<p>I made my first post yesterday, and other bboards I’d participated on usually encouraged people to introduce themselves. I don’t see that as a common practice here, but figured I’d do it anyway.</p>
<p>I have two daughters, 9th and 7th graders. 9th grader is starting to think about college even though I tell her to chill. They go to a private day school which is pretty challenging, better than the public or parochial school choices, but is the only other game in town for day school options. </p>
<p>dd1 the 9th grader is going to Exeter for their summer program which is what prompted my first posts to get some logistical questions answered. Trying not to be an overly involved parent, but I am the type to always research whatever the current topic is and know all the answers. So I read much more than I post to take it all in.</p>
<p>dd1 also tries to compare herself to me, an overachiever in HS but at a definitely average school. No APs there although when I went to a summer program at Milton I met kids from richer towns in the state and saw how my HS lacked. I nevertheless went to Cornell with stats that would be a stretch for my saftey today. I tell her this when I tell her not to be thinking too much about college at this point.</p>
<p>Their school has class sizes of about 60-70 students and maybe a couple go to Ivies, more go to New England LACs as more comfortable than the larger schools and more similar to their current school. The college counselling dept stresses fit over prestige and I do buy this even though it took me a while to realize the benefits considering the difference to my own background. I graduated in a slow time for high tech and I had access to more interviews than my husband from a small state school. But dd is a humanities type and will have different needs in a school</p>
<p>But anyway, the courses at the HS are definitely a cut above the challenge their their peers have at the publics. So I know they are getting a good education. There are not a lot of APs offered (maybe a dozen if you count all the different language ones) but lots of interesting and challenging humanities courses which to me are preferable than being compelled to take all the APs in order to get the top challenge designation. However new administration seems to be watering down the rigor and coddling the students, saying they need more time for family and outside activities. They piloted a program this year where each class has one day per week with no new material and no homework to give kids time to catch up. They are requiring the students to all have a study hall each day “because they know they need it” even at the expense of taking an additional non-academic course. This is preventing of her friends from taking chorus or a theater course, or she wants to take a CAD course in the fall. The school has a strong arts/theater/music program and also requires 2 sports per year. Even with 3 varsity sports and highest honors, dd’s formal request to take the extra course was denied “because we never approve those, so maybe we should update the handbook to say so.” </p>
<p>Sorry for the long post. The summer in Exeter is something she is looking forward to to give her the time to take courses in additional areas she probably don’t be able to fit into her HS schedule. I’m trying to throttle her enthusiasm for learning more with not letting her go overboard and my own desire for her to achieve the best she can.</p>
<p>Welcome to CC! The best advice I can offer is not to get too wrapped up in the achievement frenzy here on this board. I’d certainly advise your Ds NOT to come here at all until 11th grade (although I told my D, now graduating from h.s. that it was a very intimidating site, and I told her to “stay away—stay far away” ) I frequently send her quotes and an occasional link to a really good thread, though. We actually met (face to face) a current student at her prospective college; he’ll also be one of the orientation guides… at least one of my cyber-buddies has a face!!!</p>
<p>As the parent of an overachiever who I’ve had to constantly remind to not be so hard on herself, this site has been immensely helpful. (and there are some really good people here in the Parent’s forums). Just pace yourself…</p>
<p>Find one of the threads that talks about CC abbreviations–that may help in the deciphering as you start combing through threads.</p>
<p>Also, a final suggestion that you’ll see frequently here—your D’s should not drive their Extra curriculars (ECs) or completely determine the courses to take, based on how it will look on a competitive application. The things that will set apart their applications are their passions for what they do. That’s hard to do if you’re not passionate about your sports, classes, etc. Good luck!</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. I do not plan to encourage her to visit this site, it would only stress her out. She has already been looking at stats at colleges and is stressed by statistics like “90% of the attendees are in the top 10% of their class.” Her school doesn’t rank, and since it is a private school in the area which is seen as a step above the publics, the demographics are not the same. I would say she is top 1/3 of the class but we are only in 9th grade so things will change.</p>
<p>The thing she has going for her is that everything she wants to do is because of interest not resume padding. Her friends accuse her of the latter when she participates in activities during the designated periods set aside for these during the week, instead of just hanging out. She is very balanced but many of her friends are nice kids but who are just cruising through, missing school for family vacations/ski days, and generally not valuing their education as importantly as we do.</p>
<p>I have been reading this site for a few months and get the lingo. It is good to hear others slant on things and believe it or not, I think it has helped calm down our entry into the college process. Knowledge is power :-)</p>
<p>WELCOME TO CC!!!
