<p>They’re pretty standard at our high school as well, although I would guess about only half of the graduating seniors parents buy one. We bought them for both our kids and they seemed to like them a lot. They even chose what photographs they wanted; Mom and Dad got to write the message (and we kept that as a surprise until they got their yearbooks).</p>
<p>Everyone is subject to the same size restrictions (1/4 page), number of photographs allowed (three), and number of words allowed for the message, so there’s no one-upsmanship with people buying an entire page or pages to outdo the rest of the class.</p>
<p>I seem to remember the cost was $60, which I didn’t think was all that bad.</p>
<p>I did one–you could do the whole thing online. I did it without telling my son. It featured him in a caveman costume when he was about two years old, and a picture of how he looked in his senior year. He liked it, because it was funny and not too corny.</p>
<p>Our HS does this for Seniors only. We took out 1/4 page ad for D which is about standard. She would have been very disappointed if we hadn’t as many parents do. We also went together with her best friends parents and put a small ad in of the 2 girls (friends since 2nd grade). It was very sweet.</p>
<p>Harvard does this with its yearbook too. The big difference being the Harvard ads cost a lot more. We didn’t buy any ads in HS or college senior yearbooks. </p>
<p>When she graduated from high school, D1 and her best friend took out a yearbook ad where they put pictures of the two of them together at age 3 and at age 18 and a cute poem they wrote about their friendship.</p>
<p>We have those at my school. It’s certainly not EXPECTED but a lot of families do them, and my school is big enough that nobody would notice anybody missing. My parents did a quarter page for me, I wasn’t really into it but my mom really wanted to so I said she could, and now looking back I am really glad she did. I love to look back at it, and I love to see my classmates baby ads, too. It just felt nice that they’d take the time and money to do something like that for me.</p>
<p>It’s a pretty big deal here too but I kind of expected it because her middle school even did it. DD thinks it’s way cheesy so we kept it small and funny. Quotes or song lyrics work. DD was ok with it as long as it wasn’t huge, corney or sappy. The group pictures are cute too especially for kids who have been grown up together. A “business card” small ad is another way to go if your child doesn’t want the picture. </p>
<p>I have to say it was fun to look at when it came out but it was just a pain to do because senior year is already so busy and expensive. A parent once told me that senior year moms just needed a good pair of track shoes and a checkbook…because you run from thing to thing and pay. Quite true.</p>
<p>My D’s middle school had a yearbook, and they did sell the ads. The kids who worked on the yearbook were strongly encouraged to buy one, and there was probably about 75% participation from the class. Of course some kids had pages of them- mom dad and sibs, grandma and grandpa on both sides, and then cousins aunts and uncles. One particularly comes to mind.</p>
<p>Our high school does this as well. For our oldest son’s class, I’d estimate there were “ads” for about 80 of the 400 graduates. And most were the students whose parents are the 20% who do the 80% of the volunteer work at school. The cost of the yearbook is $45 and if it were higher, many students would not be able to afford it. So the ads help pay some of the production cost.</p>
<p>In 2008, the publishing company somehow left out a double-sided page of ads–8 kids, all
of whom were either in the student cabinet or star athletes. It was quite the little crisis and the company had to print a supplemental page and refund the cost of the ads to those parents. </p>
<p>Maybe it’s more popular in smaller communities. In our town, the newspaper also runs a special Graduates section in May and people buy ads to congratulates their kids–even those graduating from kindergarent. Our kids WOULD kill us if we bought one of those.</p>
<p>Our HS does it and many parents take out 1/2 or full page ads, but there is no expectation and not everyone does it.</p>
<p>I thought I would give it a go and designed a 1/2 page ad for my senior. Used 9 photos, highlighting one from the band this year. But no sappy sayings and no embarrassing photos. He actually liked it and my younger son (a junior) wanted to know when I would start working on his!</p>
<p>They can be a little embarrassing, but as a high schooler on a yearbook staff we really appreciate when people do them! It costs so much money to produce the yearbooks…</p>
<p>i’m on our yearbook staff and know how important they are BUT
i forbade my parents from getting one for me. They are creepy and rather pointless. No thank you…but if that’s your thing…</p>
