kokotg
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Posts posted by kokotg
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1 hour ago, MagistraKennedy said:
My daughter only applied to one honors program -- primarily because it was financially lucrative, and also because "this essay prompt doesn't suck". 😆
It was something about 'imagine a one of the following programs will be cut (basketball, theatre, or something else) -- state your case for keeping the program.' She was able to write about theatre, so she was happy.That is a non-sucky one! DS was always happy when he could use whatever the prompt was to write about music (once I suggested writing about the diversity/lack thereof in classical music for the now standard diversity prompt, things went a lot more smoothly)
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1 minute ago, saw said:
Would it be okay if messaged you about music at Amherst? DS (piano, harp, conducting) is applying to college in the fall, and Amherst is on his list (sister went to Williams so this would be funny). He's probably majoring in a sciency thing but good music is a must. Older sibs applied with strong music and supplements and all, so I'm familiar with the general process, but none of them was interested in Amherst for music.
sure! And once I get that "more tonight" update from DS I should have more to tell you 🙂
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Late-breaking update! He's on the shuttle back to the airport now, and tells me that overall Amherst is "good 👍" !! Did not anticipate a thumbs-up level of gushing! Then he added mysteriously, "I can tell you more tonight." Well, yes, I would hope so.
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4 hours ago, Eos said:
I'm sorry to hear that too. Will he attend the one where he is accepted or start over?
He'll probably go to the one where his girlfriend is (he already turned down his only other offer), but he's still a little conflicted. I don't think there's really anything he could do to make his application stronger at this point except possibly get (and pay for) a masters, which he doesn't want to do. So it's probably now or never for grad school...at least in pure math.
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4 minutes ago, cintinative said:
@kokotg for my boys "good" is often high praise. LOL.
oh, it's pretty much his highest praise! At least over text. I'm very interested to hear the details get fleshed out when I talk to him in person tonight!
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Update: orchestra rehearsal was "good"
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48 minutes ago, SanDiegoMom said:
My son committed to UCLA yesterday! Then he went and declined the rest of the schools he was accepted to. Berkeley was the toughest to find the withdrawal button - we joked that they probably couldn't believe someone would be declining admission! The rest were much easier to find. 🙂
congratulations!
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Hope he hears good news soon!
Mine is at Amherst right now for admitted student days. Right this second he's sitting in on an orchestra rehearsal. His Dad and I both really like Amherst for him, so fingers crossed he likes it for himself, too. To be fair, my entire in-person experience with it consists of a tour and info session with my oldest kid 6+ years ago. So far I've heard that the class he sat in on this morning was "okay," the assorted panels and tours were "fine. like all the other colleges" and his horn lesson was "good."
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I'm sorry 😞 No waitlist action here, either.
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10 hours ago, Eos said:
She's still on her two waitlists. Both of the admins sent her very kind letters in response to her initial inquiry and one of which said she was first on the waitlist. April 15 is the last day for admitteds to commit, so still waiting.....
In about a half hour she defends her current Master's thesis - I'm about to start frenziedly stacking wood and wait to hear how it went.
Editing to say: she passed with flying colors.
congrats to her on the thesis defense and good luck on the waitlists!
My oldest is in the same position...he's either officially or unofficially waitlisted (i.e. "we've sent out first round offers and may be making more but can't say yet") at four schools now, including Vanderbilt--the place that told him he was on the shortlist and paid for him to go visit last month--so that one really stung.
Does she have other options?
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28 minutes ago, Eos said:
This is pretty great!
Yes! I was ready to book a flight and fretting about how expensive the whole thing would be (particularly since I'd need to take my 11 year old, too) when he noticed the offer in his portal. I don't get to see the Emily Dickinson museum myself this way, though 😞
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On 3/22/2024 at 5:04 PM, kokotg said:
Yeah, that vibe would be my fear with Colby and a lot of the NESCACs. Grinnell definitely seems like a better fit socially for DS (I'm sort of surprised Colby didn't think it wasn't a good fit, really; he wrote his common app essay about his D&D characters; his app definitely had nerd written all over it 😂)..
Ahem. Mystery solved about why he got into Colby. He got his acceptance packet with a lovely handwritten note from his admissions counselor about how "as a dungeon master myself" she loved his essay. heh. He got in because of the D&D essay and this one admissions counselor's quest to bring nerds to Colby. Or something like that.
