yay for potential easiness and great options!

I'd be ready to draw conclusions about need-aware schools were it not for Colby today. As it is I'm going to tentatively go with French horn is magical...if the school needs new horn players. But who knows?!

He got into Amherst!! We're kind of stunned here right now. (Rejected at Williams, but who cares now?!)

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 😂)...but I suspect it's all going to come down to music for him one way or the other (i.e. whether he's set on a music school and, if not, how good he feels like the music opportunities are if he majors in something else and keeps it as a hobby). And the orchestra director and French horn teacher at Grinnell aren't responding to his e-mails!

ha! that is funny! We know very little about Colby--haven't visited; it got tossed in (as it does for a lot of applicants I'm sure), because it seems cool and has no supplemental essay. But the financial aid is amazing, so we're going to need to take a serious look now. ETA: what does your friend's daughter dislike about it?

Another data point in favor of "this is the most unpredictable process/year ever:" he just got into Colby!

And I should say again that this kid is totally fine with all of this. He's happy with his acceptances, and anything else would be a bonus that would make his April more hectic and his decision harder. So while college admissions ARE very often unpredictable and demoralizing, some combination of his personality and his earlier acceptances are making this more of a fascinating thing to observe and try to figure out for me than anything else. Not that my heart doesn't race every time he checks a portal anyway, but that's on me. Probably some leftover trauma from kid #1, who I remember very clearly telling me after waitlist #6 or so, "I feel like I'm never going to be happy again." And I also know that things turned out fine for THAT kid, too. So I keep coming back and reporting results, but I really am just sort of taking notes at this point (I have one more to go! not for 7 years, thank goodness). I mean, obviously I'd rather every school acknowledge how objectively incredible my kid is 😂...but it's all fine this year. Kid #1 is the one applying for math phd programs right now, and it does appear more predictable but not necessarily any more fun (at least not for a super competitive field). Fortunately, waitlists no longer send him into a spiral of despair! Incidentally, he applied to Brandeis, too, this year, for grad school, and they've totally ghosted him. So we ARE a little grumpy with Brandeis around here at the moment.

I certainly don't mean anything against Brandeis (I have a masters from Brandeis!)...but it wasn't just the acceptance rate but his stats relative to their averages as well (his SAT is near their 75th%, and I think that's probably the weaker part of his application compared to his courses/grades) that made it seem like a match/likely. There was some weirdness where they recommend an interview for homeschoolers but weren't showing any availability, so he e-mailed admissions to ask about it, they assured him they'd be opening up more slots any day, and then they just...never did. Anyway, I don't mean to be like, "I can't believe they rejected my kid!" ...but just putting all his decisions together things just look....a little random. Which I know to expect by now, but even more random than my first time through 5 years ago.

Waitlisted at Brandeis. huh. I'm not really finding any discernible patterns this year. That was one that I figured was one of the most likely admits (certainly well ahead of Grinnell). The only other one still out there that I HAD been thinking of as a likely is Oberlin, but now I really don't know what to think.

It's always nice when rejections come with a significant silver lining!

Buying official merch is such a great feeling!

They're really rolling in now: rejections at Middlebury and Wesleyan; waitlist at Bates. I'm ready to declare this admissions season even less predictable than his brother's 5 years ago. Fortunately, he's totally moved on emotionally and is ready to get the rest of the decisions so he can figure out where he's going. Just talked to him and he thinks Emory is the most likely non-music school to sway him....of course the problem there is he likely won't get in 🙂 We'll find out next week! At least four more decisions between now and Saturday! Home stretch!

ah, right--I forgot about that! Yeah, I don't really understand the reasoning behind only extending for Georgia residents. I guess pell-eligible students are more likely to stay in-state, at least for public schools? I dunno.

UGA has extended their deadline to May 15. All DS's other schools are CSS schools, so we've gotten FA packages from his other acceptances already

ours both still say "in review," but I noticed that one them says it was last updated yesterday. Which is interesting, since I can't get in there to update it myself...have no idea who's doing this updating...

Roller coaster March goes on: Grinnell acceptance on Monday, Kenyon waitlist today. We were not even a tiny bit surprised, having experienced Kenyon's brand of need-aware + strong consideration of demonstrated interest admissions before with my oldest. I think he would have wanted to go see it if they'd accepted him, but he likely won't take the waitlist spot. This makes travel planning easier at least--the other Ohio school that's still out there is Oberlin, but he's already visited and is very familiar with it. We were planning on St. Olaf for spring break first week of April, probably Lawrence (he's having trouble getting in touch with the horn teacher there), and it should be pretty easy to add Grinnell in there, too (it only adds an hour to the drive). And then if there are schools in the northeast that he gets into and wants to see, we can do one more trip later in April I think. Things are really rounded out now: big state school where he likes the music school a lot and would be close to home, LAC also with great music, another LAC with a conservatory, and then a great LAC if he decides he doesn't want a performance major after all (FA is best at Grinnell of the current options, but their idea of no loans needed is not as generous as Vanderbilt's sadly). Up next: at least a couple more this weekend...he should officially hear from UGA for music this weekend, and I hope also about music scholarships. Fingers crossed!

