<p>It’s a stereotype, which I wouldn’t expect on this thread, and it’s negative.</p>
<p>Think about the stereotypes that you don’t want your kids to run up against at college and that’s why you are on this thread looking for schools that have a Jewish population.</p>
<p>Teachable moment. From someone who lives ON LONG ISLAND.</p>
<p>We had been through the college process before, with our daughter, 4 years ago, so we knew a little of what to expect. This time, however, was a lot more intense since, and I know this sounds like a stereotype, our D was much more organized and focused, it helped that she knew what type of school she wanted, small LAC, so she did a lot of the work. This time around, I was more involved, and, like rockvillemom, I had charts and spreadsheets galore. My sons thought I was crazy. They weren’t that thrilled with the college visit process either, and I know several people who didn’t visit until after acceptances, but my kids found it very helpful to tour, since it help them narrow down somewhat what they wanted to look at, although one S still ended up applying to small LAC, medium univ size (6,000 size) and bigger univ size schools. </p>
<p>Socaldad42- in answer to your question, one son will be attending Wash U in St Louis, and the other will be at Colgate</p>
<p>ddahwan-no one will be close, but that’s fine. One will be a plane ride away, one a drive and if third S picks W&M then that’s a car or train ride away</p>
<p>The real pain is that because of timing, H and I will need to split up in taking them since assuming S goes with W&M, freshman move-in-days at each school are right after each other, on a Thur, Fri and Sat, so one of us will have to do the Thur/Sat move ins and the other do Friday’s. </p>
<p>Then we’ll have an empty house, oy!</p>
<p>Wow! Such impressive schools and you seem to have come through it with sanity intact. You should be giving advice on this thread! Triplets? I think my head would explode! Seriously, I think you must have a wealth of knowledge and experience on how to navigate the logistics of this process. Please remain an active poster on our thread.</p>
<p>Just back from Goucher. Great accepted students day. PKDof13, I will send you a PM with details. If there are any questions, I would be happy to answer them too.</p>
<p>With triplets, I suspect susanww has experience with being in three places at the same time. If anyone is every going to be succesful at cloning themselves, it will probably be a mother of multiples. Congratulations on the impressive schools and yes, you could teach a lot of us here.</p>
<p>Susan-great schools congratulations! If on moving in day sounds crazy, let alone 3 back to back. You guys should think of a well deserved vacation after that. We are still debating dorm prices. My H thinks is too much money specially with the required meal plans. Negotiations go on.</p>
<p>Susanw,</p>
<p>I am impressed with all three accomplishments. Congrats</p>
<p>Here’s my anecdote about the “LonGuyland” thing.</p>
<p>When I was a freshman in college, I took a sociolinguistics class, and did a project together with a girl from Philadelphia in which we had to interview people and see whether there was a relationship between their age, gender, educational level, socioeconomic status, etc., and the way they pronounced the final “ng” in words.</p>
<p>The problem was, both of us had the same regional accent and we could not hear the difference between the variations. We didn’t do very well on the project!</p>
<p>The difference is this–apparently, “finger” and “singer” are not pronounced the same way by most people. There is a different sound in the middle. The “g” in the middle of singer is softer. Except for some of us, from NY, and, apparently, Philadelphia. The sound in the MIDDLE of “finger” is the sound we put on the end of all words that have “ng” on the end. Other people don’t do that. So when we sang “King of kings and lord of lords” in the Hallelujah Chorus in my Westchester high school, it sounded like, “Kin Gov KinGs…” Evidently, that is incorrect.</p>
<p>My accent was pointed out to me by my college roommates who laughed at how I said “singer.” Since, then I have been unsure how to pronounce any word with an “ng” in the middle. I tend to over-correct. Is “hanger” supposed to sound like “singer” or like “finger”? I never know!</p>
<p>So maybe no one on LonGuyland says LonGuyland, but I always have and didn’t know why it was funny! Because I was truly UNAWARE that there was a different way to say it! It is possible it is more of a Philly thinG, because both of my parents are from Philly. My mother always used to tell us about being required to take an accent modification class at Bryn Mawr where they worked on “king of kings,” but I honestly never understood what they were trying to correct!</p>
