Sadly most of those applying have great stats and ECs. Is he an underrepresented minority- as that is who those programs are for? Difficult to tell you whether to hire a private counselor. I would if he isn’t getting good college advising at his school. I did it for one of my kids but not the others as college advising is very good at their private academic day school. I have many friends who used them. I would say they generally add the following -1. Strongly encourage ED to maximize chances of admission (won’t work for MIT and Cal Tech), 2. Makes sure the college list includes safeties, 3. Helps avoid mistakes like discouraging kids from pitching yourself for the most popular major at the school and gives input on essay, 4 most importantly and valuably becomes the bad guy nagging the kids to make sure essays are done, all the pieces of app are done way before deadline, etc - takes the parent out of that whole horrible process. So as I said I would do it if I didn’t trust the school advising but not otherwise.
Ha, my daughter doesn’t have those type of peers! Her boyfriend got a 1530 and one other boy in her class got a 1540. Those were the top 3 scores and the only ones in their class of 175 to score 1500 or above. Most of her class will be going to community college. It’s just the area we are from.
That makes her score even more impressive. Wondering why the helicopter Moms are saying anything besides congratulations.
I thought other parents would either find this funny or sad.
The twins got a Thank you post card for visiting a college. Neither could read the card because it was written in cursive.
Even less reason to worry, I’d think.
I thought we’d get the first application done before the busy sports season begins. Nope!
23 did fill in ECs for the CA and wrote an excellent essay.
It turns out 23 was VP of a club and never told me. I had nagged about demonstrating leadership. 
She way undersells herself. We’re telling her YES, you were the leading scorer! YES, do mention you are VP. Yes, yes, YES!!
She has no clue that the way she can learn languages is anything special. She was studying a difficult language and the teacher’s jaw dropped to the floor with what she could do.
This is definitely a problem with girls.
On another note, schools have offered application waivers to encourage applying, This may persuade me to persuade 23 to apply to these schools as safeties.
She was awarded a college scholarship last year which was nice. She doesn’t want to attend the school, though. Would that award go on the application? Would it be odd to mention it is a scholarship award on an application for a different school?
Oh, that’s a good point about not pitching yourself to the most popular major.
I would not have thought about that.
I too am wondering about the college scholarship to another school. My daughter got one to a T25 school, but visited and did not like it, so she won’t be attending. I think she will still put it on her application though as it was for a particular school, but sponsored by a large company.
S23’s school is taking an interesting approach to college apps, and I’m wondering how common it is… They are telling all the seniors they have to have all app materials submitted by Nov 1, and they’d prefer it be done by Oct 15.
That surprised me since they haven’t even started to hold guidance counselor meetings with the seniors yet. Those happen in the next few weeks, and that may be the first time S23 will have even met his GC. S23 has been complaining a bit that we’ve made him work on his app because none of his (very smart!) friends have done diddly squat yet. Some of them don’t even know where they’re applying. NO ONE has filled out any of the app, and I doubt they’ve even logged into common app yet.
I guess the school approach is to have the students bust out the applications super quickly. They won’t even have met with some seniors until mid-Sept, giving them only a month to do everything. All it takes is an illness or busy football season to derail that. Some of the issues our friends had with their seniors last year are starting to make sense now.
S23 asked his teachers for recs this week and they told him he was one of the first to ask. Between the last-minute nature of the way the school appears to do things (but still before EA deadline?!), and the fact that S23 had covid last week, he’s stalled on making progress with the application. I told him he’ll be happy when everyone else is scrambling and he’s already done.
I was a bio major at a large undergrad with a med school. Therefore, almost everyone was pre-med. The bio advisors took the approach of making the bio degree requirements line up with pre-med prerequisites to make their lives easier. Because of this, I (not a pre-med) completed a more rigorous degree than bio majors at many schools, and I don’t regret it.
This reminds me of what the GCs at S23’s school are doing (who each have a ton of students). They’ve made the requirements for graduation (especially honors diploma) and their own internal rules line up with what is mostly expected to apply EA to rigorous colleges. A clever way of dealing with so many students, I suppose. But doesn’t leave much wiggle room during their app season.
