Well - we got preliminary senior ranks - he has officially dropped out of top quarter @ 25.4%. I knew this would happen but getting through to an ADD kid with motivational anxiety proved difficult. Now we wait to see if his 3rd SAT attempt will go higher (highest he has is 1440). Kid is super smart, no doubt but there is no motivation to complete assignments or study. 
Guess itās okay since he is only applying to safety schools but could definitely hurt in scholarships.
2 Likes
@dfbdfb My son would be very jealous! Music plus Denver is a double bonus.
2 Likes
Hi all, havenāt posted here in a minute. S23ās list is crazy long at 19 and the counselor sent an admonishment today that we should shorten it - ādo you really want to commute by plane or car to Alabama or Tennessee?ā
Uh yeah, if they give him a lot of money, sure?
Almost everything on the list is an academic safety. Most are financial reaches, though, and affordability depends on merit; hence the wide net of mostly publics with demonstrated Big Merit.
Weāve explained this to her but sheās in a private-school mindset and canāt seem to grasp that weāre freaking poor, dammit. 
@dfbdfb Kiddo also applied to Montclair State. Seemed like a no-brainer - short application, quick decision + merit decision, no app fee in the fall.
Heās planning philosophy major, wants possible theater minor, city vibe (which Montclair most definitely is not - I lived there several lifetimes ago - but itās a quick train to NYC), and he had the same situation with final junior year transcript all set and sent in with the app.
Maybe our kids will be classmates!
8 Likes
Exciting! I hope she has a great time and look forward to hearing the camp report.
Just as a reminder, though Iām sure your daughter is quite savvy, downtown Denver and Auraria campus are sketchy. We have a large, aggressive homeless population with encampments throughout downtown. She should always travel in a group and avoid going through alleyways and underpasses.
@relaxmon Can you talk to my S and tell him how lucky he is to have CU-Boulder as his safety school for engineering? Had to have the hard conversation about money and how weāre not willing to pay for Michigan over CU. He gets it, but āMichigan is so cool!ā Yeah, I know I know.
2 Likes
I am sure we canāt convince him but my son definitely loved CU Boulder and the engineering facilities and the town are amazing - and we are OOS. As I said before my son was very turned off by UMich but I understand the appeal to those who want a bigger more rah-rah school!
2 Likes
Anyone get June 11 ACT scores back? Waiting for Thing 2 to wake up and check 
1 Like
Yes. Scores are out.
He got his scoreā¦no change from April. So thatās thatā¦done with testing now and time to move on to starting apps!
3 Likes
My daughter is an incoming sophomore at Texas Tech, majoring in electrical engineering. She got 9K from Presidential but 18.5K from engineering dept, so 27, 500 a year which is covering full cost of attendance. Engineering is very generous with merit. Even if your student does not get it as an incoming freshman, good chance they will get it next year and then it is renewable. She was in Knapp dorm last year and loved her dorm. She wishes she could stay another year but Tech is closing one of the dorms for renovation next year so all but 2 dorms are for incoming freshman. She will be in a dorm for upper classmen. She is in the honorās college, classes are capped at 25 for Honors. It is true all engineering classes are capped at 49. So far in her freshman year the largest class she had was 49 for required freshman engineering students. She is currently doing a study abroad in Spain having the time of her life. The energy and school spirit is amazing. The studentās really band together (I think since the school is so far from everyoneās homes, kids do not go home on the weekend). It is a big campus but honestly my daughter has not found it to be. And the professors are used to kids coming in classes late when they have a class across campus. D is also a True Research Scholar. She is learning so much about research, next year she gets to pick her research and get matched with a mentor. She and I have been extremely pleased with her education and experience so far. Best of luck to your child.
11 Likes
My kid got his tooā¦ same score but improved the super score so mission accomplished! And DONE with standardized testing!
4 Likes
For those who are waiting for AP scores, Trevor Packer from the College Board will be tweeting score distributions soon.
9 Likes
Yeah, she knows how to deal with those sorts of thingsāAnchorage has an urban homelessness problem thatās exacerbated by the fact that once youāre there, it takes decent resources to go anywhere else.
(Though yes, we stayed in Denver a couple days past dropping D23 off, and Denver is the first place Iāve been in a while where the homeless population is nearly as visible as Anchorageās. But also, any city where the homeless population isnāt as visible, I simply assume local government has gotten good at hiding things.)
3 Likes
My kid doesnāt want a big rah-rah school, but he likes the cool engineering facilities at Umich. Itās so different from the other schools on his list that I really donāt see him applying there.
Great tour synopses, by the way. Very helpful for people like us who havenāt been on many visits yet.
1 Like
This is a silly question and just for fun, no presumptions of any true predictive value, but has anyone gotten on Niche to make a profile then pull up the graphs for āWill I get in?ā
I tried it for fun: you can click in-state or OOS if relevant, and you can choose to view the data by intended major. It is user data and therefore not scientific, but I retro-actively did D21 and sure enough for her major, every school where she was reasonably higher than the average accepted applicant, she got in, including the school she picked. Her three rejections show that she was at or below average accepted applicant for her area of interest. Of course it is obvious from the graphs that tons and tons of applicants with similar or higher stats get rejected, but the red-green trend lines are fairly clear at some schools.
So I look forward to seeing if it carries some similar general correlation for D23, who is Engineering, which seems to ālowerā the chances at half the schools.
3 Likes
I hear you but honestly my kid was much more blown away by CU Boulder engineering particularly the truly insane aerospace engineering building and resources.
2 Likes
I havenāt tried Niche but seem to recall posts from past years saying those predictions were over optimistic. Having said that, does your school have Naviance? I found that quite accurate for our school if you disregard the outlier dots that are recruited athletes or kids of big donors.
1 Like
My kidsā school does not have Naviance. I used Niche for S19, and it was very accurate. (Meaning the schools for which he was solidly in the upper right/green section he was accepted, with merit, and the schools where he was on the edge, he was denied or waitlisted. Heās an unhooked, white, very average male, a great kid but nothing that would push him above anyone else with his same stats really, so we didnāt count anything where he was on the edge as a likely acceptance).
3 Likes
No navience here.
I have used Niche and college vine for chancing based on academics.
2 Likes
Yes, I did wonder if it was overly optimistic, but it lined up with D21 decently! We do have Naviance and it is very predictive, especially in a smallish community where there are not many legacies to ivies and recruited athletes are known and rarely go to tippy-top schools so they do not cloud the picture as much.
1 Like
We have Scoir but it (and Naviance) are somewhat useless at small schools. Other than a few local schools/state flagship, the applicant/admission #s become too small to remain anonymous, and so there are no scattergrams to see.
3 Likes