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)?

ah, gotcha! I thought I might have missed something 🙂 We might toss in a couple of other visits for my 10th grader while we're road tripping, too (maybe Beloit if we end up in Wisconsin to see Lawrence)

ah, that is too bad! are you going to one of the admitted students days?

Well, we're very slowly making spring break plans as new information emerges. We decided to visit Oberlin ANYWAY in order to show what a resilient go getter my kid is 😄. Also because Baldwin Wallace is right in the same area so we can do a return visit there. And also because the waitlist letter really does make it sound like he has a shot still ("we will do our best to help find you a place in the class.") Oberlin's spring break is the same week as DH's this year, so the kids and I will leave a few days early to get there the week before, and then DH will fly up to meet us. We have a plane ticket for him and tickets to a concert at BW where the students perform a different Beatles album live every spring. This year it's "Help!" which is kind of too bad. But it could be worse! Now for hotels and to book a tour of Oberlin College for my 10th grader. Multi-tasking!

I hear such universally great things about Clark! I have a friend whose daughter is going there next year (and she graduated from there).

waitlisted at Oberlin. I gather that a music waitlist comes with more hope than most waitlists, but it's still tough.

Sorry it was such a rough night--it really is brutal out there these days 😞

fingers crossed for good news! we're in a similar situation--3 left, all reaches, all should be out in the next few days.

No, Georgia Tech's page about homeschooler admissions is much more in line with most other schools (which is to say fairly vague, with no real homeschool specific requirements other than stuff like course descriptions). Which is kind of funny because I remember the conventional wisdom when my oldest kids were little was that GT was very picky about lab sciences for homeschoolers. ETA: and I agree that it's easiest to just skip schools with particularly picky homeschool requirements in general, but I'm more concerned about my state flagship (particularly in a school with lottery-funded tuition; state schools in GA are MUCH more affordable than OOS for families that don't qualify for need based aid, with very few exceptions that I can think of). ETA again: for students who qualify for the lottery funded grants, that is, which is certainly any student who can get into UGA or Tech)

Interesting! That's definitely a lot less onerous than how I was interpreting it (though still slightly obnoxious. But I am somewhat sympathetic to the difficulties giant, selective universities face in evaluating homeschoolers). They also accept the SAT or ACT for English and math, so that's covered right away by the time you apply. I always interpreted "completion of all CPC subject areas" to mean everything on the University System of Georgia's freshman admission requirements: https://www.usg.edu/student_affairs/assets/student_affairs/documents/Staying_on_Course.pdf (partially because that's what comes up when I search "CPC subject areas") It's annoying that when I wrote to an admission counselor about my specific example (biology done at home in 9th grade, plan to take subject test thwarted when it was too late to change course), she didn't reassure me that he could take ANY science later in a way that fulfilled the requirement, but just repeated: So I can definitely see how it can be interpreted the way it was explained to you, but it would have been nice if she'd clarified given my very specific question about biology! (Ari got in, too, but the only thing he was missing according to my narrower interpretation was biology, which was in progress senior year (what is it about biology and my family?!) Though I do remember freaking out a bit about trying to get his chemistry class transcript to them from the accredited but not very organized place where he took it--so knowing this back then would have saved me some stress (since he also had DE physics)!