<p>Congrats to your S on the Catapult program and your ability to plan the rest of the summer. Wish we were at that point. I take it your S is thinking about being an engineer. My S is still mulling it over, since science in and of itself is attractive to him. I think these summer programs that have hands on lab experience can really help the juniors decide on a possible major.</p>
<p>We won’t hear about the UCLA Engineering Science Corp Outreach Program until May. There are just 40 openings so I expect it will be competitive. It’s an 8 week program and one neat feature is every Tuesday the program holds a catered lunch, which all the program participants, grad students and professors attend. After the lunch, one of the engineering profs makes a presentation on his or her lab work. (I’ve been to some business presentations on the UCLA campus and have had their catered lunches and they are pretty good!)</p>
<p>My D is taking the ACT on Saturday, spending every spare moment this week brushing up on some rusty bits of math and taking practice tests. She did well enough overall on the January SAT but her math score was a little disappointing. Hoping to knock it out of the park with this ACT and/or get a better math score on the May SAT. Fingers crossed.</p>
<p>My D is taking the ACT on Sat. Not waiting for SAT scores. Good luck to Keil and other TASP applicants, I think vp’s D? Anyone else?</p>
<p>pugmadkate- I hear ya on the camp thing, loved it when we went on vacations like Club Med, they were just like camp. D is going to finish a CIT program at a girl scout camp this summer and then be on staff, yay for us, she gets to bring in money instead of the other direction. Younger D is doing a similar thing at a day camp.</p>
<p>Unlike bclintonk, not much time to spend on ACT prep. She has read through most of the PR “crash course” book and has done some practice sessions since last test in Dec. I hope she can squeeze in some more practice, even on the sections she did well on last time to keep up the good scores. Only outlier last time was science, if she can bring that up closer to the others and keep the composite the same or a point or two better, she would be done.</p>
<p>Jackief: My D got her TASP rejection letter a few weeks ago. They did not want to interview her. She was very disappointed. She has had her share of disappointments lately. One thing is certain, she will not be a stranger to rejections when she hears from her reach colleges next year. Hopefully the news from SAT will be more cheerful.</p>
<p>DD is taking the ACTs on Saturday - she took both an sat and an ACT practice test and found that they did much better on the ACT - so is not planning to take SATs. </p>
<p>She is totally stressed out - I’m hoping that will settle prior to Saturday… :(</p>
<p>sorry to hear that news vp. And I hope that it does help but the important decisions of next year in easier to handle territory.</p>
<p>scualum- my D also did better, and liked, the ACT better than the PSAT, so is also foregoing the SATs. We are in SAT country but counselor is agreeable with this. She is still taking (probably 3 total) SAT IIs for schools which require them in addition to or in place of the ACTs.</p>
<p>Son seems to do better on ACT, too. We only have practice tests to base this on, but ACT has been 28, and SAT has ranged from 1150 - 1370 (2 part).</p>
<p>Bad news today. Son reports that in the first 26 weeks of 11th grade his AP World class has completed 3 “sections” of the course. They now have 6.5 weeks to do the last 2 “sections.” </p>
<p>I do think pre-college rejections can be painful but helpful in building up “tolerance,” so to speak. While I’m still waiting for my TASP rejection (had my interview last Saturday), last summer I was initially accepted into a competitive Governor’s School of China program, then told after the first two orientations that I could no longer participate because I’m not a U.S. citizen. (The directors were not previously aware that CIA funding was contingent on U.S. citizenship.) So I figure college rejections won’t be too hard to handle–at least I won’t be deceived.</p>
S2’s World History teacher did much the same thing. I think they did all of Latin America in the last week. It didn’t seem to hurt my kid, but I suspect others who don’t do as well with cramming may have been hurt.</p>
<p>Keilex: That is rough! Hope your TASP application is successful. I lurked a bit on the TASP thread and always thought you would be one to get in.</p>
<p>I have no idea how well prepared our APUSH kids will be, new teacher this year who is not returning next year…</p>
<p>Good news is that in Latin they are done with the material and I think will just be reviewing until the test. Then they will do some of the “racy” poems which are not included in the AP syllabus (this is Catullus)</p>
<p>In my thinking of a safety for D, I am thinking of forcing her to at least visit UVM. It has many of the same aspects of other schools she likes, plus it has an honors college and best of all is EA. Of course fitting it into the same trip as a revisit to Middlebury would not be the best for UVM…</p>
<p>Keilexandra, D will not be a NMF, so that eliminates one of the big merit scholarships. We will be full pay so that also eliminates the need+merit options. So right now I am looking for something less than the $50K club as well as admissions safeties, esp with EA or rolling. My H and I continue to have our “what we can afford aka what we are willing to pay” discussions…</p>
<p>Full pay benefits the most from merit, right? UVM sounds like a good school but I’m not sure I would pay 40k for it. Still, if your D is going up to Middlebury it can’t hurt to swing by for a visit.</p>
<p>YDS, when we were on our visit to Tufts, D went to the book section of the bookstore and began reading the Catullus poems in a book that had the English version alongside the Latin (she debated buying the book just for amusement but didn’t want it to seem like she was cheating) and stayed there for over 1/2 an hour until I could drag her out… These were not about hairy armpits…</p>
<p>Keilexandra, in general yes I am hesitant about all publicly funded schools, high school and colleges, because of the uncertainty of funding especially in this climate, and the scars I suffered as a high schooler myself and child of public school teachers to drastic budget cuts. I am looking for “good enough” options for the case where none of the other more selective schools, or the money thing, pans out. Not looking for “love” but “does not hate”</p>
<p>But they have a good hockey team, right (boo to my team Cornell eliminated this past weekend, I was a season ticket holder for three years)</p>
<p>DougBetsy, are you sure your S does better on the ACT? According to the ACT-SAT concordance jointly arrived at by the ACT and the College Board, a 28 on the ACT is the equivalent of a “single score” SAT CR+M of 1260—which is just exactly halfway between your S’s low and high SAT scores.</p>
<p>Our theory is, take them both. Our D has taken the SAT once and her scores are pretty good, about mid-range for her “reach” schools and top quartile for those we have listed as “matches.” But she did pretty well on the ACT when she took it a couple of years ago as a 9th grader, and she hadn’t had a lot of the math at that stage. Since some schools will accept the ACT as a substitute for BOTH SAT I and SAT II, we figure there’s no harm in her taking it again as a junior; maybe she’ll light it up. We’ll use whichever scores or combinations of scores put her in the best stead with her top choice colleges, possibly submitting different combinations of scores to different colleges.</p>
<p>I have a question? When your child takes the PSAT, and then he gets all this mail (because he didn’t check the box) do those schools receive his PSAT scores from the College Board?<br>
Or do those schools have the College Board mail out their literature to students whose scores fell in a certain range. I was wondering how that worked.</p>
(boo to my team Cornell eliminated this past weekend, I was a season ticket holder for three years)</p>