fourisenough
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Posts posted by fourisenough
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3 minutes ago, Farrar said:
If you aim high or need to chase aid (or, like us, don't even have an in state option) you may need to apply to more schools. But more like 10 or even 15. No one ever needs to apply to more like 20 or 35. Oy. I heard about a kid who applied to 40 schools this year. It's just... no.
Lord, 14 apps nearly killed us. 40?!?! I think I’d rather have another unmedicated birth! 😂
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2 hours ago, mlktwins said:
I don’t have a dog in this fight until next year, but I’m following this thread with great interest. I was at an eye specialist appt a couple of weeks ago. I need a surgery much sooner than expected and I’m like I have college apps to get through this summer/next fall (times 2 kids). Don;t have time for an eye surgery 🤪. Anyway, he started talking about his son’s app process for 2022 acceptances. He has been the parent taking the lead through this process. His son applied to 35 colleges 😱. He is coming from a very prestigious private school, 36 on his ACT, 14 APs. I know he didn’t get into Michigan and one other so far. He did get into UVA and VT School of Engineering (we are in VA).
When did this trend start where kids are applying to so many schools? Isn’t this making it harder for a lot of kids to get accepted to their most desired school? I mean the kid I mentioned above is only going to pick one school and is tying up a lot of slots at many other schools with 35 apps. I was thinking no more than 10 for each of my boys, but is that the smart thing to do anymore?
The valedictorian of a local public high school (a large, in-state U of M feeder) with a 36 and 4.0 UW GPA was rejected, not even waitlisted at U of Michigan. Very tough year!
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Okay, all of DDs admissions results are all in. The decisions by the ‘highly rejective’ schools lived up to their name!
Accepted— Boston College, Emory University
Waitlisted— U Michigan
Denied— Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Dartmouth, Yale, Duke
I guess 2/8 isn’t a bad success rate— 25%! She is still waiting for the results of the competitive, full-tuition scholarship for which she interviewed this week at another school (hopefully it will be in by Monday and then it’s decision time).
If she had to pick one today, it would be one of her safeties. Go figure! Will update when she makes a final decision. Thanks for hearing me out, sharing your stories, and for commiserating through this really wacky admissions cycle. I am so, so happy it’s over and very grateful that my fourth and final kid is super average and will likely apply to just local/in-state safeties.
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47 minutes ago, Terabith said:
Lyr has formally accepted their full tuition scholarship at Hollins University.
Congratulations! 🎊
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27 minutes ago, kokotg said:
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.
Good that the door is still open, at least partly!
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1 hour ago, kokotg said:
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 terrific!! We just got one where the NPC totally oversold it…(like total cost +$20k from what we were expecting). Oh well, moving on…
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9 hours ago, MamaSprout said:
I'm quoting myself because we've done a visit to both.
Big engineering school's honors housing/ program was astonishing. It's set up like the British education system- so each floor of the residence is a "house" and there is a great hall. Sadly, no sorting hat. The director of the ISS is an example of an upcoming speaker, and the students in each major get honors classes geared to them. The engineering honors track would be perfect for dd. The food court that can accommodate her food allergy is about a 5 minute walk. It's also the closest dorm to the academic campus. While there are Russian classes on campus, I didn't see any particular presence outside of classes. No cultural events or anything. Dd has friends on this campus, but they are all three or so years older as they are academic friends she made doing co-op language arts and science labs, so really not close enough in age to have shared experiences. The engineering accepted student day highlighted just how BIG everything is, though, and she will still be a very young freshman.
We visited her small school again Friday. The day was an ordeal because of some car trouble. We got there, though, without DH and in my DIL's van. DD has been running some of the social media for the incoming class, so she had friends that met us at the union and the swim team ate lunch with her (I grabbed another table at dealt with some work email). As an accepted student she got an individual tour... and the tour guide was training other guides, so we had three guides, lol. Dd knew the tour guide from her social media work.
While we were touring a professor stopped her car to shout a congrats to our tour guide who had just received a big research scholarship that morning. Dd loved the workshop spaces for students (she hadn't seen them before), and was a little overwhelmed by how busy the union and main public spaces were. She had only been on campus during the summer.
She wants to double major ME with International Studies, but even with the DE she's bringing in it doesn't quite work without extra time. ETA- I looked at it again. She can make it work if she brings in AP Micro. So do-able, but no cushion.
Since the IS department head was out, we met with the German professor, who was awesome. Unfortunately, that professor is on sabbatical next year and the professor who is most knowledgable about what would be dd's geographic area of specialty is retiring, so dd needs to weigh how that would work for her. She's something of an expert-generalist kid, so she really does want to balance the STEM with something else. She's likely to do grad school outside of engineering.
