@meddy I sent both my kids scores blindly! I’m just cheap! LOL
Full disclosure - we didn’t send to D’s top schools, just the ones where I knew she would score high enough. S17 didn’t apply anywhere super competitive so wasn’t really worried there either.
@Meddy Check each school. Some might take Nov scores, some want Oct. Some may even decide in Nov that they’ll take Nov scores. Some will take scores reported in the app or in the admission portal rather than requiring an official report up front.
It would make sense if schools are more flexible this year about taking Nov scores.
On the issue of sending scores My D18 taking LSAT. They do a thing where after you take it for the first time you can pay them $45 to see the score before it posts in your LSAC profile. Then you have 5 days to let them know if you want the score eliminated or not. If you tell them to eliminate the score its it like your never took the test. If you don’t pay the money the score automatically posts and it will be seen by all the schools you have applied. We are paying the preview fee…
We are trying to decide whether or not to bother with any testing from this point forward. My daughters’ dad is extremely paranoid about allowing D21 to sit in a room for 4 hours with other students, even with masks. She has a solid score that is good enough (well above the 50th percentile) for about half her list, but I know she could score higher with another chance (she has been studying and practicing for months). For the rest of the list, she is within the 25-50% percentile mark, sometimes quite close to 50th, so she isn’t far off.
BUT it was enough for me to convince him to let her attend the one class and the one lab that is happening in-person during fall (dual credit - a Spanish course that meets 90 minutes twice a week and a physics lab that I think is an hour once a week). But 4 hours in one room for the SAT…he is not happy about that.
I strongly feel colleges should just go test-blind. Yeah, maybe a kid can get a test date, but is it worth the risk? What if half the kids wear their masks below their noses (I see this kind of thing everywhere)? What if one proctor keeps pulling down their mask? We live in an area where a significant portion don’t take masks seriously.
Is it worth trying to get a test score to appease admissions officers if it might mean the kid comes home with COVID?
Obviously no. The real question is whether the infection is likely or if the test score bump (and that bump mattering) is likely.
Without knowing your personal situation I’m assuming that honestly both are unlikely. The definitive answer is none of us have any idea or either front. Which is extremely frustrating for me, and I’m assuming for you as well.
Personally I’m going with the assumption that my D won’t be in a room with anyone infected, and that if she is wearing her mask and they are set up correctly for social distancing that it probably is ok even if some dummy gives his kid 4 Advil to kill the fever long enough to pass the admission screening.
Really I don’t probably have helpful advice, but I am venting with you. I’m really sick of the uncertainity this causes in most aspects of my life and that of my kids.
I hear you. This is going to be a matter of convincing D21’s dad that it is worth it for her to try to test again. Maybe her remaining test dates will be canceled and then that will be that. I have a feeling that is going to be the case anyway.
My .02 is that I don’t think I’d be having my S21 continue to try and test at this point. He has a good score, but even if he didn’t I just don’t think it’s worth the stress involved if trying to find a test nearby, hoping it stays open, hoping the test conditions include masks and no one coughing, etc.
Even in the best conditions scores don’t always improve.
I am along the lines of what will be will be.
I will add that given the status of the virus I honestly don’t think much will be improved for campuses by F21 anyhow. So in our case, good score aside, why even work hard to complete a bunch of involved applications if he’s going to likely end up in state anyhow?
Just my .02. Disclaimer: I tend toward being a realist not an optimist.
D is still waiting for 1 AP score (could qualify for National AP scholar based on this result) and the July ACT (with essay) results. If the AP score hasn’t posted by tomorrow, I can call to start an investigation. I hope it just miraculously posts tomorrow.
Read a little on the CC thread about medical updates. I do believe kids will have a much more normal experience in fall 2021. Rapid testing, more therapies to save lives, hopefully a vaccine we can all get.
I have a doctor friend in TX and he’s been slammed but he said that, every week, they learn better ways to help patients who are admitted with Covid. It’s nothing like it was in the early days of March and April. They aren’t scared. They know what to do and share best practices with hospitals across the country.
@homerdog - Thx for the tip. I will read that thread. I need some inspiring news!
Edited: What is the thread name? Cvirus too close for home?
Inside Medicine: What are you seeing is the name of the thread. Updated all of the time with a lot of good news!
For us, it’s worth the effort and there is minimal risk if we get a site here in our own city. At this point, there are a tiny number of cases in our city. Elsewhere in the county (eg. prisons, farmworker areas) and state, that is not true so we are subject to aggressive restrictions. People are really good about masks here also.
