<p>Okay, this is getting very coincidental. My hubby grew up in Philadelphia (his parents still live 15 minutes from there) and we go back there almost every year to see his family and spend time at the Jersey Shore. We’ve also visited a lot of the states on the east coast in driving vacations. That’s how my daughter “knows” that she absolutely will not go to school in DC or Maryland…or Pennsylvania. (Yeah, we’ll see how determined she is when she starts actually trying to get accepted somewhere.) LOL</p>
<p>I do agree that having our kids go off to school is an experience I’d like them to have. Both my hubby and I commuted to our colleges and never had the experience of living on campus…although we were both way ahead of our kids in maturity and life skills by then and we each paid our own way through collge. (Okay, okay, I had some scholarships…) :-)</p>
<p>Have any of your kids already applied anywhere? I am hoping to push my D to get started next week after she completes her summer school class. From just a quick look it seems that some of the applications aren’t that complicated.
What about sending SAT scores? D has not sent any yet. She is retaking again in Oct hoping to get a bit higher so she can hopefully get some merit aid and WUE.</p>
<p>We haven’t applied anywhere yet but I wish there was someone at our school to ask about other students’ experiences with the schools we’re looking at. (Yes, we have Naviance but the stats are over an 8-year period so it’s not that helpful and the counselors don’t return until 8/9.) For example, a large number of our students have been accepted to Gonzaga and some were accepted with GPA’s lower than my D’s but I want to know if they were early admission students or if they waited until regular and had the benefit of another semester of grades (to show the “upward trend”). I believe my D’s last grades freaked her out and she’s determined to kick butt in her first semester senior year–she’s capable of A-'s at least in most classes. It looks like some schools might have a slightly higher rate of acceptance from early admission apps vs regular…we want every positive that we can get. Her SAT’s are really good but probably just make her look lazy. I also don’t want to run the risk of getting a rejection (and lose the opportunity to apply with some slightly better grades.) What to do, what to do. I’m sure it depends a lot on the school.</p>
<p>Tangosmom - I think you are spot on in your prior post where you joked our kids must have been separated at birth. My son’s major contribution to the college search process is that he wants cold weather and to be near snow skiing.</p>
<p>My s did tour Gonzaga and really liked it. We will likely apply early admission…I don’t think it can hurt at all. I don’t believe his sr year first semester grades will be final until after the reg application date. As we understood it – If you are not admitted “early admission”, you are deferred until regular admission consideration. </p>
<p>Our plan with him is to firm up a list of 8-10 schools. We will visit the ones we can, then wait to see where he gets accepted to. If he’s accepted to another major contender…we’ll go look at it.</p>
<p>The hard part, as we experienced with our daughter, is that you get the acceptances/rejections a month or so before you get finalized financial aid/scholarship information It’s a stressful time trying not to get too focused or invested emotionally in one school if $ matters are a consideration.</p>
<p>I think our game plans are really similar–visit what we can, apply to a lot and visit the ones we get acceptances to (assuming we do). Did your S interview at Gonzaga? I know they like that–particularly if the GPA is a little low. My D has actually stayed on campus for two summer events the last two years at Gonzaga. She feels the school is a little small for her…but would not turn her nose up at it if she were accepted there and not to her other higher-priority choices. She’d certainly know a lot of people there since our school sends about 50 kids a year! Also, she doesn’t really like the weather we have here on the west side of the state and prefers warmer and dryer…but eastern Washington
is a bit too “rural” for her taste. (Funny, “Rural” is why I moved to Washington from Los Angeles 20 years ago! LOL)</p>
<p>I mentioned my concern about the early admission/rejection process because there are some schools I’m reading about who do NOT hold all applications over automatically. You can get a rejection during the EA process and that’s it. They even state that you can’t reapply. Ouch. Not sure which schools, though. My head is spinning with all the info I’ve read the past two weeks. </p>
<p>As for the finances, we are going into this with the idea that our D will get NO help. We are ‘fortunate’ enough to make too much to qualify for any of the programs and not enough to pay for the whole thing without them. My hubby has college funds (529’s?) for both kiddos but we weren’t planning on no scholarship money at all so we’ll have to do some talking. On the plus side, my S is on track to do much better in his HS career and will probably qualify for merit money when he goes off in two years. Hopefully, we’ll know that before we know if we’re going to have to ‘share’ his funds with his sister. Sigh.</p>
<p>Yes - my son met with an admissions counselor during his visit to Gonzaga. It’s pretty high on his list right now. We confirmed with them that if not accepted early admit - applicants are deferred to reg admit. You just might want to call the schools your d is thinking of applying to early and confirm their process for your own peace of mind.</p>
<p>Re Financial Aid - We are in the same boat in that the first letter we got was from FAFSA alerting us that we qualify for no help. (Fortunatly, we did get nice merit scholarship for our older daughter as USC was her first-choice school. She’s a very happy Trojan now. We did have a bit of dialogue with FA office in the process. They were very helpful.)</p>
<p>Regarding EA. 4 yrs ago when my S applied to western private schools he applied EA when available. He was not outright rejected by any of them. In several cases they sent a letter saying they wanted to see the first semester grades. With one they specifically stated they would defer his app to regular decision. The schools that asked for the grades all admitted him. The one that deferred him did not. I am not sure how much stock they put with the fall grades since he had a D in AP Calc.
