I was an engineering major, and many of my tests were open-book or at least allowed a cheat sheet. The tests that were open-book were SIGNIFICANTLY harder than the exams that were not open-book -- we dreaded them. The worst exams of all were the take-home exams that were open-everything. Those were sheer torture!

Have your kid commit to spending 30 minutes on each school, digging around in the website and famliarizing himself with the school. Have him poke around around, looking at EC lists and departmental websites and anything else that suits his fancy. Any schools that pass the 30 minute test may be worth visiting. I was amazed at how many schools my kids eliminated once they spent 30 minutes poking around the website! While most schools were eliminated because of academic requirements within a major (history majors vary WILDLY!), others were eliminated because of EC lists or housing. The core requirements were also a reason some schools were eliminated. Departmental websites are fascinating and bear heavy investigation. What are the requirements? What upper-level classes are offered? Some were eliminated because my kid didn't like the "flavor" of the school. My favorite was the school with a bear mascot. All of the pics had the bear / football theme tucked away in them somewhere (even pseudo-academic pics). Dd decided that she just didn't want to attend a school where the focus was that heavily on football and the school mascot! You may say, "But it's only a website." But the college has a huge incentive to put its best foot forward on the website, so it is advertising what it thinks will please the students it wants to attract. If your kid is put off by the website, the chances are other like-minded students will also be.

These changes will make college admission even more of a lottery than it already is. If the colleges ignore the difference in SAT scores between 750 and 800 and ignore more than 6 AP's and ignore this and that, what will they use to differentiate students? I know that the difference between 750 and 800 is statistically meaningless, but it does provide a separation point. The rejection letter my dd received from Princeton ten years ago (when the acceptance rate was approximately 10%), said that 1/3 of the applicants were fully qualified. So even then the lottery was only one in three for acceptance (10% accepted, 30% fully qualified). By setting the bar so more students will "qualify" for admission, the admissions people will enlarge the pool of acceptable students and therefore make admissions even more of a lottery than it currently is. I am actually rather curious as to WHY the colleges are planning these changes. These changes may (or may not) benefit students, but since when have colleges made admissions changes that benefit students? 1) The effect will lower SAT scores, which will affect rankings, etc. Why does Harvard want to do something that will potentially lower its ranking? 2) The effect will increase the number of less-wealthy students. Lowering the number of wealthy families associated with the college will presumably adversely affect giving. Why would Harvard want to lower the amount of money donated? I agree with the person who said that these changes would allow the admissions process to be even more random than it already is. Perhaps I am cynical, but I would like to understand better how the colleges benefit from these changes. Any thoughts?

My kids participated in two different kinds of scholarship weekends -- one where they were flown in, kept off-campus at a hotel, and let on-campus for chaperoned events only, some of which were solol (interviews, etc.) and some of which were group (interviews, talks, etc.) The other kind is I think much more common -- the kids were let to run around the campus all they wanted, with a tight schedule of talks, 1-on-1 interviews, 1-student-and-a-group-of-upperclassmen-inteviews, and some group-of-prefrosh-group-of-profs interviews. The students were housed with upperclassmen, and the upperclassmen were supposed to provide a slight amount of entertainment for them. The supervision is light enough that one year a prefrosh got alcohol poisoning and needed to be hospitalized! Supposedly all the "non-official" time was off-limits for being considered for the scholarship, but dd found out later that a prof she whom she sat with at a group lunch ran up to the admissions people and raved about what an awesome person she was, so even the "off-time" isn't completely off. And you never know who is going to talk with who about you! Another example -- one prefrosh was REALLY off-the-charts weird, and several upperclassmen did go to admissions and say that this kid was super-weird. (Dd knew this since as an upperclassmen she was involved in a few of the group interviews.) So as an interviewee she does need to remember that no matter what they say, ultimately whatever she says or does on campuss may end up being considered in the scholarship decision. I would REALLY not worry about the interview people putting her on the spot about attending another scholarship competition. They understand that students need options and scholarship money! I would just make sure that your dd has a solid answer to "why do you want to attend this school?" and "what (skills, characteristics, EC's, etc) would you bring to this campus if you came here?" (In other words, how would this campus be a better place if you attend?"

All of these are basically lottery schools. No matter how awesome your son is, do have him apply to other schools. He should apply to at least one school with an acceptance rate of 30% no matter how stellar his achievements. College admissions are peculiar. My favorite example -- there are two top-20 LAC's that are quite similar -- similar student stats, similar environments, similar rankings, similar location, etc. Dd1 got a full-ride merit scholarship to one and didn't even get in at the other. REALLY? We were dumbfounded, but that's the vagaries of college admissions.

Your student should be psychologically prepared to deal with whatever is thrown at him. The questions may be WEIRD -- one of my kids' most memorable scholarship interview questions was, "If you could be any item in Walmart, what would you be?" Like an earlier poster said, much of the time it isn't WHAT you say but HOW you say it. Go with confidence and poise, knowledge of the school, and a sense of why he wants admission to that school, and he'll do fine.

