I don’t know. I am kinda enjoying the mystery.
I never really thought about it till now.
This piece is from 2012 but I just saw it today: http://grantland.com/features/matrimonial-moneyball/
@london203, don’t encourage him/her!
@photographermom I LOVE LOVE LOVE that article. 
Oh my god, that article is just brilliant!
@PhotographerMom , Love it! I actually submitted my wedding announcement to the Times, because my birth had been reported there (in a very different time) and I thought it would please my mother if my marriage were reported there as well. Alas, too few points…
I really hesitated . . . to sign the Common App consent to ED rules, essentially the “binding” aspect to matriculate if accepted. For me, as a parent, seeing that screen and pushing the send button was a huge marker in child #1’s move to independence (especially as there is no full driver’s license yet), and the winding down of our time visiting our “second home”, aka, the BS. We have felt the separation grow by degrees over the past three years, but after ten more months, we truly will not see him as often as we have been, and that realization is so, so sobering. I might have thought that the boarding experience was going to make this easier, but it hasn’t, not all that much. Am sure a lot of you out there recognize these feelings. 'Tis the season.
*** Couldn’t have appreciated more the time spent with friends at Parents Weekend, those whom we mostly only see while on campus. There is a bond there that is different from the daily crowd. Will always marvel at what the kids are doing, and so enjoy sharing all that with the wider community. ~O)
Our BS is far - 4 hr drive- so when dd decided to look at colleges that are a plane ride away, I didn’t think the distance would make much of a difference. But recently it suddenly sunk in that she was actually going directly off to college and that BS is not just a really really long summer camp - that was a gut punch.
DD2s BS is 7 hours away by car-2 hours from an airport- and DS1 is 6 hours away by car-no airport-in college. DS2 is applying to colleges now and I have been insistent that one of the deciding factors is accessibility-he needs to be near a train station or airport. I want to be able to get to him!
We are transit blessed (near NYC and Newark airport) and DD immediately ruled out all the pretty LACs as being too similar to her rural BS so we will have trains and plains (and maybe automobiles) to utilize for college.
lol kids!
I pushed that ED button too - 3 applications down! Oy that was stressful but once her common app essay was finished which was a struggle, Chimneykid returned to her typical happy pre-common app self. Good luck to all the ED/EA kids who are submitting applications this weekend. X_X
Hi I’m applying for colleges RD and I need recommendation for a good College Consultant that you may know or have used. The most help I need is for someone to make sure my essays are creative enough for top colleges. Would an English teacher / tutor be better for this than a college consultant? Thanks.
^^^if you are a boarding school student, your best resource is your school’s college counseling office. Your question leads me to believe you are not a BS student, in which case, you may get more help on the main CC forum. The parents and junior/senior students here generally have all the guidance and direction they need within their boarding schools. Some people here have used outside consultants, but it seems those were for special cases. Part of the purpose of a BS is the fine college counseling it provides. So, you may want to post your question on one of the other boards.
@ChoatieMom, Yes our guidance counselors provide good help that is related to college selection and other application matters, not reviewing essays per se. Essay writing is the area I need help with, while I’m in very advanced classes in certain subjects, I just want to make sure that my essays are creative enough. I thought BS parents are the ones mostly hiring consultants as they generally are affluent and thus can provide me with good references.
Some of them do, and some of them expect/assume BS college counselors to perform those functions. It varies. You should have teachers willing to review your essays, given enough notice. That has been the case for our kids at different schools.
hmm… Many of them have become significantly poorer since they have started paying the BS tuition (some of them are not even that “affluent” in the first place). They don’t need to hire consultants to help their kids to get in top colleges because they can’t afford the tuition of top colleges anyway. And if they are not qualified for much FA in BS they are unlikely to be qualified for FA in college either. Just sayin…
Quick question re FA forms - the CCSA?- In order to complete this do parents log into kid’s college board account or open a separate account? Not sure how the bs parents do this. Our financial info is too complicated to expect dd to fill in the form by herself unless we at least give her a pre-filled form to copy (Both self-employed, special circumstances etc) I am terrified I will push the wrong button in her account and delete an application or something horrifying. TIA
I was cleaning out my home office and came across some college paperwork to toss. Thought this might be helpful info to share. It’s stats on my kids’ BS’s college acceptance rate percentages based on the categories into which the College Advising Office placed each student’s list:
Far Reach 0%
Reach 19%
Possible (Match) 60%
Likely (Safety) 85%
So, listen to the college counselors! I think they do a pretty good job.