@ak2018 Thanks for pulling that up!
@BucketsUCSC I honestly thought I was going to get a 70% on it. The test was multiple choice and was 50 questions. Usually, our tests are usually multiple choice and part short answer. I usually do better with the short answer, but only slightly. I’m just as surprised as you are! :))
@bubblylaugh Pulling up what?
@snowfairy137 7th grade feels like it was yesterday. It’s crazy. I feel like my life is going in fast-forward but my mind isn’t catching up. I’m still a small bean and yet I’m expected to know what to do with my life, what colleges I want to go to, etc. As a kid, I would always want to be older and I’m only now realizing why everyone told me to enjoy the time I had.
@nyuhopeful44 @ak2018 @Hamlon I understand there should be a “weighted” benefit, but for the most part, colleges look at your unweighted GPA. The weight only matters for rank and if there is no rank, there is no need for added weight. I know you would like some benefit, however benefits are already built in by taking the AP class in other ways. Colleges will see you are challenging yourself more, you can get college credit, and you learn more most likely. I just feel like this system is discouraging students across the country from exploring other aspects of learning. However all of your comments make total sense, and I just want a perfect world that can’t happen :))
@DaEmmJay23 I understand your point, but that would mean a student with all regular classes and a student with some regular classes and some APs would have the same GPA. I agree that it would be better to just do away with class rank, as it really depends on the school you go to, but doing away with Weighted GPA is taking away the reward that the AP kids deserve for the hard work. Think about the whole “hard work” argument. If you do much more work than someone who did a good portion of work, but it wasn’t really challenging, should you both receive the same reward? The person who wasn’t challenged did work that was much easier, while you did work that required a lot more thinking. Do you think you should both receive the same reward? I think not, at least. That’s why we have the Weighted GPA system, to differentiate between the students the students that challenged themselves and succeeded, got all A’s and one B, and the students that didn’t challenge themselves and worked in all regular classes, and got all A’s. The latter will have a higher GPA than the former. Meaning without the Weighted GPA system, the students who took no APs or Weighted classes and got all As would have a higher GPA than the students who took several APs, challenged themselves to do well in every one of their classes, and got all As and one B.
The Virginia Tech Class of 2020 data came out a while ago and it’s making me feel a lot better!
Freshman Snapshot: Class of 2020
By the Numbers
Number of freshman applicants: 25,263
Number offered admission: 17,540
Number accepting the offers of admission: 6,098
Percentage of the Class of 2019 accepting under the Early Decision Plan: 18%
Number of valedictorians and salutatorians in the freshman class: 157
Number of freshmen who are participating in the Corps of Cadets: 374
Number of freshmen who are legacies (legacy = parent, grandparent, sibling): 1,742
Number of high schools represented in the freshman class: 1,328
SAT test score range of students offered admission: 810-1600 (Critical reading and Math)
ACT test score range of students offered admission: 17-36
Majors
Most popular majors for incoming freshmen:
General Engineering
University Studies
Business (undecided)
General Biosciences
Animal and Poultry Sciences
Human Nutrition, Foods, & Exercise
Architecture
Business Information Technology
Neurosciences
Psychology
From Near & Far
Top 5 home states of out-of-state freshmen:
New Jersey
Maryland
Pennsylvania
North Carolina
New York
Number of states and territories represented: 42, 4 territory
Countries represented: 37
Number of international students: 328
All data current as of May 15, 2016.
This means that Virginia Tech has an acceptance rate of approximately 69% and only approximately 35% of those accepted took the acceptance offer.
So today, I got my summer assignment for AP English Language and Composition and I have to choose one of two books to read over the summer. The two books are:
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Right now, I’m leaning more towards “Into to Wild” after reading a little synopsis about both books.
This is the one for “Into the Wild”: In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a party of moose hunters. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.
Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and , unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.
This is the one for “The Glass Castle”: The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family.
The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.
So yeah, do you guys have any opinions about which book I should choose? I’m not planning to buy it until next week.
Has anyone done AP lang or AP gov yet? I’m in Calc BC and Physics C next year for sure, but I need to decide whether to do regular or AP for English and Social studies. I’m leaning toward AP lang, but I’m afraid adding gov will be too much.
@JadedJunior AP Gov isn’t too bad. The class is interesting; however, the readings are boring. The test is ridiculously easy and I would consider it a lighter AP.
