My son took the SAT in 9th and again in 11th (spring both times) and his score went up over 200 points, with fairly minor prep (Khan academy a few minutes a day for a few months, with 2 or 3 full length practice tests). But you're talking about a score increase of twice that, which sounds really difficult. Some schools do ask to see all scores; when I realized that I had some regrets about having him take it so early....but I assume all the schools are able to look at the dates and see the reason for the big score increase.

Eleven apps down here. I feel like he could really be done now--he has a good mix of safeties and matches and reaches and all that--but he insists he wants to keep going. I think he's panicky that he won't get into any of the more selective places and that he'll have a miserable March because of it. I think that's pretty unlikely, but I can't guarantee it or anything, so if he wants to do a couple more that's fine. Assuming I can survive all the moaning about essay writing. He applied to Wesleyan last night specifically because they don't have any supplementals (I do think it'd be a good school for him, but we weren't able to visit, so we only have reputation and Lin-Manuel Miranda to go on).

University of Georgia was our only one that didn't take common app; it was either coalition or their own app. He used theirs, and it was a pain because they used the standard essay prompts (plus one more of their own) so that he could use his common app one, except with a much lower word limit so that he had to heavily edit it. And they don't even read the essays for the majority of early action apps (just people who are borderline between being admitted or deferred and not), so it was a little frustrating to put all that extra work into essays that would likely never be read.

We visited Knox College in Galesburg, IL as part of the same trip last week where we saw Grinnell. DS really loved Grinnell and went into the Knox visit already kind of down on it because of some problems with e-mail communication leading up to the visit. So I was surprised when he really loved Knox, too! And pleased, since it's much easier to get into than Grinnell. So Knox is a small (about 1500 students) LAC in a medium sized town in northern Illinois--maybe an hour or so outside of Peoria. I think we first came across it on Colleges that Change Lives and liked the looks of it, and then ran the NPC and found it appears to have pretty good need and merit based aid, so it went on the list. Campus is very pretty with a lot of nice older buildings and also a shiny new arts building. Because of the aforementioned e-mail communication problems, we had no idea what our schedule was for the day when we turned up at the admissions building in the morning. It was finals week (Knox has trimesters, so they're out from Thanksgiving until after New Year's--which would actually be really nice since we're so far away: single plane ticket covers Thanksgiving and Christmas!), so he couldn't have done an overnight visit and he couldn't sit in on a class. But they had a schedule all printed out when we got there, and they kept us very busy. He had a two hour math test first thing, which is how they decide who gets a math scholarship that they give out every year. Then we had lunch with a student in the dining hall, then an info session (we were the only ones there that day, so that and the tour were just us), then a tour (with the same student from lunch), then DS met with a math professor, then an interview (really just a very short informal conversation--I think she knew that DS was worn out by then and that we had a long drive ahead of us). Few things that stood out: *They're very into Abraham Lincoln at Knox. The college was the site of one of the Lincoln Douglas debates (and it was founded by abolitionists). There are a lot of museum-type exhibits about the debates and about Lincoln, and you can sit in a chair that Lincoln sat in. They were very excited to learn that DS has a brother named after Abe Lincoln 🙂 . *They have an interesting set up with the freshmen dorms: they're clusters of 8 double rooms around a shared common room and, if I understood correctly, the same people who share this space are all in the same section of the required first year class together. I'm very nervous that DS will want to hole up in his room and do nothing but study and stare at his phone in college, so I appreciate the ones that make and effort at enforced bonding for the first years! *Every three years they offer something called rep term, where all you do for the term is theater--putting on two productions with the same group of something like 40 students. They emphasized that it's not just for theater majors. DS likely won't major or minor in theater, but he does act, and I hope he keeps it up in college, so I could definitely see him in something like that. *They have Greek life, which is a drawback for DS, but it's something like 25% who join, and it sounds like it's easy to avoid if that's your inclination. Overall it seemed like a good place for quirky, academically minded kids. Honestly, I'm still not entirely sure exactly why DS liked it so much (I really thought he was just sold on Grinnell and nothing else would measure up)....and he can't really explain it, either. I think he just got a good feeling from it and liked everyone he came in contact with. I mean, I liked it a lot, too, but I wouldn't have necessarily guessed that it would stand out from the pack as much as it did.