She could swim there, and she's always better academically when she's swimming. The team lacks the cattiness we've seen on other swim teams, and more than half of the meets are home meets next year, so travel would be minimal.
So, I do think she's going to end up at the small school. It's just a matter of if she wants to do the double major and how to make that happen. There's talk of the school adding a concentration in IS (but no minor).
I really didn't think we'd still be undecided at this point. I'm glad we didn't do any schools as regular admit. That would have really confused things!
Thanks for the detailed update; excited to hear her final decision!
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2 hours ago, easypeasy said:
They have a waitlist of 13,000 students?!?! Like, what is the point?!?! Do they turn anyone down outright?
Once BK had a couple rolling-admission safeties under his belt, the first thing we did was wax poetic about all of the wonderful opportunities of those schools. It's helped as other things have gone sideways - he's been able to touch back to those "already accepteds" and already had solid positives in his head. I'm so glad we spent that time to really focus on the good parts of those schools before any "no's" came along.
Surprisingly, yes, they do reject some applicants. Allegedly there were 83k applicants, and they admitted roughly 16k for an acceptance rate of about 19%. Applications have gone up from 55k pre-pandemic to this year’s 83k— about 50% increase! (These are numbers A/Os used in info sessions etc; actual data for this class hasn’t been released to my knowledge).
The size of the W/L makes no sense though; it’s largely a soft-reject for the qualified but not chosen kids.
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19 hours ago, fourisenough said:
DD was accepted to Boston College today. So far she’s 1/1 of the /8 RD apps we were still waiting on. Feeling very grateful tonight.
And the roller coaster ride continues! DD was waitlisted (soft reject as last year only 68 made it in from waitlist of 13K!) by Michigan, our in-state flagship. I just have no words. Well, I have words— they just aren’t fit to write on a public forum! So maddening. So I guess she’s now 1/2 of her 8 RD’s.
Never more grateful for the safeties we already have in our pocket!
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DD was accepted to Boston College today. So far she’s 1/1 of the /8 RD apps we were still waiting on. Feeling very grateful tonight.
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32 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:
See, I find it easy to find safeties and reaches, it’s the matches that are hard to nail. At least in our case, safeties are obvious. And of course reaches are even more obvious. Matches? Not so much.
We had this same issue; I think the problem is that what might have been a target for my kid a few years ago (pre-pandemic) is now a reach because of drastically lower acceptance rates in the post-Covid, TO world. Our own state flagship falls into this category— it has become a reach for everyone.
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11 minutes ago, rzberrymom said:
I’m realizing that this must be the key to having a calm, sane senior year—finding a safety that a kid can get excited about. I think we found one of those for my DD for next year, and I feel a weight lifted off both of us!!
It’s everything! She hasn’t appeared stressed ONCE throughout this whole process. That’s partly due to the calm, plucky personality she inherited from my husband, but also because she feels great about at least one financial/admissions safety!
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4 hours ago, kokotg said:
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.
Sounds like you all have a great attitude and a good plan. My DD will get the first of her regular decisions tonight (with seven more to follow). I’m totally preparing myself for a bunch of no’s/waitlists; and honestly she’s getting increasingly excited about one of her safeties which we’ll visit tomorrow for the first time (in an official capacity— she’ll been there a few times for sporting events, etc). Not sure if we’re ready to ‘buy the sweatshirt’, but she’s getting close!
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42 minutes ago, maize said:
Dd18 has all her decisions in. She got into every school she applied to (did not apply to any super selective schools).
So her options are:
Utah State University
Utah Tech University (formerly Dixie State)
Weber State University
Southern Utah University
Brigham Young University Provo
Brigham Young University Idaho
She got full tuition scholarships to USU, UTU, WSU, SUU and BYU-I.
Her current plan is to defer while she serves an LDS mission and then attend SUU as a theatre major.
She was disappointed to not get direct admission into their BFA program, but they admit most BFA students after freshman year and I think she will have a good shot then. She would be starting out as a theatre BA or BS major.
Doesn’t it feel great to have a decision made?! I’m just a little envious! Congratulations to your daughter & you.
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45 minutes ago, Momto6inIN said:
DD found out she got accepted at Purdue back in January but wasn't sure if she'd go there or the CC because of finances. Yesterday she got an email that she received a $4000 per year scholarship from Purdue, which combined with living at home makes it approx the same amount as CC. So that made her decision for her! 😊
That’s great! Congratulations to her and to you, mama!
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14 hours ago, Farrar said:
I think... my kid is going to Clark? Maybe. He did the admitted students day and went to a class and ate lunch with students and came home like, okay, I think I'm going to do this. SO. We're all going to sit with it for a week or so. I thought it would be Drexel!
Wow, congrats for being *close* to a decision!
