Above meant for cormac. Thanks!
First day of school here too! I just told her to have a great day. She was so nervous and excited after over a year away. She drove this morning and she texted when she got there that she got lost but made it, the school is basically across the street so 
For the first day of school, they had a āsenior breakfastā of donuts waiting for the seniors, smartly concluding that a senior sunrise at 6:45am would be poorly attended by teenagers when school doesnāt start until 9!
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Getting lost going to school made me lol, itās a running joke in our house that our kids donāt know how to get to places theyāve been driven for years!
This year, the kids wisely did senior sunrise the day before school started. I think itās a good sign for our future problem solvers of the world! ā¦of course, they might get lost on the way.
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I take it your kid didnāt get any doughnuts? 
I wish our school started at 9.00am. A 7.30am start is so against our studentsā sleep needs!
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I am new to the thread. My kid does not belong here gpa wise, but we are chasing merit and looking at many of the private schools talked about here. We are in Southern California. I just wanted to say hi.
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Welcome @InfoQuestMom ! Funnily enough she didnāt get a donut, but only because she doesnāt like them (still not sure how she can be my child)! She played the important role of securing a table while her friends gathered their donuts 
. And yes we love the 9am start but it does have itās drawbacks, school doesnāt let out officially until 4:25, this year D has early release and late lunch everyday by some miracle so sheās home by 2:30. A very sweet schedule for senior year and we are keeping our fingers crossed they make no further changes for ābalancingā but we wonāt know for sure for a few weeks still.
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Howās it going for everyone? Iād love to hear about your progress (or lack thereof).
I had a sit-down with my D22 for about 30 minutes and made her look at the spreadsheet I had of schools. We looked at the Common App, too, and I had her fill in some of the name & address type stuff and pick a couple of colleges so I could show her how to look and see if the college had extra questions and we could poke around a little bit on the Common App site. We also looked briefly at the UCAS website for UK schools.
It was all like pulling teeth. It was like I was making her do some heinous chore like cleaning her room and she was 13 instead of 17. Ugh! She has a college counseling appointment with her guidance counselor on Thursday (first day of school) so I just wanted her to have a little idea of what she wants to talk about. This is a new guidance counselor this year, but the counselor has had experience at two other schools at least, so I am optimistic that she knows what sheās doing. D22 did not think much of the former guidance counselor (now moved up into an assistant administrative position) so fingers crossed that she clicks with this new one and someone other than mom can get her motivated to start work on college stuff.
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All the colleges? Sure! Also, she is not an athlete.
Kenyon
Oberlin
Denison
Wooster
St. Olaf
McGill
Toronto
Illinois U-C
Wisconsin- Madison
Minnesota - Twin Cities
Michigan State
Marquette
DePaul
Iowa
Butler
St. Maryās Notre Dame
Waitlisted at Macalester
I think thatās it? Thatās enough, certainly.
We sat down with S22 this weekend and told him he needed to think of Apply to College as a 7th class. That he needed to think each day āis there something I need to do for ATC?ā A handful of his schools have an Early Action deadline of Nov 1, and he could be done with this process! We said, imagine if you could be done with one of your most important classes by Nov 1, wouldnāt you buckle down and do it just for the relief of it?? It seemed to help. Heās has his activities list pretty close to finished, and he said he has some ideas for his essay, and thereās still a lot left to do. But this is the most Iāve felt him buy-in. Fingers crossed!
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We are just starting. He had to take two summer school classes that just ended last week, and I felt those were the priority before starting appās. But now things feel very pushed.
He is not going to go for any Early Action or Early Decision, so I think it will all work out okay, but it still feels stressful. One day at a time.
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My S also does not want to talk about colleges AT ALL. Itās so frustrating. I have told him we can meet every three weeks to discuss things and I will not talk about it between meetings but in return, he has to prepare for the meetings and be courteous and engaged.
Can someone reassure me that waiting to RD makes sense for him? The pandemic really affected him. His core classes were nearly all Cās last year and I am pretty sure he can and will do a lot better this coming semester. We got letters from Knox and Wooster today promising decisions in two weeks (did everyone else get those?) if he applies early. Made me second guess our planā¦
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I donāt think D22 has heard from Knox or Wooster, at least not recently. She doesnāt look at a lot of the college mail, but I like to.
I am pleased that she did bring up the topic with me late last night. Maybe looking at the Common App and just getting the name and address filled in helped. She said she is going to ask her writing teacher to discuss essay topics with her, which I thought was great. Hoping this means she will start to get to work on stuff more. 
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Donāt worry! RD is in January for a reason! I knew getting the weight off his shoulders would be a good motivator for S22, and for him, I donāt think things will change between EA and RD. For good or bad, his grades have been very consistent all through high school. But if last yearās covid nightmare created an outlier for your son, than those extra months to see a course correction will be helpful for colleges.
