Oberlin is fascinating to me...my oldest got his best FA package by far from Oberlin (but didn't go), but I've heard the same thing from other families...Oberlin much less generous than similar schools (including one person whose kid did ED there, thinking it would be similar to her other kid's package at Pitzer, so they were kind of stuck). But since they waitlisted kid #2, I don't know if we just got lucky with the first one or not.

I feel like I'm being nit-picky, but I do want to clarify for anyone trying to navigate this world that there are a number of schools that meet need and also offer merit scholarships, sometimes very generous ones. Off the top of my head, Oberlin, Macalester, Vanderbilt, Emory, St. Olaf, Kenyon, Grinnell. IME, midwestern LACs are much more likely to give merit aid than coastal counterparts and will hand it out pretty freely (but, of course, there's still a big sticker price left at somewhere like Oberlin even after $30,000 in merit or whatever). And Ivies don't ever, as far as I know, but some schools like Emory and Vanderbilt that want to win kids away from Ivies give a decent number of full rides and/or full tuition scholarships (we know a kid this year from my kids' wind symphony who got offered a Cornelius Vanderbilt, Woodruff Scholar at Emory...and is going to Yale).

Canada. Heh. But, for real, I gravitate toward Almost Canada. I like the idea of the Great Lakes region for assorted reasons, but one of them is relatively inexpensive real estate. If that weren't a factor, I might go with Burlington, VT. I do like where I am now, too (near Atlanta), but...there are issues.

I know nothing of USC (except that I have, indeed, heard of some weird aid packages coming out of there), but the vast majority of schools that claim to meet need DO NOT include any loans beyond the federal loans in their packages. I've seen a bunch of such FA packages over the past few years with my first two kids and none of them included parent plus loans (Macalester did offer a $500/year subsidized institutional loan, but it wasn't part of the aid package, it was just something offered if you wanted a bit more). Work study yes, federal loans, yes, but there shouldn't be anything beyond that if a school is claiming to meet need.

I wanted a girl named Susannah, maybe nn Sukie, but it was not to be. I got to name a ton of boys, but I still would have liked a Leo, Henry/Hank, Jasper (my grandfather’s name), and Hugo

I hate flying and will avoid it whenever possible. But then I also have a travel trailer and a husband with summers off. Right now we’re midway between ga and Newfoundland, but we’ll be gone 8 weeks total. We mostly fly if it’s overseas or to visit west coast family (but we’ve done that drive, too). With 4 kids, we got pretty used to the price of 6 plane tickets being too much to even consider. Possible we’ll lean toward flying more often as they start to leave home. Although I just did 2200 miles in a week and a half to retrieve my oldest after college graduation. I like road trips.

I like using the formal name (given that they like both names) because it gives the kid options when they get older. I have an August that we usually call Gus, but he uses August when he's introducing himself in new situations. He doesn't mind Gus, but has at least a slight preference for August, and I like both and like that he gets to decide (and in that case the name and nickname have fairly different feels, so it's a real choice).

I also had an ultrasound for unrelated reasons, and it showed fatty liver. The summary on the ultrasound was "unremarkable abdominal ultrasound" and no one said a word to me about it (I just know because I read through the report). I gather that fatty liver is SO common in overweight middle aged women that no one bats an eye. Incidentally, at the time of the ultrasound, I'd just had labs done and my liver enzymes were perfect, though they've been slightly elevated both a few months before and after.

One thing I'd also point out is that the study linked to does not show an actual increase in cancer in people who consume Sucralose (although that could come later). There ARE lots of studies showing an increased risk of heart disease in people who consume a lot of sugar.

Well, I disagree with that 😆. I think we have a lot of new information coming out about some artificial sweeteners lately, but we've LONG known that sugar is bad. Did you see the link I posted? It's just one link, but there are plenty like it: there's an huge increase in heart disease with increased sugar consumption. Lots of sugar is just really terrible for your body in all sorts of ways--liver, heart, etc. etc. (and a whole lot more people die from heart disease than from artificial sweetener-linked cancer). I'm not sure we're all comparing apples to apples on this thread, though...if we're talking about the occasional dessert or sweetening your coffee a bit, sugar is fine for most people (I'm especially careful myself because of a strong family history of diabetes). The same occasional consumption of artificial sweeteners is probably fine, too, honestly. But plenty of people really do spend all day drinking sugary drinks....I think the big problem with these new studies about the dangers of artificial sweeteners is that we were assured it was a safe alternative to sugary drinks for so long. Most people already knew that the 96 oz convenience store Coke was not good for them (although a lot of people drink them anyway). But I'm not going to go tell my diabetic mom, who does indeed drink Diet Coke all day long, that she should switch to regular coke to avoid cancer. That would be worse for her. She should stop drinking sugary drinks, period, but she's not going to.

