<p>How do schools get hooked up for these book awards? Are there national groups or college alumni associations that need to be approached? The first I’d ever heard of these was on this thread.</p>
<p>We’re always in search of even modest awards that can be added to what we call our “Community Awards” program. In June, we’ll be handing out $138,000 of awards to 102 graduating seniors. Although some of the awards are modest in comparison to today’s eye popping tuitions, I can attest that the community really gets behind these awards. </p>
<p>It will be my distinct pleasure to make six $500 awards on behalf of the HS Booster Club. Even the Middle School PTA has a pot of money they award to seniors (with a stipulation that the student must have attended our Middle School, of course.) The mgmt group for district school administrators gives away money. The Chamber of Commerce. The Homeowners Assn. The Democratic Club. The HS Alumni Assn. Etc. Etc.</p>
<p>my alumni association solicits donors to sponsor a book at a school. </p>
<p>congrats on this award and also tokenadult’s son’s successful weekend.</p>
<p>Does anyone doing anything for physics day? Browsing around the web I see there isn’t one set date for this, I saw some placed did something in April. We wait I guess to be after APs. The physics students are going to an amusment park on Friday, there is some project work involved, don’t know the details.</p>
<p>I’ll have to ask S if the physics classes are doing anything special. It is a tradition for the AP Calc BC students, once they have completed the test, to set aside a place on the practice fields to launch rockets … and yes, there is a required educational component to it as well as the fun. Plus, the frosh PE classes are always asking what class they need to be in to do it.</p>
<p>There are two main reasons Colorado College was put on the list. One, it’s in Colorado, so reasonably close and ds loves Colorado. And two, it was the only close LAC, which ds prefers, that seemed an actual match-reach. At the time he needed variety on his list.</p>
<p>While I think the block schedule is a great fit for him, I just wondered about it culturally. Read a lot about how rich kids go skiing on those long breaks, and we’re not rich. Would he feel on the outs, especially being a minority and the school being almost 80% anglo? At this point, we’re mainly looking for ways to eliminate schools from the list, and I just heard nothing last night that made me want to keep it on. The presentation was the most uninteresting of the bunch, I thought. The presenter read the whole time and stumbled through the presentation. He just didn’t come across as enthusiastic about his campus and engaged, the way the presenters from Grinnell, Macalester and Haverford did. And probably because I’m a minority I look at presentations through a different eye. Do the slides show lots of different kinds of people? Is there one slide with a darker face, and that’s supposed to show diversity? Hard to explain, but it’s a gut feeling. Someone else might have a totally different reaction.</p>
<p>I’ve thought about how difficult it must be for colleges to find the perfect people to recruit. For instance, I’m an extrovert so I’m drawn to other extroverts. For me the funnier presenters are appealing. I found the Sarah Lawrence presenter kind of cold, but to an intellectual introvert, she would be a perfect fit. :)</p>
<p>Thanks for the summary of the 8 college presentation. Funny - I thought it was a great idea and my DD said way too many colleges at once - so I guess she agreed with you:) The idea of getting 8 of them knocked off at once appealed to the frugal side of my personality but I can see why it would be a real data dump…</p>
<p>add me and my D to the list who were overloaded at the 8 of the best prez. Maybe on a different day it would have been better. OTOH, we didn’t mind the shows with 4 and 5 schools.</p>
<p>Thank you for that insight on Colorado college, YDS. That helps a lot. Guess what? That makes it easy for me to take Colorado College off the ‘potential’ list for my D too. Diversity (genuine diversity) is a huge deal for my daughter. She observes not just the racial and ethnic variety on campus, but also whether there is a lot of self-segregation. She wants to be on a campus where social interactions are not dictated by skin color or ethnicity or socio-economic status. This is one reason why we are trying to prioritize visiting campus when it is in session. A college may have the requisite percentages of different ethnicities on paper but if they are all keeping to themselves, it does nobody any good. And in our limited experience, there really are some campuses that are more ‘mixed’ than others.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I’ve heard that Carleton is also a less diverse campus, though probably not by design. Unfortunately for these colleges, the more ‘white’ you are, the less likely you are to attract the ‘non-white’ students, thereby perpetuating your ‘whiteness’.</p>