I totally get your anxiety, though! This process with S22 has been really different from D19 and I just keep reminding myself that theyāre different people and these are different times. Everything will work out!
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@murray93 My S will not talk about colleges with me at all either. And heās only met his HS counselor twice (last two weeks of school last year), but Iām hoping he will get a chance to talk to her a few times this fall. Maybe your S will be open to talking to his HS counselor to give him a boost on the process?
S22 also had a rough semester during the pandemic where his grades plummeted. And now I think heās feeling overwhelmed with the idea of going back to full-time school with more APās than heās ever had. But heāll need to do well to be able to have a chance at some of his reaches. I feel so bad for all our 22ās whoāve had essentially two school years thrown off and have had to struggle with loneliness and lack of motivation. I donāt think S22 can even remember what it was like to be in school full time. Our school did a terrible job with the transition to online classes and didnāt get it together until the second semester but there is nothing we can do about it now.
My SS is applying RD for most of his colleges and EA to only two of his target/safety schools. So I think itās doable to get two applications out by Nov. 1 and the rest after the winter break.
Good luck! I know Iāve spent a lot of time hand-wringing.
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Iām going to say that at this point I feel cautiously optimistic about how things are going with D and college so far. knock wood
Weāve agreed to once a week meetings where we discuss progress and goals for the week, and so far so good. We had actually sat down together back in July to work on the basics of her Common App, that all rolled over so that part of the app is basically done aside from just checking it over. We sat together last weekend and added her schools and went through each to fill out what was easy, and make note of any extra essays she needs to work on. She has actually submitted 2 apps that were available early and not common app. Neither needed an essay, so they were very easy fill-ins, they are not her top schools but weāll see how she feels about them if she gets an early acceptance 
Not sure that will happen as I think both of these schools are more matchy, than safety but weāll see. Her main job now is essays. She has expressed that she wants to do that on her own and doesnāt want me to read them and I said thatās fine but she needs to find another reader just to proof-read for spelling and grammar. She is prone to typos and also prone to not checking for them.
Finally, she got emails from a couple of her schools about visit days this fall, and when I asked her about it, she just said, yeah letās go, I need to see them. So I think the one summer visit we made has worked itās magic and she understands that she needs to see it to know it.
As far as EA vs RD, she is also a kid whose grades tanked last year, and I also toyed with holding off for RD. But several of the schools sheās looking at also give primary merit consideration during early rounds, and sheās not really going for anything too reachy so I hope it works out. Her school also does quarter grades that donāt show up on the transcript, but can be provided to the schools. Her first quarter should finish up mid-October so hopefully she does well when those grades are available. I donāt know, it could be a mistake to go early, but I honestly just want it done. 
I guess if things donāt go to plan in the early round, we can regroup for RD? Though honestly if that happens I think sheāll just be a mess having all her worst fears (that no college wants her) confirmedā¦ ok now Iām suddenly second guessing everything! 
Ok that is probably enough of a book for yāall from me today! Letās just breathe through this together, itāll all work out, this time next year weāll be getting ready to send them off somewhere new!
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Jumping in from the class of 21 to say that my S21 applied early action everywhere he could even though his cumulative grades through end of junior year were at the lower end of many of the schools he applied to.
Four reasons: 1) he knew his senior year grades would only go up and help his story as they were sent in by his school throughout the year should he need that 2) he wanted to know early if there was going to be trouble with acceptances so that he could re-group 3) he felt that applying EA was another way to indicate interest; he needed every bump he could get and 4) he wanted to know a school really wanted HIM with all of his faults and challenges, knowing he was only getting better from there.
The worst thing that happened from taking this approach is that two of the schools said āwe canāt decide based on this, send us more and weāll move you into a later roundā. One of those is the school heās going to attend in a couple of weeks. And he got into several others which helped him breathe in December as he was waiting for favorites.
PS. S18 also did all EA where available because he was D.O.N.E. with the process and didnāt want to think about apps after 11/1 far less strategic but also valid.
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i have an option to be a teachers aide vs empty slot. does teacherās aide help at all?
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Does anybody knowā¦ For schools with 1/1 or 1/15 RD deadlines, what happens if official first semester senior year transcripts arenāt available to submit to colleges yet?
I would think being a teacherās aide during a free period would look good on your apps. Certainly wouldnāt hurt any.
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@murray93 I canāt say for sure, but my recollection from my D18ās process was that the deadlines was more for student controlled items like the application and test scores, but things out of the studentās direct control like recommendations the deadlines are more soft. I would check directly with individual schools on how they want you to handle it though. With a transcript, they may want you to send what you have and then have the counselor send a mid-year report with updated grade for senior year.
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