Thanks @eandesmom, I found this info from US news. Thanks for your clarify. She definitely will attempt more ACT if it allows to submit after summer. Recently, she has not slept for a couple of night for finishing her IB IA assignments and did not prepare for the passed ACT and coming SAT. :((
BTW, she will apply WSU Pullman for safety and the application deadline is also “rolling” as stated in US news. If so, she will apply after her last attempt, ie SAT at October result release.
@ashmomhk I would always check each schools website and not rely on any other sites for that kind of info. Lots of kids send in scores from Sept-December tests. Maybe most! Granted teh December tests are usually a second or 3rd sitting but it’s really not an issue.
There is not a single school that would not take a test from next fall. The only time you could have issues is if:
Application was due in November.
Student had not yet taken either test, and took it in December.
The test should have been sent in November (or earlier) so by not doing that, it’s an incomplete application and could get tossed out.
General best practice is to wait to get the scores before sending, that way you can decide what to send and send the best, or if they super score, pick which ones to send.
WSU has rolling admissions. Which simply means they admit as the applications come in versus notifying by a specific date. WSU auto admits kids who have a GPA of 3.5 or better (UW). But in reality no one from our HS has ever been denied as long as they had a 3.0 or better.
Seattle U has similar thresholds from our HS and both get a lot of applicants. For SU if she is looking at business or STEM majors, they do have a minimum math score for direct admit to the major but you can still be admitted as pre-science or pre-business if you don’t hit the scores below.
Per the website: Some programs require minimum math scores for Direct Entry consideration. Those majors include:
Redesigned SAT Math Score Minimum / ACT Math Score Minimum
All majors in the College of Science and Engineering* 570/24
Nursing 570/24
All majors in the Albers School of Business and Economics 540/23
Sport and Exercise Science 570/24
Business and Law 640/27
Business (all other majors) 550/23
Forensic Science (B.S.) 570/24
Attended the Open House at Towson University today. Overall, it was a good day. Info sessions were good and provided some great information and insight from current students and admissions people. Well organized.
Campus tour was long and hot today. Everyone was dragging by the end of it. Campus has some impressive new and recently renovated buildings. We saw the fitness center (new and very impressive, they have a ninja style obstacle course), several college buildings, lecture hall (largest lecture is around 100), library, no dorm rooms. Several new buildings under constructions and student union set for an upgrade/expansion starting this summer. I thought the common/green space areas were lacking. Campus was much bigger than I thought. We drove through the adjacent town area on the way out and it was not very impressive.
Final review from D: Liked it more than Salisbury but less than JMU and Delaware.
Great school if D decides to go the education route. Much to my surprise during the College of Education session they asked the students to raise their hands if they were certain they wanted to pursue an education degree and D did not raise her hand. I asked her why and she said she is not certain she wants to go that route. :-? I was under the impression we were locked into early childhood education/special education but I guess not. I feel for her and didn’t really push the issue. She genuinely loves kids but is really struggling to find how that will translate into a major.
Funny campus tour story. We had just started our tour and were settling into an area to listen to our guide when a skateboarder came flying down a hill, lost control, and ran into a woman (not on tour) walking across campus. Luckily neither was hurt but it could have been really bad. She was none too pleased and proceeded to give him an earful.
@fwtxmom
Dropping in from the 2018 3-3.4 thread. eandesmom is probably right that there won’t be a round up in that particular thread. I will say that if you up the tuition/merit amounts from the 2017 thread results by ~2k, you can guesstimate what happened for 2018. (of course COA is the most important). However, with the LACs, it’s always good to pay attention to what kind of student they are looking for if you are looking for merit, and find a school that wants your child.
Your list has some very good midwest schools (Muhlenberg is PA). I’d add Lawrence in Appleton.
Boy, the regular 2019 thread is so active, but I can’t really relate to a lot of it. I miss you guys over here in 3.0-3.4 land!
I’m curious about others summer plans. We are doing test prep, test prep and test prep. Also hoping to visit some schools, so stay tuned for campus reviews, and please chime in if you have any. I’m sorry we couldn’t get to more schools with kids on campus. We visited one during a break and it was downright sad when empty. We are looking at small LAC’s so I’m worried they will be too quiet in summer, but that is the time we have. We’ve been to 6 admin tours and self-toured another 2. Mostly, if we liked them on “paper”, we liked the school in person. Only one was a disappointment. Some others were iffy on paper and we’re at 50:50, on liking the campus IRL.
