<p>Aniger, Since it sounds like he is of a scientific bent, did he consider Harvey Mudd? The Claremont students are allowed to take up to 50% of their classes outside of their college there at the other institutions there</p>
<p>Aniger, so were you relaxmon? Your son sounds like he has a similar list to my son. We just visited Penn, Princeton, Swarthmore, Haverford, Yale, Harvard and MIT. He didn’t particularly like Yale (I think we drove through a bad part of New Haven), and he really liked Swarthmore and Haverford. I think he is thinking MIT might be better for him for graduate school. He’s thinking small school at this point, and also has Harvey Mudd and Pomona on his list (along with some in-state safeties). Of course this all could change – he says he doesn’t want to eliminate any options right now, so I guess we will be visiting the Bay area later this summer to check out Berkeley and Stanford too.</p>
<p>^^
Some of the same schools on our student’s list…
I was surprised by what was a keeper on the list and what was jettisoned…</p>
<p>Had you asked me before the visits–I would have gotten many of them wrong.</p>
<p>SDmomof3, yes I am former relaxmon, which was account I shared with my son which got annoying as he made a few posts as well. We are very familiar with Yale and indeed New Haven is kind of a pit, though in my view this shouldn’t prevent my son from at least applying! We did not visit Berkeley as I do not believe California schools are a good oos option at this point, with their budget issues, huge classes, etc. Are you visiting Dartmouth and Cornell?</p>
<p>Kumitedad, my son is into science but definitely wants to keep the humanities options open, also is more pure science than engineering type, so I think the only science focused college he thinks fits is MIT. Probably not his top choice in any case.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>D visited 12 schools. Her favorite is the one that I thought would be her favorite and her second favorite is the one that I hoped would be her favorite.</p>
<p>^^ You did better than me!!</p>
<p>Expected our student to like Tufts, BC and Holy Cross.
I was wrong.</p>
<p>Didn’t expect our student to like BU, MIT, Yale and Columbia.
I was wrong.</p>
<p>Expected our student to like Dartmouth and Princeton–I was correct.</p>
<p>Harvard got a mixed review.</p>
<p>We’ll see what happens at UVA and GWU.</p>
<p>Aniger, I have similar concerns about Berkeley and the other UCs… We are in-state, so we have to at least check them out. As for Cornell, I forgot that S visited it last summer when visiting family in upstate New York. His only comment was that the tour group was the biggest bunch of nerds he had ever seen. I’m not sure what he thought of the school. We did not visit Dartmouth, we had limited time. I also wasn’t sure whether he would be interested because of its frat boy reputation.</p>
<p>We were in the Amherst area yesterday, so drove by some of the schools there. Smith - the pond was really lovely and they even had a swing on the trees near the pond. D liked what she saw of the campus, but is still firm on not applying to women-only schools. Drove by Amherst next - again, a very beautiful campus. Last was UMass Amherst - boy, was it different from the other two! Huge, huge campus - almost a mini city in itself. No way can you walk around campus - you need the buses. A very impersonal feel to the campus - D was not very happy. We will be back in the area in a few weeks to pick up S from camp, so we will try and get a formal tour/information session in, but I think I need to go back to the drawing board to find another safety school for D. Can’t see her being happy with UMass Amherst. Sigh…</p>
<p>Klicky: Congrats on LuckyBoys stellar run on the APs. Sounds great that he is happy with flagship honors. You might consider submitting a few other aps only because a year is a long time and more than a handful of students will change their minds between July, 2010 and May 1st, 2011.</p>
<p>Arisamp - did your D need Umass-A as a financial safety, or just an academic safety?
