Lawrence: He had a full, exhausting admitted student day on Monday--two classes, a couple of info sessions, a tour, sitting in on a wind symphony rehearsal. The rest of us didn't have a whole lot to do--DH and I went to the opening welcome thing, which was nicely done. Then we all did the tour--nice campus, close to a fun downtown area, right on the river--but nothing really stood out from all the other LACs we've seen except how dominant the conservatory is (I think they said that 25% of the students are in the con (by which I gather they mean either majoring or double majoring). I think just looking at the college, Lawrence would be the frontrunner (not counting waitlists). But then he had a clarinet lesson the next morning. He liked the clarinet prof a lot...and he told him that he's retiring at the end of next year. Which was not a shock; we knew that he's at that age and has had some health issues...but that probably knocks Lawrence out of the running--the clarinet teacher is just too important to have that much uncertainty. DS grudgingly agrees with me...but he doesn't seem to want to eliminate ANY of his choices...which isn't really sustainable. Lawrence would also be the most expensive, and it's the farthest away. Now we leave on Tuesday to go see Blair/Vanderbilt and then one more trip to Columbus State the week after. This month is exhausting! But he really needs to see Vanderbilt in case he comes off the waitlist...he just doesn't have enough info to make a decision on it right now (but definitely doesn't want to turn down Vanderbilt due to a lack of information if it comes to that). And I do think it probably can't hurt (except for my bank account) to make a visit and show that he's really interested if they go the waitlist (which they say is unranked, so perhaps still room to make a good impression and up his chances). And he hasn't sat in on classes at Columbus State yet, and he really wants to do that (I kind of feel like he's been there 3 times already over the past few years and has plenty of information, but it's not MY giant, life-altering decision.

There's really nothing to lose (other than 9 hours) by taking the exams at this point, since he'll only report the scores if they're good. If he's reporting the scores, you can put "name of course w/ AP exam" on the transcript and, IME, colleges will treat that the same as having an AP course on the transcript. If he feels like it's too much, what about picking one or two of them to prep for and forgetting about the other/s?

I don't know which I prefer at this point! The process was a lot more agonizing for my non-music kid applying to mostly very selective schools, but I think that's more about his personality...in the end he was able to apply to enough schools that he had lots of great choices even though there was a lot of rejection (well, mostly near-rejection in the form of waitlists) along the way. With this kid, I feel like if he could have auditioned at 16 schools, some of the reaches would have gone his way, but...that just wasn't possible (and there aren't a zillion conservatories that have more similarities than differences like there are with SLACs). There seem to be kids who are very clearly top of the pecking order musically who get in everywhere (or, like, everywhere except Curtis), but then for MY kid, who is, apparently, the next tier down, the highly selective music schools feel like crapshoot territory all over again, like top 20 LACs for kids who have great stats but don't necessarily stand out from all the other kids with great stats. And it's a lot easier to reassure yourself that it doesn't really matter much where your kid goes to college when they aren't aspiring to something like a career in classical music performance, which is already incredibly difficult to break into and where most of the people who manage to do it DID go to one of a handful of top conservatories.

Oberlin: he sat in on a class and met with the clarinet professor. I think he's done all he can do now and we'll see what happens. He told him that 56 people auditioned (for, we figure, 4 or 5 slots) and that his audition was "right up there." On one hand, doing the music school thing is so straightforward compared to holistic college apps: either your audition is good enough or it's not. On the other hand, even though there's a lot less second guessing about what exactly went wrong or which of a million things you might have done differently, it's still frustrating to be SO CLOSE and know it. Baldwin Wallace: they sent him a fully scheduled day with a clarinet lesson, two classes, lunch with current students, a tour, a chat with admissions...and then he and his brother went back in the evening for a wind ensemble concert. He had a good time and is feeling pro BW at the moment, but says it may well be because he just went there. It will be interesting to see what he thinks of Lawrence...I think at the moment it's pretty much a toss up between BW and Columbus State (with, of course, wait lists lurking waiting to complicate things more).

That's where my 16 year old is. We toured UGA a couple of weeks ago because we were in town for something else, and he spent his time telling the tour guide that he was most likely going to be applying to small liberal arts colleges. She was like, "well, I admire your honesty."

We're in Ohio for college visits! Oberlin tomorrow and then Baldwin Wallace Friday before heading to Wisconsin for Lawrence on Monday. He's scheduled to sit in on 5 classes at 3 colleges between now and Monday, plus have 2 clarinet lessons and watch assorted rehearsals and performances. He's also supposed to hear tomorrow about scholarships at Columbus State, his lone in-state option. The clarinet prof e-mailed to tell him and make sure he's still interested...I remember feeling very awkward about that part last time around, where some schools wanted to check in CONSTANTLY to try to gauge where they are on your list. Fortunately the answer this time was pretty straightforward...it's one of his current top two. Multi-tasking by doing a tour at Oberlin tomorrow with my 10th grader and taking him to see College of Wooster while Milo's at BW all day Friday. And the 9 year old is getting a peek into his distant future, too. Sorry, kid!