Yes the other thread is a little hard to take sometimes.
I thought my son would be working at his supermarket job a lot this summer, but now I’m not so sure. In fact, I think he is giving notice at his job today. I wrote before about how they were working him too many hours. He asked for a reduction in hours because it was too much. They responded by giving him more. They really like him. He has been there only three months and they have already given him a manager’s key and are training him on the front desk, but he has come to really resent the job because it is sucking up all his free time. He just wants out. We have discussed him getting something else. I don’t want him doing nothing all summer. Fortunately the job market for teens is really good in our area so I think he just needs to figure out what he’d rather do instead and start applying.
We still have seen no colleges. The plan is to start visiting some at the end of August, before school starts. Yesterday he actually mentioned a new college that another parent had brought to his attention and he thought sounded interesting. For a kid that has so far been uninterested in the whole college search process, this was a big step. Anyone know anything about the University of Tampa?
I know University of Tampa has an excellent art department and it’s expensive, unfortunately that’s all I know @me29034
My D had a job last summer, but will be too busy with test-prep and sports this year. I also have a D21 who is in the young side (still 14) so I am not pushing a job for her, just some volunteer work. We live in an urban area that can make teen jobs (low skill labor) a little hard to come by because they are filled by people who actually need to work for a living. Most kids seem to lifeguard or teach swimming. My kids are year-round swimmers and I think they don’t really want to work at the pool too.
I visited U Tampa when I was looking at colleges, and D19 has a friend there now. My impression is that it is a bit of a country-club school. Lots of tan, fashionable kids. However, I was looking at it recently and it has a good selection of majors and a much lower tuition than northern private schools. The downtown of Tampa seems nice, but very 9 to 5ish (really quiet evenings and weekends). The school architecture is pretty, but I don’t know how kids study with all that sunshine!
I like both 2019 threads though I’ve only posted here once. My DD has a 4.0 and a 27 ACT, she’s taken one AP and never again! So she’s not in the super high achieving category. We are not looking at anything prestigious or selective. Basically just some place we can afford. She’s not going to be an engineer or pre-med or any of the typical high paying careers, either. She likes theater, history, geography, public relations.
We have visited Concordia University in Seward, she liked it okay but after auto merit it would be $23K/year. We also visited University of Central Arkansas because with a 27 ACT and living on campus, the COA would be $9K/year. She liked it a lot and was okay with the distance (9 hour drive, about just as long to fly with layover in St. Louis) until 2 weeks after when she announced she was nervous about the distance, and she wanted a Christian private college near home. I’d love to do that, but the cost is stressing me out. $20-25K may not seem bad to some on here, but it’s really a lot of money x 4.
My fallback for a nearby school is Northwest Missouri State, at about $14K but she’s not thrilled with it, yet.
S19 will probably look for a job when school is out, but we are also in an area where the teen job market is not great, especially for 16 year olds. Plus, he will be in Ohio for a week at a music program, we wanted to do some college visits the week before or after that, we have a quick trip to MA planned, and we would like to fit in some more college visits - telling a prospective employer that you’re going to want at 3 weeks off over a 2.5 month period doesn’t seem like a great selling point.
He may have a few chances for paying music gigs. If he doesn’t get a job. I’ll probably insist on some sort of regular volunteering.
My D has landed a job at child care center working with young kids at their summer camp. Ironically, it is the same pre-school that she attended as a pre-schooler. When she went on the interview some of the same teachers were there and remembered her. Hopefully, the summer job will help her decide if this is the path she wants to go (early childhood education).
She has been pretty quiet lately about any more college tours. We did Towson last week and we are visiting Elon, High Point and NC State (self-tour) on June 8. We will also do a drive by of UNC-CH. I have never seen the campus so curious and we have the time.
She is supposed to be taking the SAT again on June 2 but has little to no motivation to prepare any more. I think she has convinced herself that her 1290 from the last test is good enough. She said she looked at Naviance and that score is in the safe zone according to her analysis. I’m not so sure. They received a free registration through school which was apparently mailed in last week. No official confirmation has been received, so as of now she is not registered.
