As someone not from CA, I looked at SDSU for my daughter for nursing. If someone OOS is thinking about it for a safety or otherwise, just beware of the A-G requirements (including 1 year of fine arts and the history requirements) as well as the late March acceptances. We do hope to have decisions by early April, and a potential late entry may not be that welcome. So, in the end we decided to leave it off the list…enticing as it sounds.
When you experienced parents talking about “impacted majors/campuses”, what does it mean?
It just means they are over their planned capacity for the major. Can’t transfer in and can’t always easily get classes.
Is SDSU late March for nursing? I thought they usually notify of non honors admissions the first week of March. Their open house was March 23 this year so I assume everyone knew a least a couple of weeks before then.
@lkg4answers I should never say anything about CA schools because I always screw it up. OK, the earliest I see a comment in the nursing admit thread is 3/14 for SDSU…may be a day or so earlier but that’s the best I got.
re: Bama rolling admissions - DD17 applied July 2-3 but we really had trouble getting the counselor to send the transcript. They did not think they needed to do it before October once school was well in session. They thought we were crazy to even ask them to do it in July/August when they were sending out final transcripts for the graduated seniors and finalizing schedules for school to start. She had already applied to Auburn, Alabama, and Pitt before August. She heard from Pitt (self reported grades) first. It is in state and she was accepted into honors. The counselor did finally agree to send out Alabama and Auburn in early September (and we convinced her to send an official one to Pitt). We heard back from the other 2 with merit offers before the end of September. It seemed so early to have decisions in hand.
It took all the pressure off to have the 3 acceptances and she compared all other potential schools to these 3. If they didn’t offer anything more and she didn’t love them more, no applications were started. She dropped off many early favorites without a second thought. In late September she applied to a match (reach?), Villanova, and was admitted EA in December with direct admit to her major. That was her only attempt at “prestige” but she felt lousy when several classmates were denied or deferred to RD round and she felt like she took their spot. She didn’t love it more than her first admits. She also put in a mid size private CTCL school, a few different sized schools closer to home, and then one more highly ranked Northern/Midwest for geographic diversity. She felt all those other applications might fill a want/need if she changed her mind about going South.She was completely finished by December 23rd with all acceptances and merit offers. Don’t think this time around will be anything like that.
You didn’t screw up. 
I know nursing is a different beast with respect to admissions and I wasn’t aware of when the nursing students get notified.
Anyone completed the parent input sheet to the “brag sheet” yet? I am wondering how exactly they use it. Does the GC pull some phrases from it word for word, or is it to give a general impression?
@bamamom2021 Thanks for sharing your experience with counselors sending transcripts. I wonder if it would help to have the student put in the request before junior year is finished? Or is that what your D did? I understand the counselor’s position that there is no rush—why can’t you wait until the fall—but boy it really would be nice to have a solid acceptance in hand going into senior year! I don’t anticipate this being an issue at S20’s school, as their college prep literature stresses the importance of completing all of your college apps (as much as possible, anyway) over the summer.
Sounds like your D really thought it all through and prepared well. Good on her. My D18 also had a very diverse application list, in case she changed her mind about geography, weather, size, etc. (Seriously…ASU, McGill, and Grinnell on the same list!) My S20 is taking a different approach, with a more homogeneous list. They like to keep us on our toes, don’t they?
@Octagon: a brag sheet?
Regarding transcripts - the student can probably request a paper transcript in a sealed envelope and send it in themselves. My S19 sent in transcripts to a couple of schools with rolling admissions because the HS switched to a new version of Naviance and was going to run later than usual with transcripts (they were sent out mid-October in time for 11/1 EA deadlines.) Didn’t seem to be an issue at all for those schools.
@Waiting2exhale The GC is requesting a parent and student information sheet. The student writes positive things about themselves (aka brag sheet). The parent writes positive things about the student such as, “What do you consider his/her outstanding characteristics?” It helps the GC compose the letter to the colleges. I guess I can ask the GC about how she uses it.
S20 took State ACT test today. and . . . OOPS he did it again. ran out of time in English; scrambled to fill in last 15 questions or so. aggghhh.
That happened in December; we got score report and up till last 15 he had only missed a few questions, so we know he knows the stuff. Just he runs out of time. So – here’s to a lot of timing practice coming up!!
@Octagon: “The GC is requesting a parent and student information sheet. The student writes positive things about themselves (aka brag sheet). The parent writes positive things about the student such as, “What do you consider his/her outstanding characteristics?” It helps the GC compose the letter to the colleges. I guess I can ask the GC about how she uses it.”
I find it interesting to see and hear how the HS experience varies, and to learn the language that is used from area to area. Thanks for that.
I am familiar with the students submitting a sort of guide which lends greater insight to who they are for individual teachers (if they so request; the popular ones are the ones who make this request most often) as well as for the guidance or college counselor. I am not, though, familiar with parents being asked to submit comments. How interesting! How different!
Yes, as you muse, I wonder how the counselors use these little gems…
I think how your counselor uses it depends on how well your counselor knows your kid AND how well they write. Pulling actual phrases, if yours are good (or better than theirs), can happen.
For most, it’s a good checklist to make sure they’re covering all the necessary points and emphasizing the really important ones. Even a GC who really knows your kid well may forget something.
In my experience, the brag sheet is a great opportunity to say absolutely everything positive you can possibly (honestly, accurately) say about your child and their experiences/accomplishments. And it’s kind of fun, too.
Only the kids do the brag sheets here
The brag sheet was impossibly difficult for my dd17 to fill out. It is just not in her nature to talk about herself and it made her very uncomfortable. While her teachers know her well, her only interaction with the counselor was through the yearly check in for scheduling that lasted less than 5 minutes. She did the checklist part and bulleted her ECs but really didn’t write very much about herself. As parents we also struggled to accurately capture what makes her unique without appearing delusional. We downplayed this and tried to be as objective as possible only to find out that it painted a picture of our daughter as “meh”. We found this out when she won a prestigious district award. At the ceremony they read off her accomplishments in and out of school, and several teachers spoke. The GC came up to us after and shared that she had no idea and she wished we had shared all of this. We smiled and said that we had. In our attempt to be real we did not overemphasize her and it obviously made her unremarkable.
Going forward we are going to go all in on bragging about our kids. We will give details about their out of school ECs and make sure to highlight those things that make them unique. Every other parent at our school does and apparently this is not the time to be humble.
@HarrietMWelsch @bamamom Good feedback! He and I will have to make sure not to be shy about it!
@Octagon Our school does something similar. There’s a student survey and a parent survey. My impression is they are just trying to get a fuller picture of the student. We’re math people, and I’m afraid our responses were not very beautifully written. I had a hard time coming up with anecdotes, for example. We don’t get to see what the GC ultimately writes and sends to schools, so I have no idea how much of our responses actually go into the GC report. And I suspect it varies by school and GC. So, maybe just ask you GC?
IMHO when you are being asked to provide the type of info asked for on a “brag sheet” it really is not bragging since it is a private conversation and it is all factual. GC cannot know everyone well no matter what size the school happens to be.