Reading about the Stanford rape case has soured my mood for the whole day. What makes it worse is everyone saying it’s not an issue of money, power, race, and gender. I swear on my entire life that if the rapist had been a poor minority male, he would have received the maximum sentence. As proof, look at the picture they decided to use in the media for the rapist. A graduation photo! An innocent black person would have had the worst possible photo picked out to make them look like a monster. Thank god the butt-wipe of judge who only gave that dude 6 months is up for re-election today. I hope they vote him out of office. How can you be in such a position when you ignore the rights of more than half the population?! Excuse me while I go cry somewhere else before I get tears on my keyboard.
@Hamlon I feel exactly the same way, this case is wrong on so many levels
@ak2018 I literally just read The Glass Castle for my final Honors English 10 book! :o I thought it was a great read, but you should pick whatever is more interesting to you.
@JadeJunior I took AP Gov this year. My teacher was very lax, so it was easy to pull off an A. I think I did alright on the AP exam, but I didn’t study as nearly much as I should have so I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m almost certain that is an easier class than AP Lang though, regardless of your teacher.
I took my Honors Bio exam today. I need to get a 56 on it to keep my B, and I’m pretty sure I did alright. I’m hoping for a C, but I won’t care as long as my semester grade is at least an 80.
It turns out that in order to get the art/tech requirement I need fulfilled to graduate, I’m going to have to drop my lunch and Intro to Marketing for a semester. This means during my 1st semester I won’t have any free periods, and during 2nd semester I’ll have 2, since I’m also taking Financial Literacy, another half-year course. It’s going to be insane, but I think I can handle it. :s
So I got my AP assignments. I need to write summaries for articles and take chapter notes. Apparently, we will have a unit test the week we return to school. :\ AP Lang, I have to read Stephen King’s On Writing and take detailed notes, something I’m bad at doing. I read Pet Sematary by Steven King and found it fun, but I don’t know about this.
@LeopardFire damn, are you allowed to eat in class?
@hamlon I am so disgusted by this case! The father of the rapist said that his life shouldn’t be ruined for ONLY “twenty minutes of action.” How disgusting! What about the trauma that that lady has to live with and endure for the REST of her ENTIRE life? So what if his son’s life is ruined? He deserves it and even more. I think that Stanford should expel him from the school and I think that he needs to be convicted and get the maximum service. This case shows that if you are a white rich male you can get away with rape on the ridiculous pretense that you are drunk.
So I did my advising appointment for my running start (dual enrollment) classes and I’m now offical regestered for calc based physics, general chemistry, and advanced composistion for fall quarter! The math department has a stupid policy where they wont let me take multivariable clac even though I’ve taken AP calc BC, but I’m going to take it at a different college (my dad’s almma matter actually). I have to pay a reduced tutuion fee of 415 dollars to take it there where it would have been free at the other college, but I do get to take an extra class now!
Also, my spanish teacher FINALLY put the test I took late into the gradebook, so now I have all As (except for online english and online fitness where I have Cs only because I haven’t finished all the coursework, I’m getting good socres on all the corsework I have turned in) 
@Hamlon @JadedJunior @Cookiesandcreme I literally just heard about the Stanford Rape Case this morning and I totally agree that the guy should’ve had a much longer sentence. I honestly can not believe the judge. This is what he said about why he gave the guy such a week sentence:
"According to the judge: “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him. I think he will not be a danger to others.”
The phrase that stands out to me is “I think”. The tax payers of California do not pay you “to think”, they pay you judge two different parties with as little bias as possible. And of course this kind of thing will have a “severe impact” on him. It already had a “severe impact” on the girl he raped. She will likely remember, and be scarred by, this for the rest of her life. I honestly “think” that this judge should put his money where his mouth is and if he truly “thinks” that this guy will never be a danger to others ever again, as people can always be a danger to other people, he should’ve been fired right after he gave the ruling.
“The judge, identified by The Guardian as a Stanford alumnus, handed Mr. Turner, a champion swimmer, far less than the maximum 14 years after he was convicted, pointing out that he had no “significant” prior offenses, he had been affected by the intense media coverage, and “there is less moral culpability attached to the defendant, who is … intoxicated,” The Guardian said.”
So based off of this, there was likely some bias that played into his short jail sentence. The judge was a Stanford alumni. I would think as a Stanford alumni, he should’ve known how out-of-control Stanford parties can get, especially when under-age drinking is involved. Apparently, because of the fact that he had no “significant” prior offenses and had been receiving massive public shaming since the incident, they are using the short-term jail sentence as short of a “warning” for him. There are people who were definitely not given a “warning” for something like this.
