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DS waitlisted at Emory (both the Oxford and Atlanta campuses) and ACCEPTED AT HAMILTON! I don't know if I've ever been more relieved in my life than I was when he said, "hmm....there's confetti" tonight 🙂 . That should give him enough to power through the next few decisions, no matter which way they go.

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@JazzyMom he had a top 4 in mind before we started getting notifications, and Hamilton was one of them (Williams, Grinnell, and Carleton are the others, so Carleton's still out there). Macalester is growing on him, though (and gave him significantly better financial aid than Hamilton, although Hamilton's still doable)--we'll see it (and Carleton if he gets in), along with Saint Olaf, in April. And we visited Hamilton in the summer with no students around, so we'll try to get him back up there, too. 

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1 hour ago, kokotg said:

DS waitlisted at Emory (both the Oxford and Atlanta campuses) and ACCEPTED AT HAMILTON! I don't know if I've ever been more relieved in my life than I was when he said, "hmm....there's confetti" tonight 🙂 . That should give him enough to power through the next few decisions, no matter which way they go.

So, so happy for you!!!

Daughter was waitlisted at Hamilton :(. She accepted the WL but now she's sure she's not getting in anywhere else (waiting on Barnard, Vassar, Wesleyan, NYU and Dartmouth). Such an emotional roller coaster!

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3 minutes ago, kirag714 said:

 

Daughter was waitlisted at Hamilton :(. She accepted the WL but now she's sure she's not getting in anywhere else (waiting on Barnard, Vassar, Wesleyan, NYU and Dartmouth). Such an emotional roller coaster!

It really is--so brutal! Best of luck to your daughter in the next few days--it's so tough to watch them disappointed, but it just takes that one piece of good news to turn things around.

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12 minutes ago, Calming Tea said:

Does she have any safeties?

Yes she is accepted to Fordham, Franklin & Marshall, Clark, Lawrence and Pitt. She really likes Clark a lot (and her best friend just got accepted there today!), and I think once she visits F&M she may be pretty enthusiastic about that as well. But she liked Hamilton even better, so she’s disappointed. Her current favorite is Vassar though so 🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼

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11 hours ago, Calming Tea said:

Wow all great schools and good choices! I hope she feels confident about her decisions 

Yes, no matter what happens from here on out she will be absolutely fine, which is what I keep telling her! It would just be nice for her confidence (and an ego boost) if she had a few other options as well. She's had a challenging time in high school (depression, anxiety, etc.), and has come so far in the last year that I would love to see her get another win. But I am extremely excited for her future no matter what - and I know she'll get there eventually as well!

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1 minute ago, kirag714 said:

Yes, no matter what happens from here on out she will be absolutely fine, which is what I keep telling her! It would just be nice for her confidence (and an ego boost) if she had a few other options as well. She's had a challenging time in high school (depression, anxiety, etc.), and has come so far in the last year that I would love to see her get another win. But I am extremely excited for her future no matter what - and I know she'll get there eventually as well!

It was so hard for my daughter not to take rejections personally -- she felt like she had worked so hard throughout high school and the rejections made her feel she just didn't achieve enough.  She was a little bitter even though she got into a fabulous school -- it just wasn't ever on the top of the list for her! (Berkeley, NYU and William and Mary were, all waitlist or rejections).  So it took awhile for her to switch gears and be positive about a college that she actually didn't even envision herself going to:) 

I'm trying to remember to guide the next kids differently -- don't treat college acceptance like a validation of oneself and don't get attached to ANY college before acceptances.  I will dial back any and all enthusiasm and  help them focus on the fact that wherever they go, college will be about what they do with their time there, not what name is on the diploma. 

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It's so hard. After waitlist number 5 last night, DS said, "I feel like I'm never going to be happy again." I feel like I keep telling him all the right things, but the only thing he hears is these schools telling him he's not good enough. Even though he knows rationally that that's NOT what they're saying and that, even if they were, they don't even know him, so so what?

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34 minutes ago, SanDiegoMom in VA said:

.....don't treat college acceptance like a validation of oneself and don't get attached to ANY college before acceptances....

 focus on the fact that wherever they go, college will be about what they do with their time there, not what name is on the diploma. 

Best advice possible for all students.

College is just 4 yrs out of their entire lives. I think the hype of "only employable from these tippy top selective schools" gets translated from "a fraction of a percent of careers" into "most careers" and feeds a very unnecessary frenzy. What they do during those 4 yrs will be more important that the name on the diploma. 

