(did you see the link I posted to the myocarditis booster numbers from Israel? I edited to add it, so it wasn't there at first)

I haven't heard that that's up for discussion at the moment....it's only 18 and up right now; I'm hoping there will be more information/guidance by the time my 15 year old (also a wind player. Didn't seem like such a dangerous hobby back when they started!) is 6 months out in a couple of months (Israel is already boosting everyone 12 and over, it appears...so there'll be more and more data at least)

Yes. He has a higher exposure level than I'm comfortable with if his immunity starts waning. He's planning to major in clarinet performance next year, so he plays in multiple indoor music ensembles right now. So yes, I'm more worried about the myocarditis risk or damage to his lungs from actual covid than I am about the tiny risk from the booster, particularly given how likely he is to be exposed. ETA: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-reports-very-few-myocarditis-cases-after-pfizer-boosters-2021-10-01/

Ugh. Not thrilled about Moderna news. My 20 year old had Moderna back in April and will be in Budapest from January to May. I REALLY want him to get a booster before he heads out of the country and won't be back until more than a year post second dose. We may have to go the immunocompromised route if they don't move things along. I just scheduled by 18 year old for a pfizer booster at CVS and didn't even need to check a box about his eligibility, FWIW.

My understanding is...generally speaking, no. There may be some schools that give out financial aid as they send out acceptances and "run out" at some point...but that's not true for most schools and it's not true of the federal aid that the FAFSA actually qualifies you for (my oldest applied to a lot of schools, and it didn't make a difference at any of those if he got his FAFSA done super early)

I'm in a facebook group for AP lit teachers. We do AP lit at home, so I'm there for ideas about lesson plans and how to teach the FRQs and all that, but I've been absolutely horrified by the accounts of what's going on in public schools in conservative states right now (it was helpful to remember that group when I was having some self-doubts during the recent "does anyone else regret homeschooling" thread). So some example of how this bizarre CRT mania is "actually being implemented in the classroom": a teacher in Tennessee who is now afraid to teach ANY works by Black writers. Teacher after teacher having to change booklists or offer alternate books to students because some random parent complained about a book of very well established literary merit. Teachers having to get every text they assign approved by the administration to make sure it's not going to be controversial in any way I wonder how these kids will fare when they get to college and their parents can no longer protect them from the horrors of grappling with complex ideas.

I got really excited about CIM for about a day recently, because their NPC was surprisingly encouraging for a stand alone conservatory. But DS's clarinet teacher shot it down and told him it was probably out of reach. As a control freak, I hate having no idea how to gauge for myself where he's got a shot and where he doesn't. I have no idea if we're being too cautious or too ambitious with his list (I'm fairly sure we at least have some likely admits that he'd be happy with, and I guess that's the main thing).

Do you have an idea why it came out higher? I know some people run into problems with things like rollovers and get incorrect results.

Like (and this is wandering even further off topic) I'm on a paying for college group on Facebook, and people are constantly dismissing needs-met schools as "extremely hard to get into." And they ARE, but there's a huge difference between some of those schools, where if you have great stats and at least decent ECs you have a very good chance of being accepted and the top 10 type schools that really are a crapshoot for the vast majority of kids no matter how good their stats are. I hate to see smart kids who need a lot of financial aid turned off of those schools that might be attainable because people lump all needs met schools together with Harvard and MIT.

It's not actually easy for the vast majority of kids to max it out, though (the 99th percentile on the SAT starts at 1520)...but there are enough kids in that top 1% to easily fill MIT's freshman class every year. That's why I think distinguishing between a very good, selective college and those very few extremely selective colleges is so important. Anywhere outside of the top 10 or 20 ranked colleges, it's still possible to distinguish yourself as an applicant with truly excellent grades and test scores (ETA: and a rigorous course schedule). That's just not true for that tiny handful of schools at the top of the heap.

it's true. that's why I wonder how much test optional policies will actually change who's admitted, because admissions committees have always been able/willing to look at more than test scores. There is some evidence (albeit mixed) that test optional policies increase diversity (without compromising graduation rates), largely, it seems, because applications from underrepresented minority groups increase the most when a school goes test optional. I.e. you can't find those kids who are strong students but not necessarily great testers if they don't apply.

oh, I don't doubt that at all. But speaking strictly about college admissions, holistic admissions benefits girls for STEM schools and boys for most other schools. And it's not so much an altruistic desire to help women in STEM; it's because most students want a campus with a fairly even gender balance.

I just checked MIT's common data set from 2018/19 (which is just what popped up when I googled, but I'd be surprised if it's changed much): 10.6% of female applicants accepted compared to 4.9% of male. (As I said above, the advantage goes in the opposite direction at most liberal arts schools)

I would guess that it's an advantage to be a girl applying to strong STEM schools these days in the same way it's an advantage to be a boy applying...pretty much everywhere else. Gender balance is one thing schools try to accomplish with holistic admissions (if we're talking about a job search, that's something else entirely). The thing about test scores at highly selective colleges is that SO MANY kids max them out that they really just have to look at other things. MIT could just take everyone with a perfect SAT score who applies, have a lottery to see which of them get in, and not admit anyone with a 1590 no matter what else they have going for them, and fill their school almost entirely with wealthy kids whose parents spent a lot of money on SAT tutors. Which is not to say holistic admissions as its practiced doesn't often/usually favor the most privileged kids as well--the ones who aren't going to get top scores no matter what, but who are legacies or whose parents could pay for private lacrosse coaching or a bassoon. College admissions is enormously problematic in all sorts of ways. In theory I love our messed up American system of a zillion little liberal arts colleges, but in reality I also recognize that's it's super messed up in many ways, and that my kid/s are/will benefit from it despite not having a ton of money only because they have a lot of other advantages (educated parents who can help them navigate for one thing) that most kids don't have.