"The victim said Mr. Turner had admitted drinking, but still had not acknowledged any fault in the attack, insisting the episode had been consensual. She said the court privileged his well-being over her own, and in the end declined to punish him severely because the authorities considered the disruption to his studies and athletic career at a prestigious university when determining his sentence. She wrote:
The probation officer weighed the fact that he has surrendered a hard-earned swimming scholarship. How fast Brock swims does not lessen the severity of what happened to me, and should not lessen the severity of his punishment. If a first-time offender from an underprivileged background was accused of three felonies and displayed no accountability for his actions other than drinking, what would his sentence be? The fact that Brock was an athlete at a private university should not be seen as an entitlement to leniency, but as an opportunity to send a message that sexual assault is against the law regardless of social class."
So basically, another reason he wasn’t given a prolonged sentence was because he was on the swim team. He had recently earned a swimming scholarship which, due to the incident and everything following, he has given it up. The judge, and the probation officer, apparently took this into consideration when deciding the length of his sentence when they shouldn’t have. The victim is right. How fast the guy can swim should have no relevance to the case at all.
This line right here makes me truly sympathize for this victim even more: “If a first-time offender from an underprivileged background was accused of three felonies and displayed no accountability for his actions other than drinking, what would his sentence be? The fact that Brock was an athlete at a private university should not be seen as an entitlement to leniency, but as an opportunity to send a message that sexual assault is against the law regardless of social class.”
I honestly have no words to explain how true her statement is.
A statement I also agree with, from a law professor at Stanford: “If you’re going to declare that a high-achieving perpetrator is an unusual case, then you’re saying to women on college campuses that they don’t deserve the full protection of the law in the state of California,” the professor said.
“Mr. Turner’s father said that his son should not do jail time for the sexual assault, which he referred to as “the events” and “20 minutes of action” that were not violent. He said that his son suffered from depression and anxiety in the wake of the trial and argued that having to register as a sex offender — and the loss of his appetite for food he once enjoyed — was punishment enough.”
What his son, the perpetrator, is suffering from is a classic case of GUILT for his actions. His father is flat out wrong if he thinks his son shouldn’t go to jail for an incident that had occurred for 20 minutes when there are people in jail right now for incidents that they had little to no control over that had occurred in a mere fraction of a second. Some were likely wrongfully accused as well. Heck, if judges like this one exist then I can only imagine how many people are out there that didn’t do the jail time they deserved.
This case, and others like this, only add to my reasoning that I plan not to engage in under-age drinking or go to any college parties, once in college. Due to my introverted nature, this should be a pretty easy thing to do. Instead of going to college parties, which are highly not recommended for freshman to go to as it could lead to a habit of partying constantly, which is not what we’re going to college for, I will better put my time and energy towards extracurricular activities. In fact, I’m pretty sure freshman at UVA are not allowed to have cars on campus as freshman usually like to celebrate their new found non-parental freedom with constant party-going and drinking, which could lead to drinking and driving.
RANT OVER
@JadedJunior Yes, thankfully most teachers allow their students to eat in class. Its actually not that uncommon for kids to drop lunch, usually to take orchestra, band, or choir.
My Algebra II final was today, I feel pretty bad about it. It turns out someone got a hold of the exam and spread it around. They got caught, and now the Algebra II teachers are trying to find who got access to it. Apparently, there may not be a curve due to this. Everyone might suffer because of the actions of a few idiots. 
I hadn’t heard about the Stanford Rape Case until today. The situation is disgusting. I hope the outcry makes the courts realize that people that race and social class bias is not tolerated by society. Is there any possibility of Turner’s sentence being changed?
@LeopardFire I wish I could drop lunch and add an extra class, but I don’t know how I’d feel if I just didn’t have lunch. My hunger always get the best of me.
Also, that Algebra II thing must suck. We didn’t have any cheating during our class’s SOL and everyone in our class passed. Ours was curved, but only slightly. If you are very worried about your final grade, ask your teacher when the soonest retake day is.
I don’t know about the case. I would hope that if they can change it, then yes!
I also did pretty well on my HPE I final, but got a C on the exercise portion, I didn’t know my teacher would ask me those questions and was just running around looking like an idiot. At least it’s only one of three portions of the test.