<p>Moonchild, I agree with your comment…it seems like our son just started college recently, yet he is about to graduate! Feels like we have been in a time machine.</p>
<p>And lilmom, we too found this year’s admissions process suprisingly unpredictable.
Our daughter was accepted at 5/6 of her schools, including both reaches (UCLA,UC Berkeley, UCSD, UCD, UCSB); but rejected from the school having the lowest average stats…Cal Poly SLO. We thought the latter was a safe match…wrong! Suggests that the trend of applying to many schools may be a good idea.</p>
<p>That the net price of private colleges could approach those of State Flagship (U/California) to the point where it was plausible.</p>
<p>That D wound up going to a women’s college. (For four years, I watched the list of candidates dwindle as Smith/Wellesley/Barnard stayed on and kept thinking, <em>that</em> will never happen. Silly me.</p>
<p>That, being the product of a research U, with a spouse from a research U, who has worked for 30 years at a research U, I would be so completely won over by LAC’s.</p>
<p>That some items that seemed of monumental significance during the period of search & application have dwindled into insignificance in the rear view mirror.</p>
<p>That there is life when they’re in college. And life continues when they graduate from college. Same book but new chapters.</p>
<p>How gratifying it is upon occasion when, in retrospect, D says, “You were right.”</p>
<p>How the admissions process has changed so much from when I was in school and how under-prepared and under-informed I was relative to the bulk of students on CC today.</p>
<p>That being philosophically opposed to test prep, I ruthlessly embraced it in a fit of intense pragmatism; cf., unilateral disarmament.</p>
<p>I am surprised at how much he cost of attendance has increased for many of the schools he applied for from this year to next year. And, in many cases, it has been hard to nearly impossible to track down the information for 10-11.</p>
</p>