Parents of the HS Class of 2010 and college years beyond

[CheckersMidwest]

I've never had a speeding ticket. (knock on wood) BUT there have been several times I Should have gotten a ticket. I tend to have a lead foot. Our highways are pretty curvy, so can't really safely use cruise control. Go like ****on the straight sways, slow down for the corner.......

Ouch on the kidney stones. A few years ago I had them, ended up overnight in the hospital. vicadin was my friend, but made me vomit. just great! Never had anything so painful. I was on a health kick and was eating a lot of yogurt. My lab results came back as a calcium stone. considering I don't drink milk.....haven't had yogurt since.

Hope everyone had a great Father's Day! H liked his Keurig.....I made iced sweet tea for myself in it. We went to the movie "Rock of Ages". We enjoyed it...lots of great 80's music. I overheard an "old" balding guy tell his wife "I've got to get that soundtrack and I think I'm going to grow my hair out long again." Too funny. At times the audience would sing parts.

D15 and I had a successful shopping trip in Des Moines Saturday. We found some really cute outfits for the local pageant. This season's prom dresses were all on sale.....got a long one for $30 !! I love a good sale. Lot's of "Buy one, get one half price sales" and I got an artificial bamboo tree for our breakfast room. it's about 2 feet tall. had a nice birthday lunch at Red Lobster.

Today is my Birthday.

thinking about taking Fridays off for the rest of the summer. Who votes yes ?!

I really don't like the auto spell, grammar corrections, etc on this iPad. I swear I try to capitalize stuff.

Hooray for good college grades! Always glad to hear that kind of college news !

[aliceinw]

Happy Birthday, Checkers! And I vote yes on Fridays off. Would you see if my boss would sign on for this?

[tx5athome]

Checkers I vote yes for Fridays off! I had Fridays off for 15 years and I hate that I gave it up.

[TWINMAMA]

Just popping in to say hello, and to wish Checkers a very Happy Birthday!!

I have Fridays off...it's wonderful, even if I spend most of the day cleaning and doing errands- at least then I can relax a bit on the weekends!

We leave tomorrow for a quick getaway to the Lake George, NY area...just for 4 days before Ds start their camp counselor jobs next week...we've been there before and always find fun stuff to do and see

[pugmadkate]

Happy Birthday, Checkers!

We had a great Father's Day here. We used Skype successfully for the first time with Mr PMKjr and it was great to see him! Haven't seen his face since March, so it was really a treat. And now we know how to Skype. Well, I can use it with some coaching on this end by Mr PMK!

I hope everyone's summer is going well. Our exciting news is that my sister got a new puppy (a beagle) and so I'm an Aunt again! Boy, is the puppy ever cute.

[parent56]

Happy Happy b'day checkers!!!!! and did you know it was Blake Shelton's bd too? i only know that from facebook


yes vote from me for fridays off

woohoo for the skype with pmkjr!!

[colorado_mom]

Happy Birthday, Checkers. It sounds like you had fun yesterday - hope today is even better!

It was great to talk with DS last night. Two weeks w/o contacting home seems like nothing to him, but his parents are roaming around lonely and curious in the empty nest

[RobD]

Happy Birthday CM!

Congrats on the Skype PMK!

I also bought a prom dress this past weekend...for D2. She's adamant she won't go, doesn't like dressing up etc. But I know she'll decide the week before & I'll have to scramble, especially since she's so tiny. Found one that came close to all her criteria: not pink, no flowers, no bejeweling, no plunging back, front or slit, or cutouts. Size 2. Plum colored & minimum "bling." $24. It was met with a sigh & "well, it's about as good as I'd expect to find on my own."

I am so looking forward to vacation. I've been so busy at work that I haven't had a chance to get myself organized. But today is a new day.

[coskat]

Happy Birthday Checkers!

[woody35]

Hey all, I'm actually a 2012 parent but a co-worker friend has asked me to try to help his 2014 D with college stuff so I'll probably pop up in here every now and then too. I've only just finished helping one kid get into college so not sure I'm ready for providing unofficial guidance for my friend's kid too. I do also have a 28-year-old "kid" in college right now but he was in the Navy for 6 years and is going to college on the GI Bill now (or whatever we call that program these days!) so I haven't been involved in his college process at all.

My friend's D tells me she's interested in medical school one day. She's a URM and I think also the first in her family in college (fingers crossed on that anyway!), not interested in attending a HBCU but wants a decent amount of other AA students on campus. Her dad suggested the military route to medicine but she vetoed that. Also said she doesn't want to attend college in Texas (we're in Dallas metro area) and probably also not somewhere "really hot." She's lived back and forth between Chicago and Dallas all her life and said she wouldn't mind a college with cold winters.

