My daughter got waivers from Rice and Wash U but didn’t apply to either!
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I wouldn’t ask permission, at least yet, and would just plan the trip. So many things could change between now and then. As soon as you ask, the superintendent must answer.
To be honest, I might possibly be inclined to tell the school when it comes time that my daughter must quarantine and will need to be virtual for a week or whatever. Technically, because you are making the trip OOS, she should quarantine. Yes, she wouldn’t need to if you didn’t make the trip at all, but…
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@SammoJ, I totally get it. Traveling isn’t the greatest idea. We won’t make the trip if a clear choice emerges once we make a list of each school’s pros and cons. She still has almost 2 months before she learns her fate at one of her top choices. 
I wish I got from Rica and Wash U. We paid the application fee for both.
@anaray Our experience was that even some top tier schools offered waivers. They sometimes came in emails, so scan deleted files for “waiver” or in the marketing mailers from schools and I’d set those aside that had waivers or stated no app fees. Some states have no application fee days to apply to all in-state schools and schools in neighboring states jump in on that. I can’t recall I can’t recall the school, but they sent a waiver in a follow up email after a zoom sesh with AO’s. Best wishes to you in this exciting process!
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@anaray she wasn’t interested in applying to either one! We paid for the other 16 she did apply to! The waivers came in emails.
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Anybody else apply to just 1?
Couldn’t have done that if S21 wasn’t so certain about his future. He’s had a singular focus for years. Requirement was an R1 university where he can do undergrad research that he found interesting and applicable to his PhD research.
Pre-covid, we finished trips to his 6 finalists. Our instate flagship made as much sense for his undergrad as the T10 & T20 schools that we visited. Close to full auto-merit and relatively close to home were secondary considerations but are certainly nice to him & the parents.
Only doing 1 app and not having to wait for acceptances is also pretty nice.
Some of you mentioned speaking with current students was a big help. Absolutely! On his 2nd and 4th visit to UTK, we had encounters which confirmed that he could easily find his people, both socially and academically. Pro tip for pre/post-covid times: college kids are happy to talk at length if you buy them lunch 
Seeking out current students was 2nd only to seeking out research lab PI’s to know if the school was a fit for him. The admissions tours were nice but after our 1st college visit, we were spending more time in 1-on-1 meetings than we did in the group tours.
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Something I learned during the process - for nearly every private school that S20 filled out the “Request Info” form on its website, we eventually received a fee waiver via email. He started requesting info very early, but the waivers didn’t arrive until closer to application season opening up.
I don’t know if that’s a “rule” but in our experience it resulted in fee waivers. It worked more often for private schools than public schools, but many OOS publics also offered fee waivers.
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I’ve been away for a bit due to a busy schedule and needing to be the caretaker for our 20-year-old cat who passed away two days ago (she had a great life and I miss her, but she died in the most peaceful way possible after pretty much living on my lap for the past month).
First, @SammoJ, I am so sorry you tested positive but I am glad you are through it, and I hope your husband is okay and that the rest of your family is safe. I live in an area with a lot of morons who don’t wear masks (or wear them under their noses), and I want to smack them all upside their heads (but then I would be violating the six-feet protocol).
I love all the posts about number of applications! I thought D21 had secretly won the most-colleges-applied-to game, but @anaray has us beat. D21 applied to 28 (8 of them are U of CA schools, so that was just one application). The U of CA schools are the only ones I feel were kind of a waste of time and money, since D21’s fit is an LAC-type and the U of CA schools are anything but that. The other 20 are all colleges she has visited multiple times (pre-COVID) and genuinely likes or loves (except for one - Kenyon - which she does very much like but because of their virtual events as opposed to in-person visits…D21 didn’t get a chance to visit Kenyon). D21 wrote almost all the essays during the summer in an organized way, starting with “Why X” essays for all of them. She wrote other supplemental essays based on prompts from previous years, which ended up not changing for this year (except for two). She is a white homeschooled girl from the northeast with unusual ECs but national recognition etc, so she has the chops to compete with all other applicants, but with this year being so uncertain and her not being from a traditional school, who knows how things will shake out. Her list has mostly reaches-for-everyone, but there are a solid handful of matches and she has already been accepted to her two safeties with substantial merit.
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@eb23282 You really let the app fee decide where your student applied? And they didn’t apply if you needed to pay $12 to send scores? I was expecting you to say that you made him/her pay themselves to have some skin in the game, not that they didn’t apply at all. I know it adds up, but I’m really surprised to hear that. What is your thinking/strategy for deciding what school to actually attend?
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Absolutely. There are so many schools that didn’t have apps fees, gave fee waivers, were test optional etc, that it wasn’t hard to find 5 that fit the profile he was looking for. He’s not chasing the name brand, didn’t have a dream school since 2nd grade and wasn’t going to apply to 35 schools even if we allowed. Obviously ymmv but for us it was a rather simple way to start cutting schools, just as others do with location, size, etc.
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@eb23282 Interesting, I had never heard of that approach, but if it works for you then why not. I guess if he didn’t have any kind of preference for schools then that metric is as good as any. Will you be deciding on the final choice purely based on price? I’m guessing if he was able to get fee waivers then probably those same schools are generous with merit.
I’d ask for forgiveness and not permission. It is none of their concern why you had to go out of town, it could have been for a number of reasons. They just need to respect that you respect the rules, but your child still needs to be able to learn.
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I had high hopes of using a lot of fee waivers, but that’s something that fell through the cracks as we tried to fill write all of those essays. I think she used 6 or 7 which isn’t awful, but I think we missed a few. I know we sent scores to a few that allowed self reporting.
I also agree that top schools send out fee waivers. In addition to some in email, D also got waivers, from an Ivy and another highly selective school, in the regular mail. They were in letters rather than the regular marketing brochures, so just make sure to open the mail — at least from anywhere your son is actually considering — as well.
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Thanks for sharing! UTK is on D21’s short list. We are OOS though. She sounds very similar to your S21, except she decided not to apply for Haslam after getting the invite (good luck to S21 on acceptance!). She is in Chancellor’s though. The more we have learned about UTK the more it has moved up the list. Will be visiting soon.
Overall applied to 8 (including 1 R2 in-state safety because dad wasn’t convinced would get enough OOS merit $). Our 2 in-state public R1 options have definite drawbacks, so applied to 5 OOS public R1s. (Not paying for private undergrad period)
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@JanieWalker sorry to hear about your cat. No matter how ‘expected’ it was, I’m sure it is still a profound loss for your family.
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@seoace I remember your posts early on about your son and his early focus. So happy everything fell into place for him. He sounds like a remarkable young man!
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Thanks. She was as old as the hills, but she never lost her dignity or her grace. We miss her.
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Congratulations to all the college applications submitted and the good news so far. D21 applied to 14 total (as of yesterday) would have done more if essay fatigue didn’t set in. She has a mix of big/small, public/private, safety/reach, urban/rural all with honors, merit or specialty programs she liked. She did tours pre-covid at a handful and has 5 acceptances and 1 deferral so far. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out and I think she already has some fine choices. Good luck to everyone and I cannot wait to see where these resilient kids end up.
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