Yeah I think it’s important to remember that threads like this one, especially at this time of year, are stress amplifiers. Might we all wish that our kids were further along in the process? Sure. But each has their own pace and journey. And no matter how little you perceive your DC to have done, there are (many) others who have done less 
Speaking of stress amplification, December 15 is 88 days away. Some will know where their kids are going in under three months 
I feel like it is easier to feel “behind” in this day and age because of Common App opening in the summer, everything being electronic now, and social media in your face 24/7 to ramp up the stress. I need to constantly remind myself it is mid September and nothing is due for another month for EA. In the interest of transparency, he did submit his stuff last night but he was on a very tight timeline as he plays football and has zero time for anything else until December after all his deadlines for EA would have passed. But I still find myself worrying about the school doing their part, making sure everything is complete, etc, etc. It’s easy to get caught up in all of it.
One of my children had multiple acceptances. Their personal statement did not include any sort of credential or resume. It gave insight into who they were as a person. The university’s supplemental prompts were often very directed (ex. Why us? Why you? Why this major?) and were answered in detail.
When we were visiting colleges, we sat in on numerous admissions presentations. Several AO mentioned that they placed more emphasis on the questions that their university asked (ie. supplementals) over Common App personal statement. One mentioned that they looked at academics and supplementals first and viewed the personal statement as “dessert” - a nice finish, but not always necessary after a big meal.
They emphasized that you don’t know what order an AO is going to evaluate your application. Your supplemental responses should be able to stand alone and not be a follow up to what was written in your personal statement.
We are in the same boat.
As one of the many other parents in the same boat in this thread, this is feeling to me like the old joke, “No one goes there anymore, it is too crowded.” Like, if a whole bunch of us are in that crowd, how behind can we really be?
As others implied, though, a few cases on social media can feel like tens of thousands to an anxious parent (myself included). But truthfully, those people are not the norm, not yet.
Thank you! This is very useful. 
Yes, every kid has their own path. Even if applications are in, there will still be months to wait until we get all the decisions, and then months more until we get the full scholarship picture. I cannot see a decision being made here until the end of March, because of a scholarship weekend or two I anticipate she’ll be invited to.
They should absolutely include the Cherubs program, at least for their Northwestern application. It’s not a guarantee of admission, of course, but my DC’s good friend who did Cherubs, and was an outstanding student in HS, did Cherubs and was admitted to NU ED, as were several of her friends from Cherubs that year. Good luck!
Current status of my kid’s activity list looks like something sketched on the back of a napkin. No recent progress on essay and I’ve been harping on the need to leave extra time for edits or even for a potential complete change of direction.
The upside of finishing and submitting applications closer to the deadline is that the waiting period may feel slightly shorter, LOL. Though, even with the early deadlines, nothing on my kid’s list comes back until late Jan at the earliest.
D23’s essay was about her love of art and how her sketching and art in general brings her joy and comfort. It was a universally loved essay.
My DS2022 applied to 11 EA by 11/1,
and 8 RD by ~1/5.
As someone who is not a great writer, one good thing about applying later is that as he progressed, his essays improved a lot, over the 7 months (of writing 38 supplemental essays).
The 1st draft of the CommonaApp that he wrote in June before Senior year was TERRIBLE compared to the one of the last supp essays he wrote late December. He finally got into the groove.
DD2024 is not done w/ her CommonApp essay yet…
sigh.
New USNWR rankings are out. The methodology changed somewhat, and public universities are doing really well. Certainly not changing our list at all but it is interesting none-the-less. Interested in hearing thoughts…
A bunch of schools we are applying to dropped like 40 or 50 places.
Who cares? Maybe they’ll be a little more generous on the merit or they’ll see fewer applications. Either way it doesn’t matter to me. But we only have 6 schools, all safeties, and are chasing merit.
My daughter’s essay was about how much joy a simple act of kindness brought her, and how grateful she was for it.
My understanding is that URNWR is adding more weight to social mobility - schools that accept more students from lower-income families got the boost.
so schools like UChicago, UCS, and NYU dropped quite a bit.
It doesn’t change any lists for us except it will make UC schools a little more difficult to get in, I think. I’m not sure if I really agree with the UCD ranking.
DS24 is done with UC personal statements and the Common App main essay. He was going to recycle-expand the UC essay to CA essay but it didn’t work out too well. Nevertheless, they are done so it’s a huge relief.
Now onto the supplemental essays for EA/ED schools. Hopefully, he can make steady progress like he did.
No, they consider the graduation rate for Pell grant students. Not how many are accepted (as is being inaccurately mentioned by a few posters on the ratings thread).
So it doesn’t matter if a school is admitting 1000 or 10,000 - the metric being looked at is, how many of them graduated within 6 years?
I’m developing a theory that larger-metro private colleges which basically take a lot of upper-middle-class kids from larger-metro high schools and help them get upper-middle-class professional careers in larger metros are not going to do so well in the era of return-on-investment/social-mobility rankings.
But of course that is pretty much what most of the upper-middle-class parents sending their kids to such colleges are hoping to achieve.
And I don’t mean to be snarky about this, I am actually pretty much talking about myself and my S24. Like, I really do not see anything wrong with sending my kid somewhere that kids like him are likely to end up with good options for whatever they want to do next. Seems like a good idea to me . . . .
I am really loving reading parent accounts of where their kids are in the application process. I have decided not to push D24 any more, she has to want “it” enough to get whatever it is at the moment done, so being here helps me take the edge off that particular stress.
She is well aware that not having the common app essay ready is the biggest thing holding her back right now, but I was pleased to see that her most recent common app essay idea is actually going to survive to completion (I hope!) 3000+ words of ideas discarded in the past few months. Her natural writing style for non-fiction is terse and factual, it was not showing her personality at all. I kept telling her, they can see your grades and test scores and course rigor, this needs to show something about you they can’t already see, something only you could write.
She has also been making forward progress on her portfolio preparation, and realized that she is going to need some additional work to be able to photograph certain things properly (is going to make a light box). I am ecstatic that she did not realize this at midnight the day before it was due!
Her fall show starts rehearsals this week and will have dress/tech the same week EA apps are due, so it’s going to be a wild ride.
Only 6 weeks until November 1!!!
Most of D24s choices also dropped significantly. This made her do a double take but then she remembered why she has picked them and is hopefully not going to give it much more thought.