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4 minutes ago, 8FillTheHeart said:

Best advice possible for all students.

College is just 4 yrs out of their entire lives. I think the hype of "only employable from these tippy top selective schools" gets translated from "a fraction of a percent of careers" into "most careers" and feeds a very unnecessary frenzy. What they do during those 4 yrs will be more important that the name on the diploma. 

I agree. There is an article in the Wall Street Journal (behind the paywall) about how studies show that paying through the nose to go to a prestigious school isn't as much of an advantage as commonly thought.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-elite-college-worth-it-maybe-not-11553084146 

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27 minutes ago, SanDiegoMom in VA said:

It was so hard for my daughter not to take rejections personally -- she felt like she had worked so hard throughout high school and the rejections made her feel she just didn't achieve enough.  She was a little bitter even though she got into a fabulous school -- it just wasn't ever on the top of the list for her! (Berkeley, NYU and William and Mary were, all waitlist or rejections).  So it took awhile for her to switch gears and be positive about a college that she actually didn't even envision herself going to:) 

I'm trying to remember to guide the next kids differently -- don't treat college acceptance like a validation of oneself and don't get attached to ANY college before acceptances.  I will dial back any and all enthusiasm and  help them focus on the fact that wherever they go, college will be about what they do with their time there, not what name is on the diploma. 

She's my #4 (and baby) and the only one of my kids who cared at all about the prestige of a school - she also has the highest SATs/GPA of any of my kids, and maybe those two things are correlated, I don't know. She puts so much pressure on herself that she had an anxiety meltdown in 10th grade at her public magnet HS where she was on an IB track, which is how we ended up homeschooling her - which was best decision we ever made! She is incredibly self-motivated and disciplined and has thrived with the independence and freedom of homeschooling.

Part of me thinks that she would do better at a school like Clark where she would be one of the stronger students and could stand out. She almost certainly wants to go on to graduate school, so that might be an excellent platform for her. But we will weigh all of her options once we know what they are!

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9 minutes ago, kirag714 said:

She's my #4 (and baby) and the only one of my kids who cared at all about the prestige of a school - she also has the highest SATs/GPA of any of my kids, and maybe those two things are correlated, I don't know. She puts so much pressure on herself that she had an anxiety meltdown in 10th grade at her public magnet HS where she was on an IB track, which is how we ended up homeschooling her - which was best decision we ever made! She is incredibly self-motivated and disciplined and has thrived with the independence and freedom of homeschooling.

Part of me thinks that she would do better at a school like Clark where she would be one of the stronger students and could stand out. She almost certainly wants to go on to graduate school, so that might be an excellent platform for her. But we will weigh all of her options once we know what they are!


I read a Gladstone article which agrees with that.  There was a study that tried to compare similar kids.  The ones that were stronger students at slightly less prestigious colleges were more likely to publish and published more.  That made them more attractive to the graduate school.   I have a vague memory that the publish level even persisted into graduate school where you think it would have evened out.   
There was a fight (with yelling) in the Physics faculty lounge about who got to hire me for their lab.   That sort of thing gives you confidence.   
 

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27 minutes ago, 8FillTheHeart said:

Best advice possible for all students.

College is just 4 yrs out of their entire lives. I think the hype of "only employable from these tippy top selective schools" gets translated from "a fraction of a percent of careers" into "most careers" and feeds a very unnecessary frenzy. What they do during those 4 yrs will be more important that the name on the diploma. 

 

And even if it’s not (for a kid hoping to go straight to google and unsure If they want to pursue a masters) 

you STILL have to be super careful about any type of validating through success in general- career or college. There’s a reason why these kids in Palo Alto are stressed out and depressed. !! And guess what so are most of their parents too! 

It’s so important to remember that God has a different path for every person and sometimes your path will take unexpected turns and to have your joy in the life he’s given you. 

I’m so thankful that my dh encouraged my son to work toward ans apply to some elite schools where he’d be challenged in a special way (and have that name) but is soooo happy woth and supportive of the PennState acceptance, and doesn’t ask or mention at all about the upcoming decisions date for the others. 💖💖 so many dads here pressure their kids like you wouldn’t believe. Mine plays board games and watches tv with and does cool stuff with his senior. 

