Congratulations on all the choices! It’s so interesting to me to see all these kids with such different lists, and I wonder where they end up. It is SO hard!
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My daughter got in EA at her second choice school after being denied ED at her first, and is only active with the kids at that school, but hasn’t found a roommate yet, even though most kids have. We, as parents, are waiting for 4 schools first to see if there’s any better offers for scholarship before jumping to commit. She would prefer to just commit now, but we need to see what the financials are. She got into our state school which is awesome and is a no brainer from a financial standpoint, but she really prefers to go OOS.
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In California, and still waiting for the majority of the University of California campuses to release their decisions. Once we have those, we will tour a few before deciding. We also have a trip planned to visit one Oregon college in her final list.
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Congratulations on all these acceptances, parents of 2022! 
S22 is admitted at 6, waitlisted at 2, postponed at 1, denied at 2. Waiting on 10, mostly reaches. He’s enthusiastic about two of his current acceptances and will likely end up at one of them after visiting.
Meanwhile, I’m rushing to teach those missing life skills… laundry, cooking, etc 
Exciting times!
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Important skills needed for their independent survival at college. I was pretty bad at basic life skills when I stepped into my freshman year.
Have to work with my D now to train her as well. She made her life’s first cooking experiment (an omlette) last week for herself. Now she shows little interest to learn, will see how it goes. Share some of your thoughts as to how to train them.
8 EA acceptances, 3 deferrals and 1 UC waitlist. Waiting on 1-2 more, will decide based on that.
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I loved Willamette. It wasn’t the right fit for my D19, but I really loved our visit and the vibe. One of her best friends is there and loves it! (also a fan of SLU, because of STL 
)
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My same experience with UCSB—swoon!! My kid, not as much.
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It’s gotta be their decision, of course. And D19 picked the perfect place for her! Couldn’t be happier. But I followed Willamette on social media for months because it just looked like such a happy place.
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I’m with you. Definitely their choice. I’m having a hard time giving up on the idea of all those parents’ weekends with a 180 view of the Pacific, though! 
I will have to look into their social media to get my UCSB fix—hadn’t thought of that.
Of course, still waiting on an acceptance—lol.
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S22 picked up another acceptance yesterday, which he is very happy about. But we realized that all of his acceptances are at very different types of colleges. Small, medium and large. Three in major cities, one in a sweet college town. So we are trying to compile a list of things he should be considering to make his final choice. (We are also still waiting on about 6 more colleges.) So what are we missing from this list? What is your family/student considering in their decision making?
Quality of his major- Japanese (variety of classes, number of professors, quality of professors–though not sure how to evaluate that)
Cost/Financial Aid offered
Location
Weather
Size of university
Diversity
Lifestyle (?–not interested in Greek life, wants to be in a big city, access to good running area, not sure what else to consider in this category)
College ranking (can’t decide if this should matter at all unless there is a huge difference between them)
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Same here on teaching the life skills !
Kid accepted at 10, deferred at 2, waiting on the rest of UCs plus a few super reaches but he is not waiting on those . He’ll decide after UCs come in but he does have a strong first pick, which is OOS. We are just now realizing he applied to a whole LOT!
I am feeling a bit anxious as we haven’t yet visited any campus and there doesn’t seem to be enough time before May 1st is here!
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This is a great list! We are also considering these factors in our decision making:
flexibility to change majors (Eng>CS)
strength of career services dept
career and grad school outcomes
strength of advising
student vibe
campus vibe
freshman orientation and mentoring
research opportunities
study abroad
music ensembles
We’re waiting for on-campus visits to get into the nitty gritty. It will be interesting to see which factors turn out to be most important. During our last visit to Purdue, my son was sold by the food delivery robots 
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We’re still waiting for 9 decisions! We haven’t visited two campuses and so we would need to plan quick trips if she’s accepted. For her, campus visits are really important.
She has done a lot of research but I think once she knows where she is admitted she will be able to narrow the list to 3 to 4. I think she should go through and actually plot out a sample freshman year and sketch out the other years, including study abroad etc. Also look at things like APs and how they can be used. I think think this will help her think about what it would really be like going there, what’s really required for Gen Ed and major. Reading course catalogs and looking at potential professors/research will help her get an idea if the academic opportunities really excite her or not.
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Willamette is the one Oregon college we are visiting!
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Besides what was already mentioned by others
- honors college requirements
- core requirements/AP credits
- size of the program
- being able to continue his EC
See if the college can put your son in contact with advising and/or current students. That was extremely helpful for both S20 and S22.
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I am embarrassed to say that I have made a Google slide deck to compare and contrast S22’s choices. Mostly just as an outlet for my own nervous energy and to keep me busy without hassling him. My plan is to reveal it once all the decisions are in. I have important stuff like size, location, first year experience, etc and completely unimportant things like mascot and which school is most haunted (spoiler - Kenyon). My husband thinks I’m nuts.
On a serious note: may I recommend instead of comparing ranking which has been proved to be all kinds of problematic, consider retention rate and % that graduate in 4 years. That might be more indicative of how happy the students are and how likely they are to get the classes they want/need to graduate.
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Purely anecdotal, and some high-stakes decisions on the way, but this year’s decisions don’t seem like the bloodbath of last year, particularly in the more likely California publics.
At my daughter’s large, urban NorCal HS, lots of kids in at Cal Poly SLO, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, Humboldt, Cal Poly Pomona, SDSU. More rejections than expected at University of Washington and maybe biggest surprise is lots of rejections from CSU Long Beach. Also not a lot of success so far at the really selective schools, even among the superstar kids.
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You are not alone in such endeavors!
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For my D22 it was all about whether the school had her major and the vibe on campus — if it had her kind of people and if she could see herself there for 4 years. For us parents, of course affordability is important.
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JMU has those robots too. Very cool!
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