Ok, that’s good to know that Nov. 1 isn’t worse than a Sept. 1 application.
She has Iowa State, ASU, and U of Utah on her safeties list (she’s still considering Alabama for a safety). We’re considering everything else on her list a reach in our minds, and if she gets in, awesome! In addition to Purdue, her favorites are Pitt, Case Western, and UIUC because we’re in IL (trying to get her to consider adjacent majors for this app, though). In consideration are Rose-Hulman, Virginia Tech, CU Boulder, U of Arizona, Nebraska (Raikes), Denison, UW Madison, and Indiana U.
She’s a good student, super smart and intellectual, a self-described geek, but her grades have been uneven (like a C+ in Chem Honors semester 1 and an A semester 2), and she’s recently been concerned she has ADHD. So we’re at the beginning of figuring that out. Her GPA is 3.5uw/4.5w, 1410 SAT and 31 ACT. I hate that this is likely not where she needs to be to get into a lot of CS programs, but I also am comfortable with her safeties and believe she’ll land where she needs to be. She is not a young woman who is FAANG or bust. She just wants a happy, productive and balanced life.
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We’re in Illinois as well and I’m sure you know this is the first year that UIUC is going to the common app. That means they will have even more applicants than last year. CS is also near impossible to get into there unless you are at the tippy top so based on her scores and grades it’s a big reach for her. Being female will be a big help but her best chance for CS there is to apply to one of their CS+ programs and do it that way. It’s also really hard to transfer to CS so they may offer her their Prep program but know what it is before going that route. To help her chances, they will want to see actual programming/coding experience she has or leadership activities in the CS related field, projects etc or something completely unique. Higher test scores as well.
ASU is a good safety and they they will probably offer her $ and honors. They’re pushing that a lot as they try to attract strong talent for their undergrad program. Their graduate program is really good for CS so they’re trying to get the same result for their undergraduate as well. My son wasn’t interested but a lot of his friends applied there for their safety.
Try to make some visits because those schools are all different in size and type. That will help her narrow down her list.
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Yeah, I know that about UIUC! That’s why she’s looking at other semi-related majors there (CS+ for sure, but also the iSchool options). I don’t see her wanting to stress about trying to transfer in to CS at UIUC, so I don’t think she’ll go the PREP or DGS route. I’ve been REALLY realistic about all of her chances. She does have a decent amount of programming experience already and some related volunteering projects, but she is done testing. She’s done 2 rounds of ACT and SAT and it is what it is!
We’ve visited several schools — she likes the idea of smaller, but with CS that’s not always going to work well, hence the range of schools on her list right now. We’ve been to UIUC, CWRU, Pitt, Denison, Oberlin, and Dayton. By the end of the summer, she’ll have also visited Rose-Hulman, Indiana, Purdue, UW Madison and Michigan State possibly. I’m ok with her applying to a wide range of schools as long as she gets her essays in shape before school starts next month. She has a solid start at 5 of them, so she’s getting there!
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More updates from Trevor:
Note there were some attempts to submit plagiarized 2-D portfolios this year; students do not realize how easy it is in this day and age for the scoring processes and systems to detect nonoriginal work. Almost all of these plagiarism attempts were submitted by students from outside the United States, and all of those students’ scores are being canceled. There were similar, but more frequent, attempts to submit nonoriginal work in Drawing Portfolio categories.
He does that every year, excluding last year.
Haven’t posted for a while – busy with seeking and successfully landing a promotion at work. The big news for our S22 is that he’s decided he doesn’t want to study architecture in college. He’s doing the summer academy at Boston Architectural College and enjoying it, but he’s more interested in architecture as a hobby than as a career. Instead, he told my wife at a recent dinner the two of them had, “I want to do what you do.” She’s in communications/PR, having held senior positions in both the corporate world and nonprofits. I’m glad that he’s identified an interest and touched that it’s my wife who’s inspired him.
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I’m a major planner and have been deep in CC for a couple of years. It seems almost unreal now that D22 is up to bat!
Over the years we’ve visited a lot of colleges, which we are grateful for, and planning the last round next month. Wow. She has a great list of 10 schools that should be relatively finalized by the end of August and she’s plunged into the essays.
She has mixed emotions about the process but I can tell she’s getting more excited as she starts to deep dive into each school’s programs and imagine life in college.
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It’s starting to feel real, with D22 combing through the programs she’s interested in and refining/narrowing her college list. I actually want the next year to go by slowly because, at the end of it, my only child will be leaving home. It will be so bittersweet.
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Ditto. I have dealt with my anxiety/sadness by diving into the nuts and bolts of admissions. It’s helped me, and my D and H do appreciate it, but I know I drive them crazy sometimes.
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We learned a lot with S16, so essays have been a priority for a while. Common app essays are complete and other essays moving along well. Teachers for letters of recommendation will be approached in August. Majority of college tours will be completed today (Washington University St. Louis ). Whew!
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I thought it is only 1 essay in common app. You get to pick 1 out of the prompts. Is this not correct? Are there any other essays there? If yes, I am going into panic mode :)))
I think there is an optional “impact of Covid” essay option in addition to the main prompt.
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There is one main common app essay but then the individual schools will have their own school specific prompts. My D applied to 8 schools and wrote 19 essays. Some schools also have additional essays for honors college and merit $.
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Ok, makes me feel better. We accounted for individual schools essays separately :)) She is applying to 6 schools overall so should be only 6 essays (not including scholarships essays, if any, we don’t know about these yet…).
Would you recommend only doing the “impact of Covid” essay if you had a challenging time from it?
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We’re discussing that very question. In all honesty, I’m not sure. Anyone else?
I’d think it would have to be pretty traumatic: family death, lost jobs, forced move etc… Think of it, everyone has had what they’d consider a “challenging” time. So much so that they set up an optional essay so that every applicant did not write about COVID in their main essay and force AO’s to read them. I’d be really wary of submitting a COVID heavy essay.
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Re: Covid essay space. On a couple of the virtual admissions sessions I attended they asked us not to use that space to say that you missed football/speech debate/whatever extracurricular last year because of Covid. That they already know that’s the case for most students. They want to hear/see what you did with your time instead in other parts of your application. That the space is for true hardships like family illness/death from Covid, job loss/financial hardships because of the pandemic.
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I have a beautiful college spreadsheet with so much information. I don’t think it is really appreciated though. lol
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Re: Covid effect question - My understanding was that is wasn’t really supposed to be an essay but more just informational. Certainly if Covid resulted in a death or loss job, but also in our case, just a place to explain that our school was shut down since the previous March. I know lots of parts of the country had schools open or partially open for much of the school year, and I think we saw the Covid question as the place to explain that S22 didn’t step into a classroom, see a teacher in-person, etc for his whole Junior year.
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