I’m also glad I have this board because I can obsess without my son ever hearing about it. I personally don’t even care where he goes at this point I just want to know where it will be!!! 

Moms of 10th and 11th graders that want to apply to elites, please please understand it doesn’t matter how amazing they are they will still, statistically speaking, almost definitely receive a rejection notice! 🙂 it should be a shock and surprise to get in, even if they match what the college is looking for according to the profiles. 

 

 

 

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This Atlantic article is not behind a paywall.  https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/what-is-an-elite-college-really-worth/521577/

Quote

Many parents and students think there is a world of difference between the lifelong outcomes of (a) an A-minus student who gets into, say, Princeton, and (b) an A-minus student who applies to Princeton but “only” gets into some less selective school, like Penn State or the University of Wisconsin. They assume that a decision made by faceless adjudicators in Ivy League cloisters will mark the difference between success and failure in life......

These researchers tracked two groups of students—one that attended college in the 1970s and another in the early 1990s. They wanted to know: Did students attending the most elite colleges earn more in their 30s, 40s, and 50s than students with similar SAT scores, who were rejected from those elite colleges? The short answer was no. Or, in the author's language, the difference between the students who went to super-selective schools and the students with similar SAT scores who were rejected from those schools and went to less selective institutions was "indistinguishable from zero.”

What does that mean, exactly? It means that, for many students, "who you are” as an 18-year-old is more important than “where you go.” After correcting for a student’s pre-existing talent, ambition, and habits, it's hard to show that highly selective colleges add much earning power, even with their vaunted professors, professional networks, and signaling. 

I will add that many professors even at lower ranked Us tend to have "prestigious pedigrees" bc becoming a professor is an incredibly competitive field. You don't have to attend MIT to have MIT level profs. (One of ds profs (as a high school student) retired to the coast and taught at the U where he DE bc that is where the prof wanted to live at that stage in his life.) At least in physics, research is often international collaborations, so teams working on the research are spread out globally. That means profs are not restricted to a specific school to conduct their research.  I suspect that is probably true across multiple fields. (It also makes it exciting for students bc they may  get to travel for meetings/presentations.)

47 minutes ago, kirag714 said:

Part of me thinks that she would do better at a school like Clark where she would be one of the stronger students and could stand out. She almost certainly wants to go on to graduate school, so that might be an excellent platform for her. But we will weigh all of her options once we know what they are!

This was true for my ds. He had all sorts of professors offering him research opportunities. They were wonderful mentors. He had no problem being accepted to REUs or grad school.

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3 hours ago, kirag714 said:

Part of me thinks that she would do better at a school like Clark where she would be one of the stronger students and could stand out. She almost certainly wants to go on to graduate school, so that might be an excellent platform for her. But we will weigh all of her options once we know what they are!

 

 

I feel the same way, I feel he could maybe stand out if he goes to a less prestigious school, so I am happy with whatever happens because there are clear pluses to either the smaller, or in our case, the slightly less highly ranked schools.  

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On 3/21/2019 at 12:32 PM, 8FillTheHeart said:

Best advice possible for all students.

College is just 4 yrs out of their entire lives. I think the hype of "only employable from these tippy top selective schools" gets translated from "a fraction of a percent of careers" into "most careers" and feeds a very unnecessary frenzy. What they do during those 4 yrs will be more important that the name on the diploma. 

 

On 3/21/2019 at 1:07 PM, Calming Tea said:

 

And even if it’s not (for a kid hoping to go straight to google and unsure If they want to pursue a masters) 

 

 

 

 

 

Calming Tea, I think you are saying that a student must go to "tippy top selective school" to go to straight to work at Google without a master's degree, because I read something like that here in the last month that you may have posted, because I think Penn State was mentioned there too. 

I want to set your mind at ease that Google definitely hires straight-out-of-college software engineers, who never attended a tippy-top selective school. I know, because my oldest, who graduated from a big-state U that offers merit aid, had classmates go work for Google in Silicon Valley as software engineers after graduation. Google also recruits on my student's campus twice a year, and these recent-hire classmates are the ones Google flys back to recruit on their campus. 

https://money.cnn.com/2015/04/09/technology/google-people-laszlo-bock/index.html

https://qz.com/967985/silicon-valley-companies-like-apple-aapl-hires-the-most-alumni-of-these-10-universities-and-none-of-them-are-in-the-ivy-league/

Parents of high school seniors sometimes post here that their student will never get hired at x company or go on to y graduate school if they don't get into whatever tippy-top selective school is desired, however, I have never seen in many years of reading here, a parent of a college senior post that their student was not hired at x company or accepted to y graduate school, because they were a student at a non-tippy-top selective school.

