@Gatormama my daughter is class of ‘18 but I saw Otterbein on your list and had to put in a good word as we just toured it Monday. What a fun school - nice size, good tuition for LAC, everyone was friendly and the location is awesome. Kind of a hipster feel to Westerville and Columbus was a blast. My daughter avoided schools with reviews that said “snobby kids” like the plague, but this school was inclusive, diverse and relaxed. Which leaves her with a dilemma now because she thought she had found her school for sure 
@PAclgmom - thanks for your review! We also toured Otterbein over the summer and D loved it (though as I said at the time, that might’ve been the spillover effect from Twenty One Pilots being from Columbus). We are def. applying!
@Gatormama I saw that you had been there after I typed all of that out lol. Glad you liked it too
@PAclgmom and @Gatormama – do you know how the Otterbein theatre and dance department looks at GPA vs. talent for the BA theatre program? D does not have a strong GPA and she’s wavering between BA double majoring and BFA. (I’m guessing the lower GPA would be less of an issue for the BFA programs.)
Not sure, but I think you have to audition regardless of BA or BFA. Does this link help, @OrangeFish?
http://www.otterbein.edu/public/FutureStudents/FinancialAidAndScholarships/TalentAwards.aspx
Thanks, @Gatormama – the last line on the BA Theatre page seems to suggest there is an academic and an artistic acceptance requirement.
http://www.otterbein.edu/public/Academics/Departments/TheatreDance/how-to-apply/ba-theatre.aspx
BTW, did everyone know about this site? ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■.
You can pick a ton of schools and compare outcomes, costs, admission stats, etc (though you can’t compare OOS costs, which is a bummer).
So the meeting with the college advisor at D’s school is now scheduled for next week – we have two hours (!) and we received homework today. 
Besides completing the packet (together), D was told to have her “colleges I am thinking about” list completed in Naviance.
The College Wake-up Bug seems to have made its way to our house. D has signed up for an online meeting with a theatre professor, met with her theatre teacher to ask about ways to enhance her portfolio, and emailed the theatre tech professor at one of her fav schools to schedule an in-person meeting around an upcoming college visit. She did this all on her own. Without prodding from me.
Update here- not only an acceptance from Ohio University, but a $12K/year scholarship as well! Woo hoo! There is money out there for kids with less than 4.0 GPAs! We are thrilled. I never expected that much. This makes it much more of a contender…
@OrangeFish the counselor scheduled a 2-hour long appointment? Wow - that is a long meeting. Curious as to what is in the “packet” she has to complete?
A 2 hour meeting with a GC? Is this a public school or private? I have never met my kids GC. Both had the same one because it is done alphabetically so our family has now been 6 years with this GC and I have never laid eyes on her.
Congratulations, @STF4717! Such great news! If you have the chance, I’d love to hear more about Ohio U as it is on D’s list but we haven’t visited.
@STF4717 and @me29034 – this is a meeting with the college advisor. She is a different person from the school counselor. We’re in a large public high school, and like @me29034 described, school counselors are assigned by last name. The college advisor handles all the college visits to the high school, sends out notices about scholarships, internships, etc. She also coordinates career testing, military visits, and other non-4-year-college options.
The packet is a collection of materials seen on “college search” websites but also includes calculation of the EFC, then a sheet titled Let’s Get Real of what the family can really afford to pay (no matter what the EFC might be), some preferences D19 is supposed to list in terms of size of school, college major, sought after ECs in college.
When we met with D19’s school counselor earlier this school year, the school counselor recommended we set up a meeting with the college advisor. D is really looking forward to it (as am I)!
I see. We have a career center that handles the college visits and such but it is staffed by someone without any special knowledge of college admissions so there is no advice to be had there. I know when my older daughter was there it was staffed by someone who had just graduated college with a marketing degree who couldn’t find a marketing job, and who coached the cheer team on the side. There is a different person there now but I don’t expect that they have any better knowledge of college admissions.
@OrangeFish how in the world do you “complete” the colleges list on Naviance? Ours is an ever evolving flower which blooms and grows and then is ruthlessly chopped to the bone, often on the same day.
@me29034 – the college advisor at our high school has been “in the business” for over 25 years. She has been a featured speaker at area college workshops as well as regional (and perhaps national) events. Unfortunately she’ll be retiring at the end of this school year, so my S22 will not be able to benefit from her expertise.
@Ninakatarina – are college lists ever really complete? :)) D19 has a fairly well firmed up list, which is good as one of the majors she is considering requires applications to be submitted at the start of September. So “complete” will be as close to complete can be for a 16 year-old.
@ninakatarina S19’s list on Naviance is 18 schools long. He will not apply to 18 schools. That being said, I’m 99.9% sure that his college is on this list of 18 schools. We have SAT scores in hand and he’s visited a number of the schools on the list and he likes them. It will be interesting to see which schools fall off. Oh please let some of them fall off. He cannot apply to 18 schools!
Four of the schools would be considered safeties. By next fall, he may just choose two of those. Eight are matches. Probably doesn’t make sense to keep all of them either. The other six are considered reaches because of their low admission rate. I’m planning on him taking a closer look at each school’s offerings over the summer. Even though he’s undecided, looking through the requirements for each school may help him narrow down his options. While only two schools on his list have an open curriculum, a few have a ton of requirements and I don’t know how he’s going to react to that. He’s not particularly interested in taking more foreign language and one of his schools requires him to take one year of FL even if he gets a 5 on the French AP.
He may also narrow his list if he’s luke warm on schools that have multiple supplements. He’s got two schools that have five supplemental essays/questions (five!) so, unless he loves them when we visit, they may fall off.
I adding and dropping schools on the Naviance list all the time, but I’ve vowed never to cut schools that DS adds. This means that 4 schools that I KNOW we’re not going to let him apply to are still on the list. So subtracting those 4 we have 17 schools left, today, but that could change tomorrow.
Ha! My S19 has four schools on his list and has decided he is done. (Two safeties, one probably a safety, one on target/reach). Three are affordable. One probably is affordable if we get the same package we got for my older son from them. He is done with ACT so just focused (kinda) on GPA. So I keep trying to get him to think about more schools…he just says no.
@OrangeFish actually I don’t know much about Ohio Univ because we haven’t even visited it yet! But my kiddo loved Ohio State when he visited, so I made kiddo toss Ohio Univ and Miami Univ of OH on the list as additional safeties. We have good friends that live in Ohio that raved about Ohio Univ and it’s their daughter’s top choice, so I figured, apply now, visit later if necessary. It also was great that we got an application fee waiver from them in October!
Handy dandy student loan debt repayment calculator. It really brings it home. All our kids should see this.
There’s also a way to search schools and see what the avg debt at graduation is (but of course, we all know that already thanks to our obsessive CDS searches!)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/your-money/student-loan-repayment-calculator.html