<p>Why not call and ask the admission personnel?</p>
<p>I called my state university and asked. My d needs her senior grades.</p>
<p>They supposedly don't do rolling admissions, but they get 1,000 applications before December, so they do read them and make some preliminary decisions. They then get 15,000 applications in the month of December, as January is the deadline for applying.
Looks like we will be waiting until December to apply!</p>
<p>There is zero reason to wait. If good first semester senior year grades are all that is standing between your son and admission at a rolling admissions school, the school will defer him to see, and he'll have lost nothing, but gotten on their radar early. And, as many have posted, he likely has at least as good a chance, if not a better one, to get in right away with his current grades as he does to get in with a later application, even with improved grades.</p>
<p>with rolling admissions, you are in a race for those available slots. If they get filled up early, a late app with improved gpa will not help. i say apply early, and send in your updated academic record as soon as it's available. good luck.</p>
<p>The trade-off is between the rate at which the standards are raised at the rolling admit school vesus the rate at which your S's grades will go up. From what we saw last year with people we know, I would apply early. This assumes everything else is ok.</p>
<p>Jolynne - </p>
<p>My kid who was accepted as a freshman at State College applied at the beginning of October. He also put down that he would only go to main campus. A sibling with lower stats had checked off that he would go to Erie or Main, and only got into Erie... The one that got into State College as a freshman has wondered if saying "main or nothing" might have tilted his application into the acceptance column.</p>
<p>Oddly, the one that didn't get into State College as a freshman ultimately changed majors and transferred to Behrend as a sophomore (it was a good move, since he complained that there was nothing to do there but study, which raised his GPA signficantly). He needed 60 credits to transfer to State College as a Junior. He'll be graduating from PSU State College this year with a 3.6+. </p>
<p>The one that did get accepted to State College as a freshman ended up deciding to go to his sibling's first school (SUNY Buffalo) which he loves. It's enough to make me dizzy. LOL</p>
<p>Jolynne: my son will be starting UMich. If your son is interested, in addition to only counting Soph & Junior years (not Freshman, but they do want Senior first semester grades) it has it's own idiosyncratic way of calculating GPA and which courses they will include, which you check on.</p>
<p>Jolynne- my son was in a similar postion. He applied early to all his rolling admissions schools plus those offering EA. At one of the rolling schools he heard back right away in late summer. Two of the EA schools requested to see the first semester grades. He heard back from one of those a few weeks after sending the grades. The other he heard from around the same time he would have if he had applied regular decision. And he was admitted to all but one even when the fall semester grades weren't stellar.</p>
<p>Apply early. UW-Madison even states that improving grades help- those better junior year grades will offset earlier ones (likewise the converse is also true). If your son gets accepted to his school of choice he will reduce anxiety, if they say things depend on his semester grades he will have the motivation to do well. Consider this- if he waits until the last minute, eg January, he will be competing with all of those elite kids who finally apply to a safety...</p>
<p>Thanks for all that great advice. Appreciate each comment!</p>
<p>mhc48--interesting---son likes the 'idea' of Michigan schools, but I've been hearing (on CC!) that they don't offer much OOS fin aid (guess we'll see). </p>
<p>mom60--just curious, if you wouldn't mind, which schools your son heard from in late summer? The schools I've looked at (Rutgers, U of Illinois at Urbana) don't even put out their applications online until Sept 1. Although, if there were schools w/earlier app availability, think son would do it...!</p>
<p>Neozeus--glad the schools (& switches) all worked out for yours! :-)</p>
<p>Northern Arizona Univ- which we knew based on the online requirements he would get in with merit aid. It was his sure bet safety. And with Western tuition exchange program it would have been the most affordable option. The school also offered a large range of different majors. Of course he ended up not even visiting and picking a school in our home state.</p>
<p>Thanks, mom60, that's good to know. Based on other threads here, I'm likely going to encourage son to apply to colleges he might never have considered (e.g., U of Alabama) if it appears there's a chance he'll get a free ride scholarship based on ACT/gpa. There might be a tiny chance he'll go, but it will at least make me feel somewhat better that -- no matter how the federal/state loan situation shakes out --- he'll have an opportunity to go to a decent, 4-year college.</p>