Schools were- Willamette, UPS,Lewis and Clark and Redlands. Got in everywhere but Lewis and Clark. He got merit aid from Willamette and Redlands. No money from UPS.</p>
<p>My daughter just received an email from Oregon State University directing her to a California student page. I couldn’t find much about this school on CC. Anyone know anything about the “Beavers” and the school experience? </p>
<p>Oh, one more thing. My daughter applied to Northern Arizona University and she received a confirmation letter regarding her admission. She also received a separate letter indicating if she was offered admission, she would be eligible to be part of the WUE without any additional application.</p>
<p>I was wondering how the WUE program worked, now let’s see iif she gets admitted ;)</p>
<p>I’m an honorary Beaver by virtue of my many OSU alum friends and coworkers. I’m wearing the black and orange at this very minute, in fact.</p>
<p>DS (3.0-something and 1850 SAT) applied and was accepted within a few days (rolling admissions); it was nice to get such a quick response. The high school he attended sends probably twenty or thirty kids to OSU (slightly more to U of O, I think) each year–it attracts a pretty wide variety of students (among my friends are OSU grads in education, business, computer science, and food science; among DS’s friends currently at OSU are majors in fisheries/wildlife science and in pre-physical therapy). </p>
<p>Pleasant campus with lots of trees; nice student recreation center and a lot of opportunities for outdoorsy activity (not too far to the coast and the mountains). The dorms I’ve seen are pretty much standard-issue dorms; nothing out-of-this-world but perfectly serviceable. Quite a few dining options on campus(various dining halls plus the usual assortment of Panda Express/Carl’s Jr./etc.) and right off campus is Local Boyz Hawaiian Cafe (super popular).</p>
<p>The baseball team has been pretty good in recent years (back-to-back college world series championships a few years ago) and the football team…is the second-best Pac-12 football team in the state. Football games at Reser Stadium are a lot of fun.</p>
<p>Corvallis is a nice place, although if your daughter is interested in a big city experience Corvallis doesn’t really offer that. Portland’s not too far up I5 and while Portland’s not NYC by any stretch it is more cosmopolitan than Corvallis.</p>
<p>DS ended up choosing Southern Oregon University instead; it seemed like a better fit for him as far as the size of the school and frankly, Corvallis is only an hour and a half from my front door and I think the thought that I could conceivably drop in on a whim had a chilling effect.</p>
<p>Mom60, just saw your entry from a couple of days ago and I’m encouraged. My D is thinking of applying to Willamette (we’re visiting next week) and Univ of Redlands (visiting August 11th, I think). I know things can change in just four years with this whole admissions game but I’ll take any encouragement! Would you be willing to share your son’s stats at the time he applied?</p>
<p>Doame, our similarities continue. My niece, who is like a daughter, graduated from USC this past May. She also loved it. (She actually went the CC route–transferred into the SC School of Business as a Junior with a 4.0 and TONS of extracurriculars, leadership, and work experience). Kept the 4.0 at SC and had a job when she got out. Ah, I can only dream of such things for my girl. LOL</p>
<p>CHS211Mom–Thanks for the info, my daughter decided she will apply to schools up north and then take a college visit trip once if she gets accepted.</p>
<p>Tangosmom-My son was being recruited by U of Redlands, We were driving through Redlands to go to a tournament in Palm Desert, he agreed to stop but then he refused to get out of the car once we got to the campus…didn’t like it!!</p>
<p>Sockher Mom–Oh dear, that’s not encouraging! Was there something specific he didn’t like, i.e. too modern, too desert-y, too small? We were going to look at U of Redlands and Chapman on the same day since they’re an hour apart.</p>
