Where do the "cool" kids go to college?

Yes, that is my understanding. TBH, the whole guns on campus thing was the nail in the coffin. She wasn’t ever interested anyway. I think she first read about that back in September, but she was very amused that students will allegedly bring, um, d___os, on the first day of classes this coming fall. That is sure to be a great headline!

Private schools set their own policies. And there are sadly (IMO) states like Colorado, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin allow guns on campus.

My son is seriously considering Trinity U and he’s had to grapple with his own anti-Texas biases, but, like Rice, Trinity is apparently actually a fairly liberal place and San Antonio is supposedly a pretty blue city. And yeah, we checked on the whole guns on campus thing – turns out that’s grounds for getting booted out at Trinity – so @jym626 is entirely correct about private schools setting their own rules in that regard.

@Lindagaf That is so funny; my daughter also rejected TX and CA!

@mamaedefamilia , great minds think alike. Your D can just use my D’s list and save a lot of legwork, haha!

@Lindagaf Don’t laugh, I have done just that, as well as benefiting from @porcupine98 's experience! It is encouraging to find fellow parents that are not necessarily shooting for the tippy top prestige schools and have kids that seem similar to mine.

Visits can be “overnights” with two days (one when you arrive and do some things, second day = class/meetings then time to fly back) without having to sleep over, although spending a bit of evening time in a dorm can be interesting.

It’s funny to see such open-minded ppl balk at thinking that is different from theirs. My brother is at Texas A & M and I visited UT just this week, along with GA Tech and Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech has had a bad time even though they have lots of gun laws- 32 ppl killed, and a little girl kidnapped and murdered just this month. Austin seemed pretty normal to me, and A& M was awesome. Lots of happy students. Don’t judge unless you’ve actually been there. You guys are funny. Afraid of people you don’t know anything about.

@emptyMT no one here seems to be judging anything. In fact, two of the posters above are all in favor of Texas colleges, and that is great. If a 17 year old kid doesn’t feel comfortable in Texas I certainly won’t force her to go there. Plus, this not a thread about Texas gun laws and guns on college campuses. Please start one if you would like to talk about that. No one can apply to 4000 colleges. A list has to be created by some means of elimination.

Very excited to say that she got in to Kenyon! This was a big surprise to me, as there were no supplemental essays and we both think her ECs are not that strong. Guess they liked her essay and hopefully she had good teacher recs. We are feeling cautiously optimistic, tempered by reality.

CONGRATULATIONS!!! :)))
Now, she has an abundance of riches :smiley: and the trick will be to make a choice :slight_smile:

Great news!!

In the interest of fair and balanced reporting, I give you the downside of the roller coaster. Wait listed at Carleton. Better than a rejection, but still. She will accept the waitlist position. This is hard, isn’t it?

It says to notify them if you want to accept the waitlist by March 26, but if you go on their website it says “email us if you want to stay in the waitlist”, with no date. What is the best thing for her to do? Carleton is definitely her top choice, tied with Bates, in terms of actual possibilities. What do you think @MYOS1634 ?

D was waitlisted at 3 schools last year, got into one before she officially removed herself from the other 2. She, and I, are very glad she wound up where she did. Ya gotta narrow things somehow!

@Lindagraf, I would be pretty aggressive if she wants to get off a wait-list. While there are no guarantees, it does seem like the students who make it clear they’ll absolutely attend if they get off the wait-list have the best results. Unfortunately, that sometimes requires indicating you can afford to be full pay, because they may have spent their FA budget already and, all things otherwise being equal, the student who can afford to be full pay ofttimes get the nod.

I would accept the waitlist. It doesn’t oblige your daughter to attend if she gets accepted and then decides she’d rather go elsewhere; the only downside is a lack of closure.

She will definitely accept waitlist. She has always equally liked Bates and Carleton, of her realistic choices. If she gets a flat out rejection from Bates, which she will know soon enough, it will make things easy. If she gets waitlist at both, that will be hard, because I personally think accepting two wait lists is too much for her. At that point, she should be able to say clearly to a school that they are her first choice. She literally would never tell a school they were her top choice unless it was true. This is why she refused to ED anywhere.

What I am confused about though was that the letter said she could put herself on waitlist on March 26, but Carleton’s website says to email, no date set, to say you want to be on waitlist. Does she email AND sign up on her portal?

@Lindagaf I am not remotely saying not to get on Carleton’s wait list, but to put it in perspective here are the statistics from last admissions cycle. You can look at CDS’s (Section C) from farther back if desired, as wait list activity can vary from year to year.

Number of qualified applicants offered a place on waiting list 1350
Number accepting a place on the waiting list 442
Number of wait‐listed students admitted 16

Congrats to your D’s acceptances so far and good luck moving forward. Sorry, have no answer to your specific question about how to accept the wait list. Carleton’s wait list is not ranked, so waiting a little bit while you seek an answer should not affect anything.

Yes, we twlked about those stats the other day. Nothing ventured, nothing gained:-)

My word, this roller coaster hasn’t stopped! Accpeted to Whitman with a good scholarship, and wait listed at Oberlin. I am really a bit surprised at this one. Frankly, I was quite confident she would be accepted to Oberlin. Her stats are well within their top 75th percentile and she interviewed. I was not expecting acceptance at Kenyon and Waitlist at Oberlin. I sooooo wish I could be in a room with adcoms during decisions:-) kind of glad we hadn’t visited Oberlin yet, as she hadn’t fallen in love with Oberlin.

Tomorrow, Bates. And I might be reporting back with tears or champagne, becasue she loves this school.