@th03 welcome! A reach is a reach, and I think it’s more important is to have the appropriate amount of safeties that your D21 would be happy to attend.
@homerdog what a disappointment, and so close to the first day. I’m sorry! Hoping all these early precautions might open the door to a more normal second semester.
@mamaedefamilia ”send your friend here to CC! Some time on this site should set her straight.”
This made me laugh but it is true! So many here have gone through the process at least once before and the advice and experience has been invaluable to me.
D21 is picking away at essays and has had a couple of interviews. Both went well - one was with a senior student, who asked a few curveball questions and the other was with an AO which was much more conversational. I may or may not have eavesdropped on both.
I did a little eavesdropping on some of my S21’s interviews as well…to aid in any guidance I could give him in the debrief afterwards. By the time he did the last one, I wasn’t eavesdropping anymore - he had it down by then. The first few he had a really hard time sounding comfortable and conversational as he was too focused on delivering certain information, so hearing a bit of that allowed me to mention that to him so he was able to adjust for future ones.
School starts for D21 next week with her college Spanish class at our local state school in-person and her physics lab at a cc in-person, and everything else online. She spent the summer writing college essays, doing outdoor volunteer work, and working on an independent research project. She is out in the field right now learning various collection methods with an expert, then she has about four more hours of hands-on work before she writes up everything.
We need to wait on a few college apps that ask if she is a Merit Semi-Finalist or Finalist because we don’t yet know (I think she just missed the cut-off score, but we want to be sure). She picked her first ED school but is still undecided about ED2.
Hopefully this will all be done (except a few interviews) by the end of August or mid-September at the latest. She will keep attending virtual info/student sessions though so she can have a hierarchy in place in her mind regarding where she would choose to attend if she is fortunate enough to be accepted to more than a couple schools (but not her ED choices).
We are definitely paying attention to how the schools on her list are communicating with their students during this stressful time and how they are handling everything in general.
D21 is mainly focusing on small LACs. Her grades are mostly As with a couple of B+s here and there. She is also in the IB DP program in a small private school. She got a couple of SAT testings in, but her scores were not good; didn’t reflect her school grades; so now she is doing test prep and hoping for the Aug. SAT to happen. She has more than 5 safeties; and the rest of them are matches; according to her and CC from school. We are hoping for merit since she will not qualifiy for FA.
Which LACs do you think will be a good reach for her? She hasn’t decided what she wants to do yet.
@th03 – Can you share more about what types of activities she’s looking for, what type of academic areas she’s interested in, and what she college community/environment is important to her? Social desires/concerns?
Also, geographic interests or boundaries is also important
@th03@AlmostThere2018 and I can duke it out. Lol. I have a son at Bowdoin and she has a daughter at Davidson.
S19 applied to a lot of LACs and was high stats like your D. I agree that all of the aspects of campus life (community, geography, social desires) need to be considered. S19 was pretty undecided going in but is narrowing his possibilities for a major.
Ah! Missed the part about merit. S19 was accepted to Grinnell, Kenyon, and Dickinson with meaningful merit. I bet your D would be as well.
I prefer her to go to the North East area and including PA, and midwest is around the Chicago area. Basically anywhere within 1-2hr drive within a major airport … She wanted to do pre-med and volunteered at the hospital before COVID (now she is not so sure; it’s not because of Covid-19); she also likes film and political science … another word is … she doesn’t know what she wants to do - I think that’s what college is for. Although she goes to private school; she is far from preppy … she is more corky than anything else. Her group of friends all has vastly different interests; and they genuinely support each other. She doesn’t like super-competitive environment; yet she likes friendly competitions. Greek life is NOT important at all … I actually don’t see her join a sorority at all. As far as Sports; she doesn’t care much for football at all …
I appreciate all the comments regarding testing (have been away with life duties for a while and only got on CC briefly here and there lately).