<p>Tangosmom–For a kid growing up in SoCal, the Redlands area is not known to be all that exciting. The campus was really beautiful, we were really surprised…it looked like they “dropped” a small midwest LAC in the middle of Redlands. The school has been doing a huge PR campaign locally, I think they are trying to change their image to attract local students. </p>
<p>As for Chapman, we have an summer intern working for us who transferred to Champman last year…she loves it!!</p>
<p>As with all schools…go look, don’t rule anything out because what other people say…you never know when something may click…</p>
<p>Sockhermom–You’re right, of course. What bugs one kid might be perfect for another. I’m familiar with Southern California, having grown up there, and might have had the same reaction as your son. My D, on the other hand, is craving sun so who knows? I also suspect she will want to go to a school where they seem happy to have her and we’ve heard things about Redlands being a welcoming campus.</p>
<p>I actually think she’ll love the Chapman area, although she has a pre-formed negative opinion about the school–based only on her negative opinion of a couple of kids from her HS who are going there this fall. LOL When you think about how much schools spend on their campaigns and then realize how silly some kids’ reasons are for not giving the school a chance, it must make marketing people crazy! </p>
<p>Personally, I’m hoping she’ll fall in love with Univ of San Diego and forget about Loyola Marymount. But any of them would be great so we won’t leave any of them out of our search!</p>
<p>Our D loved Univ of Redlands. We visited in late June and took the tour. We are from NorCal. Going back to SoCal in Aug to visit Whittier, LMU, Concordia, Cal Lutheran and maybe Pepperdine and CSU Channel Islands.</p>
<p>Can you parents from SoCal please advise on a hotel to stay that is close to a nice beach and somewhat central to these colleges? We’ll do two visits a day, Mon-Wed, a morning tour and afternoon one and then head back to the hotel/beach. Being from NorCal, we have no idea where to stay, even what city and don’t want to stay at different hotels each night.</p>
<p>campbellmom CSUSI, Cal Lutheran and Pepperdine are fairly close to each other, LMU is near LAX Airport and Concordia is in Orange County.</p>
<p>I do not know what your budget is or if you want to stay next to the beach or driving distance to the beach. </p>
<p>Malibu is the closest beach location to CSUCI, Cal Lutheran and Pepperdine. Hotels are more expensive since they are on the beach, nicest one is called the Malibu Beach Inn.</p>
<p>Agoura Hills/Westlake Village is an area we call “over the hill” (not on the beach) but is a 15 minute drive to Malibu-Pepperdine, and then 20 minutes north to CSUCI, and 15 minutes north east to Cal Lutheran. There are hotels in all price ranges from Four Season, Hyatt to the Goodnite Inn!</p>
<p>Loyola is near the airport, if you are flying in, you could stop there after you arrive and then drive to your hotel in another location, maybe south to Irvine…there a ton of hotels in Orange County, which is a lot closer to Whittier than the other schools you mentioned.</p>
<p>PM me with price ranges if you want some suggestions.</p>
<p>There is an Embassy Suites in the beach area of Oxnard. I have heard the beach is pretty nice. It would be a decent spot for seeing Pepperdine, Cal Lutheran and Cal State Channel Islands.
Out in Orange county we have stayed at The Inn at Laguna Beach. Nice beach and cute town. It would be a drive to the LA area schools.</p>
<p>Forgot to mention-
D is almost done with her Univ of Montana application. It does not require an essay.
She also has rough drafts done for the Western Washington essays.
Also for those interested- Boulder does not have the application up but does have the essay prompts.
I am hoping to plan a visit soon out to Redlands.</p>
We’ve also visited a lot of the states on the east coast in driving vacations. That’s how my daughter “knows” that she absolutely will not go to school in DC or Maryland…or Pennsylvania. (Yeah, we’ll see how determined she is when she starts actually trying to get accepted somewhere.) LOL</p>
Football games at Reser Stadium are a lot of fun.</p>