I don't think the the message here is that sugar is better for you than artificial sweeteners, though. There are plenty of health risks from sugar; that's why people try to find alternatives in the first place. Sadly, the message is probably that we're not really meant to consume sweetened foods at all in huge quantities (i.e. we're not supposed to spend all day drinking it). https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/the-sweet-danger-of-sugar

My second kid just finished his first year working on a clarinet performance degree; he's so happy and can't imagine doing anything else. My oldest just graduated from Macalester with a math major/data science minor. He may end up in grad school eventually, but he'll be working for now, and just got a job as a GIS analyst for a department of public safety near us; we are affectionately referring to him as "map cop" now, but I think maybe he wants us to stop 😂

Just updating in case anyone from the future is reading this...just got my labs back and my A1C is 5.8, so still pre-diabetic, but on the lower end of pre-diabetic (and down a smidge from last year). So the high fasting numbers are annoying, but were not a sign that things were about to go off the rails at least. I will keep experimenting with different things! I'm about to be gone on an RV trip for most of the summer, so I'm relieved that I'm not going to have to mess around with trying to adjust to metformin or something while I'm traveling.

I'd go with just e-mailing them back and explaining and asking again. I wouldn't worry that she's not going to call them...some colleges have extremely pushy admissions departments--I find it really off-putting, too, but I guess it must work a lot of the time or they wouldn't keep doing it?

It depends on the school. At LACs you usually don’t have to declare a major until end of sophomore year.

bunny trails...if my next kid applies to an Ivy, it will likely be Brown, so I'm pleased to see that he'll have a whole 6.7% chance of being admitted there, compared to 4% if he were a girl.

I'm saying it's not just small LACs, though (all your examples were SLACs). Vassar's the famous example, but top 20 universities favor men in admission, too. It's pretty much just STEM/engineering schools that don't, and there aren't nearly as many of them. So boys have the advantage in admission at MOST selective colleges. I guess I'm saying it's not some sign of a deep bias against boys, it's a sign that colleges like gender balance.

There are far fewer schools that are just STEM based, though. And it's not just SLACs colleges where men have an advantage, it's universities like Harvard, Vanderbilt, etc. etc. etc., too. My son actually had a spreadsheet that included a column about where he'd have the biggest advantage applying as a male. We weren't even surprised when he got into Vassar after a slew of waitlists at similar schools, because...boy. Schools do it because gender balance makes them more desirable to potential students (i.e. boys at MIT generally don't want to go to a school with way more men than women, and women at Vassar don't want to go to a school with way more women than men. By and large).

I finished Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait a few days ago. It was well written, and I got through it a lot easier than Hamnet (even though I really liked Hamnet), but it was...a little silly? Not my favorite. Then I started The School for Good Mothers, but it was really feeling like a slog, and I disliked the main character, so I've abandoned the attempt. I'm on to Dark Matter now. I read a ton of sci-fi in 2020 as an escapist thing, but then not so much lately.

right--I meant the list chiguirre gave of well-paid traditionally female professions that men should consider. Doctors aren't in that category.

yeah, I was thinking of nursing as the exception on that list. My understanding is that things like PT don't pay well, though (although, having had a few PT sessions this year, I can say confidently that SOMEONE is making a lot of money off of it!)

Sure, but most male dominated professions that require a similar level of education pay way more. If I were making a list of professions that pay relatively poorly despite requiring a lot of education, I'd put a lot of those on there (and throw in some others, like librarian). Money-wise, you're much better off with a bachelors in CS than a masters in education. ETA: I haven't read the book, so just trying understand the argument...I just don't get why we'd be comparing jobs that don't require advanced training or education to ones that require at least a college degree and a masters or other advanced degree in many cases. I'm also certainly not arguing against men going into historically woman-dominated fields--there are plenty of reasons aside from money to do so. But I don't think it's a coincidence that those fields almost always pay more poorly than the fields historically dominated by men, adjusted for education level.

Most of those aren't well-paid professions, though? I mean, as someone who's married to a teacher, I'd love it if more men went in to professions that are dominated by women because then maybe those professions would start paying better.

Thanks for all the info! I have a rising senior, so I don't have to worry about this for a few more years, but it's really interesting to hear all of this. The College Board paid my college freshman son to take a digital SAT this past year as part of the testing phase, and he LOVED the desmos calculator.

Another Belle Island vote...we loved it. There's the aquarium and conservatory and Great Lakes museum...you can also walk about to see the Art Deco marble lighthouse. And the art museum is world class--the Diego Rivera murals are especially impressive.