She took her one and only AP test (Psych) this past Monday. I told her what she needed to do grade wise to close out the year on a good note and told her that it was up to her. I have not checked grades, only asked if everything was going okay. She says it is fine. We will see in 4 weeks.
My spouse who is not really that engaged in the process (drives to tours) claims after speaking with my father-in-law that I am too involved and obsessed. They tell me stories about how when they were looking at college and what they did, etc. I tried to explain that things are a bit different these days but they don’t seem to get it. I see it as being organized and providing information. Oh well.
Haha @DCNatFan, I have also been told by my spouse to back off a bit! But what will I do with all the pearls of wisdom I have learned here? I am the youngest of 3, and the only college tours I went on were with my oldest sister, when I was in middle school, so I am just hoping to provide more guidance than I received. (I did mention above that I had visited UTampa, but that was when I was looking to transfer because I was unhappy with my college. So that further explains my desire to give good guidance and find the right fit for my kids - the first time!).
Our summer break is only 8 weeks long, so there really is no time for working, like @eh1234 said, not with all the other things the kids need to do.
BTW a 1290 or a 4.0/27, are great, solid scores and should put several good options in play. Of course, we would like to see some merit, so I understand the need to really nail the tests.
@carolinamom2boys @Acersaccharum My first glance at Tampa was that it was inexpensive. All the private schools in the northeast are in the vicinity of $60k/yr, so Tampa looks like a bargain in comparison. Also, the NPC showed that S would get some merit. I know its not a super intellectual school, but I don’t have a super intellectual kid. We know of one kid that goes there but don’t know him well. It was this kid’s dad that was talking the school up to S (while he was checking him out in the supermarket) so it seems that they are happy with it.
D received a mailer from Tampa listing tuition + R/B as $39k! (COA estimate $43k). And merit looks achievable. Also, GPA to maintain merit is 2.5-3.0 in most cases. Don’t know how they do it, but we may look into it further.
@me29034 my good friend’s daughter just finished her sophomore year there. She loves it - lots of research, etc for her. She just left with a UT group to head to Australia for research. She received significant merit. She is not a wealthy kid but the family is full pay. Despite it’s rep as a non-intellectual school, friend’s daughter had a very strong GPA and a 32ACT and she is happy and finding lots of opportunities. On a facebook page I follow, parents seem to indicate that UT is fairly generous.
@Gatormama uncanny similarities. I’m a Gator too, my Twin 1 is very similar to your daughter: enviro, strong English, avg. math, two APs this year, small school only allows juniors to take, doesn’t rank. I’m very interested in Hobart & William Smith. Niece went to York College and liked it.
DD had a job at the dairy sweet during the school year, which she put on hold for soccer season. She really doesn’t want to go back, so she has this month to find something new. There are precious few jobs here, and for us it’s an 11 mile drive to town. She recently applied to our church’s summer camp which she would love, if they’ll work around her schedule. She has a choir trip in early June so she could spend about 2.5 weeks working at camp in June, then we have family vacation beginning of July, then she could work another 3 weeks and then we would be at camp for a week ourselves in August. Hoping that works out even though it means she won’t be around here much. It’s 3 hours away but her cousin will be there all summer so that helps.
If not that, back to the dairy sweet or try the grocery store and that’s about it. There’s an organic farm that will work around any schedule, but it’s 25 miles away.
She also has an office cleaning job, it takes one hour each weekend and she gets $35.
I’d like to get her to really work on ACT prep this summer, but she’s convinced she can’t do better so why try. However, she did go through For the Love of ACT Science and raised her Science 6 points so she ought to do their math book too before she calls it good. I’m hoping the desire for this Christian private motivates her because raising 2 points will get her another $3K/year.
@bjscheel Isn’t it ironic that working a job for a few dollars an hour (vs. studying all summer), can end up “costing” you $3k/year? We had that very conversation the other day. Humph!
@TwinMom2023 - welcome! Only my D is now all-in for theater. Env. sci. is on the back burner, until the next wholesale shift of the earth, which is probably next week… 
But the money pays for onion domes, so surely that makes it worth it no matter what, right? :-bd