Good luck to your student. 

 

Edited by *LC
Removing personal information that wasn't needed anymore
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I might have more info than you do on hiring practices at google LOL.

also if your kid went to a BIG STATE U that is a probably a recognizable university.  ?? The hiring managers have heard the name of it. It exists in their brain. And on their lists and in their conversations. 

I’m not and never did say they’d never get hired even from an unrecognized university. But I will tell you for a fact it greatly reduces the chances of getting hired out of their bachelors program. Especially with no internship behind them. 

But you know what those of you who aren’t waiting on acceptances why don’t you Do something else ? The rest of us are trying to have a conversation in this thread that is just about the waiting and how we and our kids feel about it. If you read this very thread a few posts up I’m trying to bring balance - I feel like one of you is literally following me from thread to thread harping on your agenda to save us from the debt that will overtake us if our kids to an elite uni. Or to save us all from the horrid idea that an elite uni might be nice to go to as a freshman or that maybe we’d celebrate and (the horrors) be extra happy if our kid got into Cornell than PennState. Whatever!!!! We’ve discussed this issue ad nauseum here and this has been again quoted out of context. Going to an elite uni may not be all it’s cracked up to be (I agreed with ya’ll If you’ll recall) but it’s not worthless, and it’s not that no one should go there. We are here to comfort each other while we wait, if you’re not move on. 

Ive been on this forum for 16 years and never have I been frustrated till today.

can we just be left in peace with our countdown????

 

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3 minutes ago, Calming Tea said:

Anyway...

those of you on the countdown because your children are in the application season- 

carry on 🙂

You fail to recognize that the posts are not derogatory toward you and your family's decisions. They are meant as encouragement for those who are disappointed in their outcomes. Bc, guess what, awesome outcomes do come from lower ranked schools. (I'll take my kids post college outcomes any day!)

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@Arch at Home DS has 2 tomorrow and 1 on Saturday....then the last 2 next week. Is tomorrow one we have overlap on? Oberlin and Carleton for DS. Carleton's a long shot, but I'm REALLY hoping for it, partially because it's one of his favorites and I really think it'd be a great fit for him and partially because we're already going to see Macalester and St. Olaf next month, and he's going to be really grumpy if we're in the same town with no reason to visit!

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12 minutes ago, Arch at Home said:

DD’s last three decisions come tomorrow.  Does anyone else’ DC waiting on decisions  tor tomorrow?

 

So happy for you!! My son has three on are on the 28th, one (his TOP choice) on the 30th and then two on the first.  They're all reaches (the kind in the realm of statistically impossible lol) I don't know why he applied to so many reaches.  LOL  He's hardly thinking about it because he's very logical and assumes he will not get in.

We are thrilled with PennState Engineering but I would like to know where my baby will be and start buying plane tickets and planning!

I can't wait for you for tomorrow Arch!  Will your dd know for sure as soon as that comes in or more thinking to do?

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We have one tomorrow (Barnard),  and  one on Saturday (Wesleyan). Both long shots! 

Then Tuesday is Vassar which is ever so slightly more possible because they admit a larger percentage. And final two on the 28th. She is really questioning why she chose to apply to so many selective schools!

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Do you guys want to humor yourselves (ok really me) while waiting with bated breath.... ? 

We're a year out from the application madness, but enjoying this thread immensely. Who wants to list what they think are selective schools? I'd love to see your list of these schools! 

Anyone game?

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27 minutes ago, kirag714 said:

We have one tomorrow (Barnard),  and  one on Saturday (Wesleyan). Both long shots! 

Then Tuesday is Vassar which is ever so slightly more possible because they admit a larger percentage. And final two on the 28th. She is really questioning why she chose to apply to so many selective schools!

We have Vassar on Tuesday, too....I have some hope for it mostly because he's a boy, and that helps there 🙂.  

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I can't contribute to the list, lol, because I’ve honestly never heard of most of these schools!  Lol!!

I guess they’re just not as popular in Texas???  

I’m still excited for everyone who is getting news, though!  (((hug)))

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Off the top of my head....

