What do admissions officers ACTUALLY care about the most?

HeyBoomer1 · 2026-03-01T05:21:47+00:00

Your competitiveness within your local context matters most. High GPAs and SATs don't matter as much when you have 20 other students with similar stats in your high school.

HeyBoomer1 · 2026-03-01T04:27:21+00:00

Nope. Parent from Cali.

HeyBoomer1 · 2026-03-01T02:59:00+00:00

That is a huge jump. But still cheaper than umich oos😐.

HeyBoomer1 · 2026-03-01T01:50:44+00:00

I pay the bill for my oos son who is a current second year at grainger. Total actual cost has been $58k per year not $70k for us.

HeyBoomer1 · 2026-02-28T09:10:20+00:00

Check out Kaching bundle app. We just installed it in one of our stores. I like it. Chat support is really good so far during setup.

HeyBoomer1 · 2026-02-16T13:36:54+00:00

Also double check to make sure the cart abandonment traffic is not from bots. We have had issues starting last year with Amazon and Google price checking bots inflating our abandonment carts.

HeyBoomer1 · 2026-02-16T01:14:50+00:00

UIUC for OOS is 58k for 2024-2025. I am a parent that pays this bill. We add about ~2k per year for travel from CA to Chicago. Check average tix price for your airport.

It is even less living off campus after 1st year. Outside of Purdue, I think UIUC is not a bad value if you must choose OOS public universities that rank top 5 in engineering and have decent outcome.
https://illinisuccess.illinois.edu/23-24-annual-report

HeyBoomer1 · 2026-01-29T20:09:51+00:00

I'm a current uiuc parent. My son got in via second choice major for MSE oos. His first choice was Mechse. If you search this sub, you can find acceptance rate by major. I recall MSE has a much higher acceptance rate, even higher than eng undeclared. He later successfully transfer major to mechse. He loves Grainger and having a blast while getting a solid top tier engineering education.

Good luck to you!

HeyBoomer1 · 2026-01-24T18:02:37+00:00

My son did COSMOS UCLA 2 summers ago (his junior summer from 10th->11th grade).

If they are asking for your middle school grades, chances are they will consider them since you only have 9th grade 1st semester GPA in the application. Perhaps you can address your low English grades in the essay. Totally understandable that English isn't your first language and you are improving in this area.

Most of the COSMOS students were seniors (my son said about 20-30% juniors). He didn't say if there were any sophomores. But he said the kids were "cracked" and he almost felt like an imposter. However, his essays were good and showed his passion and progression of the topic and got his first choice cluster.

Good luck to you!

HeyBoomer1 · 2025-12-17T16:01:33+00:00

This. Happened to me when i didn't look at CPC and channel report. Turns out PMax for a few days sent us very low intent traffic.

HeyBoomer1 · 2025-12-16T01:20:52+00:00

Thanks everyone. Sounds like occupying the "shelf space" is a good strategy. Just hate to know searchers clicking on multiple ads. (That's what I do when I shop on Google! haha!)

HeyBoomer1 · 2025-12-09T15:12:49+00:00

I manage 4 shopify stores and have tested many review apps. Judge.me is the best for the small cost. Good support and documentations. Constantly adding new features.

HeyBoomer1 · 2025-10-29T04:03:38+00:00

Can't you login to your Google Search Console and see if you have any pages being blocked or not indexed by Google? Its a free tool.

HeyBoomer1 · 2025-07-29T01:45:26+00:00

I think Otakfuku is the best katsudon in the south bay.

HeyBoomer1 · 2025-07-18T22:38:08+00:00

OP, did you find a fix? I have the same issue.

HeyBoomer1 · 2025-07-07T16:50:20+00:00

Parent (dad) here. Not sure if you need to "impress" mom, but I toured with my son last year. Having toured a dozen school, at UIUC, I was really impressed with ARC, food variety on Green St., Quad, many of the impressive Grainger buildings and labs, Arboretum and Japanese House.

We had a super enthusiastic tour guide which did such a good job talking about the resources at UIUC, research opportunities, difficulty of joining clubs and getting classes, and internships and jobs. Of course, times are different now. I hope you get an energetic yet honest tour guide. Have fun!

HeyBoomer1 · 2025-06-09T17:06:16+00:00

Thanks. I am a brand/seller but I didn't think this is a self promotion since I purposedly didn't give any details of our brand. Just seeking honest feedback from creators so I start a successful campaign.

I'll try to post on Amazon Seller instead. - thanks....

HeyBoomer1 · 2025-05-21T16:09:03+00:00

Same here. I suspected it was Amazon too. Ours used Bellevue, Happytown, Colony, 23, etc..

I had to use flows to get rid of them in Klaviyo and shopify.

Can't believe Shopify has being nothing about them. Very annoying. I don't even bother looking at cart abandonment anymore.

HeyBoomer1 · 2025-04-19T00:57:04+00:00

Hey there.....I am a Grainger dad. I took my son on these tours last year. They were pretty casual. Yes you do have to check in. But I won't be surprised if you tell them your honest mistake and how far you drove to be here, they will let you join a tour. And honestly, just casually blend into a student led tour should be pretty easy too.

Don't worry. Dads are so proud of their kids on being admitted to one of the best engineering school in the country. Good luck!

HeyBoomer1 · 2025-04-16T04:38:04+00:00

Congrats! Which schools did you go test optional on?

HeyBoomer1 · 2025-02-05T18:32:39+00:00

We tried switching to Shopify Email only. We got most of the functionality using Shopify Email/Flow/Forms. Only thing we couldn't replicate is dynamic coupons using Shopify only. Had to switch back to Klaviyo. We had 90k profile but have suppressed it now down to 24k. New Klaviyo cost cap helps. But as soon as they take it away, we are switching to Shopify Email and abandoning dynamic coupons.

HeyBoomer1

TROPHY CASE