My S20’s English teacher had them work on their essays the last week of school, which was really nice.
Congrats @ITBgirl !
@ITBgirl congrats on the acceptance!
I love this time of year. First acceptances are coming in. Applications are getting started, everyone is getting excited. It’s so much fun. My D is super busy right now and unable to work on her apps, but is looking forward to getting back to them next week. She has a plan that is subject to change, but a plan none the less. She has five schools on her list. Three she can apply to later if she needs to. Ourfingers are crossed. Her essay has been done three maybe four times. She keeps changing her mind. Only one of her apps is on Common app, so every essay a slightly different, but she can certainly reuse pieces if not the basic gist of things.
Huge kudos to everyone who is getting applications submitted or positive responses already.
Buckle up those seatbelts, we are certainly in for a ride.
We are lucky…our school offers a 2-day College Application Workshop first week of August for a nominal fee – signed up S20 and D20!! D20 has her personal statement done and a very rough draft of her college essay done. S20 has his personal statement done but hasn’t touched the college essay. We’re getting there! This Saturday D20 visits Randolph-Macon College and on Monday goes to UMW for Admissions Interview.
Unfortunately, here in VA, almost all colleges (even privates) require at least official transcripts before making decisions so acceptances (hopefully) will only start coming in September at the earliest as their school counselor is not even back to school until mid-August. Patience is not one of my virtues.
@scoutmom2002 that would be nice! Our school does very little, I feel for the kids who don’t have parents that informed.
I think most of son’s are on Common App, but I assume there will be some supplemental essays too. (Ugh)
I feel like our list is short. 1 reach, 3 matches, and 2 safeties.
My D applied to only two schools - Roanoke and Longwood. Both were rolling admissions and accepted self-reported scores/grades. She was accepted by early September.
BTW, I loved RMC. It really impressed me. But it’s super small (i.e. only 1 place to get food) so it might not be everyone’s cup of tea for 4 years.
@eb23282 - yes Roanoke accepted the self-reported grades/transcripts but noted “This is fine for now, but we will need your official transcripts later on in the process.” So I assume the acceptance would only go out once they receive the official transcripts.
D20 toured Longwood over Spring Break. We are returning on August 17 for their Summer Decision Day. Is your D currently at Longwood? Does she like it?
@scoutmom2002 Roanoke never requested anything official, even after we accepted (with great merit) and put the deposit down. We later deferred acceptance and took the deposit back. I assume they would have eventually wanted to see official grades and scores, but hadn’t asked for anything by the end of April (7 months after acceptance).
I didn’t go on the Longwood visit, but heard it was “nice” - D just wasn’t feeling it.
@eb23282 - yeah, Longwood didn’t click with my daughter either but still applying - attending Summer Decision Day on August 17. Our plan when it comes to acceptances - if D20 is still undecided - we revisit the school(s) and try to spend night/attend class to get a better idea of which school will be the right fit. https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-admissions-playbook/articles/2016-04-04/3-reasons-parents-students-should-attend-admitted-students-days
@scoutmom2002 Roanoke was the only college D came away from the tour saying “I can see myself here”. After her acceptance in September we went back in October for an overnight. Arrived on Thursday evening and attend two classes Friday. She liked one, not crazy about the other, but was impressed with the professor nonetheless. Also, she texted me Thursday night at 11:58 “I LOVE college”. Lol, not exactly what a parent wants to hear at midnight.
@eb23282 - that’s great! We actually all liked Roanoke (my husband was especially impressed)…except S20 (D20’s twin brother) - he wants the bigger school experience. But the sticker price would have to come down significantly since we’ll have two at college. We’ll see where we are in the fall and spring of next year and have to compare academics/overall fit as well as financial packages. D20 has her list of 7 small/medium in-state schools to apply to (would have been 6, but am making her apply to JMU - my alma mater).
Those of you that are doing summer visits - do you feel that the campus might be empty and give your child the wrong idea? My son seems to like the Open Houses more than just the tours - there seems to be more interaction with students. Plus a bad guide can be a killer! We toured one on my favorites (UNC-Wilm) last August, right after classes started and he thought it was boring, I think I will make him apply and visit again if admitted.
@ITBgirl my D19 did some visits over the summer and upon revisiting in the fall found she didn’t care for the school vibe once the students were on campus, so I am avoiding summer visits with D20. She did visit UNC-Wilmington since she was there for a summer program, but she didn’t care for it at all.
@ITBgirl we are doing some summer visits just because of timing issues once school starts. He liked San Francisco State and loved Sonoma State and we are visiting San Jose State on Monday. Once he has some acceptances in hand, we will likely visit his top one or two again (maybe on admitted student days) so he can see the campuses with more activity. These are all close to us so it’s pretty easy to go back for a second visit. For the 2-3 he’s applying to farther away (UN Reno, Arizona State), we will wait until after acceptances and only visit if he’s really interested.