Despite the lovely note, I don't think Colby is making the short list, which is shaping up to be UGA, St. Olaf, Emory, and Amherst. It all comes down to the music for him, and now we've got two schools with BMs and then two non-BM schools that seem to really love musicians and have interesting offerings. The orchestra conductor at Amherst reached out to him with just the nicest e-mail ever, telling him about music at Amherst and saying nice things about his music supplement. Similarly great communication and enthusiasm from music faculty at Emory. Which is why I'm currently at a Best Western in Illinois on our way to go see...Grinnell. Hmm. We'll see. I should perhaps have waited a bit longer to plan this trip (we're seeing St. Olaf and Lawrence, too. And we needed to be in the midwest anyway for the eclipse). Admitted student day at Emory next week and then Amherst is flying him up the week after that.
Who else is still deciding?!
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11 hours ago, Eos said:
A dollar says he gets it 😊
You owe me a dollar! With an unsurprising Brown rejection we are done! On to tough decisions!
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6 minutes ago, SanDiegoMom said:
- DS finished off strong with an acceptance to Berkeley. This is the school his older sister applied to and got rejected or waitlisted three times - once for undergrad and twice for law school... so she's going to kill him:)
Congratulations! We have some sibling rivalry going on here, too—mostly my college grad is bitter about this kid’s superior FA offers.
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DS in at Vassar, Emory, and Hamilton. I remain stunned by how many amazing options he has. Last one is Brown tomorrow; not holding my breath for that one, but anything is possible!
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2 hours ago, catz said:
Colby has always made me nervous because they are one school that doesn't publish an up to date common data set annually and they look pretty bad in the NYT economic diversity profiles (that is older data, but the fact that they aren't publishing newer data ...)
My kid was admitted to Oberlin a few years and we got really mixed reviews on being a music inteested student not in the con. We even got mixed messaging on double degree. Not every faculty member was excited about those students in their studio. No guarenteed studio spot was a deal breaker for us,, especially since that was more expensive for us. We were always lucky enough to have music teachers in our metro that were well qualified to work in a college setting so stepping back from that would have been tough. The musical studies option popped up soon after that, so hopefully maybe there are better options/contingencies for more dedicated music students not doing a full on BM program. Crossing fingers! I really think these music schools would do well to update their models and curriculum to more how modern musicians are working in the world.
You have a great set of options, good luck with final visits! Teacher/faculty made a big difference here so hopefully you can connect with teachers everywhere you'd like. And maybe if you don't that can inform as well, it definitely ended up being a turn off on a few schools for us.
It is weird about Colby and the CDS! I was pretty shocked he got in given that they're need-aware. With Oberlin I think he's just going to have to straight up ask what lessons and ensembles would look like for him as a musical studies major and see what they say. I know there are a good many non-majors at Vanderbilt that still do a lot at Blair, so who knows? Re: your last point--he e-mailed both the horn teacher and the orchestra director (who also happens to be a horn player) at Grinnell a week and a half ago about meeting with them, sitting in on a rehearsal, etc. when we're up there next week, and he hasn't heard a peep back. It's definitely a turn off, and it's making me rethink even visiting (he's already been there just before junior year and done the tour and all that--if he can't learn more about music there's not a lot of point in going; he already knows he likes it from a social/cultural/academic standpoint)
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2 minutes ago, cintinative said:
They caught it before all the FAFSAs were processed.
but is says less than 10% of the ones that have already been processed. I guess it's unclear how many they processed between catching the mistake and issuing that statement, though.
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3 hours ago, jplain said:
Will this ever end?
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The Department will start reprocessing applications impacted by a previously identified issue shortly after student corrections are made available. The Department recently identified a vendor issue that was incorrectly calculating the Student Aid Index for records of dependent students with assets. This issue affected less than 10 percent of the 4 million records that have already been processed and has been resolved since the issue was identified. As these records are reprocessed, they will be identified as a system-generated transaction in the transaction source field (ISIR field 16).
huh. How could it have only affected less than 10%? I would imagine the majority of students have some kind of reportable assets, even if it's just $500 of birthday money in a savings account or whatever.
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31 minutes ago, Eos said:
Amherst is this too, but it's in a much more beautiful spot and I think their commitment to equity is more than Colby's.
I'm getting very mixed reports about how preppy Amherst is! I guess we just need to go take a look. I have it in my head as the hippie school amongst NESCACs, but I may just be thinking Hampshire must surely rub off on it a little 😂. But, yeah, my experience so far is that all the New England schools have that vibe more than mid-western schools.
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2 hours ago, Eos said:
You know I'm plugging for Oberlin, the music is everywhere. Dc have a dear friend who did the musical studies major and played music throughout his time in the college, not con, and has had the most interesting jobs and travels related to his major. Apparently musical studies kids are considered the smart ones, less cutthroat than the con kids.