She says she gets As/Bs in a high-performing school district that offers a lot of AP classes but she hasn't taken any AP courses before now. I'm not even sure yet if she's taken any honors classes in her first 2 years in HS because I forgot to ask her that. When I said in our first brief chat about it this week that she probably needs to take some AP classes, she was concerned and said they're hard. Don't know yet if she can't handle rigorous courses well or is just intimidated about taking one, so i also don't know yet if her medical school plan is even realistic. But first things first with undergrad! Her 11th grade schedule is set and not sure if she can change it much now to add an AP class. Maybe she could still take two AP classes as a senior if I can persuade her. I know it's only "recommended" for college admissions but it would probably help her a lot if she could do fairly well in at least 2 AP classes.

Also no SAT or ACT taken yet. When she said she wasn't sure if she took a practice PSAT last year, I got nervous. Our school district makes every 10th grader take it in October. I need to ask her dad where he keeps any school records at home and see if they've got a copy of her 10th grade PSAT results anywhere. Otherwise, no info on that til school starts up again. She did tell me she's taking algebra 1 in summer school right now but I realized later that I didn't ask her if that was by choice or it's a required re-take, yikes.

She's in a one-parent low-income household but so are we so I know what pitfalls she needs to watch out for with that in the application process. She says she has no contact with her mom which means she might need to only apply to colleges that don't require the CSS just to make things smoother in that regard. I need to verify that with her dad though. Once I get a better idea of her current GPA and what types of classes she's been taking, I'll know whether she should give QuestBridge a shot for some of their college prep scholarships in 11th grade and their college match program in 12th grade. My kid did well with QB in grades 11 & 12 so at least I'm already very familiar with that sometimes confusing program.

Now that I've typed this out and seen all the little bits together, I'm thinking that we need to get together by next week and really start talking numbers, ideas, possibilities, etc. Hoping I'm not in over my head on this one! But I went thru a lot of different things with my own kid's college search and application process so hopefully we can keep this girl heading in the right direction with all this. My kid was in a full IB program at a different HS in town with some unique leadership activities plus very defined ideas about the kind of humanities degrees she wants to pursue and also some of her career goals.

Hopefully as I get a better fix on this younger girl's strengths and weaknesses, y'all may be a big help in giving her (and me!) some fresh ideas about campuses that might be a good fit for her. At this point I'm already sure it'll be a much different process than what we just went through with my own kid since the two girls are so different. Okay, that was really long!

[woody35]

Oh yeah, and I'll be dropping my own kid off in August at Earlh@m College in IN if anyone's kid is possibly eyeing that college and is looking for more info about it in the future. If you want to know if they give some students a bunch of merit aid, yes, they do! They also have a great scholarship program available for low-income kids that has to be applied for separately but if selected, it covers the full remaining COA after Pell grant and basic federal Stafford loans. PM me if you need more specific details for a student that might qualify. Kid got accepted into 9 other colleges so will let you know any other merit aid details and other stuff about those schools as it comes up.

[parent56]

hi woody.. actually we have kids graduating college in 2014... but think some of us might be able to help

re AA % , med school hopeful, oos.... uab ( UAB - The University of Alabama at Birmingham ) .. cant fit the not hot criteria though.

UAB is 26% AA, has very good automatic merit...ie act of 28 and gpa of 3.0 will get 15K/year against total cost of 20-25K. Very strong for sciences, incredible honors program (sci/tech honors), 11K undergrads, only 6% greek. Home of a top 10 med school

if by any chance she is national merit or national acheivement scholar..its a full ride.

[woody35]

Oh yeah, realized that later. I'm not used to looking at anything with "2014" in it and your thread ended up more visible than the HS one when I decided I should start thinkng more about stuff for this girl! I'll move it but I'll be sure to track y'all down if I need more help for her that the more experienced parents/students have. She's a good kid and her parents will be zero help for her with all this stuff.

Dang, thanks for the big reminder... I already forgot about National Achievement maybe being available to her. My kid was NMF this year which is why I asked the girl about her 10th grade PSAT that the school district requires everyone to take. My kid was accepted at UA and OU but opted not to attend either. I did tell this girl about the benefits of a strong PSAT and my neighbor kid who attended OU with a plan to major in PHysical Therapy but spent another year there and became a Physician's Assistant instead. That might be something she could make happen as an alternative to med school if she wants to go that route.

[parent56]

good morning all.. coffee is ready!!

woody.. just a heads up... UAB is not the same as UA...same system, different schools

[psychmom]

Happy Birthday Checkers!♥♥

woody, Best wishes to your friend's D...and congrats to your kiddo!