me: Hey D24, UofA has some open spots available for campus tours on Saturday. Do you want to go?
(we’re in the Phoenix area, so Tucson is ~ 1.5 hr drive for us)
D24: What? (makes a disgusted face) Ugh, no.
me: Why not?
D24: Because at school this year, we already did a tour of ASU and it was totally boring.
me: But it was boring because you guys only went to a museum and looked inside the science building.
D24: I don’t want to.
me: You didn’t even get to see the interesting stuff like dorms and dining halls and stuff like that.
D24: Ugh, no! I don’t want to.
me: ok, fine.
Serves me right for pitching this idea when she’s hungry…she turns into a gremlin. Note to self: She’s not ready yet for college tours, so back off.
My D22 had zero interest in colleges until she hit her Junior year and even then it was slow going. Fast forward to today and she’s all in. We’ve been doing a lot of tours in the past 2 months (with Covid tours were fairly limited until this Fall and she was too busy then). My D24 is more interested although I think she’s done hearing about her sister’s college search .
S21 had no interest other than knowing the general location—what’s to do in the area, weather, public transport, which he googled. We took them to SoCal for a college tour junior year and even then it was a nice to visit trip with really no true purpose. It wasn’t until S21 and his friends got accepted that they cared about a true campus visit—where is my dept, food location, types of food at each uni, dorms, location from dorm to classes, etc.
I realized it’s just cognitive overload otherwise and they don’t get invested for a worthwhile tour until they have skin in the game.
D24 loved going on tours with D20, so we have slowly started doing tours for her this month. We have gone on 2 so far mostly to look at size/type of campus she may like. She thought she wanted a small school until she visited a bigger school and now she’s not quite sure what she thinks. D20 had an eclectic list of schools, and I suspect D24 will as well.
UCs are announcing this month. UC Davis is today. I’m getting nervous. I have a couple of kids I helped so I’m waiting for them to get home to check. I’m so invested in this and not even my kids!!
Awww! Thanks to everyone for their congratulations. It was so cool to see that acceptance from SLO yesterday. I really wasn’t sure if that was going to happen this year. This year broke application records again.
What this now means for DD24 is that she wants the option of being able to go to SLO too. Since SLO likes extra math, English, and science classes, we’ll now keep her courses for next year as we scheduled them last week:
Junior Year:
Geometry - She’ll do that in summer school between the second half of summer this year and the beginning of summer next year (online SVHS gives you a year from sign-up to complete a course for credit).
AP Stats
IB HL 1 English
US History (regular version)
Tennis PE to keep from missing a difficult 6th period class for tennis team matches twice a week in the fall
IB HL 1 Spanish
AP Comp Sci Prin junior year which will also give her an extra science credit
Senior Year:
Advanced Algebra with Financial Applications her senior year to get the second advanced math classes SLO wants to see without having to take Calc or Pre-calc.
(finish before senior year that Geometry she started summer before Junior year)
Gov/Econ
IB HL 2 English
IB HL 2 Spanish (she took summer school Spanish before her freshman year so this will be a 5th year of Spanish.
Drawing (she already has an art credit from Freshman year, so this gives her the extra art credit SLO wants)
Creative writing fall / Early Release Spring (she’s already taking the film analysis class right now [Spring 2022] that gives her a half English credit. So taking Creative writing Fall 2023 will give her the other half credit to bring her total English credits to the 5 that SLO wants].
That’s actually more than the required number of extra classes the old MCA score wanted her to have. Math is the one thing I might have backed off on since she’s exceeded the number of extra points from courses, but I’m going to keep the two higher-level math classes since that’s specifically called out in what they want now; we’ll keep the Spanish since she enjoys it; we’ll keep the English because that’s what she wants to major in; we’ll keep the art because it’s fun and keeps her schedule a little more relaxed; and we’ll keep the comp sci because she’s curious.
I know a lot more about marketing yourself for SLO at this point than I did when DS was a freshman. Hopefully DD will benefit from that gained knowledge and be able to follow her brother if she still wants to.
Was Davis the #1 for those kids? Or just one of the early UCs they applied to?
It’s funny, I’m now going to go check Davis just to see if DS got in. Not because he wants to go there… just to see if he got in. I’m actually annoyed with CSU Fullerton for not having accepted him yet. LOL! And that one I really don’t care about. He already got SDSU, CPP, CUSLB, and now SLO. And I’m annoyed with Fullerton.
