<p>JackieF:</p>
<p>You rebel you… :)</p>
<p>Have you considered moving to Chicago where candidates like yours are common place?</p>
<p>LOL scualum! Maybe if D matriculates we’ll move within 50 miles. Oops, wrong thread! 
We still talk about our candidate on a facebook group for our HS.</p>
<p>LOL. I think we’ll pass on the “Chance a Parent.” We’ll have plenty of intrigue and anticipation stress just going through the process with our only S.</p>
<p>Besides, I’m going on a job interview on, of all days, April 1.</p>
<p>What, a double post? Sorry about that.</p>
<p>While looking for some OOS possibilities for our S to ponder, I was reviewing the site for Northwestern U. They have a neat Integrated Science Program where the student gets a degree in three year and a double major in four. It emphasizes the underpinings of math across the sciences. However, an entrance requirement is SAT II in Math, Physics or Chemistry, and one other science. Sounds pretty hard core.</p>
<p>Since you shared your prank, I’ll share mine… </p>
<p>Our school had a sail boat, left over from when sailing was a PE class. It was chained to a trailer parked behind the gym.</p>
<p>Late one night, 8 of us showed up and lifted the boat, trailer and all, over the fence around the school pool and carefully carried it down the bleachers, and set it next to the pool. We knew that it leaked like a sieve so we then inserted some garbage bags full of air and styrofoam into the boat. We then put the whole thing into the pool where, thanks to the extra items it floated merrily away until the principal saw it the next morning.</p>
<p>I can’t take credit for this one - but someone else in my class went around town one night collecting house for sale signs - and then put them into the lawn in front of the school. That one made the paper - great photo with probably 40-50 for sale signs.</p>
<p>Are we posting our senior year HS pranks now? Here’s mine that, had I thought enough ahead to realize there was a financial impact, I would not have done it.</p>
<p>Never known for great volume control, my buddies and I were not favorites of the school librarian. She warned us about our ways and said if she heard our group again, we’d be tossed out.</p>
<p>So, a few days later, our group was once again in the library. Only this time I was studying and the rest of the group was a bit noisy. Sure enough, the librarian comes over and asks the group to leave. I innocently keep studying. She indicates I had to go to0 and despite my protests, I slunk off with the rest of the group.</p>
<p>We groused about it. A few days later I came up with a plan to fix the librarian’s little red wagon. To check out a book, the student workers had to pluck the card from the back, and put it in the stamper machine along with the student’s library card, which impressed the info on the card. The card was then kept until the book was returned.</p>
<p>So I figured, wouldn’t things grind much more slowly if my group, right in the library, grabbed a bunch of the check out cards out of the books, stuffed them in our gym bags, and then put the whole collection of cards in a huge garbage bag in the upstairs drop off bin?</p>
<p>Lord knows how, but we pulled it off. Shortly after finding the stash, the principal came on the intercom and said he would suspend the persons responsible. I guess they ended up paying the student workers some money to replace all the cards after school.</p>
<p>We were never found out although I worried about it for quite awhile. The principal would have been shocked to discover I was the ring leader, since I was one of the good (at least until then!), active, and studious students.</p>
<p>Brief dispatch from the road: We are running ahead of schedule! Finished the Brown info session, campus tour, at lunch on campus and sat in on a class. Then our GPS informed us that if we drove at speed limit and got no traffic we could just make it for Harvard’s last campus tour of the day. So that is what we did. </p>
<p>D really loved the Brown campus but has problems with the open curriculum and didn’t like the class, so I doubt she’ll apply there. She liked Harvard’s campus a lot too and the tour guide was fabulous with infectious energy and enthusiasm. She will sit in on a class or two tomorrow at Harvard, and then off we go again.</p>
<p>All hotels so far were clean and comfortable enough, thank goodness. Princeton- Marriott Courtyard, Brown- a Holiday Inn Express near the airport, and Boston- another Holiday Inn Express about 2 miles away. A big criterion for us is that the hotel needs to provide WiFi internet in the room at no extra charge…we are a three-laptop family :-)</p>
<p>Vparent:</p>
<p>LOL about the WiFi connections. When we went on a driving trip last summer to Yellowstone, I packed along one of those octopus extension cords. When my H saw me packing it, he asked what it was for. I told him to just wait. The evening we were at one of the more rustic motels just outside the park (we decided too late to book inside), with not an excess of outlets, he was glad I brought it. What with the laptop, separate DVD player, two cell phones, two IPods, batteries for the camera and a digital photo viewer, we needed that cord.</p>
<p>No senior pranks to report - guess I went to a boring high school.</p>
<p>VP - thanks for reporting back on your visits. Sounds like they’re working out well. What did your D think of Princeton?</p>
<p>You all are making me laugh with your comments about needing Wi-Fi free connections nowadays. Truth be told, I’m pretty much a goner without it too in the evenings. Last March I planned a spring break to the South Rim side of the Grand Canyon. Dear S wasn’t there more than five minutes before he said, “what, no Wi-Fi at the Grand Canyon, Mom?”</p>
<p>Vicariousmom, good road trip report. We’ll be making ours next month. Need some more off high school days to fit it all in or will have to go anyway.</p>
<p>I have a picture of us on Facebook visiting my brother. There are six of us on laptops in the picture!</p>
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<p>Now you know why I’m pushing beach access, but 50 mi is too far. I’m moving into D’s dorm! ;)</p>
<p>FAP, I’ve taken powerstrips before but I forgot to pack them this time. So right now my hotel alarm clock is unplugged.</p>
<p>Mathmom, I actually thought of you when we were at Harvard. My D is trying not to fall in love, but today’s tour did not help. Lets see how she holds up after the class(es) tomorrow. </p>
<p>LIMOM, the Princeton tour was on Sunday and there was no info session and th campus seemed pretty deserted- they may have been on break. My D likes the undergrad focus of the college and the idea of the senior thesis but something was missing…she can’t put a finger on it. And while the campus is gorgeous, it didn’t appeal to her as much as Brown or Harvard. Go figure. </p>
<p>One thing is certain, this is really helping her think about what she wants.</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with liking Harvard. 