Oh, he'd have a much better shot at Oberlin at the college than the con, I'm fairly certain. The only reason I can even handle thinking too much about admissions stuff this year is because none of it really applies to my current senior 😉 . Conservatory and college admission are completely separate at Oberlin (I don't think it was that way as recently as a few years ago, but it is now), so if the Con wants him he's in. But academically he'd be very competitive at Oberlin anyway; he's actually my kid who would probably do best with admissions at selective schools because he has good stats AND such a strong extracurricular profile because of music stuff. But he decided to torture me by applying to a bunch of music schools that take 3 or 4 clarinet players a year instead.

Recruited athletes, legacies, and full pay kids, mostly.

Right, but as the conversation meandered it seemed to be about whether applying test optional hurts one's chances in general at "selective" colleges, and it's such a different conversation at Cornell than at Oberlin or wherever, even though both schools are certainly selective. The evidence I've seen so far is that test optional applicants do have a lower chance of admission at highly selective schools (Vanderbilt was the exception Selingo noted, interestingly). But I've only seen numbers from highly selective schools; I'd be interested in seeing if the same is true at the next tier down--those schools that admit more like 25-35%.

I think you need to break it down way more than that, though--IME there's a huge difference between a school that accepts 10% of applicants and a school that accepts 30%, even though both are much more selective than the vast majority of schools. Those 10% schools really get to make their classes look however they want them to look, which I think makes admission in general much, much harder to predict.

I'm guessing the distinction between "selective" and "highly selective" is pretty important when it comes to test optional policies. I also think there's a difference between schools that genuinely de-emphasize test scores and those who have been pushed to try going test optional by circumstance.

so annoying! glad they finally made it!

It will be interesting to see how the big increase in test optional admissions affects things going forward. Pre-pandemic evidence was that going test optional tended to increase a school's diversity without a decline in graduation rates. I'm reading Jeffrey Selingo's Who Gets In and Why right now (I'm pretty addicted to behind the scenes in college admissions types of books), and he has a section in the intro about how test-optional policies affected things last year (after the bulk of the book was written). He reported that the admission rate was much higher at most of the schools he talked to for students who reported test scores than for students who applied test optional (at Emory, for example, it was 17% vs 8.6%). The people at admissions offices say that this is because the applicants submitting test scores tend to be stronger overall; i.e. they're not getting admitted at higher rates because they're submitting test scores. But, then again, what else would they say? "Sure, we say you can go test optional, but we don't really mean it, and you're way less likely to be admitted if you do"? Either way, I think the takeaway is the same: if you have strong test scores you should submit them; if you don't then you still have a shot at very selective colleges if the rest of your application is stellar. But I'm not sure how different that is now than in pre-test optional days. I think admissions committees (at least at schools with holistic admissions) were always willing to overlook lower test scores if a student had a strong application overall and, particularly, something else that the school was looking for to shape their class.

It is from the Cornell School of Engineering admission FAQ. The original link doesn't go to Cornell's actual site, but I did some sleuthing and found it. One other thing I'd say is that our experience with my oldest is that when schools seem to have particularly onerous requirements for homeschoolers, there may be more flexibility than they let on. Emory said it required 3 subject tests for homeschoolers, but my son only had 2 and applied anyway; he was waitlisted and then eventually offered a spot off the waitlist at their Oxford campus. And University of Georgia wants to see either a test score or a grade on an accredited transcript for every required core class, AND I've been told by admissions that this means the student should complete all these classes by junior year before they apply. This is ridiculous and approaching impossible (and keeps a whole lot of homeschoolers from applying, which is why I think list likes this are SUPPOSED to seem overwhelming and discouraging), but my son was accepted (and auto admitted to the honors program) even though biology was still in progress senior year. So, yeah, my main issue is with the tone, as I read it. But it's possible that the people over at the engineering school are not as careful about how their tone is perceived as humanties-focused me wants them to be 😉

I think this is going to be hard for a lot of kids this year, even ones who weren't homeschooled since so much was online last year. We're going back and forth about the same kind of thing; DS has one letter from an online teacher from last year (and it was a music theory class, so not a core subject), but he's not sure who to ask for the second one. He could go with a teacher from an in-person class this year, who's only known him for a couple of months, or with his piano teacher, who's not from an academic subject, but who's known him for years. Some schools are more flexible about the recommenders for homeschool applicants; I know that Oberlin's page on homeschool admissions talks about how your LOR can come from coaches, extracurricular advisors, etc. So, yeah, I don't know either! I think what DS will do, assuming his current teacher agrees to write one for him, is to submit that as his second letter but also ask his piano teacher for one that he'll submit as the optional 3rd letter where allowed.

it's the titles/topics from every paper written for 4 years that seems like overkill to me. That said, if I had a kid who wanted to apply to Cornell engineering, I'd go back and add more detail re: number and types of papers written to my course descriptions, but they probably wouldn't get the title of every paper.

oops, never mind--still there: https://www.engineering.cornell.edu/admissions/undergraduate-admissions/first-year-applicants#home It looks like it's a school of engineering specific list. I agree that a lot of that information is in most course descriptions, but a list of every paper you've ever written is pretty excessive, IMO (and what good does it do if they don't ask to actually see any of the papers?)