Thanks! He thinks he wants somewhere smaller and out of state, so we'll see....but we're very glad to know he has at least one good option out there! (I'm an alum, too 🙂 )

Here now! I'm waiting for DS to finish the class he's sitting in on, and then he has an interview, so I've got a lot of time to kill...we haven't talked a whole lot yet, but I think he really likes it. His overnight host didn't seem to do anything particularly interesting with him--he says they hung out in his room, talked about Grinnell with him and his friend across the hall, then he needed to study while DS....hung out his phone? I dunno. It sounded to me like he wasn't the greatest host, but DS seemed happy enough with how it went. His host is a physics major (DS's top two potential majors right now are math and physics) and was homeschooled until high school, so seems like they probably did their best to pair him up with someone who was a good match. He got to visit with someone's pet rabbit in the dorm, and I'm suddenly very excited that he might be able to bring a pet (not dogs or cats, but most rodents, reptiles, etc are allowed) to school. Graduation present bunny! We did the tour and information session this morning and got to see the jungle gyms in the library--one of the things that stood out to both us when we did a virtual tour awhile back. They're just as appealing in person. Right now he's at a Calc II class. Grinnell's math department is sort of quirky in that they only offer 2 semesters of calculus....so I gather that calc II includes multivariable calc? at any rate, as far as we can tell, it's where he'd start with math here since he took BC calc last year... so it will be interesting to hear what he thinks of it and whether he feels prepared and all that. They seem to have a good sized math department for a school this size and we were told math is a popular major. We ate lunch in the cafeteria; other places he's eaten are Hendrix, Bowdoin, and Kennesaw State U (where he does dual enrollment), all of which happen to have really highly ranked dining....this one did not impress him as much, but he liked it well enough. I'm kind of worried about weather, since he hasn't lived anywhere especially cold since he was about 20 months old and since the overwhelming majority of places he's applying are in cold climates....high today is 34, and he says it's not bad at all. Of course, it gets a lot colder (and windier). But I think he can adjust.

Yep--they notified all the early action apps (admit, deny, or defer to regular decision) on Friday. DS doesn't have any rolling decision schools, but he did 3 early action, which should make the wait until March for the others a little less stressful!

It's nuts! It's where I went 25 years ago, and....things have changed just a little bit since then!

We're visiting Grinnell Monday :). Thanks for the report!

Just found out DS got into the University of Georgia. First one he's heard back from, so very exciting! He was auto admitted to the honors program, and he'll get a Zell Miller scholarship to cover full tuition (but pretty much everyone who gets into UGA from Georgia gets one of those)

DS has gone back and forth a million times about Swarthmore--I think he finally decided he'll do Haverford but not Swarthmore...if he makes it that far with essay writing! Good luck to your DD! 9 applications submitted so far here, and he's running out of steam. He's working on the Macalester supplemental right now, and then I think that may be it for awhile, and he'll see if he gets a second wind after Thanksgiving to do a couple more. We made the mistake of watching a Youtube video we stumbled across last night--of a girl recording herself reacting to all her college acceptances/rejections. She applied to half the same schools as DS, and it seemed totally random where she got admitted and didn't: Grinnell--yes, Hamilton--no. That kind of thing. So I feel like DS has a good mix right now and should really have a couple of appealing sure things in there, but now if he misses on all his reaches he'll always wonder if he might have gotten into one if he'd just managed a few more essays. Being a high school senior these days doesn't seem like all that much fun. On the other hand, he's likely to have a lot more options than I felt like I had at his age, so that's something.

I definitely don't mean that I think he should write one essay and do a search and replace for the college name ? . But he's applying almost exclusively to small LACs, so there are some common elements....there's always something about small class sizes and a small math department and getting to know professors well and then he gets into specifics about school X's math department, for example. But, yeah, I think it's really hard for him because he isn't at all sure which school is perfect for him, and Oberlin is the first he's had to write without visiting, so that makes it especially tough. And he feels like there's a BS element to it because it's "tell us why this school is perfect for you and then go do the same thing for 10 other schools." And the end result is that he DOES sound much more stiff in these essays than he usually does when he writes (or than he did in his common app essay), which is too bad. It's also entirely possible I'm a harsher critic than I should be and that he's doing fine with them!

