@TVBingeWatcher2 and @GoldPenn , I am so sorry for your losses. I hope both of you and your teens are doing as well as possible considering the very sad events.
I got caught up on this thread this morning – a huge congratulations to all those teens with acceptances! So very exciting!
I get extremely anxious sometimes and need to avoid stress for the sake of my mental health (and therefore the sake of my teens’ mental health). I had to stay off these boards for a while because I thought D21’s dual credit professor who gave her low B grades on her papers and midterm with seemingly no reason would completely tank all her applications by giving D21 a C as a final grade this semester. She is a straight-A student, she’s published, she has had three other dual credit English courses with high As, one of her LOR is from a college English professor, and I’ve read the things she submitted for this course (after she received her grades) and could see nothing wrong with them (and I am a published author, both mainstream and academic).
D21 asked this professor if she could set up a Zoom meeting to go over her work, and if she could record it so she could refer to it later if she forgot any of his comments. He agreed. They met, and she asked specific questions…it turns out the secret to getting As on his papers and tests is not to just answer the question, but to do the absolute maximum…so if he says the paper should be 2-3 pages, 2 1/2 pages might get you a B but never an A, and 3 full pages makes it possible to get an A. D21 was respectful and spoke with the professor for almost an hour. She told me at the end he said he was impressed that she set up the meeting and that she had not once asked for points to be added back to her paper/test, but just asked how she could improve. They had a bit of small talk at the end and she feels a lot better about everything. So now she knows the secret to getting As in that class, and we both have hopes that her grades will improve now, and I am not nearly as stressed worrying that all her hard work and efforts might be done in first-semester senior year by a professor who grades with no apparent logic. She currently has an 86 in the class, and I no longer fear she will end up with less than a B (and a B would be fine, it would be her only one). She can still get an A now that she knows what he wants. But again, a B would be fine and would not hurt her application.
Also, D23 turned into a hormonal teenage wreck a few weeks back because…I don’t know…she doesn’t like the paint on her walls?? Doesn’t take much these days (hooray for teenage hormones). None of that is helping with the anxiety. Working on it. Very much wish edibles were for general adult sale in my state.
Life is very busy. D21 is trying to finish up the UC app but, as I predicted, her fall schedule is too busy for her to be able to do quality work on applications (which is why she did all the Common App stuff over the summer). We’ll see if she actually finishes the apps.
D21 was just contacted by a local organization that wants her to speak to their teens regarding her main extracurricular, so that’s cool. Someone we know who interviews for one of her lotto schools reached out unsolicited and asked if he could send an informal letter or make an informal call to admissions on her behalf since he knows the admissions folks and since he has been following her progress in her extracurricular since she was very small. That was kind of him, and she said sure. Don’t know if that kind of thing will move the needle at all, but he insisted it would not hurt, and admissions will know his recommendation was unsolicited.
D21 has not yet been contacted for interviews at the few schools where she can not just schedule an interview herself. Hopefully, she will get interviews, but if not, oh well.