<p>I have to admit - I’ve seen some that were SOO embarrassing! If I were the kid I would be mortified. </p>
<p>That’s why I was VERY careful with the photos I selected, only did a simple “Congrats” statement, and made sure DS (who usually hates this sort of thing) - approved!</p>
<p>Ours are called “dedication pages”, and I just submitted D’s. It cost $170 for a half page, which I thought was exorbitant until I saw the posts above that cite prices of $250 for that size. Anyway, when I did it for my older son, it was much cheaper. I never would have bought his at the $170 price, but am kind of obligated to do the same thing for D now. As it is, I feel cheap because most people do pay for the whole page. Some familiies bought 2 or 3 full pages in the past, but I think they’ve disallowed that for this year. Very few people opt for the quarter page size. You’re entitled to 6 photos for a whole page, and 3 for the half. The typical page has a baby picture or elementary school age shot, one of the student doing a favorite activitiy, and maybe one of the student with friends or family. I put a cute school photo from 1st grade, a sports action shot, and one of the casual senior portraits. DH and I wrote the customary “we’re so proud of you for your high school accomplishments, make us prouder in college” letter (gag me), as did her brother and sister. And that’s all the space there was.</p>
<p>The funniest thing I ever saw was one family made a list of complimentary sentences taken from college mailings and posted them on the page, things like “Prestigious College X is looking for bright, accomplished students like you”. I’m sure their child was mortified!</p>
<p>Our HS does it. Maybe 25 percent of the families do it though. They are pretty corny in my book. My favorite was one year when someone asked me whether I thought anyone would notice all the liquor bottles in the picture she wanted to use of her son and his friends. Nice…uhm…no comment?</p>
<p>That’s funny you mention the liquor bottles. My DH put together the ad for our DD and there were very specific instructions about what could not be in the ad. Alcohol was one no no. There was a great family picture from a Bermuda beach that my DH found of the four of us, but we had beer bottles in our hands so we could not use this one!</p>
<p>When I was in high school I used to always say I was going “adventuring” whenever asked what I would be doing that weekend, so when my parents put mine together it was a picture of me from one of our family vacations when I was a preschooler, a senior pic of me in my Yzerman jersey, and said, “may your ‘adventuring’ lead you to all the success and happiness in the world. congratulations on your graduation!” or something like that. Maybe that is a little corny but I really got a kick out of it, still do. I am surprised at all the distaste you guys seem to have for them, my school loves them-- though we are allowed a half page max and they aren’t as expensive as most of yours are. Then again our books are $70, so if these things do indeed subsidize the cost then I can’t imagine life without them! O.O</p>
<p>Our school had several sizes to choose from though the majority that did a page chose a full page. I think the cost was $250. Some parents really went overboard with the two page spreads and comments from everyone the student ever knew but some were really creative. I tried to keep D’s pretty simple and not too embarassing. We ended up using the same quote on our pages (the seniors all get a page to do for themselves that they usually coordinate with their friends).</p>
<p>Our high school yearbook has them, but they are pretty pricey and I’d estimate that a third of the class buys one. We bought a half page for D1 and her best friend–they had a number of photos of them taken over the years since they were 2 and they put together a really cute ad.</p>
<p>We would have bought a half page for D2 had she wanted to make one. But she didn’t.</p>
<p>Our high school also does for the parents but not at the prices some have posted!! I think it’s $25 for a quarter page and $100 for a full page and $50 for a half page in color. If someone has trouble affording it and contacts the school I think they give them a quarter page. Don’t know if anyone has ever asked for a free space. Most everyone posts a baby picture and I think it’s fun and sweet. They call the pages “Wonder Years.” No one gets “competitive” or “goes overboard.” I don’t think in the six years I’ve seen senior yearbooks that anyone did a full page. That might be abit over the top but almost everyone does a 1/4 or 1/2 page. One picture (or two) and a small quote or dedication. The kids sell a few pages of “business” tributes and parents that have cash to burn buy one of those under their company name or give a gift to the school as a tribute. It’s a public school with not alot of one-up-manship amoungst the parents.</p>