If just academic, what about some of the other area state schools? Might really like UVM…much prettier, and smaller, than Umass.</p>
<p>Not really fair to Umass to look at it at the same time as Smith and Amherst! Two quintessential, stereo-typical New England college campuses…versus something thrown together in the anti-aesthetic campus architecture years of the '60s and '70s.</p>
<p>Arisamp, did she like Amherst or Smith other than for looks?</p>
<p>arisamp-what is your D interested in majoring in? UMASS Lowell has a great engineering program. Although it is Lowell and doesn’t have a great campus.</p>
<p>We are starting to get letters from area college reps, with “pre-application” stuff that we’re encouraged to submit. We plan to do so for several of the schools, including a few we’ll be visiting in the next few weeks. One of the items to fill in on the pre-apps is GPA. I know there has been discussion on this before, but I’m not sure whether to fill in just unweighted GPA and designate it as such, or try to squeeze in both unweighted and weighted. It’s only a pre-application, so it probably doesn’t make much difference, but it may be a question that comes up on the actual applications as well. And the documents don’t specify which.</p>
<p>Fill in whatever GPA the school says you have. </p>
<p>The colleges that re-compute GPA do so in various ways. Some take out AP or honors course weighting. But some compute only “core” classes and take out band, gym, etc. Our district doesn’t include HS courses taken in middle school in the GPA, but they are on the transcript, so who knows, a school might just decide to include that Algebra grade in the GPA.</p>
<p>shawbridge - D was feeling a little under the weather that day, so we didn’t do anything other than drive through the campuses. So, a bit hard to tell. I’ve always thought she would love Amherst, except for the fact that it feels a little too small for her. </p>
<p>We were looking at UMass Amherst as a true safety - both academic and financial. We are planning a trip to UVM and I suspect she’s going to like that one - both the campus and the size seem to match what she’s looking for. But UVM is expensive for OOS - although I have heard that there are merit scholarships available.</p>
<p>mamom - we live a little too close for UMass Lowell - she won’t even consider it :-)</p>
<p>cooker - our school does not even publish an unweighted GPA. Our weighted GPA is kind of complex - I think the max one could get is a 4.7. Really? They couldn’t come up with a system that ended in whole numbers??</p>
<p>Cooker- I would submit the highest GPA you have. The colleges may or may not recalc when they get official transcipt.</p>
<p>Hey all</p>
<p>Was unpacking our student–after being gone all summer…</p>
<p>Those all in one Purex laundrey sheets DO NOT WORK</p>
<p>Our student said-even using 2-3 on a load–the load of sports gear/T shirts or towels would smell after the wash was finished --and would have to be redone…
got to the point our student just used whatever liquid detergent had been left in the laundrey room.</p>
<p>Of note–our student did laundrey weekly-- sports gear, towels, sheets, casual clothes etc and did sort whites vs colors and darks. Got pretty good at laundrey–
and noted that several times the load had to be rewashed…</p>
<p>I think what made the laundrey an easy task was that it was free in the dorms…
and lots of machines available.</p>
<p>so pass on those all in one sheets.</p>
<p>Maybe the sheets work as well when kids pack/stuff/jam the washer to the brim - though this is probably the norm. I have tried a few loads at home and they work great.</p>
<p>Laundry lessons are not going so well. S1 has discovered that it is easier to steal S2’s clothes than it is to do his own laundry.</p>
<p>^^
Asked our student
The darks load would be on the fuller side–and not “stuffed” (though your guess is as good as mine)</p>
<p>and the whites not nearly full…</p>
<p>My guess from the gear I unpacked
–that the darks were on the fuller side–and perhaps would have been an extra large load in a standard washign machine–or a large load and small one if split
and the whites load was 3/4 large load…</p>
<p>Used multiple sheets–and no real luck–
Perhaps because it had lots of sports gear (underarmour) types of things and cotton T shirts etc…that need lots of water/detergent to get the sweat out?</p>
<p>Our student likes neat clean rooms, neat clean drawers, everything hung up correctly…
I am sure if kiddo says the stuff didn’t come clean and smelled when opening the washing machine lid–after the washing cycle…that is smelled…</p>
<p>Smiling here that the laundrey lessons (sorting even) has been going well
;)</p>
<p>I have started using those Shout Color Catcher sheets when I need to wash multiple colors/darks/lights in one load. They work. Those might be good to add if you think your child will throw all colors in together.</p>