$4,000; The Muhlenberg Scholars Program-$4,000 annual stipend; The Dana Associates Program-$4,000 annual stipend - demonstrated interest, recs, E.C. and essay count + 1270+ SAT.
Admitted middle 50 SAT range: 1190-1390
Muhlenberg uses the CSS profile, which can be detrimental to some.
Thanks, @Gatormama! The Muhlenberg rep will be at D19’s school today so she signed up for the session.
@OrangeFish, my D17 is at Muhlenberg but not really helpful here, since she was high-stats. It’s been a good place for her, though she’s annoyed that (because of one of her majors) her non-pre-med self has to make it through the pre-med weed-out courses.
I can say, though, that they really, really pay attention to demonstrated interest—I mean, really. Also, they’re very open about preferential packaging of financial aid (which nearly everyone does, they just admit it), so different students may get the same amount of aid, but the grant:loan ratio, for example, might be different.
Thank you, @dfbdfb – great information to know! (She met with one of the theatre professors at a college fair and has corresponded with him back and forth by email. She has printouts of their email correspondence with her for the visit today.)