<p>DeskPotato–Thank you for that story. Particularly love the “accent modification” class at Brynn Mawr (also known as the “beat the ethnicity out of you class!”). I’m originally a Philly girl, living in NY for 30 years. I always thought the exaggerated LonGuyland pronunciation was a way of highlighting the Jewishness of Long Island. I always thought it was mildly, very mildly, offensive in the same way “JAP” was offensive. I felt particularly prickly when someone not Jewish uttered those words. Not a big deal but I am aware when it happens.</p>
<p>Accent? What accent? Come to Miami, everybody has an accent (even yours truly).</p>
<p>Here’s a good test for your accent…It had me pegged as Boston, even though I moved 30 years ago…
[What</a> American accent do you have?](<a href=“http://www.gotoquiz.com/what_american_accent_do_you_have]What”>What American accent do you have?)</p>
<p>Susan-Congrats on the accomplishments of all four of your children! (Are there “only” four? I don’t want to leave anyone out!)</p>
<p>SoCal-I’ve been thinking, your daughter at UDel must be remarkably independent and confident to move across the country for college? Good for her. Sounds like she reached outside her comfort zone of where she grew up, good for her!</p>
<p>Toured “my” school today with Cheergirl and her best friend. It’s a vastly different school today than when I attended–LAST CENTURY! Really awesome presentation, the best we’ve seen. Very nice tour as well. It was a beautiful day. A bit chilly but gorgeous blue sky. </p>
<p>I was surprised that we saw very few students out and about when we began tour at 1pm. Almost no sign of life. We saw more and more as the day went on, but nothing like UDel, where we saw dozens if not hundreds of students walking, playing, bike riding…I have a nagging concern about the number of underclassman who do or don’t stay on campus over the weekend.</p>
<p>Academically, the school seems exceptional. Good explanation of the limited enrollment programs and how they work. Route 1 and town of College Park are not pretty, but with so much to choose from on campus, no true need to venture there often.</p>
<p>Drove through fraternity row before leaving, Cheergirl and friend perked up when they saw the cute frat guys playing football! Hopefully that’s an image that will stay with them lol!</p>
<p>Not crazy about “Freshman Connection” but that’s a likely outcome. All in all, a productive day.</p>
<p>I’m a philly girl and my kids both went to overnight camp with almost 100 % New Yorkers and dealt with being teased (in a very friendly way of course) by all of their camp friends every single summer. They very quickly started ordering H2O in restaurants instead of daring to try to say “water”… they still do. I’m sure none of their camp buds meant any harm in their teasing as I’m sure nobody on here means any harm either.</p>
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<p>Of course no one means anything by it… so long as you know that repeating the stereotype is not a good thing… even if YOU think it’s cute and just teasing. If it was about your religion, you would see it differently. </p>
<p>Anyway, rant over. Back to the fun stuff.</p>
<p>DS finally joined FB pages for Class of 2017 at UM. It’s starting to sink in and I think he’s ready to start engaging. Maybe playing a tennis match in the absolute freezing cold yesterday morning helped. I’m going to start figuring out move-in plans now, since it involves a plane flight and hotel stay.</p>
<p>cheermom: Nice to hear the positive feedback about UD. That’s where my daughter is (was offered Freshman Connection for UMDCP). She’s home this weekend (to attend a concert tonight - easy options for transportation!), but I continue to be happy about her progress and the advisement she is getting (when she seeks it out). She met with her adviser last week, chatted about her interests, and the adviser knows someone at a company nearby (Philly) that fits DD to a T, where DD can probably intern during next school year. And DD is excited about it. And wants to do an internship both semesters next year (she will be a senior and doesn’t need that many more credits as she entered with some APs and also did a winter session study abroad for 6 credits). I feel like she is transitioning.</p>
<p>susan: Good luck with your triplets. I imagine the past year has been quite challenging for you. Wish you more luck for move-in which is likely to be very complicated. Triple launch. My head spins thinking about it!</p>