So glad that you decided to introduce yourself! I’m sure you will find much valuable information here as you head toward the pre-college years with your daughters. You seem to have a good perspective on things, and I wholeheartedly support your not wanting to stress your D out by having her frequent CC. My son relied on my participation and the information I got here to guide us through the process. He was too busy with school and other activities to be active on the boards even if he had desired to be.</p>
<p>I wish you and your family all the best and am looking forward to getting to know you! </p>
<p>I think the introduction is a great idea! People - why are we not doing this?</p>
<p>Btw…I’m also one of those CC parents who has a kid who has never posted or visited this site. But, she does occasionally ask me to ‘find out something for her’ on CC…lol! (And my husband often sends me trawling for good book recommendations…CC parents are some of the most well-read people on the planet I do believe!) Personally, I think this is the perfect arrangement. ;)</p>
<p>jackief,
Welcome to Addiction Confidential. Oops, I mean College Confidential. I have one graduating college this year and try to answer questions for people who visit on that specific part of this board, and I also have freshmen (2) in high school, so I have no reason to leave this board for several years. I find myself lurking, reading, posting, and reading some more. This place is a great repository of information for almost every topic imaginable. Just don’t get sucked into all the college stats which are thrown around here. It can be overwhelming and intimidating, but only represents a tiny slice of the “real world.”</p>
<p>thanks for the welcome everyone. I hope I don’t get addicted, I have been reading the board casually for a while, just there are several other areas which I follow online. Usually I can devote time to one primary focus, I hope this doesn’t come to the top of the list for years, when I planed a xc trip a couple summers ago I researched all of that, my main focus now is Girl Scouting, and I have a couple other interests on the back burner for online participation. I always like to have as much info about a subject as possible.</p>
<p>That plus the family, household, job, kids’ school, my own ECs, I hope not to get lured in here too much, but I agree it is a tremendous wealth of info for everything I have absorbed so far.</p>
<p>Hello to all you helpful CCers! I only discovered the site two months ago, but look forward to absorbing your sage advice on the college freshman year. (We have just finished the process with second D, Harvard EA; first D Princeton grad. Mountain state, far from the prep frenzy.) For jackief, if your Ds follow their passion, success will bloom. And emphasize integrity above all, which, besides being right,will make your Ds stand out in the minds of adults who recommend them.</p>
<p>Welcome to CC, jackief and fauve!! I lurked on CC for many months after discovering it during S1’s senior year–finally posting in March. It has been a great source of information and I have met some terrific people (some even in person, or on the phone!!) by participating.</p>
<p>jackie~you definitely have the right perspective–try to keep it that way. Our oldest (D) is graduating from college in less than 3 weeks, and S1 is a sophmore–they have been so happy at their schools. I think kids end up exactly where they are supposed to–it invariably works out that way. And there are so many great schools out there!! We also have a junior in HS (S2), so we have tried to keep it low key with that perspective in mind. I don’t talk much about CC, and none of them have lurked or posted here. I have used it to find out a number of different things, but the greatest value for me has been the anecdotal information from parents and students. You simply can’t get that from a college catalog or website!!</p>
<p>Sort of off post, but not really: thanks for your help and guidance during our S’s first year at your S1’s school! It was also fun to meet the real you at the Engineering brunch during Parent’s Weekend, though I almost blew your cover with your son!</p>
<p>Welcome, Jackie & Fauve. Jackie, I don’t think 9th grade is too early for a student to stick their toes into the waters of looking at colleges. They will change over the next four years, circumstances will change, but acquiring some of the vocabulary and grammar, some of the conceptual map of the possibilities, is a good thing, imo. I’ve seen an awful lot of frenzied junior & senior years that could have been a little less frenzied if search/application hadn’t been quite as much of a cram course. It’s still stressful for a student aiming at the top tiers, no way around that, but it’s a little more manageable, imo.</p>
<p>Thanks TheDad. She is starting to explore on her own, so I want to keep it all in perspective. Especially when she reads the stats on the admissions pages of the (Ivy) colleges she is looking at and tries to compare them to her small private school. </p>