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3 minutes ago, sassenach said:
DD's top 3 are all releasing today. So far we are 0/1; her first denial. Lots of tears. All 3 of these schools are big swings, so we could easily end up with none of them and that would be a big bummer of a day.
Oh, hang in there. She’s applying to direct-admit nursing right? The programs have all gotten crazy selective and competitive. I’m hoping for at least one admit for her today!
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DD is awaiting 8 decisions that should all be in 3/31-4/1. It’s been a LOOOONG application cycle; hers were mostly submitted by mid-September with one late add on. Thankfully, she has two very attractive, affordable options already and she’ll attend admitted student events for each on 3/25 & 3/26. My hope is that she’ll be so excited by one or both that regardless of the RD outcomes, she’ll walk away happy.
Good luck to everyone awaiting decisions and congratulations to those of you who have already been admitted and chosen your schools!
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On 1/21/2022 at 1:05 PM, fourisenough said:
Hits for senior DD:
AP Calc AB at Blue Tent
Senior Eng at Blue Tent
AP Bio at Blue Tent
Orgo Chem at Clover Valley
Latin IV at CLRC
Intro to Sociology* at ASU Universal Lerner
*She is only 2 weeks into the course, but finds the course organized and easy to navigate and the content interesting and totally manageable. Her only complaint is that you have to stay on the pacing of the course (1 module per week) and can’t work ahead. Instructor says it should be 18 hours/week of work, but DD says it has taken her exactly 3 hours each week so far.
Quoting myself to say that DD ended up LOVING the Sociology course from ASU and is sad it’s over. She found it easy, but very engaging. She learned a lot and looks forward to taking more sociology courses during college, if they fit into her schedule.
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15 hours ago, pehp said:
I've been looking at Wilson Hill for Algebra--instructors are George, Church, and Ohotnicky. If you've got experience with any of those teachers, I'd love to hear about it. He really wants a "real" math teacher next year. The Saxon videos we are using are solid and they work fine, but I think he'd like more dynamic teaching and explanations, especially b/c he really does enjoy math.
Thank you!
I’m not familiar with any of those instructors. Sorry!
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Sticker price doesn’t tell you much. You’ll need to start running Net Price Calculators for all the schools you’re considering. You’ll have to guesstimate gpa and test scores (a good guage is to look up the NPR that your son has scored on his early tests— my kids typically end up at the 95-99th percentile, so I started there when running NPC). All schools have NPC, just Google school name + net price calculator to find them.
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I responded on your other thread, but I’ll weigh-in here, too. We’ve had great success with Wilson Hill Academy math (Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, and AP Stats) and with Blue Tent math and science courses (Honors Pre Calc and Calc AB; Honors Bio and AP Bio). If you look at any of those courses and are interested, lmk teacher options and I’ll give you our assessment of them.
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No advice on schools to look at, but I’m hopping on here to tell you that I think prepping and aiming for a high SAT/ACT score seems like a good plan in your situation. There is definitely a you-don’t-need-to-validate-your-homeschool-transcript bias present on this board (really just one or two persistent voices 😉), but if that doesn’t resonate with you, feel free to ignore it and go with your gut.
I think your student who has a history of testing well sounds like one who can benefit from test prep and the resulting high score that he may achieve. My current HS senior was a very strong tester in her early years, invested a good amount of time over the summer before junior year prepping for the ACT, and ended up with a 34. Together with the other components of her application (essays, LOR, EC, transcript), this score has opened doors that might not have otherwise been available to her.
Since he is relatively stronger in reading/writing than math, you might research the differences between the SAT and ACT and consider whether he may do better on one than the other before beginning to prep.
Best wishes on your search!
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My DD is in Becka Hilton’s inaugural AP Bio course at Blue Tent this year. It is well-organized and her instruction is clear and concise. There is a weekly live component, but my DD is in a 25-30 hour/week pre-professional ballet training program, so she has opted out of the live class and just watches the recordings at 2x speed. I think for most of the year, the class has taken her about 3-5 hours per week, but it has inched-up recently to more like 6-9 hours depending on the week. For context, she is a fast, efficient 12th grader with Physics/Chem/Honors Bio already under her belt. She’s had no difficulty maintaining a high A and feels well-prepared going into the AP exam this May, although obviously time will tell if she scores well! She really loves Blue Tent’s platform and all the teachers she’s had there have been excellent.
DD is simultaneously taking Connie’s Bio & O Chem course.
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2022 Acceptances
in The College Board
Posted
Stuff like this really turns my stomach. It just seems so greedy and gross. Getting to see the acceptances just pile up in a folder? What is this a game where you’re earning badges? A process that allows/encourages this illogical, selfish behavior (and media that reward it by publishing these same stories year after year) needs to be reformed; she can only attend one school.