<p>Continued congrats on your S’s accomplishments, PCP. </p>
<p>My S remembers to feed the dog his medicine every morning. Can’t I write that up as an accomplishment somehow? (We take what we can get!!)</p>
<p>Any sustained commitment is worthy of at least a mention in the app, and be sure he documents the hours spent each week/month/year. Colleges will want to know this to compute an accurate score for his EC’s. His chances for admissions increase exponentially if he can correlate the dog’s physical improvement with the frequency and amount of medicine intake. Furthermore, his chances will be enormously enhanced if this is done without the supervision and/or repeated reminders from Pizzagirl ;).</p>
<p>Friends son, under 3.6, accepted at Reed for EDII! They are ecstatic.</p>
<p>I think he wrote great essays.</p>
<p>Congrats to your friend’s son, ihs76.</p>
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<p>Does that include Facebook? They’re in at HYP for sure! :-)</p>
<p>ihs76, congrats on your friend’s son and thanks for the post.</p>
<p>PG, I heard a good way to acquire an impressive EC is to sign up with College Confidential and aggresively post on its forum until one reaches “Senior Member” status. A “Senior Member, College Confidential” title sure sounds impressive for a high schooler!</p>
<p>PCP, I woke up the dog, laughing so hard. Nice!</p>
<p>Time to refresh the thread…this is not about a Top 20 school but given the stats required to get in, I figured it might qualify as a hopeful sign to others.</p>
<p>My son just got accepted into the state flagship’s honors college which has an average SAT of 1400 and GPA of 4.3-4.7. It’s very difficult to get in as they only accept 300 students (on a campus of 15,000k) and it’s pretty much free since 100% of the honors college students get scholarships. The honors college competes for students who do get into the Top 10-20. This was considered (by the GC) to be a reach for my son. Also, because of the economy, they were expecting much stiffer competition this year. Son did a terrific job on the application (lots of short answer essays). It was the only application I saw before submission. Son had a 3.7 WA and a 31 on the ACT. His first semester GPA was a 4.7. He goes to an academically rigorous private school that is well-known in the state, so I think that added weight to his application.</p>
<p>This university also has a law school and medical school. Honors students with a 3.0 and a certain score on the LSAT are guaranteed admission to the law school and they are in the process of working out a similar deal with the medical school (not that son knows what he wants to do but he has mentioned both in the past). It also has the #1 UG International business program and #2 graduate IB program in the country. So there’s lots of opportunities there if he decides to attend.</p>
<p>Just wanted to share…still have 8 more colleges to hear from ( a few top 20s) but we’re pretty excited (can you tell? 
). This was the only in-state one that was at the top of his list. It’s a relief to know there is a good academic option if he decides to stay in state.</p>
<p>^^^What college is this MomLive? You did say you just wanted to share…</p>
<p>MomLive, CONGRATS to you and your son. Full ride to top notch honors college, wow! After filing CSS and FAFSA, I’m kicking myself for not encouraging S1 on the full-ride choices. Good and encouraging news to all indeed! Congrats to your son on the 4.7 GPA. Great job!</p>
<p>Zing-a-ling-a-ding-dang! My son just called from school to say that he’s a National Merit Finalist!</p>
<p>This is going to make the decision pretty darned tough if he gets into either of his top-20 schools (Stanford and Rice), because two of the schools he’s already admitted to offer great packages to Finalists (full-ride-plus at Alabama, and several scholarships that appear to total a full ride at Ole Miss).</p>
<p>Looks like MomLive and family may face the same dilemma. Congrats and good luck!</p>
<p>Congrats again to mantori and son! Full-ride acceptances indeed make choosing a high cost T20 difficult. You are in an enviable position now :).</p>
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<p>Congrats! A good problem to have but it is a difficult decision. I’m already making up a spreadsheet that will compare (& weight) the various pros and cons of the full-ride schools vs. the $50k+ schools. Son’s counselor advised me today that there won’t be much time to revisit schools between acceptances and having to make a decision. He suggested doing second visits now if possible. It can be a tough decision to make based on 1 visit to a school.</p>
<p>congrats to MomLive and mantori.suzuki,
As mom of a 2006 NMF who ended up at USC with a full tuition scholarship, after being accepted at many top 20 colleges, I remember well wondering which was the wiser choice- “prestige” or saving the $$. Even though there are times I do find myself with “Ivy envy”, all of us are glad he chose the more frugal path. He made the wise choice, and has no regrets.</p>
<p>Congrats, mantori-suzuki and son!</p>
<p>MomLive - I’d be very curious to know what factors you are using to “compare and weight” the full-ride to $50k+ schools. We’re going through a similar process with S2, although none are “full-ride”, just discounted… </p>
<p>To me, as one of the parents paying the bills, my gut tells me some schools are worth $50k, while others are not. But I want S2 to really think this through.</p>
<p>Our National Merit Finalist daughter gave up the full rides (including one to Emory) and we’ve never looked back. It’s a tough dilemma, but a nice one to have! Congratulations!</p>
<p>Okay, so I’m not a parent and I don’t technically have a GPA between 3.3 and 3.6, but I’m going to make myself an honorary member of this thread anyway. If that’s cool.</p>
<p>I had a 3.83 GPA my fresh/soph years (yay!) but a 3.5 GPA my junior/first semester senior years (boo!) - this means my total high school GPA is 3.66, but I think that my downward trend puts me in the same boat as the sub-3.6 GPA crowd. Feel free to interpret this as you will. I have a 2300 on the SAT (1580 on M/CR) and my main extracurricular is that I am a two year all conference football player - the rest of my EC’s are mostly fluff, but I think there is enough fluff there to satisfy most adcoms. The EC’s won’t significantly help me except for some small LAC’s where I am an athletic recruit. Anyway, I got deferred ED at Williams and accepted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I’ve been reading your posts and they’ve provided a lot of emotional support - so thank you. I’ll be sure to post my acceptances and denials (hopefully there will be more of the former) come April.</p>
<p>^^^
Good luck Drought.</p>
<p>What position do you play?</p>
<p>In high school, I played defensive end and offensive tackle, but I’m undersized so I’ll most likely play D end in college.</p>
<p>Well, like I said, good luck to you. Football takes an awful lot of dedication. I think it ends up being almost a year round endeavor. Especially if you are any good.</p>