Lessons learned so far: 2024-2025

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:do your research and if you have a strong application, and get some EA (and merit!) admits in December.

My DD feels GREAT, even with a T20 deferral, given all the love she's received from her safeties/rolling (Pitt, Case, and Vermont) last month.

It's a HUGE ego boost and relief. Don't underestimate it.

This is the best piece of advice we got. DD got a couple of early rolling merit offers which showed her lots of love. It really set her up well for the rest of the admissions season because she would have been fine going to either school if those were her only options.

Same. I learned to do that here! It was great advice and a rolling Pitt letter in September is great. My DD got merit from those 3 schools (plus a few others). Then got into Michigan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:do your research and if you have a strong application, and get some EA (and merit!) admits in December.

My DD feels GREAT, even with a T20 deferral, given all the love she's received from her safeties/rolling (Pitt, Case, and Vermont) last month.

It's a HUGE ego boost and relief. Don't underestimate it.

This is the best piece of advice we got. DD got a couple of early rolling merit offers which showed her lots of love. It really set her up well for the rest of the admissions season because she would have been fine going to either school if those were her only options.

I would say to start way earlier even, in July depending on specifics: My dd ended up not applying to UC schools and Cal State schools because the application process was so different and cumbersome. By the time we applied to our other EA schools especially in-state, she was busy with school, sport at school, and she ran out of steam and felt done. Then she could have done it in December, but by then she already heard back about admissions at some schools and decided not to send these out. I wish we got those out first. So EAs coming out derailed this for her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it’s just my kids, but it was way more parental support than I expected. Between remembering deadlines, helping with all the admissions ways each school does things, managing visits and talking through all the highs and lows of the range of emotions, it’s just an exhausting process. I know it doesn’t have to be that way but it was for us. So glad we’re just about done.

I helped a lot and yet not enough. It will be a regret I likely carry my entire life. My ds has been an independent student since middle school so I let him decide where to apply. Instead should have handled everything from A to Z, made him apply more places or actually done it for him. He's going somewhere people here slam every day, and irl I have not heard one positive reaction about it. Now I worry he will carry the stigma of going there forever.

I can echo that the level of detail and the layers of necessary activity took us by surprise, despite having researched the application process and strategies thoroughly. While most applications get done centrally via Common App at first, you get kicked over to the individual college portals upon submitting your application. Depending on how many colleges your DC applies to, this can mean managing many individual portals, each with different requirements. In our case, that meant managing Common App, Naviance (not fully linked with Common App at our school), College Board (for SATs and then separate microsite for APs), registrar's office from 2 different universities where DC had taken courses and needed transcripts sent to each college to which DC applied (again $10-20), one college with its own portal, UCAS, and then all the individual college portals. I think I counted at one point that it was a navigation process between 28 different portals/sites. Now I consider myself a pretty swift administrator, and my DC is pretty on-it, but supporting DCs process really felt like a part-time job (for me) throughout the fall.

I share one particularly annoying learning as a forewarning: If your DC wants to withhold any APs from their score reporting (still officially required to submit upon application at a few schools), you have to download and print out a form, fill it in for each college, pay something like $20 a pop, FAX IT in, and then wait for 10-12 days before you see the updated AP score report in the College Board/AP portal and can send it to the college. Talk about an unexpected nightmare!

I didn't do any of this: I just proofread his essay, his common app applications and logged onto portals with him to make sure he was doing things right. I asked him what about this school, that school, and he was adamant he was not interested. Then admissions started to roll in and he realized oh wow, I could have gotten into more schools! I feel absolutely terrible about it and it literally haunts my dreams. I'm not really sure if I can ever let the guilt go.

Haunts your dreams??

Yes, I have dreams about college many nights.

Where do you wish your kid was going?

Yale

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it’s just my kids, but it was way more parental support than I expected. Between remembering deadlines, helping with all the admissions ways each school does things, managing visits and talking through all the highs and lows of the range of emotions, it’s just an exhausting process. I know it doesn’t have to be that way but it was for us. So glad we’re just about done.

I helped a lot and yet not enough. It will be a regret I likely carry my entire life. My ds has been an independent student since middle school so I let him decide where to apply. Instead should have handled everything from A to Z, made him apply more places or actually done it for him. He's going somewhere people here slam every day, and irl I have not heard one positive reaction about it. Now I worry he will carry the stigma of going there forever.