Having just shepherded a kid through music school auditions, I can say that those conversations absolutely take place about equity and, in particular, classical music. Probably not as much as they should, but people talk quite a bit about the role wealth plays in getting a kid to the level needed for conservatory admissions. If anything, it's more disturbing than the same conversations about academic college admissions. Looking at the roster of what kids made honor band in our very diverse district this year was eye opening. Nearly every single kid came from the wealthier northern half of the county...where the music programs start early and have money flowing in and where parents can afford private lessons. I mean, I take your point...people looking on the from the outside perhaps see music auditions as pure meritocracy and are fine with it. But when you look closer, just like with standardized tests (or with nearly ANY metric highly selective schools use in deciding whom to admit), wealth plays a HUGE role in which kids are "talented" enough to make it at the top levels of music. ETA: I don't mean quite as much cynicism as putting talented in quotation marks implies. My own music kid IS talented, but I have no illusions that he'd be where he is now without us throwing a whole lot of money at private lessons, orchestra fees, instruments, etc. We're not at all rich, but we're fortunate enough that we have the freedom to prioritize and sacrifice other things so we can do that.

I do appreciate schools that prioritize stuff like faculty salaries and financial aid over fancy buildings and rock climbing walls. But seems like MIT could afford to do both!

Maybe (U of Chicago has lower median income and does consider legacy status). But MIT has a $27 billion endowment (quick googling tells me that's the 4th highest per student in the US), so I'm not sure they can use that as an excuse too much 😉

I guess what I'm getting at is that a school like Bowdoin that's test optional, need blind, and meets demonstrated need with no loans still doesn't have any problem filling its classes mostly with wealthy, full pay kids. Clearly there are plenty of ways to make sure you get all the full pay kids you want while still calling yourself need blind. Likewise, a school like MIT (also need blind, also meets need, not test optional other than during covid) manages to admit many more lower and middle income kids than Bowdoin without any drop in prestige. I just don't see test optional vs. not as even close to the biggest issue when it comes to equity. ETA: my hunch is that the reason it's so hard to tell whether going test optional helps or hurts when it comes to less wealthy kids is that admissions offices can use it to make things go either way, depending on their priorities.

Incidentally, this is from 2013, it looks like, but MIT had the second lowest median parent income among 12 "Ivy League and selected elite" schools and the lowest percentage of students from the top 1%: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/university-of-chicago Median income was $137,400 at MIT vs. $195,900 at (test optional for 50 years) Bowdoin.

Yeah, I really don't know how much it matters. I don't know of any selective colleges that actually set firm cutoffs for test scores (as opposed to less selective public schools), so they've always been free to accept those kids who don't test well but have otherwise extraordinary applications. Going test optional means they can do it without bringing down the SAT/ACT averages they report, since those students are likely to apply without test scores. In Jeffrey Selingo's book that came out last year, every school he looked at except Vanderbilt, if I remember right, reported a much lower acceptance rate for students who applied test optional. I'm just not sure schools are really, for the most part, accepting different students because they're going test optional. It IS encouraging kids to apply to way more colleges than before, it seems, which changes the admissions landscape in a lot of ways. There are plenty of selective colleges with a long traditions of being test optional, and it seems to work well for them without affecting student preparedness, graduation rates, etc...I imagine it takes time for an admissions office to find its footing with test optional admissions, though, and all the newly test optional schools kind of got tossed in the deep end.

Great news! And so nice to have a decision 🙂

And ANOTHER waitlist at Vandy/Blair. This one’s a little complicated—it’s PROBABLY one of his top choices, but he hasn’t visited and his short virtual lesson with the clarinet prof was plagued with tech issues, so he didn’t get a good feel for how they’d work together. So I guess we need to get up there and see it.

Got the financial aid package from Baldwin Wallace, and it’s surprisingly great—like a little better than what his brother gets at Macalester, even though BW isn’t a need met school. The net price calculator really undersold it. So that’s good news. All of his acceptances are doable for us, so he won’t need to factor that in when he decides.

That's sort of where we were this year. I do feel like there was some middle tier of music school that we missed (like I can think of some that were probably it, but the financial aid didn't work--mostly big OOS universities with better overall music schools than our in state options; those also weren't the kind of schools he wanted--he wanted small)...but there are also a lot of schools he didn't apply to because every time we asked "would you pick it over Columbus State?" and if the answer was no there wasn't much reason to apply.

