<p>A year away from D1 applying (and 2 years away from D2) I have a little perspective. First, most kids don’t have their apps in yet. I was shocked last year that some of D’s AP/IB classmates didn’t even have final lists/requests for transcripts & recommendations until after Thanksgiving! Some even after Christmas. Their GC’s motto was “if you can smell the turkey, it’s too late ;)” but the reality is that for solid students not applying to top 20 schools, there’s plenty of time. I enforced the Thanksgiving rule, only because I wanted a calm Christmas break. </p>
<p>D’s reachiest school was Vanderbilt; she toyed with Yale & Princeton for a while but ended up realizing that she was only going to apply to see “if she could get in” and that wasn’t a good enough reason for her. She would have been happy applying to just 1 school but I insisted on her finishing up the 5 apps she’d started since I know kids change a lot senior year. She is now thoroughly enjoying her freshman year at the school she told me she’d be attending at the end of Junior year.</p>
<p>I’ll agree with the “parent’s choice” app though; most parents use it for a financial safety, but if you think she’s not stretching enough, throw a reach in.
Good luck!</p>
<p>I think my s was intimidated by the whole process of applying, and that’s why he was leaving it all for “later.” I REALLY had to lean on him to get started, but once he did, the fear left him, for the most part. Has anyone else felt like the kid is just scared?</p>
<p>Fear is definitely a factor. “What if I don’t get in?” “What if I DO get in?” It can be very overwhelming. Also, the shear amount of written work that needs to be done can be daunting. Neither D nor I expected so many essays :0 I have basically just told her to take it one app at a time.</p>
<p>“I have decided (as of today) that i am going to take charge since she obviously is not managing this very well.”</p>
<p>I would caution against this. It says loud and clear “I don’t believe in you.” As many here know, I have a daughter that is in the top 1% and is doing 6 APs this year and handling each like a champ. Yet when it comes to apps she is at a stand still. I have seen a few FB postings of hers that college applications are “stressing her out.” I am not so sure it is the application itself that is stressing her out but the inability to find the time. I joking sent her an essay I wrote via email yesterday called why I never went to college (I went to college, this was pure fiction) and it talked about never getting around to filling out the application. Done with much humor, but it had a point. She called and told me she got the email and she laughed about it. She has started her apps (for Apply Texas and Common Ap and has gone up until the EC part) and she has her completed Resume as they worked on those in English, so she has the information in one place, but it is just a block for her. I think having to type all that stuff in overwhelms her and I am certainly not going to do it for her so she needs to find a way to make it happen. We set a date of this Sunday at 4:33 (random, but it was her pick) to have the EC part of the apps done. She has started the essay but it is not ready for Teacher review yet and SHE set a deadline for that of next Thursday. Let your daughter set the deadlines. This is her deal. When the acceptances come through the door she needs to know it was all about her and her effort.</p>
<p>You mention W & M - if your d is committed to nursing, you should know that there is no nursing program there. If you are Virginia residents, I think your d would be a strong applicant at UVA as long as her SATs are in line with her rank and rigorous curriculum. I’m not usually an advocate of parents requiring kids to apply to certain schools, but a strong chance at a great institution like UVA, with an excellent nursing program, is too good to miss. It’s a common app school, so the process will be somewhat streamlined (although I remember a killer supplement when my d2 applied there in 2004).</p>
<p>Though she could certainly get an excellent nursing education at other institutions, and be perfectly happy there, I think she’d thank you to have UVA among her options next year. I didn’t ask any of my kids to apply to a particular school, so I don’t know how that would have gone - but if I were you, I’d do whatever it took to get her to agree to apply there. I’m not too proud to bribe. ;)</p>
<p>At this point last year my son had not done anything in terms of applications or essays. It simply not necessary to be doing that right now, there is plenty of time.</p>
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<p>I don’t see the problem. I would only invoke “parent’s choice” if my child refused to apply to a safety school. Even matches are optional, let alone reaches. If she likes the colleges on her list, I would leave it alone lest she wind up feeling like her college was not good enough for her parents to be proud of.</p>
<p>I would agree that parents choice should be invoked if a safety is needed. HelpIng your student find a safety they will love is an important step.
Virginia has several very, very good nursing programs. UVA is an excellant school, but it does not blow away the rest of the schools by any means. You need to talk to your student with an open mind and ask why they are looking at the schools they are. The point isn’t why not UVA or WM & Mry. Those are your choices. The point is why is she interested in the schools she is.