Stanford 3-4% admission rate

Carnegie Mellon - the computer science is in the low single digits not sure of other majors 

UPenn- less than 8%

Columbia- I think it's was 5% but don't quote me on that

Cornell- again computer science is in the single digits even though overall it's closer to 20% 

Some other "selective schools" that pop into my head

all the Ivy leagues obviously

MIT, CalTech of course

UCLA, Berkeley, University of Washington depending on major, University of Chicago depending on major, Georgia Tech, and then a few I'm familiar with back home in PA- Swarthmore, for example...

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55 minutes ago, Calming Tea said:

 

So happy for you!! My son has three on are on the 28th, one (his TOP choice) on the 30th and then two on the first.  They're all reaches (the kind in the realm of statistically impossible lol) I don't know why he applied to so many reaches.  LOL  He's hardly thinking about it because he's very logical and assumes he will not get in.

We are thrilled with PennState Engineering but I would like to know where my baby will be and start buying plane tickets and planning!

I can't wait for you for tomorrow Arch!  Will your dd know for sure as soon as that comes in or more thinking to do?

After tomorrow she will get down to the business of deciding. She has refused to express a preference because she knew that many were fairly long shots. Slowly over that last month she has started to differentiate between accepted schools and even prioritize certain factors which is great progress but until all the decisions are in she doesn’t  feel that she can start the next step. For this reason I am glad that she is not going down to April 1. There will most likely be at least one more college visit prior to her decision. 

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26 minutes ago, mirabillis said:

Do you guys want to humor yourselves (ok really me) while waiting with bated breath.... ? 

We're a year out from the application madness, but enjoying this thread immensely. Who wants to list what they think are selective schools? I'd love to see your list of these schools! 

Anyone game?

There are many definitions of selective. A pretty common one are those with less than 50% acceptance rate; however, on this board we typically mean highly selective or even statistically impossible when we say selective. For me highly selective starts in the low 20s. On that list I would include Grinnell, Barnard, Wellesley, Williams, Ivy’s, and many of the UCs. 

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4 hours ago, Calming Tea said:

I might have more info than you do on hiring practices at google LOL.

also if your kid went to a BIG STATE U that is a probably a recognizable university.  ?? The hiring managers have heard the name of it. It exists in their brain. And on their lists and in their conversations. 

I’m not and never did say they’d never get hired even from an unrecognized university. But I will tell you for a fact it greatly reduces the chances of getting hired out of their bachelors program. Especially with no internship behind them. 

But you know what those of you who aren’t waiting on acceptances why don’t you Do something else ? The rest of us are trying to have a conversation in this thread that is just about the waiting and how we and our kids feel about it. If you read this very thread a few posts up I’m trying to bring balance - I feel like one of you is literally following me from thread to thread harping on your agenda to save us from the debt that will overtake us if our kids to an elite uni. Or to save us all from the horrid idea that an elite uni might be nice to go to as a freshman or that maybe we’d celebrate and (the horrors) be extra happy if our kid got into Cornell than PennState. Whatever!!!! We’ve discussed this issue ad nauseum here and this has been again quoted out of context. Going to an elite uni may not be all it’s cracked up to be (I agreed with ya’ll If you’ll recall) but it’s not worthless, and it’s not that no one should go there. We are here to comfort each other while we wait, if you’re not move on. 

Ive been on this forum for 16 years and never have I been frustrated till today.

can we just be left in peace with our countdown????

 

I am reading this thread to root for the TWTM kids still waiting on decisions. It is great to hear the exciting news about college admissions from fellow homeschoolers 

We have known for years where my current senior would go; the same school as older siblings attend/attended as well as parents/aunts/uncle/and a few grandparents. My time there overlapped with 3 cousins and a sibling. Joining my kids will be their first cousin, who is a senior this year. The current seniors, who live in different states, have been planning on attending college together  for a long time.

I love the "cult" as a friend calls my alma mater, since so many families send kid after kid, generation after generation there. However, I do know we are lucky to have a connection to a school with merit aid.

When I read your post today, I remembered that I meant to reply to an earlier post where someone said her kid wanted to intern and work at Google, so he couldn't go to a college that gave merit aid. I never post exact information about where we live or where my kids go to school, intern, work, and I felt like I needed to reply with some of those personal details on that post to say the son could attend a school with automatic aid and reach his goal to intern/work for Google. However, I never got back to posting on that thread. 