<p>Wonder if S2 made it into school today…Typically, because I drive right past his hs on my way to work, I drive him to school in the mornings. Well, this morning I heard his alarm go off and then went back upstairs to wake him up (the usual sequence of events) at 6:30am. He picked his head up but I didn’t wait to see if he physically got out of bed. Occasionally I have gone back upstairs 5 minutes later, if he didn’t show for breakfast. But today I decided that he really does need to get himself up without my prodding so I didn’t go back up. When 7am came around and still no DS, I left for work. Even got in a little early for a change, since I didn’t make the ten minute detour through the school parking lot.</p>
<p>I have no idea what happened after that. H was supposed to go into the office this morning as well, and may or may not have been available to drive. And anyways he would have refused on principle. But S1 just arrived home from college, and in the back of my mind I knew that S2 could wake him up a get a ride at the last minute. Windering about the lesson learned.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, vp, we’ve only been able to visit in the summer, so I do look at numbers and such. I guess that’s why I really rely on the feel I get from a presentation. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any LAC that has a huge minority population, but some seem to do a better job than others. Macalester, for instance, has double-digit international population. I like that. And that presentation didn’t have a “token” feel at all. The numbers show Carleton is less diverse than Mac, but it has a quirkiness that appeals to ds and myself. He’ll visit and see what he thinks. But again, it’ll be in the summer. :(</p>
<p>I have a friend with nieces at Colorade College, and they’re very happy, so it’s definitely the right place for some. I hope I don’t really turn anyone off of it!</p>
<p>A propos of this discussion, just got home from our school’s assembly, where they gave out four book awards to juniors. The colleges named with the awards were Yale, Wellesley, Penn and Dartmouth. A friend’s daughter won the Wellesley award, and I remember that the presentation said something about “love of literature.” I saw the girl afterward and she said, “Too bad I hate girls.” I guess she’s not counting on applying to many all womens colleges. They also hand out four University of Rochester awards for things like technology, science, etc. DS#2 received the Bausch & Lomb award as the outstanding science student. He was pretty pleased. </p>
<p>The whole assembly was tempered by the fact that they also announced that school was closing at the end of the day for the rest of the week. They are being very cautious about a possible outbreak of the H1N1 virus, although they emphasized they have no confirmed cases yet, just some type A influenza. This was the last week of school with finals next week, so very bad timing in terms of review.</p>
<p>I posted a few days ago that GS got the Geo. Wash. Univ. Book Award - I still don’t know what ‘book’ it is (will have to call him later) … He would have liked the the Univ. of Penn. award since that ‘book’ was Ben. Franklin — He’s happy that he was recognized for the award although he has NO interest in Geo.Wash. Univ. </p>
<p>To chime into the discussion about visiting campus’…GS will only have the opportunity to visit few and over the summer…It’s not ideal.</p>
<p>First will be MIT since he will have to take a Science AP to apply so it’s important for him to see if MIT is high on his list…I hope it’s a positive for him! (I’m only his Grandma but it’s high on MY list…LOL!)</p>
<p>He is looking forward to the weekend at the Yale Questbridge Conference the end of June. There will be lots of schools represented. </p>
<p>I’m saving Frequent Flyer miles to have free flights available to visit Rice and Pomona…GS is in the Northeast and really would like a college far away from home… (parents would prefer a college within driving distance - it would be hard to ‘let go’ all the way across the country and harder to afford frequent college visits back and forth) </p>
<p>S2 attended the Claremont Colleges (sans Pomona) last Sunday. He was particularly interested in hearing from the Claremont McKenna rep. He was surprised at how the rep taked about it not being that impossible to get accepted (with a 16% admit rate?!). I suspect that fit is an important criterion, and that successful applicants will be self-selecting. He is interested in the school, likes the program, is not sure he would be comfortable with the student vibe. He said “I don’t think I’m among ‘the landed.’” We will probably be in CA this summer to visit friends, so he can visit campus and talk to profs, but he really wants to see classes and people. Not sure we’ll be able to make that happen before next spring.</p>