DS is in at Grinnell! Waitlisted at Macalester the other day, so this is very nice to hear 🙂

DS waitlisted at Macalester (after a deferral in EA). I guess they had already guessed they couldn't count on big donations from us or his older brother 😂. He's fine and likely won't accept the waitlist spot. I'm not worried about this one so much as if there are another 10 of them coming in the next couple of weeks. Settling in for a bumpy ride. Because second guessing is what I do at this point, I wonder if his application screams "actually, I want a music school!" a little too much. But...he kind of does, so... grad school DS got into the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. With a very low stipend, and they didn't even offer to pay full expenses for a visit, so...maybe not that one. He did the Vanderbilt visit and really liked it, but still waiting on an official offer (he was told by current students there that last year everyone who was invited to visit got an offer).

Still waiting on a whole bunch here; we thought Grinnell might come out last night, based on years past, but it didn't. Right now he says he doesn't really care, though, and is likely to end up at one he's already been accepted to. So I'm mostly working on planning a spring break trip in early April to those places at the moment.

DS in at Lawrence University (accepted to the conservatory). Very nice merit aid, but we'll have to see the full FA to know if it's a contender.

I looked up the response you got and they were just cutting and pasting from the website; it's certainly possible that it was written years ago and no one remembers who wrote it or why anymore (and they don't deal with homeschoolers enough to bother updating/clarifying/learning more about why they're wrong). I'd probably stop going back and forth with them, let my kid apply if they wanted, and see what happened. Particularly if this is just one of several schools she's interested in and not somehow uniquely wonderful. FWIW, my oldest kid ignored homeschool "requirements" at at least one college (in that case they wanted 3 subject tests from homeschoolers, and he only had 2) and was accepted anyway.

The departmental visit (as opposed to the big public tour) definitely turned DS around on our state flagship--hope the visit goes well! Still in a holding pattern here waiting on March decisions. I had some hopes that Lawrence would come out by the end of the month, but I checked back on old CC threads, and it looks like it was March 10 last year. My nephew just got a bunch of decisions last week (completely different list than DS), so now I'm feeling antsy. We're planning on college visits first week of April (DH's spring break, so the 11 year old and the dogs will stay home with him), but we don't know where yet! Oh--grad school applying DS has been told he's on the "preliminary short list" at Vanderbilt, and they're paying for him to go visit this week. So that's exciting! His brother's at Vanderbilt, so having two there would be nice/convenient for ME, at any rate. Senior DS is going to go up and visit at the same time, so that will be fun for the three of them.

This kid will be my only one at home next year, which will be very weird! Language Arts: I think I'm ready to pull the trigger on Hearth & Story. I've been fooled before by things that look pretty but turn out to be not that great, but I realized the author is the one who does History Quest, which we've been enjoying. Samples look great. Only issue is that the completed level is listed as 5th grade, but I think it should work fine for 6th grade as well (right now we're piecing things together with Grammar for the WTM, WWS, Caesar's English, and books + Arrow, but if I can streamline things that would be nice!) History: History Quest US History, and I think I'm going to add in some Canadian history and both US and Canadian geography. I like Canada, and we're about to spend our third summer over the past few years in Canada. And I'll probably stretch it over 2 years and add in a good bit to the US history, too. Science: Science Mom Chemistry/Biology assuming we finish Chemistry when we plan to (we'll actually start it this spring, I think; we're almost finished with Earth Science) Math: AOPS Pre-algebra (he's almost finished with Beast Academy 5) Other: he takes a small group Spanish class, which will likely continue. Piano and trumpet lessons. Band or orchestra. Whatever looks interesting at homeschool co-op. I'm trying to get my husband to run a math olympiad group. book club at the library. probably baseball. math circle at a local university.

For the places where he hasn't heard anything? not yet...he has one acceptance and one...maybe acceptance? they've invited him to visit and told him he's on the "preliminary short list" ...so he might not be worried about the others. The official waitlist specifically told him that they didn't need any more information from him, so they don't seem to want additional contact. I would guess he'll contact any he's still interested in but hasn't heard from in a couple of weeks to see what the status is. FYI if she does a results search on Grad Cafe, she can see what people have heard this year and when people got off the waitlist in years past at the schools (if she's someone who wants all that kind of info as opposed to someone who it would just make more anxious).

DS is on one waitlist officially (math phd) and a couple of other places where we know they've sent out some acceptances and some rejections, and he didn't get either, so he assumes he's essentially waitlisted. My understanding is that these waitlists move a lot more than undergrad ones, because they're dealing with such small numbers.