D21 has a solid score from March that falls either at or above the 50th percentile at all schools on her list except for some reaches. She has a spot at a testing center for the Sept SAT…BUT her father does not like the thought of her sitting in one room for four hours to take the test. I barely got him to agree to let her take her 75 minute college classes this semester. Four hours at one time in one room is too much for him. But she could really use a higher score, and she has been studying hard.
She has hit “submit” on the applications where she knows she will use her existing scores. She is waiting on her reaches since she doesn’t yet know whether she will actually take that Sept SAT (and score higher), or if she won’t take it just so her father’s head doesn’t explode. It could of course be canceled anyway, which would be the best thing for her personal circumstance because it wouldn’t feel like a missed opportunity and she could go ahead and apply TO to those reaches without regrets.
I really really really really really wish all schools would go test-blind this year. It just does not seem right to consider scores at all with so many varying factors with students across the globe.
@mamaedefamilia - thanks for clarifying this for me. I don’t think there were any schools on my D16’s list that asked me for all of her scores, so this kind of threw me. I erred on the side of including it.
D starts school Monday fully in person…not sure how long this will last given our County has a positively rate of 10.2%. 2-3 weeks I am guessing.
So far her AP physics C teacher is the only one who has sent his plan. He will teach the online synchronous class (not sure if it is from his office or in classroom) and the in person kids will be in their seats with their laptops/chrome watching his lecture just as if they are home. He said he did not know how to make it fair otherwise… So this is how he is doing it.
I wonder if this is how her other classes will go, I suspect they will. Makes it easier when they do go remote.
D has her last day of her engineering research. She is still hammering out a 5 page technical paper due by end of day.
She passed her driver’s test today (failed yesterday) and starts driving to school by herself Monday (that is huge for this very reluctant driver).
Our county is at 12.7%, but our section of the county is even worse. School board meets next Thursday to decide whether some kids go back in two weeks. I can’t see how they could say yes, but then again, I’m in GA, so who knows?
@TVBingeWatcher2 congrats to your D on passing the driving test!
@nichols51 Is there no national CDC guidelines on the percent per 100,000 that needs to be hit in order to open school? I don’t think so but, geez, don’t we need that? We’ve got states and/or counties with 1% and they won’t have school even in districts that have the money for distancing and PPE. And then we have districts in high case areas going back in person. There’s no other explanation except politics, or maybe teacher unions in some places refusing to go back.
But the virus in TX is the same virus in NY so it makes very little sense to have such differences in policy for this fall.
@homerdog, Guns a Blazing where I live and Texas Tech classes start on the 24th, not sure how many of the 40K undergrad are coming back to school. But it is a sure bet that rate is gonna rise.
Any idea if Texas Tech will have a covid dash board like ND so that everyone knows how many cases they find? I think all schools have to report cases but some make it easier to find these numbers than others.
@homerdog do you know anything about U of Dayton? Somehow hit D’s radar today (I need to ban her from the internet!!) Andy she’s intrigues. A little worried about the Catholic element, but wondering if anyone knows anything about it? Definitely a safety looking at Naviance (although only 20 apps in 11 years so not a lot).
And holy cow on school starting. I’m so jealous of all of you that get in person school. It’s like a whole different world; I can’t believe it. Our county’s 7 day average is 3.66% and our town’s is 2.16% and the schools won’t even open in hybrid format. We have had a recent increase in cases in kids 0-19, but still…
I wish I knew how Catholic it felt because I also think it checks a lot of our D21’s boxes. I know that anyone who goes from our school really likes it and I know two grads my age who have very positive memories. Love to know if anyone else here knows more.
I worked with a super sharp young woman who graduated from University of Dayton about 7 years ago. Went to grad school at GW and she was living in DC. She had really good things to say about Dayton. Said something about a chapel on campus that everyone wants to go back and get married in. That said, she didn’t strike me as particularly religious.
Her partner was also a grad – CS. They ended up moving out to the Bay Area to take tech jobs last summer.
