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[Sarath Perera]

I have been posting our daughter's college application
activities here and getting some valuable suggestions.
She ended up applying to 10 colleges. They are Yale,
Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Amherst, Dartmouth, Cornell, Harvard,
Washington University in St. Louis, Stanford and University
of Connecticut. UCONN already offered her a half-tuition
scholarship and admission to their honors program. Her
interest in UCONN, however, has gradually diminished.
But she says that she will be very happy in any of the
other nine. In fact, she refuses tell us her favorite
one, says they are all favorites. The order I listed above
is my preference (which has very little to do with actual
selection).

My question is, if she gets notified that she is a
National Merit Finalist (notifications are due this week),
should she write to each college and provide this
information? On college applications she filled out
that she is a semi finalist. Since 93% of semi finalists
become finalists this is not a big deal. On the other
hand, if she does not write, colleges might think she
didn't get selected. Also, writing this might be a way
of saying she is still very interested in going there.
What do you think?

Sarath.

[Out West]

Email it to the admissions office. At the same time think of a benign
question to ask them. You want them to know that you are still interested.
All colleges want to know about anything that changes in the Spring
semester. It is certainly appropriate to notify them of her honor if she
gets it, but at the same time hook it to an unrelated question she may have.
That way she lets them know about the finalist status, but she doesn't seem
overly confident. Merit finalist , while certainly an honor, is not that
critical in admissions. The colleges all know that it is based on one test
in fall of Junior year. The actual SAT's mean more.
Admissions people are all people , after all, and the more human your
daughter seems to them and the more interested she seems the better. My #1
did this with a number of colleges that she was interested in and that she
did have questions for and I think it may have helped. Admisions people can
read honesty a mile away and if your daughter is truely honest and
interested they will see it (as well as seeing that she is a NM finalist).
Oh, and good luck to her! She has some great colleges on her list. Choosing
ten was a good idea because her choices are all amazing schools. A waitlist
or two or a reject or two will still leave her options open. I can't wait to
hear where she gos!
-B
"Sarath Perera" <ppeerreeaa@yahoo.com> wrote in message
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