<p>Congrats Mustang2000 for your daughter’s award. </p>
<p>We are not planning on attending the Presidential Day unless my daughter is invited for the Elite Scholarship day. We attended Auburn during a War Eagle Day this past April and my daughter loved the school. It is her first choice, by far, and the only reason that can keep her from attending would be a far better scholarship offer elsewhere. I have no idea if my daughter has what it takes to get an Elite Scholarship, but we are hoping and hopefully your daughter will get it. Your daughter had to have excellent stats to be a semi-finalist.</p>
<p>Anyway, students who receive the Presidential Scholarship are not required to attend Presidential Day, but if you haven’t had a chance to visit Auburn yet, I would recommend taking advantage of it. The school really did a phenomenal job with War Eagle Day and I can only imagine how impressive the Presidential Day will be. As for us, we are only going to take her out of school only if it is required because she may have other scholarship interview weekends later that month and she hates missing school. Senior year in a fully loaded IB program keeps her pretty busy.</p>
<p>Feb 15th is Auburn’s next Presidential Scholar Day and it is ‘Presidents Day’ , which is a school holiday (nationally ?), so my son won’t be missing any school. We have attended a War Eagle Day, and I am looking forward to seeing what a PS day is like.</p>
<p>So there won’t be students on campus on Presidential Scholars Day? That’s disappointing, as we were hoping to get a view of the general population of Auburn as well. Commuter campuses are a big no-no for us. With it being a Monday, will most of the kids be at the beach for the three day weekend?</p>
<p>Proud mom, good luck to your daughter! It seems like there is a lot of luck when it comes to acceptances, sholarships, etc. What state are you from and what other schools is your daughter considering? We are from Minnesota. My daughter has applied to a few private schools in MN, and the U of M. Nationally we visited Madison, WI, Iowa, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Wash U in St. Louis, Duke, and U of North Carolina. We also attended an info session from Yale.<br>
She is going to apply to Duke, NC, Northwestern, and maybe Yale or Stanford. We thought Notre Dame was very nice, but she said it was “Too Catholic.” (We are Lutheran) WUSTL was amazing. The dorms were incredible and the people were extremely friendly. My daughter though, is looking for a big sports team to follow, (they are DIII) and she said no one around here has heard of the college. I fell in love with Duke, and wish I were a college freshman again! Our next door neighbor went to Auburn, so that is how we started looking at the school. I’d just like to get out of this stupid stretch of below zero wind chills we are going through!</p>
<p>I agree that it is a lot of luck when it comes to scholarships and acceptances but we can still hope during the process. </p>
<p>We are from SW Florida and my daughter is primarily interested in Auburn, Clemson, Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill. She has also applied to three public FL universities. She has completed all of her applications and all but one honor’s college application. </p>
<p>Earlier this year I talked with her about northern schools, but she was insistent that she didn’t want to be any farther north than North Carolina. Some of her teachers think she isn’t aiming “high enough” for colleges (primarily referring to Auburn and Clemson) and some of her peers have made negative references to the state of Alabama for education. Our family thinks those individuals are living in another era and everyone we know who went to Auburn loved it and her guidance counselor also loves the school for many reasons. Her final choice of school will depend heavily on the scholarships offered. Personally, I think she would be happy and very involved if she attends any of the schools above and will. I am hoping that she will make a final decision in early March.</p>
<p>My daughter also wants to attend a school with football. Not that she understands the game, but she loves the social atmosphere that surrounds football schools.</p>
<p>President’s Day is not an official Auburn holiday so the students will be there. Auburn is well respected within the South as a school that both educates and turns our great people. And it is ROTC friendly so it’s alums are spread out all across the world.</p>
<p>Proud mom,
What are your daughter’s stats in regard to GPA and ACT/SAT? I was thinking that there may be some advantage to attending a school like Auburn over Yale/Duke, etc. The kids are so brilliant at those very top schools, that there may be a danger of feeling inadequate in comparison with others. Not that Auburn doesn’t have it’s share of top students, but at least there is also a pretty good share of kids in the 3.5 GPA and 27 ACT range. It isn’t all bad to be somewhat of a “big fish in a small pond.”</p>
