Here we go. The oldest is applying to colleges. Being a female, she needs to get out of Gilead so all Texas schools are off the table.
A few things I've learned in this process which is way different than 30 years ago...
1. Go talk to your high school college counselor your freshman year. Most kids wait until they're a senior. The college counselor has relationships with many college admissions offices. They can help build a relationship with one if your kid is borderline for acceptance. We went through her list of a dozen schools and the counselor was quick to say which she was going to get into, which were iffy, and which gave money and how much. Since we tailored her list to ABET accredited engineering schools that offered the 4+1 master's program and picked schools that we felt were not a stretch, her list was pretty safe. The one school we thought would be a stretch was one the counselor thought she'd be an easy admit and one we thought was a pretty safe pick was one she thought would be iffy. I can't recommend enough going and talking to their college counselor.
2. Schools admit based on your weighted GPA on a 4.0 scale. I found that counterintuitive since you can have a GPA higher than 4.0. Many schools also give merit aid on a sliding scale based on the weighted GPA. McCallum does not even put the unweighted GPA anywhere on the transcript. The counselor said that any school that cares about that will calculate their own GPA for the classes they care about and not many outside of the top 50 ranked schools will do that.
3. The Common App is simple and a beast at the same time. No other way to describe it. Let the college counselor review it before you submit to schools.
4. If you have Hispanic heritage, make sure your kid is classified as such. I'm around 20% Hispanic. Last year, I checked with the school and verified that my kid could be legitimately classified as Hispanic and was given the green light. It just took one email to change it with AISD. Last week, she got notified she was a National Hispanic Recognition Scholar. That automatically gets her the Presidential Merit Scholarship at her top pick. With her weighted GPA, she also automatically gets the top level non-resident merit scholarship. Since those two scholarships can stack, she'll be at in-state tuition before she even applies for any other scholarships.
I'm sure I'll learn some more as the process moves along. The counselor is reviewing her common app today, so we will submit it this week and wait for acceptance, which should come in December.