Sounds like a dating app! lol How did it work out?
Great!
@srparent15 Both of my sons decided to ālet fate decideā and go potluck on the roommate. Also, there was very little coordination about who brought what for the room. It was very stressful to my type A self, but it all worked out!
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Bowdoin sounds like they have the same process D18 went through at Amherst College, although they did pair two friends on her floor from the same out of state school which surprised me. The other surprise which @homerdog you will appreciate since I think you had one at Grinnell for admitted students day that same year. D18 made a friend at the airport that was on her way back from Grinnell and they were on the same flight even though they had to take a connection to completely opposite sides of the country. When we moved her into her dorm at Amherst, who was her next door neighbor? Same girl. Still her close friend today. It makes me really think about fit.
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Roommate situation sounds fascinating. So different than 24 years ago! Do kids have a school forum or Facebook (This is the zInstagram, Tiktok, Snapchat gen, tho) to find a match? So amazing for kids who know already. S21 will likely have to wait til end of March for UC if he doesnāt get into his reach and really reach schools.
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@inthegarden These kids are bored out of their minds and so stressed and isolated - Iām not surprised theyāre latching on to this new community of accepted students. They can look ahead and imagine a more normal life in Fall 2021 and be regular drama-filled teenagers for a minute. That said, I get it - it sounds a bit overwhelming and more intense than it needs to be. I imagine it will settle down in a couple of days.
@JanieWalker Good plan! I am really anxious about the effect of upcoming EA decisions on morale.
@rbc2018 I wonder if the inability to visit colleges because of the pandemic will enable prospective students to make choices based more on whether the college fits their academic needs than that āI felt right at homeā feeling. Of course, some kids are more sensitive to place than others and may be picking up on more than just the style of the buildings, the amount of greenery, or what the students are wearing. But probably not always. There are two great threads along the lines of stupidest reason your kid crossed a school off their list and schools that went up or down the list after a campus visit. I had them bookmarked but the bookmarks didnāt survive the redesign of the site. They should be pretty easy to find. Kids said things like ādidnāt like Boston College because there were too many crossesā or ācampus had too many trees.ā It makes for fun reading.
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My D would consider going random for a roommate but we havenāt heard or read anything that would suggest whether W&M does a lifestyle questionaire or not (@3SailAway do you know?) My D would be Ok going random if the school uses some kind of temperament matching criteria like @homerdog mentions. On the other hand, sheās the type who enjoys getting things settled (hence Ed) and would have a hard time waiting until summer to find out!
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It wasnāt just temperament! The survey asked about things like āwhat do you like to talk aboutā and āwhat are you looking forward to most going off to collegeā in addition to all of the mundane things like sleep patterns,etc.
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@homerdog, I think thatās great! Really goes beyond the superficial things kids might pick up on on zoom meets or Instagram posts.
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@mamaedefamilia I bet those threads are amusing, Iāll look for them! Yeah, without visits, kids might use even more random things like whether the decision had confetti or did the letter include cool swag 
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Only 27% of Cornell ED applicants submitted test scores.
Wow. Iām surprised to be honest.
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Cornellās % test optional is more difficult to find meaning in because some of Cornellās schools are test-blind for this cycle and others are test optional.
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Good Point. We are in California and all the tests have been canceled. Some kids have travelled out of state to take them, but most kids only have them from their sophomore or early junior year - taken as a āwhich do I like betterā so many havenāt submitted.
How do you know?
I read it on two other forums that the Chancellor said it during a lectureā¦ one forum writer wrote 23% (reddit) and another on this site (Cornell ED 2025) said it was 27%. Granted it isnāt terribly reliable but with two separate souces, I think itās close.
@mamaedefamilia, thereās no way my D would have applied ED without visiting. We had gotten to visit almost all of the schools on her list (mostly 2-4 hours away) during sophomore and early junior year (thank goodness we did that). W&M was a little farther and bigger than all of the other schools on her list. She was so sure she wanted a LACā¦(for example, she had said Lehigh was way too big when we went there) but I had a hunch about W&M and made a spontaneous decision to take her in September despite my fears of traveling. She fell head-over-heels. I felt It was probably a reach school because she is OOS, but I also felt she could handle the academics if she got in because her stats put her in a comfortable place. I have to say I also like the egalitarian feel of it being a state school. We had no tour but a friendly young man asked us if we were lost lol (we were taking a break with map in hand) and he ended up telling us quite a lot of the things he loves about the schoolā¦and it turns out he was a senior majoring in my Dās likely major. (pretty serendipitous) and that cinched it.
D noticed a few OOS kids on Instagram from pretty far awayā¦Idaho and Washington Stateā¦Iām so curious whether these kids visited or went ED sight unseen.
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And admissions person mentioned this in a talk they gave a few weeks ago.
But the data is sort of skewed because 4 of their colleges were test blind so itās hard to see what the real data is for who submitted a test for test optional schools and how many applicants applied to a test optional program. So until they release any of that info itās pointless to even try to make any sense of this.
Parents are talking about it on the parent page as well, again unless they have an applicant they too werenāt aware that any of the schools were test blind.
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Agree. No way would I ever let my kid apply to a school ED without a visit. An ED school is not the be all to end all and there are some virtual tours that suck and some that donāt give a school the credit it deserves.
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@mamaedefamilia my most irrational reason from my own D18 was that W&M was too āoldā of a school. Of course in the informational session they couldnāt stress enough that W&M was the second oldest school in America. The āoldā idea wasnāt helped by all the āoldā folks walking around Colonial Williamsburg. Meanwhile my wife and I were apply early decision this place is great.
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