I can echo that the level of detail and the layers of necessary activity took us by surprise, despite having researched the application process and strategies thoroughly. While most applications get done centrally via Common App at first, you get kicked over to the individual college portals upon submitting your application. Depending on how many colleges your DC applies to, this can mean managing many individual portals, each with different requirements. In our case, that meant managing Common App, Naviance (not fully linked with Common App at our school), College Board (for SATs and then separate microsite for APs), registrar's office from 2 different universities where DC had taken courses and needed transcripts sent to each college to which DC applied (again $10-20), one college with its own portal, UCAS, and then all the individual college portals. I think I counted at one point that it was a navigation process between 28 different portals/sites. Now I consider myself a pretty swift administrator, and my DC is pretty on-it, but supporting DCs process really felt like a part-time job (for me) throughout the fall.

I share one particularly annoying learning as a forewarning: If your DC wants to withhold any APs from their score reporting (still officially required to submit upon application at a few schools), you have to download and print out a form, fill it in for each college, pay something like $20 a pop, FAX IT in, and then wait for 10-12 days before you see the updated AP score report in the College Board/AP portal and can send it to the college. Talk about an unexpected nightmare!

I didn't do any of this: I just proofread his essay, his common app applications and logged onto portals with him to make sure he was doing things right. I asked him what about this school, that school, and he was adamant he was not interested. Then admissions started to roll in and he realized oh wow, I could have gotten into more schools! I feel absolutely terrible about it and it literally haunts my dreams. I'm not really sure if I can ever let the guilt go.

Haunts your dreams??

Yes, I have dreams about college many nights.

Where do you wish your kid was going?

Yale

Where is he going?
I mean Yale is generally not happening even with planning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it’s just my kids, but it was way more parental support than I expected. Between remembering deadlines, helping with all the admissions ways each school does things, managing visits and talking through all the highs and lows of the range of emotions, it’s just an exhausting process. I know it doesn’t have to be that way but it was for us. So glad we’re just about done.

I helped a lot and yet not enough. It will be a regret I likely carry my entire life. My ds has been an independent student since middle school so I let him decide where to apply. Instead should have handled everything from A to Z, made him apply more places or actually done it for him. He's going somewhere people here slam every day, and irl I have not heard one positive reaction about it. Now I worry he will carry the stigma of going there forever.

I can echo that the level of detail and the layers of necessary activity took us by surprise, despite having researched the application process and strategies thoroughly. While most applications get done centrally via Common App at first, you get kicked over to the individual college portals upon submitting your application. Depending on how many colleges your DC applies to, this can mean managing many individual portals, each with different requirements. In our case, that meant managing Common App, Naviance (not fully linked with Common App at our school), College Board (for SATs and then separate microsite for APs), registrar's office from 2 different universities where DC had taken courses and needed transcripts sent to each college to which DC applied (again $10-20), one college with its own portal, UCAS, and then all the individual college portals. I think I counted at one point that it was a navigation process between 28 different portals/sites. Now I consider myself a pretty swift administrator, and my DC is pretty on-it, but supporting DCs process really felt like a part-time job (for me) throughout the fall.

I share one particularly annoying learning as a forewarning: If your DC wants to withhold any APs from their score reporting (still officially required to submit upon application at a few schools), you have to download and print out a form, fill it in for each college, pay something like $20 a pop, FAX IT in, and then wait for 10-12 days before you see the updated AP score report in the College Board/AP portal and can send it to the college. Talk about an unexpected nightmare!

I didn't do any of this: I just proofread his essay, his common app applications and logged onto portals with him to make sure he was doing things right. I asked him what about this school, that school, and he was adamant he was not interested. Then admissions started to roll in and he realized oh wow, I could have gotten into more schools! I feel absolutely terrible about it and it literally haunts my dreams. I'm not really sure if I can ever let the guilt go.

Haunts your dreams??

Yes, I have dreams about college many nights.

Where do you wish your kid was going?

University of Utah, University of Oregon, UMass, Penn State...He is going to FSU. I am feeling absolutely horrible about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it’s just my kids, but it was way more parental support than I expected. Between remembering deadlines, helping with all the admissions ways each school does things, managing visits and talking through all the highs and lows of the range of emotions, it’s just an exhausting process. I know it doesn’t have to be that way but it was for us. So glad we’re just about done.

I helped a lot and yet not enough. It will be a regret I likely carry my entire life. My ds has been an independent student since middle school so I let him decide where to apply. Instead should have handled everything from A to Z, made him apply more places or actually done it for him. He's going somewhere people here slam every day, and irl I have not heard one positive reaction about it. Now I worry he will carry the stigma of going there forever.