Then, I read this post about applying to college after a divorce, and I read it to mean you were going to be divorced when your daughter goes to college and therefore you would not be able to pay the same amount as you will have to pay for your son's college, so he could intern/work for Google. I felt bad that I had not told you that expensive schools are not needed to intern/work at Google. However, I never made it back to re-read the first post to verify I didn't have two different posters confused. When I read your post today, I had time to check that the previous texts were by same person as well as to reply, so I felt compelled to reassure you that students can/do intern/work at Google from schools that are not reaches for smart kids. (I read on my phone, so I don't see signatures.)

On 3/14/2019 at 11:42 PM, Calming Tea said:

I'll be in a similar boat with my daughter, and I really am trying to lay the groundwork now to say, you have to go to a school where you'll get some scholarships because her intended career makes very very little money in the beginning, you have to work your way up the ladder in a government job, and we don't want to carry high parent plus loans for her.  So we are saving everything we can now, but the reality is, she will have to go where either the tuition is a little lower or she gets some scholarships.  

I had no way of knowing you know Google's hiring practices, because your thoughts are different from my experience. I took your posts about your son needing to attend a name-brand school to reach his career goal at face value, so I broke my don't post personal information on a public board rule to reassure you. I also broke my rule of not to assuming things, but I didn't want you to feel pressured into a school you can't afford to help your son intern/work at Google. All I know about Google's hiring practices is that Google hired my student (and classmates), who go to a school, much smaller than Penn State, far away from California. While my kid did intern at Google before being offered a job there, others were hired straight out of college without an internship. When checking online to see if the names I knew had interned first, I saw a number of older alumni listed as working there. Some have a bachelor's/master's from big state u, and some worked for another company or two before Google.  Others had bachelor's degree from a foreign university, and then a graduate degree of some type from Big State U. In the grand scheme of things, this school doesn't send many people to Silicon Valley; there are plenty of software engineering jobs much closer to home. 

With your inside information I'm sure your son will have no problem getting a job/internship with Google no matter where he goes to college. For anyone with a student interested in interning/working at Google, you can simply search on LinkedIn to if graduates of their school/possible school are working at Google or at whatever company they want to work/intern for.

8 hours ago, Calming Tea said:

 

Ive been on this forum for 16 years and never have I been frustrated till today.

can we just be left in peace with our countdown????

 

I was also confused and thought this was your first senior. I'm not sure when I joined the forum, but I know I ordered "Story of the World" in 2002, when I started homeschooling my oldest, and when my current senior was 1 and wreaking havoc during our first day of homeschooling. I did not mean to frustrate you; I simply wanted to ease the stress of fellow boardie, who was going through college applications for the first time.  

However, since I have already frustrated you, I guess I should go ahead and remind you that teens don't always do what we think they will do. (Did you read the article posted here last year about the girl who turned down Yale? There is always an article like that come May.) I even posted on this thread a while back that my senior, who has always wanted to go to Big State U, spent a lot of time this year looking into the University of Hawaii, simply because a good friend wanted to go there. When I pointed out it didn't have the intended major, my kid said, "I'll just major in something else; I can do anything."

Good luck with your countdown and to your son with his remaining decisions.

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Anyone else totally overwhelmed at the prospect of planning visits in April before decision time? I was looking into doing a Hamilton one last night (he visited, but in summer without many students around), and I couldn't make any progress. There are just so many options, but all of them are some combination of super complicated and super expensive! And then he's never visited 4 of the 5 he has yet to hear from (and the one he did see was, again, just in summer); if he gets into any of those things get even more complicated. ETA: I have no idea how to prioritize: revisit to Hamilton, which he's seen before but is a top contender? Or first visit to Oberlin (if he gets in. knock wood. no jinxing!) which he hasn't seen but is probably less likely to choose in the end? And then there are wildcards that could throw everything off even more....

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8 minutes ago, kokotg said:

Anyone else totally overwhelmed at the prospect of planning visits in April before decision time? I was looking into doing a Hamilton one last night (he visited, but in summer without many students around), and I couldn't make any progress. There are just so many options, but all of them are some combination of super complicated and super expensive! And then he's never visited 4 of the 5 he has yet to hear from (and the one he did see was, again, just in summer); if he gets into any of those things get even more complicated. 

