@Curiosa She is out and she does think the adrenaline was a huge help. Did not need to snap the rubber band once today! Gotta love our ADHD kiddos. Always something…lol
If this were not a Covid year I would have a hard time feeling finished with the list of schools but we are limiting the list to those we could drive (not fly) to within a half day. D‘s current top pick pushes a bit at the geographic boundary of this but we think is worth the distance. I know that many of you live in areas where a flight or much longer drive is necessary if your child is to have any choice at all, so I feel fortunate in that regard.
D’s core list is stable at about six schools and there are a few more that may or may not be added. There are a couple of safer schools we’ve not yet seen which she’s not crazy about that I think she should add. I think when SAT results come out (IF the tests happen) we’ll have a much better idea whether her current list contains mostly reaches or matches.
@homerdog I am having a little list anxiety. Some of the mail coming in is from privates we didn’t really consider - probably because of the lack of strength in his major but shouldn’t I just check? 
Also avoiding getting back to settling on another safety recommended by the GC. We have trouble on the low end settling.
@mamaedefamilia there is zoom fatigue here too. One of the schools on his list he couldn’t even remember if he had attended a zoom with in summer. The school specific ones are happening this month and I only make him go to the private tracker ones that are on his list. He did SCU last week. I think the presenter was happily surprised to get questions from the kids at the very end since it was 7:30 in the morning. I think there is a lot of fatigue out there.
We just watched a Boston College info session specifically about admissions. Two take aways. One, if you have a score “within their averages” they say to send it. Two, about the dreaded Covid question, these two AOs said the question is specifically for how Covid has affected “your academics”. They said things like internet issues that affected your grades, sickness, hospitalization or worse, other family issues that presented themselves like taking care of younger or older family members are all examples of what they expect to see there. On a separate slide, they talked about extracurriculars and said they know they won’t look normal during pandemic time but want to see what you did do from March until now.
Just one school and two AOs but interesting nonetheless.
Just for fun: About all the mailings, when my daughter was applying 2 years ago, we kept all the college flyers. At the end of the recruiting season, we weighed them.
36 pounds!! Our poor mailman.
@homerdog – how do you interpret 'within their averages?" Is that still the 50th percentile or above or does that mean between 25th and 75th? Just curious!
Tks for sharing what you heard!
I thought that was a puzzling answer as well. D21 asked in the chat and they wrote back that answer. Didn’t answer out loud. I took it to mean to go ahead and send if you’re within their 50 percent range (and obviously above). What I was looking for was either an answer like this or one more like “submit if the score supports the rest of the app”. For D that could be two different things. She will likely be at or near their 50th percentile but that score to me seems “less than” her grades and rigor. And, from our high school, no one has been accepted at their 50th percentile so I might be afraid to send her score if it’s there.
So unless D ends up closer to their 75th percentile, I’m not sure what to do and if I would even matter. If I follow their advice, we send if she hits a lower score but that doesn’t look good on Naviance. And if we don’t send will they assume it’s lower than 25th percentile? Colleges say they won’t assume anything that’s not there but BC saying to send it if it’s in their middle range makes me feel like it’s best to send. Are you confused yet? lol.
@homerdog, I have heard that some schools that are TO look for a higher recalculated GPA and course rigor to balance the lack of a test score. I have no idea how widespread that practice is. Something to consider if GPA is 75th percentile and test scores around 50th percentile.
Right. You don’t want the score to “bring the app down”. I wish they would have said that but, even though they did not, I still think it might be true.
I’d be inclined to interpret “within their averages” as within the 25th-75th percentile range.
Yes I believe that’s what they meant. But, like I said, kids from our high schools didn’t seem to be admitted on that low range and it’s also been widely said to not send a score if it will look “lower” than the rigor and GPA. D21 just asked the question and that’s the answer she got. Not a nuanced one for any particular student of course but just one sentence saying send it if it’s within that range. I think each student still has to make their own decision depending on a lot of factors.
Couldn’t get back to sleep after the earthquake last night and been working with DS all day on his applications. I am NOT cooking dinner!
Sending good vibes!! Best of luck to your kiddo!! ??
Same with my S21. His preference is to be within about 5 hours drive max, unless he could go to CA where we have family. But with the world the way it is, he decided to take those off the list. He also wants to keep the price down since any college savings not spent on undergrad he’ll get to use for grad school (otherwise, grad school is on him).
I’ve heard it will be a trend that kids will stay closer to home for college. I guess we are just rolling the dice that there will be a vaccine by fall 2021. Plus we already have S19 a plane ride away so staying close for D21 just isn’t a must.
I do wish she had more schools closer to home but her mantra has been “S got to go far from home. Why do I have to stay close?” Now watch. He’s in Maine and she’ll be in CA and we will be stuck here in the middle of the country half way between both of them!
This college admissions game is so stressful with all the guessing of what different schools want or don’t want. I want it to be over already.
@homerdog i think middle of the country is a great place to be in regard to traveling to both coasts ?.
We also have a hard time getting D21 to look at any schools close to home since D19 went away to school. We’re requiring one sure bet state school.
The high school just announced that they will be hosting an SAT for seniors in October. D had decided that she was just not going to submit scores since so many ACT and SAT had been canceled. We think we know what we’re doing, and it just gets complicated again.
It will all work out.
I love how active this thread is. But I missed a week and then it took me a couple of weeks to get the courage to reopen it because I was so far behind. I’m a bit of a “completeist” so I hate missing posts, but finally the number of unread posts was ridiculous enough that I had to just skip ahead.
D has a list of 12 for sure apps she is working on. It’s similar but slightly different list than the one I was working from on a separate thread a couple of months ago. Her plan is to add a few more, based on how much time she has for extra essays, and how the ED/EA round goes. Obviously ED ends it. She is applying to Macalester and possibly CWRU EA. If she gets one of those, probably a couple “super reach” schools get added to the RD list, because not much to lose if she has one of those as her floor. If she doesn’t get either of those, probably St. Olaf and Whitman will get added. Not safeties, but probably lower matches.
She is still sitting at a 32 on her ACT, but took it again today. She was not thrilled with her timing on Reading or Science, although she did get through all of it just a bit rushed at the end. If she doesn’t improve we will have to do some thinking about whether to submit. It doesn’t really match her GPA and class rank.
I’m also banking on the vaccine. She also has a brother a 20 hour drive from here and she doesn’t want to stay local either. Grinnell isn’t local, but I could roundtrip it in an (unpleasant) day if needed. She said she would rather go to Whitman or St. Olaf, mostly because she wants to live in a different part of the country for a while. I figure if she can get into Grinnell she gets into both of those, so Grinnell is probably staying off of the list. The only local school (defining local as our state or a bordering one) is her “safety of last resort”, the state flagship where her other brother is a student.
D25 has just started seriously looking at boarding schools, which is a new thing for our family. Not sure if that is really happening or not. But if it does, theoretically I could have those 3 kids all within a few hours of each other, just 20 hours from here. Or they could all literally be over 1,000 miles from each other and from here. I don’t even want to think about the logistics of a “March 2020” event. I guess S19 drives his car home, wife heads to New Orleans and I head to California to get the other 2?
My head hurts. Again, REALLY banking on that vaccine. 
Re: the list. I wish we had a bunch of schools within driving distance. But being in TX and D wanting to be in a city and at a diverse school means we are looking at 3-4 hour drives for the few instate options she’s considering. A couple in state options did get added as a regular of coronavirus.
College app boot camp scheduled in the mm house from 10-12pm today. Hoping to get all the common app schools w/o short answer Qs submitted and Apply Texas started. Wish us luck!