There are great schools that on the surface would seem to be good choices for my son. Nope, nope, nope. Not interested. When I asked and really listened I understood why an Ivy or MIT wasn’t on his list. It had nothing to do with opening his eyes. My eyes needed to be opened. He knew exactally what he wanted in a school, his education, and a place to finish growing up. I had to respect that.</p>
<p>My daughter is also young. As a college freshman, she won’t turn 18 until right before Christmas. I let her decide where to go to school. Now she did want to apply to a high-end school to get an acceptance letter. (She was rather confident of being able to get in where ever she applied, and she did.) Although, she didn’t want to apply to a school that required her to take SAT subject tests because she was tired of testing. I respected her choices and her reasoning.</p>
<p>My daughter did end up applying to some reach schools and she was accepted. She ended up choosing a match/safety school with an honors program for two reasons: she really loved the school and the scholarships allowed her to cover her UG without having to touch her college savings. So far school is easy for her, but she does her homework, goes to class and studies so I think that is one reason why things seem easy, because she is doing what she is supposed to be doing. I agree she possibly could have been challenged a little more at some of her other choices, but she loves where she is. She is happy, she is learning, she is involved and what else can I say, she is happy. I am confident she will make the most of her college opportunities, maintain a very high GPA and go on to a great graduate program.</p>
<p>Sometimes it is hard to let an academically talented child go to a school that isn’t ranked as high as others are, but I don’t think that necessarily means the child will be at a loss down the road.</p>
<p>I’d say to applying to a reach school or two may not be a bad idea. I applied to all safety schools (one may have been a safe match) because I was hunting for merit aid as a 33 ACT/4.0 UW/top 2% rank/strong ECs student. I do not regret my decision at all–I had a lovely time at my school, had great opportunities for research/teaching/clinical volunteer work, made some really good friends, my family paid less than $35k for all four years of tuition, fees, room, and board, and I got into a good PhD program with full funding straight out of undergrad. That being said, I remember feeling kind of sad/left out spring of my senior year when all of my friends and classmates were getting accepted to top schools, and I was going to a relatively “no name” school. It may have helped to have at a reachy-er acceptance in the game. However, I say this with the very important caveats of: 1) no guarantee that the reach schools will yield admits, 2) What other posters have said about nursing schools being a different ball game is true and also very important, and 3) Don’t let your kid apply to a school if you are certain you can’t afford it (for example, your institutional EFC shows you don’t qualify for aid at that school butv you can’t afford to pay that amount).</p>
<p>I would like to share my story about my eldest daughter. She was also a top achiever, top 5% of her class of about 250 students in strong high school. She wasn’t overly involved but in the few things she did, she had a very long term commitment to and they took up much of her time. This showed well on her apps and recommendations. She had outstanding letters of rec. Her test scores were pretty good, SAT’s combined were 2080 and her ACT’s was either a 29 or 30 She had a GPA of about 4.0.
Anyway we always thought she would of course be applying to top tier schools, maybe a few ivies and during the summer after her junior year, lo and behold she tells us she wants to go to school A. (a respectable school but far below what she is capable of getting into) we visited, she convinced us it was the right fit though we didn’t see it one bit. We visited several other schools including (at my insistence a few ivies and a few very top schools/universities) She said no to these, though I sensed it was more anxiety and an inferiority complex on her part.
Fast forward a few months to application time, and she first applies to the school A. that she so badly wants (we don’t see the fit at all) and several others, NONE of the ones my husband, myself and her guidance counselor thought were great matches/slight reaches. Her guidance advisor strongly suggested she apply to Cornell, Brown and U Penn as somewhat reach schools. She said no way.
Finally at the very last minute that she had, the very night of the deadline, I might add- at our insistence she decided to apply to U Penn and Brown.
Fast forward again a few months and guess what? Of course she got into school A. that was a no brainer as well as every other 9 schools she applied to, AND got into U Penn and Brown!!
When she found out, she went nuts…and finally when she calmed down admitted she was fearful of the rejection and just “didn’t want to go there” in applying to schools she knew were a bit more of a reach. I think the pressure of high school had reached its threshold and she didn’t want to endure another round of high pressure/compeitition/rejection even though she worked so hard all 4 years to do just that…apply and hopefully get into a great school!
End of story- she now attends Brown and LOVES IT!! She is amongst her academic equals and is thriving in the academia of the environment. I know school A. would have bored her to tears.
So my only advice here is to gently encourage her to apply to schools that she might feel she is overwhelmed by (translation-fearful of being rejected by) because you really never know, and sometimes they look at those schools very differently when they know they are actually accepted there.
Sometimes a parents wisdom really supersedes a teens instincts and in this case I am really glad that we prevailed and continued to encourage her, because if it wasn’t for that persistence…she might never have thrived in college as she is now.</p>
<p>When my son was near the end of application season, we had him add Case due to merit scholarship opportunity and proximity to relatoves. He had a free app postcard, and common app was already done. He was interested in engineering, but the nursing school sound good - plenty of local hospitals nearby. </p>
<p>It actually ended up costing us money because we tacked on a January visit when looking at Carnegie Mellon. It as good we did because teh Case scholarship came through, making it less expensive than our state schools. Although the campus was not his favorite, I’m glad we did the last minute addition. It gave us another affordable option to choose from.</p>