College applications email account

Some good advice from NYT's The Choice for students applying for college financial aid.

Provide an e-mail address you actually check. The financial aid process is detailed, and we often need to contact applicants or their parents to fact check or request more information. If we can’t reach you, we can’t complete your award.

From the comments, some more advice:

Several parents on a related College Confidential discussion forum thread have suggested creating a college-only email address that parents can access so that Mom or Dad will be able to alert their applicant children to important notices. It may sound very helicopterish, but when thousands of dollars are at stake, it might be wise to start whirring those blades.

— Sally Rubenstone, Senior Advisor, College Confidential

I confess I did this when my son applied to college:  Yup, I wanted to make sure my son didn't miss any important news that might hit us in the pocketbook.  There were times when he changed the email password so that he would be sure to be the first to learn decisions about acceptances, and that was certainly appropriate.

JFK's algebra grades

As a prep student, young John Kennedy earned a grade of 65% the first year he took algebra and a 71% the second year.  It's unclear if 65% was a failing grade that required him to retake the course, but it does look that way.  Later on, he scored 82% on his "Elementary Algebra" college placement test. I suspect he benefited from private tutoring.

You can draw your own conclusions from this information.  It fits into several possible narratives.  And then there's this from the letter JFK's father wrote to Harvard before his son enrolled.

Jack has a very brilliant mind for the things in which he is interested, but is careless and lacks application in those in which he is not interested. This is, of course, a bad fault.

JFK's Unimpressive Harvard Application

I found this on Ann Althouse's blog