I don’t think the schools are that motivated though to make it happen with everything else they have to deal with. At our zoom call the administrators tried to seem upbeat but they seemed kind of exasperated and didn’t have everything dialed in yet. A friend said the test companies are working to find non-school locations, but I don’t know if that is really true.
Thanks, @evergreen5. I hope all schools are forthcoming about their number of gap year kids.
You have to create an account to see this story I think but it’s worth it.
^Interesting discussion of “unlisted” ACT testing sites, kinda like a school-day test but on a Saturday.
If the regular, open Saturday tests are such a pain for high schools and proctors, it makes me wonder why they do it - it can’t be all bad? Many of the same (large) high schools offer a school-day SAT to their own students and yet are test centers for every Saturday SAT.
This really scares me. If a school allows 10-20% of 2020’s to defer, which I’m guessing is where most elites will end up, one of 2 bad things happens for our kids.
First, it is probably going to be significantly harder for unhooked kids next year. Donor and athlete spots won’t be affected, but that thin slice the rest of us are fighting for just got thinner.
Second, to the extent they didn’t take kids off the waitlist to fill the 2020’s, those kids will me added to the 2021’s. They will have a huge class of 2021’s, which could make getting the classes they want and need especially difficult.
I get why 2020’s are deferring, I would too. There are specific reasons my 2 still in college are not taking a gap year, I think it makes sense for a lot of people. But the 2021’s will be disproportionately affected.
The winners in the college admission game are the waitlisted 2020’s. I’m guessing most schools went much deeper than anticipated into the waitlist.
@dadof4kids The elite schools that called it early and said very few kids on campus and all (or mostly) remote classes are showing the biggest numbers of gap years because they said their plans on or before July 1 and then allowed unlimited gap years. Now, though, many schools that have pivoted recently either aren’t allowing any more gap years or kids are so invested in starting school that they’ll go ahead and start remotely from home and not gap.
My point is that I think it’s a very limited number of colleges that will see large numbers of gap years because (1) many colleges do not allow unlimited numbers of freshmen to take a gap year and (2) if plans changed recently, they won’t have a lot of requests because it’s too late to make other plans and most freshmen will be disappointed but go ahead and take remote class.
The numbers we’ve seen from the likes of Harvard, MIT, Williams, etc are high but I really don’t think a lot of elite schools had that many gap years. We don’t see big numbers from Duke, Vandy, NU, UChicago etc.
@dadof4kids - I wonder if that 10-20% figure includes those who took a gap year but now must reapply. If so, then those kids who must reapply will likely take a back seat to the 2021s during this fall’s admission cycle IMO.
We are paying close attention to colleges and their gap year policies for this year. One college that approved unlimited gap year requests had been a potential ED choice for D21 but is now an RD choice (if she still even chooses to apply…she’s leaning away from that one now). Did they take into consideration the high school class of 2021? Were they thinking about both the short-term and the long-term regarding school community and school spirit? What about job placement after graduation? If they allowed a ton of gap years but are still going to accept the same number of students this cycle, then are they creating an extremely difficult situation where an overly-large class of 2025 graduates must compete for a limited number of jobs? What about being able to secure an internship if there is now a significantly greater class size? Or will there be the same number of kids per class, but now it’s even more difficult to be accepted to begin with? Whatever the case, these colleges need to be transparent. 21s need to know if their matches are still matches or if they are now reaches due to newly lowered acceptance chances. They also need to know if the college’s incoming class size is going to be much larger than usual, if registration etc might then be affected, etc.
If someone out there has a kid applying to the U of CA schools, they don’t need to worry about any of this. Just heard a podcast (Getting In) that had as its guest Ffiona Rees, Senior Associate Director of Admissions at UCLA. She explains that though they feel for the class of 2020, they “are not granting deferral requests for students who are saying this isn’t they experience that they thought” because “We as universities need to preserve and protect the spaces for next year’s class…we can only enroll so many students each year.”
I found this interesting on Harvard’s page regarding Deferred-enrollment First-Years -
“It is always possible that we will have too many students seeking to matriculate at the same time, and we may not be able to house everyone on campus in the traditional First-Year housing. In the event there is excess demand for housing in academic year 21–22 or thereafter, Harvard will establish and share a process by which students may apply for undergraduate residential housing. Deferred-enrollment First-Year students who do not obtain space in a Harvard residence may be granted an exception to our requirement that First-Year students must live on campus, and such students will receive financial aid for room and board if they would ordinarily be eligible for such aid.”
I wonder if that means students who take a gap year this year are not guaranteed residential housing (Harvard Yard) during 2021-2022. Maybe that’s Harvard’s way of accommodating a larger-than-usual class of 2025? Just guessing.