Definitely! DD has seen all except one of the schools still on the table but 4 of them were either quick visits and 3 of the four were during spring break or in the summer. DD doesn't like missing classes at CC nor college visits in general so that will work to our advantange so I can see her culling her list down to only one visit. That said I just checked Occidental's website and they are limiting overnights around their Admitted Students days. Coming from the Midwest will require at least one overnight. 

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My D's waiting is over.  Now she needs to make a final decision.  I am 99.9% sure what her decision will be, but will be happy when she makes it official and we can move forward to the fun stuff - looking at dorm decor, something my boys had zero interest in doing.  

This was my third and last time through the process.  My D applied to more schools than my other two combined, mainly because I wanted her to have options between a liberal arts school and a tech school if she changed her mind about what she wanted over the span of senior year.  

She was offered admissions to the following:

Grinnell (with merit)

Hamilton

Williams

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (with merit)

Rochester Institute of Technology (with merit)

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (with merit)

Our state flagship (with merit)

She was deferred then denied at MIT.

Good luck to everyone still waiting!  

 

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1 minute ago, Arch at Home said:

Definitely! DD has seen all except one of the schools still on the table but 4 of them were either quick visits and 3 of the four were during spring break or in the summer. DD doesn't like missing classes at CC nor college visits in general so that will work to our advantange so I can see her culling her list down to only one visit. That said I just checked Occidental's website and they are limiting overnights around their Admitted Students days. Coming from the Midwest will require at least one overnight. 

It looks like Hamilton only offers overnights for students traveling on their own....which is a possibility, but he's never flown by himself before and this would involve at least one late at night flight....if I go with him and he DOESN'T have an overnight, I'm not sure how much point there is to a revisit. He could sit in on a class, but other than that it'd just be the same tours and info sessions he's done already. And, yeah, he has DE classes to work around, too. 

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3 minutes ago, alewife said:

My D's waiting is over.  Now she needs to make a final decision.  I am 99.9% sure what her decision will be, but will be happy when she makes it official and we can move forward to the fun stuff - looking at dorm decor, something my boys had zero interest in doing.  

This was my third and last time through the process.  My D applied to more schools than my other two combined, mainly because I wanted her to have options between a liberal arts school and a tech school if she changed her mind about what she wanted over the span of senior year.  

She was offered admissions to the following:

Grinnell (with merit)

Hamilton

Williams

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (with merit)

Rochester Institute of Technology (with merit)

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (with merit)

Our state flagship (with merit)

She was deferred then denied at MIT.

Good luck to everyone still waiting!  

 

Wow--what a great bunch of choices! Congratulations to her on all the acceptances and to you both on being DONE!

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I'm grateful this year has no  agonizing decisions.  LegoManiac received his acceptance to Old Dominion University, and paid his deposit the next day.   He is so happy.  I'm dreading next year, though.  If figuring out which colleges to even apply to is this hard -- I don't want to imagine the decision making process!

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I am WAY more nervous about Carleton than DS is. He just shrugged and said, "meh. I got into Hamilton." Apparently at some point along the way I accidentally fell in love with one school while I was cautioning him not to. And we haven't even seen it yet! Anyway, good to know that he'll be relatively okay if it's bad news, and I'm the one who'll be crushed this time! I have three more tries to get kids into MY dream school, after all 😉

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11 hours ago, kokotg said:

Anyone else totally overwhelmed at the prospect of planning visits in April before decision time? I was looking into doing a Hamilton one last night (he visited, but in summer without many students around), and I couldn't make any progress. There are just so many options, but all of them are some combination of super complicated and super expensive! And then he's never visited 4 of the 5 he has yet to hear from (and the one he did see was, again, just in summer); if he gets into any of those things get even more complicated. ETA: I have no idea how to prioritize: revisit to Hamilton, which he's seen before but is a top contender? Or first visit to Oberlin (if he gets in. knock wood. no jinxing!) which he hasn't seen but is probably less likely to choose in the end? And then there are wildcards that could throw everything off even more....

 

I will say that THIS is the one topic that makes it nice for our family - having two musicians and one athlete in the family. DD1 visited all her schools on her official visits (where she spent around 2 days on campus at each) - and the next two will have to visit in-session for their auditions. So, they'll have visited everywhere they're considering before acceptances even come in.

Figuring out how to fit all those visits in after late-March acceptances during April, and before May decision day... makes my brain hurt! Good luck to you sorting it all out!! 🙂

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