A school that requires a parent plus loan or for us to co-sign a private loan is not affordable for us. I can’t afford the repayments after paying my parent contribution.
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No, my son is priority waitlisted at CMU, we didn’t receive a letter. Sounds promising for you.
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Seems almost all kids have smartphones with internet access. They can easily use them to study for SAT/ACT through Khan Academy for free. I was a poor kid too. I was born to teen parents who divorced before my first birthday. Luckily, my Peruvian immigrant grandmother helped raise me along with my mom. I couldn’t speak English until I was 6 y/o. I was an only child and my mom used all her resources to put me in an inner-city Catholic school, where they treated me awfully because I couldn’t speak English. There were no ESL classes…I just had to learn on my own. But I graduated 8th grade as the top student and was awarded a full scholarship to an elite private school in CT. Again, I didn’t fit in with all the privileged kids who had so many advantages, but I studied a lot and became a top student. My classmates were able to take test prep classes; we couldn’t afford it. My mom bought me a Princeton Review book and I studied my butt off to get good test scores and I was accepted to an Ivy league school (with generous need-based aid). All this to say - where there’s a will, there’s a way. No excuses.
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@CollegeYaYa Wonderful story. Thank you for sharing.
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Here is a great twitter thread about how all of the parts of the app benefit wealthy applicants. https://twitter.com/JonBoeckenstedt/status/1378587085137846272
I don’t have an answer, but I think colleges better get together and come up with a better system.
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S21 had his Senior Pictures photo
session this morning…gah, someone was chopping onions!! 
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I totally agree with this-where there is a will, there is a way. I also find that many students are giving excuses. I have seen students wear a very expensive jeans and shoes, and have a very expensive iPhone and the moment you ask for a pencil they are poor to afford that. What we also need is a cultural shift that gives importance to education.
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And Kroger and Walmart have website for booking vaccine appointments.
For the families in CA, 16+ can be vaccinated on 4/15, so book this week. You can go on vaccinateca.com to find places in your zip code area. If you live in the greater Sacramento area and are having problems getting an appointment, please don’t hesitate to DM me! I want every kid and fam who wants vaccines vaccinated. That is how we are going to keep this thing from mutating and variating.
Ack. Senior pictures. s21 went in for yearbook pix last month and we got the proofs last week. I still think he has a kid look despite being a man-sized. I’ll likely take his and his friends’ senior pix in 5 weeks when everyone will have been vaccinated and cleared
I think it’s a terrible idea to take away testing and put a heavier emphasis on essays. If colleges want to do this, then students should have to go to a testing center to write a timed essay without outside help.
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Fascinating. I didn’t read the whole article. Did they theorize as to why this is the case? Does it reflect differences in schooling or differences in the extent of assistance that affluent students tend to get with their essays? Or perhaps just a difference in emphasis as affluent parents may be hyper-obsessed with entrance essays while they may not be on the radar of immigrant and less affluent families.
We could do like other countries where all HS students are given standardized exams in high school (which all states already do) and those state-administered exit exams are the only thing used for college admissions. No SAT or ACT that you take 6 times. No essays that a consultant writes or re-writes for you. Add a timed writing sample to the standardized English tests administered by every state for HS graduation and you are good to go.
Of course that would create a situation like in Korea where test day is a tremendous day of national anxiety.
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The article discussed “essay content” as being correlated with a family’s income, but then they also mentioned that ECs would also correlate with a student’s SES. Frankly, I don’t understand the point of the article. Basically, it points out that kids from higher income backgrounds have been privy to more EC opportunities. Of course they have! Admissions officers just want to see that a student has taken advantage of the opportunities made available to them.
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Most schools in this country you admitted based on stats and not holistic. The issue here is there are not enough spots at the coveted top schools for all the top performing kids.
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This is where testing played an important role. As discussed in the twitter link above, it actually helped boost the chances of some kids from underperforming high schools. It helped them demonstrate to admission officers that they were a good academic fit.
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@CollegeYaYa Ive been listening to a ton of AO podcasts. Just Admit It, Yale Admissions, etc.
As an adult, I’m having a tough time truly understanding if the AOs are truly that empathetic. They talk about kids who go to schools that offer only 3 AP classes and they don’t punish those kids in the assessment. But then they turn around and say, “college dual enrollment, etc.” From a survey of people I know, I honestly feel like they expect kids to do dual enrollment to differentiate themselves. That’s fine but the extras become the expectation in the AO assessment and I hate it. I want a definitive, “Hey, for sure don’t worry. If you can’t get more than 3 AP classes, we don’t expect you to somehow hustle and get to the CC to take classes…and we get that your parents can’t drive you there.” Then with the EC’s, they go into community service. I came from the most poor but privileged family in that my parents didn’t beat me, I didn’t really live in a violent zoned neighborhood, and my parents did allow me to have time to study. But we were poor. The ECs I had was probably whatever things we did in the clubs afterschool. Even then, my participation was limited and there is NO WAY I would’ve cut the mustard now at the UW. For sure no way at a UC here.
The ambiguity is on purpose and it just drives the kids and parents to this spiral.
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This is a great idea! But then people would argue that privileged kids are studying for the state exams, so it’s not fair.
Other countries rely heavily on test scores to remove ambiguity. Now that almost every school in our country is test optional (at least for another year), the whole college app process is more of a nightmare. I’m not sure how admissions officers are going to holistically review kids next year, given that many students couldn’t do ECs because of the pandemic.
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I wonder if anyone’s done admissions podcast from a parents POV. The for reals, from kids and parents struggles to what we actually see and experience.
We could probably produce one. We have tons of topics we could cover and imagine if we did the recordings over drinks?
We could call it, “The Waitlist Happy Hour.” Waitlist = your kiddo is neither accepted nor rejected so it’s a rather balanced viewpoint.
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It wouldn’t be too hard to use the PSAT (though a more wide-ranging exam would be better). Some colleges already use it to determine who gets money and who doesn’t…