Parents of the HS Class of 2015

[Maxwellequations]

@mihcal, what is ABA? Anyway, wish your D. luck with that competition!

D. 's school's sophomore and junior classes are taking the PSAT tomorrow. She wanted to practice some but she didn't have time to because of band. oh well, this is not for real. She should be able to do reasonably well if she concentrates, based on a sample test she did 1.5 months ago.

[Gibson1514]

Good Luck to all the kidos sitting the PSAT tomorrow. This may be an urban legend, but I recall D1 telling me a study of the kids who scored perfect 2400's concluded that a large % ate tuna or some sort of fish the night before the exam. Can't harm.............. but we are headed to chick-fil- a for a swim team spirit night.

Triplemom - congrats to your D!

The saga of counseling dept continues. Received a phone call Mon am asking me to stop by the school and sign the Governors Honors dept forms. Somehow they had misplaced the originals and sent in a photocopy, which was rejected by the county. Did I mention I had sent in 2 signed copies on different days!!!!

[mihcal1]

Maxwellequations -- Thanks for the good wishes!

ABA is the American Birding Association. My D2 is participating in their annual Young Birder of the Year Contest. She submitted excerpts from the Field Notebook she has been keeping of her birding observations all year, a Community Service module describing her work at the local Audubon daycamp this past summer, a half-dozen paintings and pencil sketches for the Illustration module, and a dozen-ish pictures for the Photography module. She decided to skip the Writing module this year, as last year she got ding'ed for submitting mostly poems and she didn't feel like writing that many essays.

[3girls3cats]

mihcal, your D's work sounds amazing. I love it! I'm not a birder but really enjoy birdwatching and respect the incredible detail that goes into identifying the tiny nuances that distinguish one bird from another and the art that goes into capturing those differences. Best of luck to her!

[PinotNoir]

Good luck to the kids taking the PSAT today!

[suzy100]

mihcal, that is very cool. Is this a hobby for your D or is this something she might like to study? I'm definitely a bird nerd.

I second the good luck for those PSAT takers today! Wish D was taking it today instead of Saturday. She's going to be crabby getting up so early on a Saturday.

[Pepper03]

mihcal that's very cool!

Gibson do our kids go to the same school?

My daughter is taking the PSAT today as well-I wish is was Saturday like it was when my son took it! I don't have very high expectations for this test and am glad it is truly a practice test!

Something is going to have to give next year-and it is going to be the sports!

[OHMomof2]

D has likely just finished it. She did some prep - just getting familiar with the format, mainly, and we went over some guessing/eliminating bad answer strategies, but this PSAT is a baseline only for her, it absolutely matters for nothing.

She is applying to a couple of summer programs this year and one wants an SAT or ACT score, so I think she will take one of those later this year. I kind of lean towards ACT because she doesn't have to report that one to colleges later....am I right about that? Or does it matter what her SAT score in 10th grade was, once she has "real" ones from late junior year?

[suzy100]

OHMomof2, I'm curious to know as well. I'm hoping that if there are any programs my D is interested in for the summer (no idea at this point), that a PSAT score will suffice because it's my impression that some schools will require reporting of all SAT's or ACT's taken in high school and so she won't be taking any this year.

Does anyone know if the PSAT test given today is the same one that will be administered on Saturday? I see questions and answers being discussed on this board, and that seems a bit wrong if there are kids taking exactly the same test on Saturday.

[ahsmuoh]

The PSAT will be different on Saturday. As far as taking an ACT or SAT in 10th grade. If you are only taking it for a summer program do not put your high school on the registration - that way it will not be sent to your high school and if your school puts the test scores on transcipts at application time it will not show up. There are some very selective schools that ask you to send all of your test scores - honestly, I wouldn't worry about your 10th grade score - assuming that you will improve in 11th and 12th grade that is all they will care about when looking at the application.

[OHMomof2]

Thanks ahs. Our HS does not put scores on transcripts, I don't think, but I'll double check. I agree, a 10th grade score shouldn't matter much in the grand scheme of htings

[suzy100]

Thank you ahsmuoh!

[helpsilteplait]

Hello all, I'm new to this group - but I've been lurking for a while. Enjoyed reading your posts and your children's activities/achievements!

D. is a sophomore. She did the PSAT. In her school, PSAT is required for all the sophomores. For juniors it's optional. I don't understand why. does anybody know? Do schools use PSAT to access sophomores?

[IJustDrive]

helpsilteplait- that's very odd. It's true that the PSAT provides a reasonable prediction of how the student will do on the SAT, but the other reason for taking the PSAT is that it's the NMSQT, and to qualify for NMS or National Achievement awards, you must take the PSAT in your second to last year of HS. (Jr. year for most students.) So most schools, if they make the PSAT mandatory, it's mandatory in Jr. year. It doesn't qualify a student for anything sophomore year, it's just for practice and for predictive purposes.

There are some kids who flirt with leaving high school after Jr. year, and for those kids it makes sense to take it as sophomores. But for everyone else, 10th grade PSAT is merely for practice.

We've decided that D won't do any testing this year. It's a very, very busy year, and Saturdays are crazy busy. Maybe she'll take the June ACT once it's all over, but there's just not time this year. She's got some SAT Subject score for summer programs, and that will have to do.

[helpsilteplait]

@IJustDrive, I also think it's odd. In D's school, sophomores don't have to pay to take the PSAT because it's required. but if a junior wants to do it, s/he has to pay.