<p>Liny- going to UM today. Son also joined same page. Tell him to join college of Engineering page (nothing going on really but just to get him pumped up). I may see SaxMom today if all goes well.</p>
<p>ddahwan: Yes! I forgot about the Engineering FB page. Will do. I met NYSaxmom on Tuesday… my DS was playing a tennis match at her son’s HS (he doesn’t play, but she came by to meet me!)… she was nice and chatty…tell her I said “hi!” Have a great time at UM today. Let me know if you get any new info!</p>
<p>Need some wisdom from this group: For senior year, Cheergirl choosing between *Spanish 5 or *AP Spanish.</p>
<p>I’ve urged AP Spanish; my thinking is that choosing Spanish 5 is the “safe” choice, sorta kinda like being in a club for 4 years but not stepping up to become an officer in your Senior year. </p>
<p>She’s never had a grade less than A in Spanish; and, she’ll be a member of the Spanish Honor Society. Both AP and Honors are weighted identically. </p>
<p>Seems almost like Spanish 5 would be a big red flag on transcript: “WHY didn’t this applicant choose AP?”</p>
<p>Thoughts?</p>
<p>Cheermom: I would ask the current Spanish teacher what he/she would recommend. Current teacher is best equipped to judge if your DS is capable of the AP course or another Spanish class (if there is an alternate). In our HS, very few take AP Spanish because it is a huge leap from the previous year. My DS - who also did very well in Spanish starting in middle school - took College Spanish as a junior (received 6 credits from St. Johns University). Didn’t take any language this year (but also won’t need to take a language at Miami as an engineer, although I’m sure knowing Spanish will come in handy there! If he chose Tulane, he was going to do his language requirement in Hebrew! His choice!)</p>
<p>Another consideration is the rest of your DD’s course load. For the colleges she’s considering, what does your guidance counselor suggest is appropriate number of APs? Our GC was adamant that DS take 3 APs this year, and he chose 1 math and 2 science APs. The 3 APs was based on his target college list. For DD (the one at Delaware), she took 2 APs senior year and that was fine. (She had taken College French as a junior and then, senior year, took a French culture class, which also included language, as opposed to AP French. For her language requirement at UD, she took Hebrew, which worked well with her Jewish studies minor.) For her government/econ requirement, DD was slated to take it at the honors level, but it didn’t fit into her schedule. So she had to decide between taking it on AP level or standard level. She thought I would push her to AP, but I didn’t. She hates govt and econ. So she took it “on level” and did very well. And the GC, in her letter to colleges, explained why she had gone down a level for these courses – it wasn’t about her ability or desire, it was about scheduling.</p>
<p>While I wanted my kids to continue with a challenging schedule, I wanted them to take AP classes, which require so much work, in subjects that they like senior year. The goal is not to kill them in HS. And they’ve worked so hard. So take the hardest classes that you are willing to work in, not just because they will “look good.”</p>
<p>sounds to me like language is pretty easy for her, so if it’s not going to stress her out or affect her ability to do well in other classes I would say go for the AP. I know that college’s want to see you keep up the workload, not go easier senior year, but with that said… at what cost. If spanish does come very easily to her and she has a strong foundation then why not add another AP, but if it will be a struggle for her then I would say stick to honors which is still impressive etc…</p>
<p>I will tell you my nightmare story with Spanish. I am originally from Brazil (in case you did not already realize by my English), and my husband is Cuban. While Spanish is not my mother language you would think that my kids would Ace Spanish classes. Wrong. 5 long nightmarish years of native Spanish ( why Native if they did not speak well?) until AP Spanish test. Bad grade after bad grade (he was required languages in HS). He did ace the AP but it did hurt his GPA. His Honors friends did take also AP eventually but at a slower pace. Advice. Stick with what’s best for her. Do not push for AP. An Spanish AP is not a calculus AP. it will not make her application better or worst. Now is she is ready let her take it. In UMiami if you get a 5 in AP Spanish you get 9 credits. That was the only thing my son was happy about taking Spanish in HS.</p>