I thought of a reason graduating early wouldn’t work well for engineering – most schools have a 1st year engineering sequence to explore different types of engineering prior to picking specialty. Not sure how that’d work if you started in Spring.
On that same note, I do have a friend whose D really wanted to go to Georgia Tech but didn’t get in. UCLA was her second choice (OOS) and she was waitlisted. She’s from a cold weather state and really wanted a warm weather college experience. Ended up at ASU. She seemed pretty disappointed. BUT ended up loving it. In honors program with a ton of perks. Lots of off-campus trips to beaches and mountains and didn’t seem to have a stressful experience and all and did very well. ASU too big for D but this is the way @3kids2dogs’ strategy can work!
@homerdog – Safeties are tough. What would your D say is her safety right now? Maybe she should throw in an app to a big school as a safety and if she didn’t thrive she could transfer? Boulder seems like a good choice. From the little I know about Denison it also seems like a good option.
Safeties are rough. Right now my S’s is Iowa State but when push comes to shove it would feel so random for him to go there – and he’s not visited – that I wonder if we’re kidding ourselves.
Great point! I know that at UT and Texas A&M a lot of their desired/popular majors only have Fall Admission…that’s probably a big reason why you don’t usually see or hear of a Freshman starting in the Spring very often in our area.
I feel so topsy turvy here right now lol…S21’s list is ALL safeties lol, with only 2 reaches…well one total high reach (UT Austin) and a quasi reach/semi match (Texas A&M).
Since he’s pretty much committed to staying in state a public, they are all financially feasible.
I’m the weird one in our household suggesting OOS schools he’s never heard of, he and my husband just shoot me blank stares.
Oh well…I still have my s23 twins…since we’ll be majorly chasing merit for those two (and they will likely have much higher stats then S21) maybe I’ll have my OOS dreams come true with one of them 
@AlmostThere2018 S19’s safeties were rough. After it was all over, he said he would have gone to Grinnell (over Kenyon) and planned to transfer. That’s not the point of a safety! But we tried so hard. He didn’t want big no matter what. He visited both of those schools twice and stayed overnight and agreed to keep them on his list. Looking back, I think he was just thinking he’d never have to go to his safeties and he indeed got lucky. We had some drama here, though, because Grinnell would have saved us $100k over four years and you know there was some serious discussion about that before we agreed to let him choose his full-priced college.
Iowa State is terrific but I totally understand why it could feel random for someone not from the Midwest. I do wonder how many kids have safeties that they hope they won’t have to use. I would say all of S19’s high achieving friends felt that way. One was denied everywhere but UIUC and waitlisted at Vandy. They took the waitlist spot, drove down to Vandy to talk to the AO and brought two more letters of rec. He was accepted two days later and didn’t end up at UIUC. I know. Ridiculous but this is what we are dealing with around here.
D would say Santa Clara and LMU look good to her for safeties. She thinks she’d like them better than Denison but I want to take her to Denison. They have tours. We know a student there pretty well. He’s one of S19’s friends and we’ve known him since kindergarten. I just want more options since CA is so far away and she’s not sold on Denison (yet).
Did your D18 have a safety she liked?
My daughter’s list is 5 out of 6 safeties too. Tulane is the only outlier with it’s low acceptance rate. Though she’s going to have to apply for Honors College at UofSC (and her ACT is right in the middle there, so OK chance but no guarantee) and Elon (she’d HAVE to get Honors Fellows to even consider it).
So they are safeties with a twist 
So funny story about Iowa State…I have a good friend whose daughter is an Engineering major there. It’s pretty odd for someone born and raised in North Texas lol to wind up in Ames, Iowa. How it came about was end of Junior year of high school they were at a college fair and randomly stopped at the Iowa State booth because waaay back in time my friend’s father graduated from Iowa State. Friend casually mentions it to the Admissions Rep and he tells them that daughter would be considered a Legacy there because of her grandfather. Daughter laughs it off and they continue on. College tours start (they did NOT go visit Iowa)…apps get submitted. She has her heart set on somewhere in Colorado (I forget which school) but friend tells her to go ahead apply to Iowa State too because why not (and they were constantly contacting her and sending her stuff)…she gets accepted to everywhere she applied but Colorado option is turning out to financially out of reach, even with the merit aid awarded while Iowa State literally keeps offering them more and ends up costing them even less then any of the in state publics. So our North Texas girl ends up in Ames, Iowa. First semester she HATED it (roommate issues, no friends, doesn’t know anyone) and now she can’t imagine herself anywhere else lol. She ended up joining the marching band and found her tribe (she was in marching band at our high school). She just completed an 8 month engineering co-op here in Dallas (actually timed perfectly…the Covid shut down didn’t affect her at all and she got to be at home) and is headed back in a couple of weeks to start her Senior year there.
Apparently S tried to apply to a school today that doesn’t require an essay (which he hasn’t written yet). However, the common app wouldn’t let him leave that blank so he couldn’t submit. That doesn’t sound right so I’m assuming he’s doing something wrong. Anyone else have knowledge/experience with this?
@eb23282 can your S submit directly through school application? I had my D submit one directly through school site just to get one under her belt. (Freebie she has zero interest in attending)
Two things could be happening here. (1) the school doesn’t require any essay at all and then you can’t use the Common App - you need to use the app on the college’s website or (2) it doesn’t require any supplemental essays but does require the personal statement on the Common App. In that case, he will have to write and add the personal statement before he submits.