I can echo that the level of detail and the layers of necessary activity took us by surprise, despite having researched the application process and strategies thoroughly. While most applications get done centrally via Common App at first, you get kicked over to the individual college portals upon submitting your application. Depending on how many colleges your DC applies to, this can mean managing many individual portals, each with different requirements. In our case, that meant managing Common App, Naviance (not fully linked with Common App at our school), College Board (for SATs and then separate microsite for APs), registrar's office from 2 different universities where DC had taken courses and needed transcripts sent to each college to which DC applied (again $10-20), one college with its own portal, UCAS, and then all the individual college portals. I think I counted at one point that it was a navigation process between 28 different portals/sites. Now I consider myself a pretty swift administrator, and my DC is pretty on-it, but supporting DCs process really felt like a part-time job (for me) throughout the fall.

I share one particularly annoying learning as a forewarning: If your DC wants to withhold any APs from their score reporting (still officially required to submit upon application at a few schools), you have to download and print out a form, fill it in for each college, pay something like $20 a pop, FAX IT in, and then wait for 10-12 days before you see the updated AP score report in the College Board/AP portal and can send it to the college. Talk about an unexpected nightmare!

I didn't do any of this: I just proofread his essay, his common app applications and logged onto portals with him to make sure he was doing things right. I asked him what about this school, that school, and he was adamant he was not interested. Then admissions started to roll in and he realized oh wow, I could have gotten into more schools! I feel absolutely terrible about it and it literally haunts my dreams. I'm not really sure if I can ever let the guilt go.

Haunts your dreams??

Yes, I have dreams about college many nights.

Where do you wish your kid was going?

University of Utah, University of Oregon, UMass, Penn State...He is going to FSU. I am feeling absolutely horrible about it.

Start a new thread? You can get advice on how to strengthen profile for a transfer app if he’s miserable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boys have an easier admission to LACs, but they DO NOT have an easier admission to business schools and engineering. Example, the upper middle class, northern Virginia white boy with college educated parents who tries to apply to Virginia Tech for business. Better have impeccable stats. Meanwhile, a girl in his class with much lower stats got accepted for a Classics major.

Kid is fine and doing well at an oos school w a great business program, but don’t tell me that all boys have it easier.

Business/ CS / Engineering are male-dominated majors.

Makes sense.

Anybody know if the gender divide applies to other majors? Like I would imagine if a female just HAS to go to a certain college, applying as a philosophy major would be a good strategy. And guys in same situation might want to apply as French majors.

Yes and no. Philosophy and history are not necessarily undersubscribed — and almost never as undersubscribed as any other humanities major. In that sense, being a female philosophy major (although philosophy is a “guy” major) probably gives less of an edge than being a female French major (which is almost exclusively female); with often 2-3 French majors a year, at best, many of these departments are in serious trouble.

To be sure, a genuine male French major would be a unicorn. But I would assume AOs are suspicious of the male actually majoring in French once admitted. To say the least, the male would likely have to do more than take AP French and be co-President of the French club to make that narrative convincing (and other issues to: did the kid take lots of science, computer science, econ and other electives vs, say, a second foreign language, AP music, art etc.?).

A female may not have quite as high a bar of suspicion to overcome. Not only because all modern languages are female-dominated (classics is more balanced), but French is traditionally the most female-dominated— that whole wistful Paris thing.

One way to convince AOs your son is a legit prospective major is for the kid to arrange a visit with a French professor during a campus visit and to demonstrate a. an interest in studying French and b. the actual ability to speak French fluently enough to take literature classes. French prof will be in touch with admissions if this is a selective private. If your son can do that, they will be in good shape. If your son cannot do that, they aren't going to study French seriously and should be looked at skeptically by AOs.

Agree a letter from prof can help. But there are MANY other ways:
- summer French program at T20
- create a capstone project (https://www.crimsoneducation.org/us/blog/friends-in-french-a-crimson-student-initiative/)

also a good co-major for these kids of languages is: humanistic studies (princeton) or similar

Or show how kid used French to make an impact (used French to assist Haitian refugees) or writing in the American Journal of French Studies (or better yet, an internship there) or work/internship with The French History podcast. So many easily googleable ideas.

https://american-journal-of-french-studies.com/louisiana-should-accept-the-haitian-refugees

https://www.thefrenchhistorypodcast.com/the-french-in-modern-haiti-with-david-ritter/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it’s just my kids, but it was way more parental support than I expected. Between remembering deadlines, helping with all the admissions ways each school does things, managing visits and talking through all the highs and lows of the range of emotions, it’s just an exhausting process. I know it doesn’t have to be that way but it was for us. So glad we’re just about done.

