Longtime lurker, infrequent contributor here:
@Rue4 @jeneric @InfiniteWaves Congrats on Pitt acceptances, it’s a great school, did they use CA or Pitt app? My D18 is having a really good experience there so far. Now if I can get D21 to finalize her application, or any application for that matter. She didn’t believe me this summer when I was nagging about essays, that time would get away and school would start, but here we are. We are requiring her rolling and financially feasible applications in first, holding reachier places hostage if you will. I’m afraid this might backfire, but she has to drive this process. I go between thinking everything will be just fine and panicking that deadlines will be missed. Perfectionism can be paralyzing for sure. Thanks for the vent, any motivational advice would be very welcome.
S21 took the SAT this morning!!! Woohoo!!! Now we wait until Oct 9th to see what he scored and then pull the trigger on submitting all his apps Oct 10!!!
@MPT3D I feel your pain with the essays. The CA essay is still very much a “work in progress” around here. S21 was accepted to Pitt (Engineering) last Monday. He applied using the Pitt app (SRAR, SAT scores, 2/4 short answers).
@Momof3B Yay!!!
Congrats!! It’s been such an unusual year for all students ( and their parents). Glad he had such success!
Folks applying to Pitt – it looks like Pitt may not look at your common app essay at all? Does that mean you could use that as one of the response to their essay prompts? I was wondering about that.
@momandslp – Congrats! My S is applying to Pitt engineering too1 Can you give a sense of how long your S’s responses to the essay were? Just curious since they don’t provide a word limit but do call them ‘short.’
@MPT3D – welcome! My S has a lot of essays to write between now and Nov 1. It’s nerve wracking for sure, and I urged him to do more all summer but it didn’t happen. Just know you’re not alone! I figure my role is to help with some of the underlying mechanics like making sure he requests his transcripts and follows the school’s new procedures for recommendations. We have new systems in place b/c school is virtual and things are a bit crazy on that end so I’m happy to help navigate.
But, ultimately, if he doesn’t write his essays some of his colleges will have to fall off the list or he’ll just have to submit with less ‘well thought out’ responses. So, I guess my advice is that I’m making it clear to my S that I’m there to provide structure and guidance, but if he doesn’t do the work, the chips will fall where they will, so to speak. Just trying to making sure he realizes he ‘owns’ this 100%! Meanwhile, he thinks he has plenty of time, and I’m a worry wort, lol.
Love to here all the love for Pitt Engineering. My dad graduated from Pitt Engineering and also taught classes there as an adjunct professor. Congrats to all accepted and good luck to all who are waiting… H2P…
S21 applied to Pitt with the CA as he already had everything filled out there. But he only submitted the two shorter Pitt-specific essays. He did use his CA essay to draft one of the Pitt essays.
@InfiniteWaves – my S is using the Common App for Pitt too. So if he repurposes his common app essay for one of the short essays that won’t be redundant b/c he won’t be uploading the actual common app essay for Pitt, right? Not sure if I explained that clearly.
Congrats to your S too!!
@AlmostThere2018 I totally understood! The CA lets you only submit the Pitt short answers. Pitt won’t see the full CA essay at all. So it’s all good. 
@InfiniteWaves – thank you!
As always, love this helpful community!
@AlmostThere2018 Short essays were about 200 words each (definitely fewer than 250 words). As I’m sure you know, Swanson applicants are encouraged to answer the one “If you could create a new product, process, business, or organization, what would be? Please describe its purpose and how it would function.”
@MPT3D My D did the same as @momandslp 's son. She did Pitt’s app with the SRAR, 2 of 4 short answer questions (about 200 words each) and sent official ACT scores because we read they value high scores when awarding merit aid.
Venting: Class rank came out Friday at D21’s school. She was sure she’d be top 5% of her class of 500+. She came out in the top 6% and she’s very upset. It’s all because of her horrible 10th grade English teacher, she moans. (Frankly, he was horrible.) Sometimes she just obsesses over the most trivial things. Big things (like finishing her essays!) she puts on a back burner, but then gets emotionally caught up in something that’s inconsequential. Kids!
So class rank is just based on grades through junior year? Ugh.
We don’t rank here but we do acknowledge the top 12 in the class at graduation. They sit in the front row. It’s based on weighted GPA through first semester senior year. Then kids have a different sash if they are in top 5% and then 10% and 20%. All based on seven semesters. It’s kind of a bummer if schools don’t count any of senior year for rank but I guess it’s because a lot of kids in states like TX apply to state schools EA and the schools need their rank before decisions?
Couple of questions for anyone who completed the ApplyTexas app for TAMU. In the scholarship application section, there is a question under “family and financial information” asking for “annual projected parental support”. What is this, is this estimated EFC?
Also, under the extracurricular activities section, there is a question asking whether you want to submit a separate resume “using the format below”. However, I don’t see a template or format under it. Is there a format for the resume? If soo, where can we find it?
TIA
@homerdog Yes, ranks are based on grades through Spring semester of Junior year only. In our school district, they calculate the rank in July. They will include the grades from the summer (2020) classes starting in September, but they do not recalculate GPA or class rank . So the GPA or class rank that is on the transcript may not really reflect the actual GPA or class rank. It is weird and confusing.
I wonder if that favors female students who are already on their game freshman year of high school. In general, boys are later bloomers when it comes to grades and I bet are more likely to show an upward trend as opposed to having a strong GPA starting day one freshman year.
I am not sure if it favors either boys or girls. We know most of the kids in the top 50 ranks in my daughter’s school and its almost an even distribution. If anything, I think well rounded kids get the short end of the stick. In our school district they use the weighted average for GPA and rank. So for example, my daughter has taken orchestra all four years and took athletics(golf) as one of her classes in her freshman year (tho she is on the golf varsity team all 4 years). Athletics and fine arts are standard level courses, so that drags down your GPA. So my daughter ended up 26/763 (3.4%). A lot of kids postpone fine art and/or phy-ed courses till their senior year. So you can game the system.
Not only that, since it is so competitive, they take till the 4th decimal of the GPA when they are calculating class rank. My daughter took 2 Dual enrollment classes this past summer and improved her GPA by 0.01, may not seem like much but can improve your rank at least by 3 or 4 in my daughter’s school. But since they don’t recalculate the class rank and GPA after July, any kid who worked hard in summer will not see the result on their current transcript which both UT and A&M use to decide auto admits.
@MomofOne If you haven’t already, try logging in with a different browser. Some websites work best with Google Chrome or another browser to see the full picture. It’s worth a try. Good luck.
I am not sure, I understand!
@purplemama if you are referring to the class rank and GPA, it s not just the web version. we have the hard copy of the latest transcript. It is the districts policy to calculate GPA only in July after Junior year and in January (Spring) of senior year for the express purpose of college admissions. They will not calculate GPA or class rank in between.