<p>She is going to a summer program this summer where there will be some visits to colleges and from college reps. I’m going to wait and have that be the next step in her exposure. She live closeby to a great variety of schools and I have offered to take her on a tour if she is interested, but I am not pushing it. The college planning office at our school officially starts to meet with the kids in the winter of their junior year, but they are open to starting earlier. I think maybe next year we can have an informal talk with them after we get her practice 10th grade PSAT scores back. Since it is a small school, everyone knows each other and I’ve already had informal chats with the college planning director, his daughter and mine are classmates.</p>
<p>The family went to my college reunion at Cornell last summer. I asked D if she wanted to go on the admissions tour then, but she wasn’t interested, preferred the teen program. What a difference a year makes. It was good to be on a campus (and such a lovely campus if I do say so) and stay in a dorm and see the facilities.</p>
<p>There’s an under-recognized paradox about looking at stats: if you have the average stats, you have a below average chance of getting in. The most competitive schools, abbreviated as HYPSM et alia around here are crap shoots for virtually anyone. But even the notch below that, you want to be in the upper quartile in their stats range before you become mildly confident. </p>
<p>Some paranoia is justified. Some of the best information on this board is reading the profiles of who got rejected from where. Sobering.</p>
<p>Welcome Jackief. I guess my user name is my introduction albeit brief.</p>
<p>I think it’s good for kids to become familiar with college campuses even if they don’t have much interest in a ‘college tour’ at the time. It’s pretty easily done though with the plethora of summer programs available and not just academic ones. For example, one of my D’s spent a week at a tennis camp on-campus living in the dorms. It just helps them get used to it. One of my D’s also had basically no interest in college tours or even thinking about them that much until it was pretty close to time to apply - we did a lot of touring in the summer before 12th grade. I think she didn’t want to think about it that much until then because she was enjoying being in HS and a teenager. However, she did take the most rigorous course-load of anyone at the school and did extremely well so maybe she was giving it more foresight than was apparent.</p>
<p>I do recommend planning out the 4 years of HS before 9th grade as much as possible though. It can be necessary to make sure the kid is on the track of taking the right classes to get the follow-on classes to be able to be competetive. This assumes it’s appropriate for them. There can be a problem if the kid waits until junior or senior year and then figures out they need to take more challenging courses (AP, etc.) yet didn’t take the pre-req track. This may be more applicable at a public than your private.</p>
<p>My “friend” told me about CC last summer, right before my SS started their senior year. I put friend in quotes because I think she was trying to scare me to death when I read the stats of other seniors applying to the same school that SS were applying ED.</p>
<p>What I did learn was to keep these stats in perspective. Not every applicant has 2400 boards, has found the cure for cancer, and has written a Pulitzer prize winning novel.</p>
<p>Trust your children. At the end of the process, H and I realized that our sons had identified schools that fit them-- not us. If they hadn’t gotten into their first choice, I believe they would have been happy at any of their other choices.</p>
<p>For our family, ED was the way to go. It doesn’t work for everyone. But knowing in December where they would going made everyone’s life easier and the rest of their senior year something to enjoy and remember.</p>
<p>I periodically check in to CC even though the process is over. I enjoy the debates, the well-reasoned arguments, and even the not-so-well-reasoned arguments.</p>
<p>Hi mafool! Not really off-post–just let’s everyone know that we all really do end up being a “family” of parents. Everyone helping out newbies as best we can, and even if you’re not a novice to the process there’s always something to learn on CC!!</p>
<p>It was great meeting you (and Dr. G) for real at the Engineering BBQ on Parents’ Weekend!!! I hope we get to do that again, and that I’ll meet other CC’ers down the road as well!!</p>
<p>Hope your S’s first year at Duke was awesome–S1 is still just loving it all!!</p>
<p>Speaking of Duke…can’t believe we posted at the same time, proudinnj!! Didn’t we decide we should all get together in the fall at move-in?? Hope that will happen!</p>
I have one graduating college this year and try to answer questions for people who visit on that specific part of this board, and I also have freshmen (2) in high school, so I have no reason to leave this board for several years. I find myself lurking, reading, posting, and reading some more. This place is a great repository of information for almost every topic imaginable. Just don’t get sucked into all the college stats which are thrown around here. It can be overwhelming and intimidating, but only represents a tiny slice of the “real world.”</p>