Waiting for colleges to respond
Poor Small Boy. He's worked all fall on college applications. He's visited dozens, he's interviewed, he's written (and re-written) essays, and most recently he's gone through the grueling process of applying for financial aid when your mother owns three businesses. (I was there. That was GRUELING.)
The hardest one was Harvard. It took us several days to finish that one (I helped with the financial aid part). My conclusion at the end was that only super-highly-competenent people could even manage to APPLY to Harvard. Seriously, it took the full facilities of a home office to prepare the reports, scan and upload them. Harvard applications pretty much require Excel, Word and Adobe Acrobat.
His first choice was Princeton, and he applied "early action". The concept there is that he may only apply to one private and one public college under "early action"; it's a bit looser than early decision in terms of requirement to attend. He obviously hoped he'd get in there for his own reasons, but I hoped he'd get in because it would have saved me close to a thousand dollars in application fees. Their response, however, was to kick him into the general population. He wasn't accepted, but nor was he denied: he still has hope.
But these name-brand east coast colleges are super hard to get into, even if you're 100% qualified. They just have too many applicants for each spot. I've heard stories about people just being picked at random from the applicant pool without even reading them once they've made it through the first vetting. That totally makes sense. So I calculate he has a 1 in 8 chance of getting into any of his choices, and a not insigificant chance that he won't be accepted at any of them. He knows this. He's taking AP Stats this semester.
So far he's been accepted to the two state schools he applied for: UMaine at Orono and UMass at Amherst. Both are top notch and he'll get a good education, and we can afford both without putting either him or us into debt. So he's not as freaked as he could be, but he's still on tenterhooks waiting to hear from:
Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, Univ of Rochester, Renssalaer Polytech, McGill.
The only one we haven't visited is McGill. I figured we'd see where he got in and do one more round of visits as an accepted student before he made his decision.
But right now the decision isn't his to make, it's all in the hands of other people. It's making for a hard winter.
The hardest one was Harvard. It took us several days to finish that one (I helped with the financial aid part). My conclusion at the end was that only super-highly-competenent people could even manage to APPLY to Harvard. Seriously, it took the full facilities of a home office to prepare the reports, scan and upload them. Harvard applications pretty much require Excel, Word and Adobe Acrobat.
His first choice was Princeton, and he applied "early action". The concept there is that he may only apply to one private and one public college under "early action"; it's a bit looser than early decision in terms of requirement to attend. He obviously hoped he'd get in there for his own reasons, but I hoped he'd get in because it would have saved me close to a thousand dollars in application fees. Their response, however, was to kick him into the general population. He wasn't accepted, but nor was he denied: he still has hope.
But these name-brand east coast colleges are super hard to get into, even if you're 100% qualified. They just have too many applicants for each spot. I've heard stories about people just being picked at random from the applicant pool without even reading them once they've made it through the first vetting. That totally makes sense. So I calculate he has a 1 in 8 chance of getting into any of his choices, and a not insigificant chance that he won't be accepted at any of them. He knows this. He's taking AP Stats this semester.
So far he's been accepted to the two state schools he applied for: UMaine at Orono and UMass at Amherst. Both are top notch and he'll get a good education, and we can afford both without putting either him or us into debt. So he's not as freaked as he could be, but he's still on tenterhooks waiting to hear from:
Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, Univ of Rochester, Renssalaer Polytech, McGill.
The only one we haven't visited is McGill. I figured we'd see where he got in and do one more round of visits as an accepted student before he made his decision.
But right now the decision isn't his to make, it's all in the hands of other people. It's making for a hard winter.