[ETA: He was rejected at Davis. Now I’m having to explain to my husband why that’s not an insult and that Davis gets a lot of CS applications too.]
LOL. I’m the opposite! I know and appreciate your love for SLO but I can’t stand SLO with the rolling admissions they did last year. Not sure if it’s this year. It wasn’t S21’s highest ranked school but the periodontist’s daughter with worse grades, less rigor, barely any ECs got in for the same major while S21 was WListed. He declined the WL after a while because he said he was rejecting them and not the other way around. Rolling admissions is so annoying. I won’t even let D24 apply to SLO.
Davis is ranked high for one kid but not for the other kid. They’re aiming for Cal or UCSD. I have grown a little smittened with Davis. S21’s friends are there and when D24 asked a question they texted their mentor asap and got a response. That was really cool to me. The research academy program that D24 works with for Davis has been so positive. Professors take time and they actually picked her to be peer research mentor. I don’t know what they did but that’s darn good marketing to make me feel emotionally attached now. Ha!
I dont have any kids specifically I am looking for but still very curious how things go in general. I can Imagine how tensed I would be around this time.
Good luck to the kids you have helped.
Yes. I absolutely hear you on the admission practices of SLO. I was getting antsy these last couple of weeks. And judging by the negative tone that popped up on the SLO thread for the two days before the first in-state acceptances hit, it’s a darned good thing they announced when they did. I almost stopped checking the thread due to the nastiness of a few.
Davis is awesome. I did a lot of research on it back when DD wanted to be a Vet. Did a campus visit too. Loved the river trail through campus. I was talking it up to DS at one point early on when he was fixated on Cal. I also love Cal. Many people in my family went there, but definitely not the right environment for DS.
I hope you guys get UCSD or Cal. When do those announce? I haven’t been paying attention to the UC dates.
@RadM - yes, between December and March everyone goes a little nuts as the acceptances are expected. On the Cal Poly SLO thread @MommaLue was referencing, things are pretty tense still. There’s a mix of ecstatic parents whose kids got in and tense parents and kids who don’t have an answer yet and it looks like no new answers have been released today so they get to wait until next week. Everyone guesses what will happen based on previous years, but they seem to change patterns each year lately, so the conjecture is useless. But they try to read the tea leaves anyway. The only thing that does seem to be a constant is that acceptances go out first. Then the wait list. And then finally the rejections. But the wait list is the worst of all because it takes forever until they finally finish clearing the wait list and then reject everyone who has hung in there to that point. I’m feeling extremely relieved we’re no longer in that waiting cycle. It’s brutal. I’d already told myself that if DS was wait listed we’d move full-steam forward with CPP.
True Wait list is pretty hard and being in flux for a long time can be very stressful and if you have another choice you like makes sense to go with that. I would also prefer all admits/WL/Deny on all one day so less stress. If it is Rolling like ASU where you apply and know in a couple of weeks that is good. But after waiting 3 Months+ doing rolling is annoying.
It looks like you have your top 2 choices so you don’t need to worry about UC’s anymore just watch for fun
Absolutely! With an announced day and time for the announcements to come out. I like ASU’s method too. Though I’m not sure how/why they do that. While it’s a good school, DS had an unmotivated friend who hasn’t been doing well academically due to lack of caring. He applied and two weeks later had an acceptance. I was glad for him, but I found it odd.
We just submitted next years request, we won’t know what the schedule looks like u til right before school.
We request AP Lang, Honors Pre Calc, AP US history, Intro to organic biochemistry, medical therapeutics, AP euro, AP psychology, supply chain management.
We are planning some college visits this summer. He visited all of his siblings college tours so he knows what to expect.
Happy Pi Day! It’s a big day for our family because I have a cousin who is obsessed with it and over the years it just became a major thing. We had pie. And it’s our dog’s birthday and her middle name is Pi I am also excited for MIT admissions since they always announce 6:28PM eastern time on Pi Day. This kid at our school applied and got rejected by the Tech Trinity (he didn’t expect to get in)—MIT, GA, and Cal. We did have a kid get in early at MIT at the school. Probably the first one from the school in a very long time.
Also this weekend D24 found out she was selected for the UC Davis Health Adolescent and Young Adult Research Advisory Board. I’m not sure what it is but she does get paid $75 per meeting. She already had on her wishlist to pay for a music streaming service if she got the role. Now I’m hoping the meetings are a few times a year so then I can open up a Roth IRA for her!
Note to self: She’s not ready yet for college tours, so back off.
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