Yes our school “requires” final college list and common app completed and common app essay done by September 30 and all early apps in by October 15. Most private counselors will say all apps should be in by then but the school knows it can’t enforce that as most kids will wait for the early results before finishing the others. They require all teacher and counselor recs to be requested by prior May 15 so that is all done.
This is so funny because my kid is wigging out that his counselor just emailed him today that the school report/LORs won’t be done “for several weeks.” He asked his teachers for LORs in spring. He’s got some colleges waiting on the school report/counselor LOR or whatever before they begin reviewing his application and he’s really annoyed that he has to cool his jets because his high school isn’t on our schedule.
But Bama is fully in (except Honors, which doesn’t go live until September), thanks to him applying via their website and getting the counselor to manually send an official transcript in July. Those decisions are released right after Labor Day. And I think he’s set with Pitt’s application, which luckily uses SRAR. The others are important, but the super-early time element isn’t as critical.
Out of curiosity, how do the schools enforce all these early completion requirements? They don’t have direct access to the apps as far as I know. My kids’ public high school never even sees the applications or even the draft applications. They are involved in the LoRs and the transcripts only as far as the apps are concerned. They do host college fairs and some workshops, etc., but have no supervision, intervention or review of the applications themselves. Too soon the tell with the current HS kid but with the older ones they were having to chase the counselor and teachers getting their LoR’s in very close to the early application deadlines despite asking for them in May and providing all the requested materials then.
One would think our smaller public school would have the counselor support for some college requirements but they do not. Frankly, their jobs the last two, three school years have been focused on mental and physical health of students and while they pay lip service to helping seniors with college applications, the reality is quite different. It’s difficult, all around.
I would think this is more about getting your list into the school so they can send out the transcripts / LORs. It’s OK for transcripts to be sent before the final application is in. Out HS puts hold on any requests from mid-December through the return from winter break.
We are at an academic private. They require it the same way they require you to do homework. List of potential colleges due to college counselor by date x, then the student meets to discuss it, the draft essay is due by date y (like any other essay) and then the student meets with college counselor to discuss it, etc. You do need them for teacher and counselor Recs which they enter through the school. I don’t think they enforce essay and application deadlines except by nagging endlessly but they will genuinely enforce some rules, like only applying ED or SCEA to one school, not applying anywhere else if accepted ED or SCEA etc.
And they do work with the kids on common app responses if needed as well…But I don’t think they see that (other than the essay) unless the kid chooses to work with them on it.
Yeah, I doubt it’s that unusual to require it all to be done by Oct 15. However, I’d think that’s at schools where the kids have at least STARTED on their apps by now? S23’s teachers say basically no one has even asked them for LORs yet. The GC’s haven’t met with any seniors yet. None of S23’s (very accomplished) friends even have their list of schools finalized, and they certainly haven’t started on their apps. I doubt they even have common app accounts yet.
Our school uses Naviance, which links with the Common App. Honestly, I’m grateful because I think it would be a disaster if they didn’t. Each GC has something like 400 kids.
I’m wondering if this early deadline is new. Last year, our friends were bummed that their kids missed out on a lot of stuff because they didn’t realize you really have to have everything in by Nov 1 to get the good offers. I think it’s great, just surprised they’re having the kids try to get literally everything for the app done in about 1 month’s time.
Interesting. Our school does this too and use it to submit the LoR’s. But I’ve seen no evidence that this lets them track actual application submissions or completions. If it does, they don’t seem to do anything with it since kids are totally on their own when it comes to submitting and deadlines, other than transcript and LoR request deadlines. We would love more structure and early deadlines from the school too but not in the cards. I suspect our son will be using winter holiday break to cram a ton of supplemental prompts and submissions for RD schools.
Given the ever-earlier deadlines for the good scholarships at colleges at all levels (not just the USN&WR T100 types), this really just makes sense.
Few kids at S23’s school apply out of state, so most kids (and therefore counselors) are looking at the in-state deadlines of late November.
I’m hoping DS can submit the first application tonight - was awaiting a copy of his unofficial transcript bc for whatever reason he (and I) could no longer access through the school’s portal. Counselor printed out a copy for him yesterday, so now he can enter into the Common App.