When the grades from the essay assignment arrive, the following day, the students who wish to apply out of state stand out like sore thumbs to the eyes of the class. And not just Daisy and Valerie, who are widely considered 2 of the strongest students. Albert also stands out from the other kids for this reason.
"What is the meaning of this?" the AP English teacher asks Albert when he comes to collect his copy, showing him a request for admissions advice. More specifically, the counselor's rec.
"I might be considering Holy Cross... they seem to be asking for a counselor rec, but guidance knows next to nothing about us"
The class gasps, surprised that Albert, who hitherto made no real academic splash, is apparently willing to go to college out of state. Meanwhile, a train of thoughts traverses Albert's mind. While Daisy might have been helpful about the importance of paying attention to the breakdown of the net price, I am worried about the counselor rec. As I told the class, guidance knows next to nothing about us.
"By and large, in-state public schools put next to no weight on that. You may as well book your next appointment to help the counselor write the recommendation letter" the teacher advises the class regarding the counselor's letter of recommendation.
And Daisy realizes that she can forget about having the booster club president write a letter of recommendation for her unless absolutely necessary. Which forces her to redefine her priority for letters of recommendation: the debate coach and counselor have priority over the drama teacher, who, in turn has priority over the booster club president. They both book their appointments over to guidance after class for that specific purpose, but other students in the course didn't even get their appointments with the counselor yet.
Oh boy. Here I am, in this AP English class because English is my strongest subject, and I need to work much harder in pre-calculus to even think about going to LSU, which I know is much better than McNeese State. We were always told about needing at least 3.5 for LSU, Paige, one of the students, tries to resist the urge to cringe at Albert, also wondering how good Holy Cross is. Yet, that student knew Daisy and Valerie were much stronger than him.
When the time comes for Daisy to meet up with the guidance counselor, later that week, the visibly stressed counselor has some questions for her.
"Before you ask, I already sent the official transcripts of everyone who started their applications. Your essay please..." the counselor asks Daisy.
"Why?" Daisy asks the counselor while she sends her essay to that person.
"My letter of recommendation must not contain information already on your essay, nor elsewhere in your application" the counselor responds to her.
And, if necessary to put past actions in context, use the STAR (situation, task, actions, results) method, the counselor thinks, while letters written for other kids included difficult family contexts, disciplinary actions taken against the kid, and so on. Yet, upon reading about how Daisy came to realize, after the end of an inter-state debate tournament, how governance issues are interconnected...
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"I never, ever saw anyone write about retirement reforms in a college application essay. Not even Chantal, who instead tied international extemp and mathletics into the economic aspects of international relations" the counselor comments on Daisy's essay.
The choice is clear: I must write about Daisy's willingness to think outside the box. However, there must be... some other trait I could talk about! The counselor struggles to think of what else could be written about Daisy.
"What ultimately sparked this realization appeared much less savory on a personal statement to me" Daisy quips on that comment.
"What do you mean?"
"That DCC debater I played against talked far too quickly for most people to understand. I proceeded to attack his arguments at their core, as usual for people who preferred to debate at a more readily understandable speed, but also to talk about the problems with speaking too quickly and their implications for engaging in a dialogue with stakeholders about retirement reforms"
Daisy seems pretty earnest, or perhaps has a sense of justice that might be worth writing about, the counselor reflects on what Daisy's answer would imply for what the letter should talk about. Big-picture thinking was out of the question since it was already covered in the essay. She might not be as driven as Chantal or Valerie, but she certainly has her share of personal qualities. What I am doing with Daisy right now, I am about to undergo this process about 40-50 times this year, and without specific reference to any college. The strongest kids are often the early birds, the counselor then sighs, realizing the sheer amount of stress of filing paperwork for the kids. I ought to ask more questions about what challenges she faced in the area of ethics.
In a sense, the teachers are lucky since not everyone will need a letter of recommendation from the same teacher, but it's still something that can stress a teacher out. After all, they want to see the people they write recs for succeed after graduation.
With the final document secured for Common Application purposes, Daisy returns home to work on her remaining Dartmouth supplements and, late at night, she has her parents around for submitting the early decision agreement. For one last confirmation prior to submitting the early decision app.
"Are you sure that you want to do early decision at Dartmouth? You're rolling the dice in ways you wouldn't at Tulane!" Daisy's mom warns Daisy, urging her to go over this choice once again.
It's good practice to think of NPs as a range. Dartmouth's NP is lower than Tulane's, $8-10k, however, I will spend some summers studying and my breaks will come at different times, Daisy mentally runs through what she expects from each college, knowing she's not interested in business or architecture.
"You forgot about Dartmouth's partying! Sure, the student bodies are academically interchangeable between the two colleges, but Dartmouth is the Ivy that's most similar to Tulane socially as well!" Daisy's mom keeps warning her.
"If I am going to have the same sort of college experience at either one, I may as well apply ED at the one with the lower EFC! We'll save money if it works!"
"One last thing: New Hampshire winters are very cold, at least compared to Louisiana ones" Daisy's father warns her.
I could have ED'd at Brown, but its net price is like $6-8k higher. Or UChicago, but its faculty is a little inaccessible. Or Middlebury. But Dartmouth had the lowest EFC among all colleges that had that number of items I wanted in a college, Daisy then signs the early decision agreement digitally. However, this buys me two and a half months to look for other colleges I could like and that aren't reaches for everyone. And yet this is going to be stressful for that long, if not longer.