<p>The most “useful” piece of info S2 says he came home with is that Peter Osgood, head of admissions at Harvey Mudd, said that they will no longer be using the hard-and-fast top 10%/minimum SAT/ACT scores criteria for awarding their $10,000/yr. merit awards. Their rationale is that they would like to be able to attract top students from small, highly competitive programs who may have accomplished quite a good deal, but who are just beyond the top 10%. (ahem, ahem) Approx. 40% of the incoming class has qualified for this award in recent years. The terms of the award were non-negotiable in prior years, which probably cost them some fine applicants.</p>
<p>There was a sticker placed over one of their brochures that reads “The award will be offered to the top students in the admitted pool who demonstrate superior academic achievement and ability to contribute to the college community.” S2 says that the implication was that Mudd was still looking at the test scores and rank, but wanted more flexibility. [Idle musing on my part: I wonder if they are now going to offer a specific # of these awards, rather than to all who met the criteria, as a budget measure.] The Presidential Scholar Program full rides are still in place. S2 was doing legwork for GF, who is is interested in Mudd, but was home studying for an IB exam.</p>
<p>S2 did not mention to Osgood that he’s S1’s younger brother. Noone ever believes it anyway!</p>
<p>The Mudd website mentions the change beginning in the fall, but does not have an updated link yet.</p>
<p>Countingdown - My D wanted to attend the Claremont colleges event last Sunday too, but she had a conflicting activity. She visited the Claremonts last summer and absolutely adored them - especially Pomona. CMC emphasis on student leaders turned her off a bit and Pitzer also did not seem like a fit. Scripps is also on her list. Too bad Pomona is so incredibly hard to get into!</p>
<p>S2 visited the Claremont Colleges and really liked CMC out of the bunch. He did not like the “vibe” at Pomona. He will likely be applying there in the fall. Kids are really interesting in what “moves them.”</p>
<p>As per request here is my union college visit report:</p>
<p>Let me start off by saying Union was completely lovely. Nott’s Memorial-the centerpiece of the campus-was completely breathtaking. It was definately a very rural feel, but very close knit. </p>
<p>I started my day with an interview-my interviewer was a college senior. She was extremely friendly and they found someone with similar academic interests as I did to help answer any and all questions. She and I ended up talking for nearly an hour(which i hope is a good sign)
I then sat in on a social psychology class. For an introductory level class, i was pleasantly surprised by the size-only 22 kids in the class. The professor was very funny and I really enjoyed the class. I also got to meet “stella” a rescued turtle who roams the science halls.
got to see the athletic center(very modern and nice) with a huge pool, as wel as the very spacious library. I then had lunch at the Upperclass dining hall. The food was average, but the variety was very large which was a good sign for me.
I then spent an hour exploring the theatre-which was simply wonderful. great spaces, and everyone i met was very friendly and very theatre(if youre in drama you know what i mean.)
I ended the evening at a Shakti dance, which is like Indian Hip Hop. Not only was it amazing, but nearly 200 kids were there and all seemed to be very friendly with each other…</p>
<p>This school has definately gone to the top of my list</p>
<p>We’ve been to the Claremonts a couple of times. S2 and I walked around CMC the summer after 8th grade while S1 was off talking to Mudd profs. A couple of good friends attended Scripps and raved about their experiences in Claremont, and initially suggested S1 check out Mudd. We may check out Pomona while we’re there this summer; it is a reach, but the Claremonts seem to like students from his school. S2 would appreciate Mt. Baldy and the beach more than his brother ever would. :)</p>
<p>The Mt. Baldy area is fun. As for the beaches in the area, well, they aren’t tropical beaches. For me, you see one beach, you’ve seen them all. Needless to say, I’m a mountains girl at heart. More to see and do!</p>
<p>Thanks for the report, rocket6louise. It sounds like you had a great visit, and I’ve heard from people who know students there, that they love it. Good luck!</p>
They also hand out four University of Rochester awards for things like technology, science, etc. DS#2 received the Bausch & Lomb award as the outstanding science student. He was pretty pleased. </p>