Dd is a bit nervous about this semester -- she is entering several competitions and has several concerts (or parts of concerts) on her schedule. And one of the concerts means that she will have to miss a day of school. I did point out out to her that she is at an arts school, so they had BETTER be sympathetic about the need to do this concert! She broke up with her BF right before break, so she needs to adjust to life on campus without that special someone. At least she'll be busy! And she has to take a philosophy course that she is dreading..... The reading list looks dreadful, and the prof doesn't look great either.

As always, it depends on the college. The college my kids went to said officially that your attendance was required and said that your decision to attend was an indication of your priorities. if you really wanted to attend THAT school, you would attend the scholarship weekend, period. At least they were upfront about it! I would ask delicately about how optional attending it is, but the college may (justifiably) take non-attendance is an indication of interest.

What a BS versus a BA means depends ENTIRELY on the college. 100%. There is no blanket rule! Some colleges only offer the BS degree. Some offer the BA degree. And they may have identical requirements for the degrees -- or the BA from one school may even have more challenging requirements than the BS from another school. Read the departmental info and decide on that. What types of classes are required for the degree? Does the department help students who want to do research or get internships? (For a great math department website, look at St. Olaf College's math department website. Looking at it makes me want to go back and major in math!) Employers and grad schools should know that there is no "one size fits all" rule for BA versus BS.

The college NEEDS to be a reasonably academically strong college, but after that you never know. Dd went to a SMALL top-20 LAC with NO history of sending people into engineering. Yes, it has a 3-2 program with RPI, but that's the only mention of the word "engineering" on the website! Dd had amazing internships, amazing recs, and stellar grades and got into the #2 engineering program in her field in the country. (There is one other student in her entering class of 26 who didn't attend a hard-core engineering school!) So is it possible to be a trail-blazer, to go where no one from the college has gone before? YES! Is it challenging and less likely -- YES! (If she had known she would want to go into engineering, she wouldn't have attended that college!)

My dd heard from her top choice grad school in VERY early January, but none of her friends heard back from their schools until late January - early February. He should be patient for at least a few more weeks..... (easier said than done!)

When my kids applied to grad school (one in engineering and one in operations research), they had NO interviews whatsoever. They hadn't even visited the school or talked with any of the profs at the school before they applied. Once they were accepted, the schools provided an expenses-paid weekend for accepted students to visit the school, but my kids applied to the schools sight unseen. (We are talking the #2 and #3 ranked programs in the country in a particular field, so I assume this non-interview approach is typical of top engineering programs.....) if my kids' experiences were at all normal, relying on an interview is NOT a great way to go!

Make sure she has kept receipts for books. When the scholarship income is more than tuition, the excess above tuition is taxable, but some student-related expenses such as books can be deducted. Taxes and scholarships are a pain in the neck, but I'd rather deal with that pain than having to write a check to the college!

Two significant others spent Christmas week with us. Result -- one engagement and one break-up. Since we just helped dd2 through a breakup three weeks ago, I'm feeling rather emotionally drained. Toilet-training was SIMPLE compared with this relationship stuff! And teaching them to read was a walk in the park compared with the reflective listening required when they are mulling over whether or not to break up! I intend to spend next Christmas on a deserted island that is NOT accessible by cell phone, landline, or internet. (My dh is welcome to come, as are any friends over 50 who are in stable relationships.....)

And ds2, the boat building sailor guy, got engaged! (He would still be a college student if he hadn't dropped out, and his fiancee is a senior in college, so I can still list thtis under Christmas break shenanigans, right?) On Christmas morning they sat persusing a book Santa gave them called "Top Cruising Destinations." They have promised that their honeymoon will be less than two years!

1) Encourage your kid to pursue his/her outside interest(s) PASSIONATELY. Flying kites sounds silly. But colleges were really impressed that ds had won a national kite-building competition, been flown to India (expenses-paid) for an international kiting event, and ran his own kite-building company. (And the fact that he had scratch-built a few kayaks was a non-stop source of wonder at college admissions interviews!) Playing the organ sounds like a good thing to do if you are interested in a conservatory, but the LAC's my dd applied to were THRILLED to have a strong musician who also had top-notch academics apply. LEADERSHIP is great, but I think even more important is a kid developing their interests and getting a real feel for who they are, what difference they want to make in the world. 2) Colleges do a very poor job indicating that they will bend academic requirements for the "right" candidate, but our experience is that they will. Of course, the "right" candidate may also need to have 5's on several AP exams, top SAT and SAT-2 scores, etc., but the "right" candidate does NOT need to take fourteen AP's and volunteer thirty hours per week and belong to multiple honor societies. The "right" candidate can just be a strong student who is passionate about one thing to the point where questions about leadership, volunteer hours, and years of a foreign language, and even number of lab sciences are moot. If I had known that colleges wouldn't care that dd2 and ds2 only had three years of a foreign language or that dd1 only had three years of science (and only one year of labs!) I would have slept better during their senior years! (BTW, the kid with only one year of labs will get her Ph.D. in engineering from the #2-ranked program in her field in the country this spring!) 3) One last thought -- sometimes one interest that can seem mundane and dead-end can be a stepping stone to another skill. For example -- my dd is totally inflexible (no matter how much she tries) so her ballet career was dead in the water before she was 5, but several years of ballet led to several years of Irish step dance led to not only amazing pedal skills on the organ but also great swing dancing skills! So if you don't see your student as a (fill in the blank) but she/he wants to pursue this area, let him/her -- the activity may be the skill he/she needs to succeed in another seemingly unrelated area that hasn't crossed the radar screen yet.