Summer visits are necessary for us due to time constraints but I promised her that she wouldn’t accept until she went to her top choices during the school year.
We visited Towson during the school year and didn’t even finish the tour it came off the list so fast. Bloomsburg was toured during the summer and it stayed on the list, but until she sees it bustling with students, all bets are off.
We visited most during school year or Spring Break (when students were still on campus as college spring breaks don’t usually happen at same time) but didn’t make it to some until after school was out. I think if you are at all able to visit a school while it’s still in session, great. If not, a summer visit will at least give you an overall sense based on location (is it in the middle of nowhere, near a city, etc.), campus amenities (dorms, fitness centers, dining options) and academic offerings. The campus vibe is important but an initial tour will at least cover location, amenities and academics. Attending an Open House is great if it fits your schedule (we’ve only been able to attend one so far).
I agree with MuggleMom – based on acceptances that come in, I would want D20 and S20 to actually revisit the school (regardless of whether they had already visited during school year) to really get a sense of whether it will be a good “fit” for them. I will try very hard to have them attend each school’s “admit day”. Of course S20 is making it hard on me as he really wants to be recruited to play soccer.
@MuggleMom - just curious…why did Towson come off the list?
@scoutmom2002 I debated about answering because I never like to put anything negative out there. On the other hand, its a completely honest observation. So I’ll do it. This is why Towson came off our list
D20 is my 3rd. I trained her well for college fairs. She went to a national one about an hour away (we took the day off school to go because most of her schools were going to be there!) The admissions rep that was there, wasn’t our local one. She was unable or unwilling to answer a single question D had. We were completely understanding about her not knowing specifics about how the major is run. But… questions about clubs on campus and student life and campus culture? She didn’t even offer to hook D up with a student who could help her out. Just repeatedly told us to go to the website. Um… we started there, that’s where the questions to what we couldn’t find came from. Fine. No big deal. One admissions counselor doesn’t make a school. Right? On paper, it looked perfect for her, so we went during spring break. It was on the top of her list. We had a lunchtime tour. We got there an hour early to walk around and check the place out. Campus is beautiful. She loved it. Kinda empty, maybe everyone was in class or still asleep. It was just after 10. Couldn’t wait for the tour. Same admissions rep. Oy. Same answer to every question anyone asked … check out our website. Oh, and every single thing was described at ‘Great’. Apparently it was the only adjective she knew. No time to talk to the students who were there, we were immediately split up into tour groups and off we went.
We had high hopes for our tour guide. He was STEM major with lots of interests. Apparently, the only adjective he knew was ‘Great’ as well. About halfway through the tour I asked where everyone was, it looked like a scene from a movie where everyone left town and everything was left behind in mint condition. Let me set the stage, early April, first 70+ degree day all year, sunshine, it was glorious outside. His answer was, probably home. This is a commuter school and people only come to campus for classes. What? 5000 students live on campus. His answer was 4800 of them are freshman. I asked about clubs. He said people come in for their meeting and leave. Everything is scheduled. We continued on the tour, at least hoping to see a few students. We happened to be near the academic buildings when classes switched. It was like the flood gates opened. D described it as the zombie apocalypse. No one looked happy. No one looked engaged. They didn’t look unhappy. Nearly everyone had headphones on. We actually counted the number of groups conversing during our 3.5 hours on campus. We both counted 4. Only one group looked happy. Everyone else just ‘was’. We saw one skate board and one bicycle. No one laying on the grass listening to tunes. No one hanging with their friends. The way my daughter put it was that you go to a campus to see if you like their vibe. This campus had no vibe what-so-ever. It was like no one wanted to be there. They just were. Once class switching was over and we had seen a few hundred students (between the switching and the 20 minutes before watching them park their cars and walk to buildings) and we compared notes, she asked if we could go home. We had a 4 hour ride and we were wasting our time. So off we went. We missed the 2nd half of the tour.
We’ve been to D20’s top choice twice. Once for a big open house weekend and once during a typical school day. On the first visit, the school went to the top of her list. On the 2nd visit, she got to to see kids changing classes and interacting. The students would stop to interact with the guide and the tour group, there were booths for various causes set up in front of the library and the kids there encouraged the tour kids to come over and hear about the causes, everyone was busy but friendly. She came away from that visit saying she loved it and could see herself there. This is the one that she has been accepted to. I think it really helped her visualize how she would fit in when she got to see the campus “in action”. Of there is another one we visited and she has been to for Sea Camp, that she loves but is more of a reach. She wants to try for it because of a conflict in majors. lol Either Animal Sciences Pre-Vet at #1 or Marine Biology with specialty in Sea Turtles at #2. She’s okay with the transfer option as well since they are in the same system. I guess we will just have to do some more discussing pros and cons and such.
@MuggleMom Thank you so much for that answer! I wish more people would be forthright and name names!