Onward! We're still waiting on Blair/Vanderbilt, but I know they sent out early acceptances earlier in the week to a bunch of music people (and not my kid), so I'm going to proceed as if that's a no and be pleasantly surprised if it's not. To that end, I finished booking our spring break/college visit trip last night, and we're staying in Chicago for a few days (for fun!) after we see Lawrence (instead of holding that space open for a possible Nashville stop). He has good choices, and he's handling it all super well, but I have to admit I'm kind of bummed at the moment. He's just done so well for a kid who'd never held a clarinet in his life 4 years ago...I feel like if he had one more year to improve he'd have so many more options (and also like the financial aid would likely be better at Oberlin or Vanderbilt or probably Bard). But he doesn't want another year; he wants to go to college and play clarinet all day every day somewhere, so now we figure out where best to do that.

A no from Bard Conservatory 😞 And from the college, interestingly, even though he should have gotten in to it no problem just based on its acceptance rate and his academics. I imagine it was easy to tell from his app that he had no intention of going to the college if he didn't get in to the conservatory.

FWIW, I checked with admissions at a university my kid was applying to that recalculates GPAs, weighting AP classes, and they told me that they would re-weight classes on a transcript that said "with AP exam" the same as AP classes. That said, it's really easy to adopt a syllabus and get a course approved, so I don't know of any reason not to do that if you're teaching one at home.

I haven't looked at the test myself, but my kid who just took it says it was ALL vocab--no verbs beyond present tense at all. So it really does seem designed to just be very picky and keep most people out of higher level classes until they've taken the lower ones at that school. I think he has the option to take it again, but I really don't mind him doing something that's a lot of review for his first foray into college level Spanish.

I think that must be the case. My oldest kid had been reading short novels in Spanish and writing pretty long papers for a couple of years with his tutor and still got that second semester placement. If that's the case then I appreciate that they don't want people in over their heads (although the same university would let my 10th grader place into pre-calc based on his math SAT score...the SAT he took months before he'd even started algebra 2. We will not be taking them up on the offer).

yes--that's my question, too--I think you phrased it better 🙂 FWIW, I've done this with two kids already, and I absolutely put all their Spanish done in high school pre DE on the transcripts. With my oldest I encouraged him to finish through 4th semester DE just so there was no question that he officially had 4 full credits. With my next kid he did 2 semesters DE, starting with 1002, so Spanish 1, 2 and then 1002 and 2001 (or whatever they call it--basically 4 credits of Spanish, but through a third semester college course)...I wasn't as worried about it with him because he's going for music performance and his academic stuff takes second place to his audition for admission purposes. So it's really my 10th grader that I'm wondering how I should advise. He's good with languages and could easily just do 3 semesters of DE Spanish, but I don't know if it's all helpful or necessary or if his time would be better spent somewhere else. Not that knowing more Spanish would ever be a BAD thing. But there are only so many semesters of high school.

I'm saying that when they apply to colleges senior year after doing DE Spanish, those colleges will see on their transcripts that they took--in my 10th grader's case--Spanish 1 and 2 in middle school, Spanish 3 in 10th grade, and then took Spanish 1002 junior year DE (which is supposed to be the equivalent of Spanish 2). So is a college that wants 4 years of a foreign language going to "count" the Spanish done before DE if the student doesn't get to 4th semester college level language classes? I mean when they're evaluating how rigorous the high school course schedule was for admission, putting aside concerns about placement into college classes. ETA: yes, this was all at the same DE university

I'm thinking more of just how they look at it for admissions purposes at selective colleges than for placement. Though that's another thing to think about. My oldest had three semesters DE and didn't have to take any language at his college; I know at at least one college he's considering my current senior will be 2 credit hours short because he just took 2 semesters.

I've never asked this before, because it's always felt like a very nit picky sort of question, yet I've always wondered, so I'm finally going to ask and see if anyone knows. Situation: all of my kids so far have started Spanish at home somehow or other (tutor or an online class) and then moved to DE in 11th grade. We've yet to crack the code of how to place any higher than second semester Spanish on the university's placement exam. My kid who had YEARS of private tutoring placed into second semester. My kid who had Spanish 1 and 2 at GA virtual school placed into second semester. My kid who did the exact same GA virtual school classes and now has a 100 average in WTM Academy Spanish 3 ALSO placed into 2nd semester. He tells me the placement test was pretty much all vocab; no verb tenses at all. I think they use a standardized curriculum for all the Spanish classes, so my guess is that the placement test is very tailored to that; they want to be able to assume everyone knows all the material covered in their Spanish 1, 2, etc. This is all fine; so far they've all had a very easy time with DE Spanish but also good experiences; I don't want them in over their heads because I know college language classes can move really fast. But my question is...if a college recommends a certain number of credits of a foreign language in high school, do they care that my kids appear to be "starting over" at Spanish 2 again when they move to DE classes? Or is it understood that college classes are a different beast? Like if they want to apply to colleges that recommend 4 years of a foreign language in high school, is there any value in completing through a 4th semester college class (which would mean taking 3 semesters DE in addition to 3 years previously in my 10th grader's case, since he took 1 and 2 in middle school). Or does it make it more sense to cut it off after 4 credits and use the extra time for other DE classes (assuming he has more interest in those than in continuing Spanish)?