I’m wondering if my kid may just be ok to go to Cal State University (Cal Poly, Sac State) options since they don’t require essays and he’s running into all sorts of writers block. Any one with kiddos in the same boat? I think he has great extra-curriculars but just can’t seem to garner up any themes that helps him answer the common app essays. I am not doing much to help other than give him guidance and strategy to help him dig deep. Not planning on writing the essays for him and I am just fine with paying UC/CSU tuition vs out of state/Ivies. I did get that book on essays that folks recommended (where the audience is the admission person) but the tips just seemed too obvious and nothing he didn’t know already.
In other news, College Board releases his AP Physics 1 results. He took it in May but was among the victims who couldn’t submit part 2 of his answers despite completing the exam. I told him he didn’t need to retake because I would never want to subject myself to the second torture of an AP exam, let alone Physics. He scored a 3. Good enough for UC credit so I’m glad he didn’t retake it. Wishing the kids who retook their exams high scores this week!
D’s list has several admissions safeties since we are chasing merit and fit, and she’s not sure what she wants to do. There are several because visits were planned in March and August that did not materialize… so we have Arizona, UCF, USF on there as well as our local auto-admit UH where she’d go essentially for free with NMF. Several matches and then two reaches - USC and UCLA. If I were made of money she’d have many more reaches like ivies and Stanford but we can’t handle full pay here particularly with now being down one income. And those super reaches may not have been good fits anyways since she’s now toying with digital media/animation majors. Or at least I can try to convince myself of that.
Tried to have the “plan for August” convo with her yesterday and was told that everything I mentioned to her, she already knew, and that I wasted 10 minutes of her time when it could have finished in 1 minute. ? Is it May yet?
@homerdog – my D considered NC State as her true safety (b/c she wasn’t applying engineering; it’s never a safety for engineering) and Mt. Holyoke as the ‘next one.’ I don’t think she would have liked NC State so it kinda failed in its role, I suppose.
If it’d just come down to those two as the only options she would have easily chosen Mt. Holyoke b/c they offered their 2nd largest merit scholarship that came with extra leadership development programming. And she knew someone there whom she thinks the world of so she had warm feelings about the place. Plus, it would be getting farther away. I think she would have thrived there.
@Momof3B – thanks for the Iowa State story!
I have a question about the Common App.
In the section where a teen states they have done college courses for dual credit -
Does the kid check off both “dual credit during high school” and “college will issue credit”? Doesn’t a college always issue the college credit? D21 and I are confused.
I just realized something. On the CA, all of D’s schools make you say up front if you are submitting scores. We don’t know yet. She has a few apps ready to go except for that part. One, in particular, we want to send because you can’t see that college’s “optional” supplements until you send in your app. I can call that school but I’m just curious if anyone here knows - can you send the app in saying that you’re not sending scores and then just change that if you get a score you want to send later? I understand there’s no big rush but she at least wants to get this one in.
I always wonder if the colleges care how soon you get your app in - if you send it on the early side if that shows interest. Any thoughts on that? Or is that just a detail that isn’t noticed?
Got an email from ACT this morning about 6:30 am. According to the email
“we have migrated to a new registration site called MyACT and many students in the class of 2020 and 2021 who had not yet received a refund were automatically registered for fall testing. Unfortunately, without a registration record in our system, this did not happen for students who had already received a refund. We are very sorry for that.”
We never asked for a refund and never received it because we were sure she will take the test in fall whenever it reopens. And now when you call, you get a message to call back later because too many people are on the line? How and why are these people able to still able to operate? Any other industry they would have gone the way of the dinosaur long time ago 
.
@homerdog I posted earlier: “I just looked through the requirements for our tentative list of common app schools. It seems that we won’t be able to submit until we know if he gets a test score he wants to share. One specifically warns that you are not allowed to change that decision after you submit. Makes me wonder if they put you in a bucket, maybe tackle the easy ones with scores first? They also seem worded as if they assume everyone who wanted a test score could have gotten one and is then choosing not to share. Hm…At least they didn’t specifically ask if you were able to take a test or not. We have an ok but lopsided score from March that we would only chose to share with safeties and lower targets.”
I don’t think we can submit until we see if he can successfully take the ACT September 12. I guess I will find out this morning if we still have the spot I got last week, since I have no email from them over the weekend. By then he should have his essays done.
Personally, I would feel nervous about submitting as TO and then trying to add a score. I think it is logical that they would have two piles for schools that have not been previously TO. The one with scores would be the easiest pile to tackle first. I also wonder if getting in early would help because they might be knowing it will take longer than usual for the holistic process and they want to get going, plus you show strong interest and preparedness? All speculation on my part. I plan to ask the CC about this next week.
BTW we have Gonzaga on our safer list. I’m not counting on SCU as a safety but he should be a strong candidate for them. I suspect that it may be more competitive due to increasing popularity and investment in the school, then perhaps more CA families like us want to be closer to home next year. There are a lot of full pay people in the Bay Area. I’m just full of speculation this morning!
That all makes sense. I’m just anxious for her to start sending. Just forgot about the score part! Let us know what your CC says.
@TXStuMom Different ACT email, same result.
“Because you are a class of 2020 or 2021 senior whose test center was cancelled for the April, June and/or July test date, we attempted to auto-register you for an upcoming September test date. However, we were unable to successfully register you. If you still wish to register to take the ACT test this fall, you may register for the test center and date that works best for you beginning on Monday, August 3 at 10 a.m. CT when the MyACT registration site reopens for all students.”
Argh! So I get to camp on their site forever.