10 days ago, my daughter Jessica submitted her college applications
to Carnegie Mellon (CMU), Oberlin, and Lawrence Univ. CMU and Oberlin had to be
in by 1 December so that they could set up vocal audition schedules in January.
Tonight, she finished and submitted her application to Smith College.
Smith is the only all-women’s school to which she is applying.
Tomorrow, Jessica plans to submit her applications to Rice Univ. and Univ. of
Rochester. That leaves only MIT, Princeton, and Brown to finish. Other than
CMU and Oberlin, the order of completion has mostly to do with how
many supplements a school requires to the Common Application, or if they
don’t use the Common Application at all. Jessica is trying not to form
opinions of a school just based on the ease of use of their web pages or
application but sometimes this is hard.
Observing to Jessica work through the applications, Lawrence Univ. seems to
have the friendliest and most supportive admissions office. MIT seems to
have the most responsive and best web pages. Oberlin required the most work
of those finished so far: she had to complete both the Common App.
and the Unified App. to apply to Oberlin and their music conservatory.
Jessica has had in-person interviews so far with MIT, Oberlin, CMU,
and Rice. She is playing email-tag with the Smith interviewer.
Several of the schools have sent her letters asking for an interview
after she had one. I can imagine that college admissions offices at this
time of year are insanely busy. Jessica wants to get everything in before
15 December because in past years a number of colleges’ admissions computers
have gone down under the end-of-year deadline load.
Jessica has gently pointed out to me that “we” are not applying to
college, she is. But it is hard not to feel that it is a family effort
what with reviewing essays for spelling and grammar, checking forms to
be sure the boxes are checked right, and paying fees for
reports, transcripts, and applications.
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