<p>astro- I think D will use the Math/Latin recs for most places, Chicago requires an English/History rec hence the third. Not sure if she will send the third other places or not.</p>
<p>She said the physics teacher has like a 5 page questionnaire he requires kids asking for recs to complete for him. Good for him. I don’t think she will do this for her teachers, although I would be interested in seeing this questionnaire. The English teacher is also her ski coach so he could speak to that. The Latin teacher is also her advisor and they have long conversations after school often, I’m sure he could find a lot to write about. The Math teacher might need some additional info from her.</p>
<p>I think in our case the ECs will be fed to the college counselor who will include them in the GC letter. One thing I gleaned from the Tufts workshop a week or so ago is that they don’t care to read long letters from teachers- short and to the point and covering the compelling basic info is what they want.</p>
<p>Boy, I hear you regarding the need to set classes at the right level, especially for physics. Our HS has Honors Physics and AP Physics C but not AP Physics B. This makes sense to me, but others have argued they might get more students signed up if B was offered in lieu of C, due to the Calc required for AP Physics C.</p>
<p>And so it goes …</p>
<p>My S will have a free period this year as well, which I hope he will be putting to good use in preparing college apps and continuing on with the work he’ll do with the summer internship doing climate modeling. He will bite the bullet and do the CTY online class in Multivariable Calculus, even though his experience with them in Linear Algebra is that their tests are brutally long.</p>
<p>FAP–thanks. It helps to know what other schools do. Your mentioning those open-ended questions is making me think that a short note about her goals and why she is interested in her top schools would be a good idea.</p>
<p>This is how I ended up being asked to write an LOR since I taught this student APUSH and led literature discussion groups. Otherwise, she was asking her community college professors. I guess I did a good enough job–she got in and will be attending University of Chicago this fall!</p>
<p>Now that I’m looking at the form, there are more open ended, short answer questions than I thought. Here they are:</p>
<p>o What are you planning to study in college?
o Why do you wish to pursue this major or career?
o What areas of the country interest you?
o Circle the six words that best describe you (30 choices, plus other (to fill in)
o What do you think people who know you would be surprised to learn abut you? (I like this one.)
o Outside of academics, what do you enjoy most or find most challenging?
o Number of community hours to date. What have you done? What has it meant to you? What have you learned? Why did you chose this community service?
o What are your favorite academic interests? What course have motivated you and why?
o How would your teachers describe you? What are your strengths and limitations?
o List three achievements in your life of which you are most proud.
o Please describe the qualities and accomplishments you would bring to the undergraduate student body.
o Please write down your favorite quote and/or a saying or motto that sums up who you are as a person, who wrote the quote, or where did you find it and why you chose it.
o Where do you fit in your family constellation? Please give your mother and father’s college alumni affiliations and careers.</p>
<p>I guess filling this out should give him a light warm up for writing those essays!</p>
<p>Jackief, I wonder if your daughter can work off her fine. I know our librarian needs lots of help at the end of the year. I had to do that in college when I accidentally kept a reserve book well past the deadline.</p>
<p>I have no problem with flipflops for normal occasions, but flipflops flapping across the stage to get your award is very distracting to the audience. They tell the kids to dress up, but they don’t send them home if they don’t.</p>
<p>I’ve asked my English and Math teachers this year for recs already. My English teacher, whom I had 9th and 11th grade and who was the advisor for two of my clubs, went on maternity leave in March (she’ll be back in the fall, though) and had those of us who wanted a rec fill out a sheet that was full of questions like “How do you think you grew as an English student in my class?” before she left. My Math teacher hasn’t had me doing anything of the sort yet.</p>
<p>thanks for the thought ILoveLA, but I’m sure the library’s solution will be to bill us. But we will need to get it cleared up by the end of the year or they won’t send her report card etc.</p>
<p>OK, maybe this is something peculiar to junior classes because of all the AP exams, but I found out last night, after wondering why ds had spent NO time studying for finals, that he only has ONE. One out of nine classes??? Lucky guy.</p>
<p>Yeah it’s a juniors thing. Although, I understand why the kids are OK with this, I wonder why the teachers are. Do the teachers get results of the AP exam to use for their final grade assessments? Or are they allowed to pre-score the exams before they are turned over to the collegeboard? Neither seems likely to me – so I wonder about the lack of finals.</p>
<p>Or – do the teachers have enough data points for a grade even without AP results or a traditional final exam?</p>
<p>There’s no way they get the AP exam scores in time to factor in those scores. Too much writing.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s because they have them do a couple of weeks of practice tests and let that figure in. He did have some projects but not even a lot of those. Maybe in his language his teacher used Natl Exam results???</p>
<p>I think they just figure the kids have worked hard and deserve a break. They generally have a fair number of tests (practice APs) leading up the exam so there’s a lot of data. Apparently the English AP teacher is being forced by department head to give an exam and the class is not happy about it at all. US History has a Regents exam (which do double as finals unlike APs), S2 has gotten a 99 or 100 on all the practices tests he’s done so far, so does not plan to do any studying for it at all.</p>
<p>YDS - lucky guy, your S. My D still has 2 finals and a Regents exam to get through, though that’s still lighter than ever before. Next year, she won’t have any finals or Regents! :D</p>
<p>FAP - I think you’re right, and the school recommends against flip flops and similar shoes for safety reasons, but they aren’t forbidden. For awards ceremonies, they sent home a letter with a dress code, but I’m sure they wouldn’t send a kid home unless he or she was dressed completely inappropriately.</p>
<p>About recs, D has asked her current math and APUSH teachers, and she’s thinking of asking her AP Euro teacher as well. Her GC said she wouldn’t have a problem with sending all three recs because she feels that the two history teachers each knows D in different capacities as they’re both advisors for some of D’s major ECs. I know her band teacher has also offered to write one for her, but we’re afraid of overkill. I’ll have D question the GC about that at their next meeting.</p>
<p>I believe the school sends out a packet to all seniors in August with very detailed instructions regarding recs and handing in paperwork.</p>
<p>It’s starting to look ugly in the LA region for education due to state budget cut backs. The LA Community College District will only hold one of two summer sessions. This puts some college bound or transfer students at risk who needed to cover requirements before the fall, and HS students looking to move ahead, take classes not offered at their HS or cover a UC system requirement (usually the visual/performing arts one.)</p>
<p>News today says the LA Unified School District is canceling almost all K-8 summer school offerings, and cutting many at the HS level as well, save for credit recovery (a fancy name for “do over” because of a class failure.) This will have an obvious impact on drop outs and on time graduations, not to mention parents scrambling for child care, more students on the street in the summer.</p>