On the other hand, I also have a soft spot for Amherst. Has he visited both? The campus cultures are so different. Amherst's setting is gorgeous, and the 5 college thing is cool but logistically challenging. The cornfields surrounding Oberlin were/are distressing for my nature-loving kids, but maybe it kept them on campus and noses to the grindstones 🙂
You already know this but one challenge for conservatory kids is the absolutely ridiculous amount of time they are expected to practice and the number of credits they require. Dd's curricular requirements as a con student were so far beyond what non-con students had to do. Yes, it's an incredible opportunity and she was/is grateful for that, but non-con offers at least a modicum of balance.
thank you! Do you happen to know how lessons work for musical studies students? Like...it doesn't seem likely they'd add more students to the studio professor's workload, but...then what? DH went to Oberlin over Vassar because he liked the idea of the con being there; he took piano lessons from a Con student, and that was fine for him. But DS is already just a step below Con students on his instrument, as I'm sure is true of a lot of the musical studies majors, so that wouldn't really make sense for him. So--yeah--need to see how it all works!
I am indeed familiar with what a music performance major looks like, and it definitely worries me for this kid. His brother is ALWAYS incredibly busy (he didn't respond to my "are you alive?" text for several hours the other day because, "Thursdays are crazy!") And he's very, very happy that way. I'm not anti-music major. But THIS kid isn't his brother. He's just not as single-minded, and he certainly doesn't spend the kind of time practicing right now that I know he'll need to do if he's a performance major. I think he'd be better off somewhere with great academics and social fit that values a music a lot and has a great horn teacher and ensembles, but where music can still be the thing he does for fun without all the pressure. Amherst looks like that to me. But I worry that the more I voice my opinion the more he'll push back (which is how he landed on French horn instead of an easier instrument. Why, that anecdote features prominently in his counselor letter! Don't tell this kid what he can't do!) Sigh. He has not seen Amherst yet (Colby is also out there; I'm ready to cross it off the list as too preppy/sporty for him, but he might want to look at it). I visited with my oldest, but he wasn't on that trip. We're waiting on the last few decisions this week and then we'll plan a visit. He seems at least somewhat excited about being walking distance from the Emily Dickinson museum. Because that's the kind of nerd he is.-
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My kids' have finally processed, but on 3/22 and 3/23, so I think we're in the clear of the latest mess and the numbers they're giving us are correct. fingers crossed.
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22 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:
Did he have a lesson with Amherst teachers? I would go with the teacher he likes. I don’t trust places with conservatories for non conservatory kids because I was told you don’t get access to “real” teachers there. I know in places with grad school, you get assigned grad students. Oberlin has no grad school though, but if you don’t have a spot in a studio for a conservatory kid, how do you find a place for a non conservatory one? I am musing aloud here. Congrats to your DS though. I know how much of a roller coaster this process is, especially for music kids.
Yeah, normally he wouldn't consider a school with a conservatory as a non-con student, but I'd like to find out more about the musical studies major before he dismisses Oberlin as a possibility. Interestingly, Amherst is the only place where he approached the horn teacher and was turned down for a sample lesson. She told him she only does them for admitted students. Which makes total sense at a non-music school; I was a little surprised he had such good luck with teachers elsewhere. Anyway, he will definitely meet with her now that he has his admitted student cred! I think Amherst offers the most music stuff for him if he decides against a music school. The horn teacher seems great from what we know, they really seem to value music and have a lot going on (which may well be why he got in), and they have the 5 college consortium there that gives him even more options (I think he could even do marching band at UMass if he wanted)
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3 minutes ago, JennyD said:
Congratulations!! What a great set of choices he has. Would he do music at Oberlin?
I hope everyone has noticed just how long the 2024 list has gotten!
He did not get into the con (didn't pass the prescreen back in the fall)...so that's the main thing he needs to figure out: how good the opportunities are for non conservatory students. They have a "musical studies" major that's supposed to give a lot of access to the conservatory for arts and sciences students who are serious musicians...but the details on the website are a little sparse.
Thanks for keeping the list up, btw--it's so great to see it growing as the year goes on!
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DS in at Amherst College and Oberlin College
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The Class of 2024 College Application Thread
in The College Board
Posted
Sounds like he had a very good visit: met a lot of current and prospective students, had a good horn lesson, sat in on an orchestra rehearsal and then hung out with orchestra kids after, thought the campus was lovely, took a selfie with the Robert Frost statue....I was hoping he would be ready to deposit and we'd be all done, but sounds like no. I guess all of my kids are determined to keep the suspense going until the last possible moment. He has nothing particularly negative to say about Amherst, but I think he's still a little hesitant about music there and giving up the idea of real music school. He said wistfully, "if only I could move the UGA music school to liberal arts college..." Unfortunately, that's pretty much Oberlin, but he didn't get into the conservatory there...(it's also sort of St. Olaf, but with some caveats).