I helped a lot and yet not enough. It will be a regret I likely carry my entire life. My ds has been an independent student since middle school so I let him decide where to apply. Instead should have handled everything from A to Z, made him apply more places or actually done it for him. He's going somewhere people here slam every day, and irl I have not heard one positive reaction about it. Now I worry he will carry the stigma of going there forever.

Take a gap year. Get a kick ass 6 mo internship and do something else for 3-4 months.
Take standardized test over this spring if necessary.
Reapply (defer your best admission to be safe).
Lots of ppl get into T50 this way, btw

[Anonymous]

FSU is a great school. I know a freshmen there now from the DMV who absolutely loves it. 90% is what you make of it and 10% where you go. Give it a try and if it doesn’t work out, transfer. But most of the time it works out.

[Anonymous]

FSU is not a great school but within the context of Florida, a very large state, it is one of two major universities and is looked upon within the state as a good enough school. I would also point out that because the state of Florida makes it very cheap for strong students to attend FSU and UF, there are some kids who might otherwise be elsewhere who end up there because the tuition is too low to pass up.

Nothing to be too concerned about. It's a fun place, lots of good-looking people, sports are a big deal, and it won't hinder job prospects within the state. Also, it's the South, and people are nice.

[Anonymous]

Agree with earlier commentators that underline how much planning goes into top 20 (or really, top 15) acceptance. For us this meant applying to selective programs for the summers between 10/11 and 11/12 grades, including an extensive application for a very selective summer science program. I put it in much more time than my son did mapping all of this out, which required a great deal of research in addition to keeping track of deadlines, recs, essays, etc. Indeed, I would say that with the essays in particular my role in shepherding all of this gave rise to real tension between my son and me, to the point where I wondered if the effort I was putting in to all of this was really worth it. I am still a bit bruised by the experience but the outcome was what we were looking for, ultimately, and it is my hope that at some point sooner rather than later my kid will understand why things had to go the way they went. It is not for the faint of heart. As a parent, I decided it was in fact worth it to do what I thought was right for my child even if our relations were, in the present, strained. There are some events in a person's life where you just have to buckle up and take responsibility for the process in spite of the bruised feelings that result, including one's own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In RD, it rarely works out for "oversubscribed" majors (CS, engineering, applied math, business, biology or pre-med). It often DOES work out in RD for niche, creative or humanities majors.

Is this because in RD they are "shaping the class" and figuring out what they are missing? So like the other post on majors and positioning, if they are missing Jewish Studies majors or Medieval Studies majors that's when they add them? And take out the CS?

Yes. There have been some good posts in February about this phenomenon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree with earlier commentators that underline how much planning goes into top 20 (or really, top 15) acceptance. For us this meant applying to selective programs for the summers between 10/11 and 11/12 grades, including an extensive application for a very selective summer science program. I put it in much more time than my son did mapping all of this out, which required a great deal of research in addition to keeping track of deadlines, recs, essays, etc. Indeed, I would say that with the essays in particular my role in shepherding all of this gave rise to real tension between my son and me, to the point where I wondered if the effort I was putting in to all of this was really worth it. I am still a bit bruised by the experience but the outcome was what we were looking for, ultimately, and it is my hope that at some point sooner rather than later my kid will understand why things had to go the way they went. It is not for the faint of heart. As a parent, I decided it was in fact worth it to do what I thought was right for my child even if our relations were, in the present, strained. There are some events in a person's life where you just have to buckle up and take responsibility for the process in spite of the bruised feelings that result, including one's own.

What type of strain are you referring to? Did you kid really need that science program?

[Anonymous]

I think whether he needed that science program has been, in part, answered: he was admitted ED to the school he wanted to go to. But yeah, we'll see. There's a reason why people shell out 30k for a private counselor. It's not just for their knowledge of the process, but to mediate between kids and parents. Or so I am told.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it’s just my kids, but it was way more parental support than I expected. Between remembering deadlines, helping with all the admissions ways each school does things, managing visits and talking through all the highs and lows of the range of emotions, it’s just an exhausting process. I know it doesn’t have to be that way but it was for us. So glad we’re just about done.

+1 lots of support and guidance...very stressful! So glad to be almost done here too.