I feel like they're so formulaic that they should be relatively easy to do, but I guess my kid doesn't do formulaic well ?

Okay, thanks ? . I should clarify that it's not the focus of the essay ("I want to come to Oberlin because my Dad went there!")--it's more mentioning things like that he's interested in a particular math class taught by his Dad's favorite math professor. Or that his Dad remembers the Friday night organ pumps fondly and he's looking forward to those.

DS loathes these with a fiery passion. He thinks they set him up to sound completely fake. Anyway, though, he's finishing one up for Oberlin right now. He hasn't visited yet, but his Dad went there, so right now he mentions his Dad and stuff he remembers from college three different times in the essay. Is this a bad idea? Like does it make it sound like he's trying to play up that he's a legacy too much (Oberlin does consider legacy status, but it's a fairly minor factor as I understand it). That's not why he's doing it; it's just that that's mostly what he has to go on as far as Oberlin-specific knowledge, since he hasn't actually been there.

Writing these supplements is going to kill both of us, I think. I am sympathetic, but also so tired of listening to him agonize over them. It's a 70 word maximum for this one, kid; how can it be taking you THREE HOURS?! Deep breaths. He just added Wesleyan back onto his list specifically because it doesn't have any supplements. But it does want an interview, which is a whole other thing. He REALLY hates interviews--even more than writing supplements!--and I'm not sure how much I'm supposed to push him. Some places are clear that interviews are HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, but others are very cagey. Carleton says interviews considered on the common data set, but then says they're not required in bold letters on their website. Okay to skip that one? I don't think he's bad enough at interviewing that it would hurt him, but he's super quiet and reserved, so I don't think they're likely to wow anyone either (these would be all alumni interviews; he already has done a couple and has a couple more scheduled for places we're visiting...if he requests an alumni interview for everywhere that offers them it will indeed be a lot of interviews).

Good luck on the ED app! That would indeed make for a much more pleasant second half of the year!

It looks like the PrepScholar list hasn't been updated for 2018; I know that Harvard, Yale, and Brown all stopped requiring the essay section this year.

My DS wholeheartedly approves of this trend of dropping the writing requirement! He doesn't have anywhere left on his list that requires it; otherwise he'd be taking the SAT again just for the essay, and he'd be very grumpy about it (he was signed up to do it in the spring but ended up dropping that part because he didn't feel prepared).

My sister-in-law went to Guilford and loved it (she didn't graduate from there; ended up taking a break and finishing her degree much later elsewhere, but she says it wasn't Guilford's fault). That was 25 years ago, but that's all I've got! And I was going to throw Oglethorpe out there as well, although I don't know a lot about it.

I think that one is Harvard....which he may not even apply to--it's kind of a "why not give it a try?" if he still has any essays left in him come December kind of thing. I don't mind telling them about my 13 year old Sienna ? , but I don't really want to deal with troubleshooting how they're not giving me enough room to do so!

....because then I think, "but if we as his parents are paying for his piano lessons, we don't report that as income or gift $ to him, so why would we if his grandparents are paying for them?" right? I think myself in circles! I want to just throw money at some sort of financial planner type person to handle this for me, but then I won't have any money left to throw at a college next year....

It's for all of them....I mean, it pays for my oldest's lessons, too (although it won't once he goes to college). I could report the part that pays for his (or report it under his information...this is where I start to go crazy with confusion). It's not an asset, though, because it's mostly been spent at this point--as I understand it, it would be counted as income if I report it as a cash gift to us as parents.

Thanks--that's what I'm thinking--in the unlikely event that it comes up (they'd have to select us for verification and then ask to see the particular bank statement where that check was deposited), I'll explain the reasoning and if they don't agree the worst that happens is they adjust the financial aid offer. It's not like it would make so much of a difference that he wouldn't be able to go to college (but it would likely make enough of a difference that we'd notice it!)

it's true--I've thought of that going forward, and we'll probably ask them to do that--but the deed is done for this year's reporting. I'm not sure I even knew the css profile existed and what the difference was between it and FAFSA this time last year. I was so young and innocent then ?