<p>Mom,
We have some great schools here in the “north country” and our K-12 schools are top notch. I believe we have the highest ACT average score in the contry. I think though, she’d have a tough time with the cold weather. I can’t stand it here in Minnesota and I’ve lived here all my life. I’m looking forward to retirement when I can go to Arizona/Florida in the winter and golf in Jan, Feb. and March.</p>
<p>My daughter has a 4.0 unweighted GPA (currently 5.08 weighted) in a ranked IB program. She has a 1520/2320 SAT score and is a NMSF until Feb when she will hopefully be a NMF. She is a strong student because of both innate ability and excellent organizational and time-management skills. The nice thing about her is that she is involved in school activities and volunteer work she truly enjoys and she keeps a very busy schedule. She isn’t the type of student who has published a research paper or who has cured cancer. Just a well-rounded girl who is academically interested in the sciences, but who also has a love of the arts. I think she really is both right and left brained.</p>
<p>Interesting, she sounds a lot like my daughter. She has a 4.0 unweighted and has taken the toughest course load imaginable. She is also involved in so many activities that I don’t know how she keeps it all straight. She took the ACT while we were in Hawaii over spring break and got a 35 despite thinking it would be a “practice” test for the one in June. She decided not to try for the 36. She is somewhat of a procrastinator and still doesn’t have her apps done. I think she will be frantically finishing them after Christmas. Good luck to your daughter! I know mine is really starting to get stressed out over everything.</p>
<p>Since I’ve read that there was a Presidential Scholar Day in November, and there is supposed to be another one in February, does anyone know if there will be yet another Presidential Scholar Day on another date that may be better for some families?</p>
<p>Also, what is this Elite Scholarship day some of you are talking about? Is that a special interview day that select students are invited to attend? When are you given notice of that event?</p>
<p>The Elite is a $10,000-$30,000 scholarship that stacks on top of the Presidential. My daughter received her letter stating she was a semi-finalist for the Elite the same day that she got the Presidential award. She also received notification by e-mail. I believe they have already chosen the semi-finalists as there are two more essays to write along wtih submitting a resume. They choose about 150 semi-finalists and 14 get invited down for an interview on Feb 14th. Of those 14, six get awarded an Elite scholarship. I tried to call Auburn about Presidential Scholar’s Day, but was on hold for a long time and I had to go back to work. Let me know if you find anything out and I will do the same.</p>
<p>Wow, that is awesome! Congratulations to your daughter! So, her interview will be the day before Presidential Scholar’s Day? Now, that’s something worth making the trip down for, interview, plus special visit day. Wishing your daughter so much luck on this. You definitely should be Proud Dad!</p>
<p>Actually she is a semi-finalist. IF (big if) she gets to be a finalist, she would then get an interview. The interviews would be on February 14th. They interview 14 students and Auburn said slightly less than 10% of semi-finalists get to be named a finalist, so I’m thinking around 150-200 are chosen as semi-finalists. It’s all a little overwhelming, especially when I read that last year only 82 kids earned the Presidential. I would have guessed more than that.</p>
<p>Montegut - I spoke to one of the professors at Auburn who explained that President’s Day is a regular school day for them, so the campus will be in full swing…</p>
<p>Oh,good. Will get to see students on campus. Made it here fine. Found the intramural field where we park tomorrow. Winter storm warning on TV tonite, so glad we’ll know where we’re going. Husband set the GPS to remember the location. Drove through the campus. Very nice. Can’t wait to get the tour and see the dorms.</p>
<p>By the way, snow still on the slopes of the hills on the drive up. Beautiful drive up.</p>
<p>It was nice. The meal and speakers were great. The tour groups could have been smaller and could have been longer as we only got to see dorm rooms. We were glad we went and they really made the kids feel special.</p>
<p>I completely agree with Mustang2000. Auburn did a very good job setting up for this day. The only negative, like Mustang said, was that the tour groups were way too large. Other than that, it was a great event.</p>