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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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![/quote]

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.[/quote]

Haunts your dreams?? [/quote]

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