Just don’t get your heart set on it! Interesting that she didn’t like Brown, it’s where I’d go now. I love the idea of an open curriculum. mathson has so many AP credits though he might as well have an open curriculum. He had to take all of two social science courses and one writing course. Princeton had break starting this weekend, so no wonder the campus was deserted.</p>
<p>vicarious–thanks for the hotel report. I’m trying to book some hotels right now. Good luck with the rest of the visits.</p>
<p>VP, tell your D not to fall in love! After my NE college visiting last summer–out of the Ivies, I’ve seen Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Cornell–I fell in love with Yale after visiting but it is such a lost cause. H and C were parental-perogative visits, but I expected to like Brown more than I did–the campus just seemed run-down and I wasn’t enamored of Providence Hill.</p>
<p>Remember a few pages back (post 3980) when I gave my DD’s GC a thumbs up for sending the transcript early (e.g. middle of junior year)? </p>
<p>Well - guess what - I found an error on it. DD’s Trig class was not marked as college prep. </p>
<p>But wait, there is more - I sent GC an email, ready for a fight - and within 2 hours he had it fixed, thanked me for catching the error and sent me a pdf of the new transcript. I LIKE our new GC!!!</p>
<p>scualum:</p>
<p>Consider giving that GC an atta boy with his higher ups for that response time!</p>
<p>A word to the wise for all on this '10 list: Now is a really going time to be going over those transcripts with a fine tooth comb, while the GCs, you and your student have some breathing time. My S’s is now in a state of perfection and all we’ll have to check now is the grades for this last jr year semester. (By that I mean a perfect representation of what he did, not that it’s all A’s.)</p>
<p>I learned a lot in going over the transcript for my S. </p>
<p>1) There were some things from MS that didn’t have to be on the transcript and that were best left to be highlighted in the GC letter to the Ad Comm (e.g. taking Algebra 2 in 8th grade, taking social studies classes in Spanish 6-8th grade (an option no longer available but goes to show his consistency with Spanish classes K-10.) </p>
<p>2) I discovered how some JHU CTY summer classes were having a negative impact on class rank, so I opted to have these removed since the credits will not be needed for graduation, and because JHU CTY can provide a separate transcript for these. One of those rare instances in life where you can have it both ways: bumped up class rank and separate reference to other educational opportunities (he took classes in electrical engineering, probability and game theory, and conceptual physics.)</p>
<p>3) It’s vital to keep copies of important documents. His sophomore community service requirement was not showing (also needed for graduation.) The teacher assigned to keep the records moved away from the HS and the GC couldn’t find the signed copies in the file. I made the GC a PDF of our home copies, sent it off and it was fixed.</p>
<p>scualum - yay for great GCs! So far, our experiences have been much more like yours than like many of the horror stories we’ve heard here. I am so grateful for that!</p>
<p>Keilexandra - my D has the same attitude - she’s afraid of falling hard for any of the schools on her list. D decided against visiting Yale or Brown, but we visited H, Dart and Cornell (and plan to visit Princeton and Columbia - H and Columbia are my choices). She ended up liking all three schools a lot - but she says she has no favorite.</p>
<p>VP - I’m sure that Princeton without the students feels very different than P with the students. Too bad they were on break.</p>
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<p>On D’s transcript, her middle school classes get lumped together with high school and there is no differentiation. I don’t think there is a way to change that since this is how they send out transcripts.</p>