She'll be coming home tomorrow!!!!!!! She is giving a concert on January 2nd, so she will be doing lots of practicing for that. Also, she has a competition in March so she will be practicing for that as well. (I see a theme here!) But since ALL of her siblings plus significant others are arriving on Tuesday (from a wide variety of far-away states), she plans to spend the week doing some longed-for hanging out with the sibs.

The joys of attending an art school -- dd's semester ended right after Thanksgiving so that the ballet students could focus on the 21 performances of the Nutcracker! As a music student, dd has short mini-classes and is expected to practice a LOT. She also got really sick after breaking up with her BF,so she spent most of her time not practicing but checking out the health center. She is better now and will come home on Sunday after she plays in a Lessons & Carols service. At least she managed to get out of playing the Christmas Eve service in a city four hours from home. (Why did she ever agree to do that?) Instead, she will be playing two services ten minutes from home. YAY! So she comes home on Sunday and all the others descend on Tuesday. We will have people from five states staying for a full week! (I'm still trying to figure out the sleeping arrangements. My last configuration had dh and I sleeping under the tree!) Let the party begin!

Good points all. Thanks!

How do you find an apartment when you live thousands of miles away from where you are moving? This can't be an uncommon problem! I just have no idea how to approach the problem. Ds says that he cannot find reviews of apartments, and he is reluctant to sign a rental agreement not having either seen the apartment or read any reviews. The company he will be working for is quite large, so he can't just call up and say, "Hi, I need help finding an apartment." Since the vacancy rate for where he is moving is really low, I think he should have an apartment before he relocates so he can avoid living in an overly-priced hotel for months on end. He is planning on both settling on a rental and buying a car in the two weeks he will be there before he starts his job. Yikes! I'm getting stressed thinking about it. Is it common to move to an area and THEN find a place to live? Any suggestions? (Or do I just need to chill?)

That's cruel! I am so sorry! i do love the colleges that simply put "Welcome Class of ????" on the envelope. It eliminates ALL suspense -- especially if the kid is away and the parent is stuck staring at an envelope she can't open for the rest of the day.....

Dd just broke up with her boyfriend. We're delighted that she broke up with him, but the end of semester is a rotten time for a relationship to go south. At least she broke up with him BEFORE he spent a bunch of time staying over our house during the break! Trauma. Drama. Emotions running high. I'm considering finding a deserted island somewhere and moving to it......

Dd lived at home last year while attending a college about 1.5 miles away from our house. 1) This is NOT a commuter college. Out of ~1000 freshmen, dd was one of only SIX to not live in the dorms. Dorm life is the norm. 2) Dd was heavily involved in the music scene both on and off the college campus. This meant that she really would not have had time for the socializing that dorm life involves -- but it also meant that she had little social life outside of music. 3) Dd has her own car. Thankfully she also had a parking spot that was technically off-campus but closer to her academic buildings than the campus lot -- the campus lot fills before 9:00 a.m. Commuting wasn't a problem, but given the difficulty of parking, she was VERY thankful that she had a way of reliable way of dumping her car each day! 4) Socializing was much MUCH harder than it would have been if she had lived in the dorms. She is quite social, but not being around all the time limited her involvement with people. 5) We expected almost no help from her around the house, and we didn't require her to let us know if she would be home or not for a meal (leftoevers rock!), but it was still hard on dh and me to have her bopping in and out on a random schedule. Dd transferred (for reasons not involving social life at all), but if she had stayed she would have tried to move on campus.

One other thing -- I second the call for a supplementary credit card but for different reason. My dd1 spent a summer abroad. For unknown reasons, her credit card worked in most but not all places. If she had not had a supplementary credit card she would have been stranded at least once. Also, near the end of her time abroad, dh and my credit card was cancelled due to suspicious activity on it. She was now down to one card! If she had only had one and that had been the one cancelled, life would have gotten interesting.....

You have my sympathy. I transferred back in the day and dd2 transferred this year. The whole transfer process is so different from the regular freshman admissions process that it's bewildering. (And the strangest thing of all -- to transfer as a music major you need to get the first school's "permission" to apply to transfer! It has something to do with financial incentives, but some music organization requires that all students transferring to conservatories have the head of the music program in the first school fill out the form, regardless of financial plans or need. In other words dd2 basically had to announce her intent to transfer to folks in charge of her program months before she did. That was seriously NOT COOL!) Take care, ask lots of questions, and do check with the admissions office if something seems strange. Few enough people transfer that there may be a "bug" in the transfer process that the uni is unaware of!