<p>Strange as it may sound, my son has been ADDING schools to his list! It’s the common ap’s fault. The GC office finds them easy to submit and even the supplement’s are easier then their standard on-line form for the colleges. I was reminded of a college we visited this summer and was going to write about it on the “Colleges your kid crossed off the list” thread so right before I posted I said to son, “Hey what about_______? Is that really off the list?” We talked about it some more and I saw that they took the common app and he said he’d like to apply. It was one of those colleges that I heard about here, looked like a good match on paper but when we got there we couldn’t find anyone around to talk to about his program. It’s a match stats-wise for him but because they offer good merit aid and the location is good they have a fairly low acceptance rate which makes it more of a reach. Thank goodness most of his colleges gave him a fee waiver for visiting because the ones that don’t are NOT inexpensive to apply to. </p>
<p>Hey, any of you that have kids in Robotics, are you going to Ramp Riot this weekend? I can’t because I have to work but I think son’s Robot won it last year. This year doesn’t look so good.</p>
<p>kathiep - My Sr. isn’t doing FTC this year…FLL mentoring & FRC. Several in his school are doing Zero thru MIT. He was busy doing the drivetrain CAD for FRC…also wanted to step aside to allow room for rookies to enter the FTC teams. My 2014 son is FTC and as a rookie team they just figured out Samantha a couple of weeks ago. Their first competition is in December.</p>
<p>Funny, this must sound so greek to anyone else. :)</p>
<p>^ I’m laughing… I hardly think this is a bad thing. (I’m assuming you were saying this tongue-in-cheek).<br>
My son has little else besides robots because of the time it takes (big robots, little robots, elementary school robots… but robots). It’s all in what they choose. Nothing is right or wrong, as long as they do SOMETHING. Hopefully that something is what they enjoy.</p>
<p>In fairness, his internship didn’t involve a single robot. A nice change of pace!</p>
<p>amandakayak, lol. D1’s school has a robotics team with a really cool t-shirt. So our household has robot t-shirts, but no robots. </p>
<p>Absolutely no application activity going on. D1 will have Thanksgiving week off, and insists that her essays are all in good shape and she can get everything finished up that week. The only app that will need to be submitted is for the University of California. Everything else needs to be ready to go if there is bad ED news on Dec 15, but won’t be submitted until Dec 16 at the earliest. I am getting my fix of college app angst by watching the fourth season of “Friday Night Lights”. :)</p>
<p>In other news, we got a letter from the counselor that D1 is in danger of not being able to graduate or walk. She’s missing Health and Life Skills, and she’s not the only one. Health is being dealt with via a weekend class at the high school. Life Skills is a problem. Plan A was to take it online via a local community college. However, that class keeps getting cancelled, and hasn’t been really offered in the last year or two. Plan B was to drop the highly enjoyable film studies elective and take regular boring useless Life Skills at the school. Unfortunately, since this is the last graduating class that will be required to take Life Skills, the school no longer offers the class! Hahahaha, a graduation requirement that isn’t offered at the school!!! :rolleyes: The counselor is working on the situation. Worst outcome: D1 doesn’t walk, and she takes the course over the summer. Not the end of the world. Best outcome: they give the kids a bye and kind of ignore the req. Actual outcome should be somewhere between these two poles.</p>
<p>This conversation is so funny because this is all new to me. Turns out S does have a Sumo Bot, working on this through Science Olympiad. I encouraged him to join Robotics this year and he ended up on Sumo Bot again (because he already had experience in it), but it is the same after school day as Science Olympiad so he’s sticking with with S.O. (already has a relationship with that teacher from last year). Because of the Robotics time commitment in Jan/Feb, he wasn’t going to be able to do that 100 percent (he has several other interests) anyway. I’m glad he tried it out. Especially if you all are saying any robot is good to have! LOL.</p>
<p>This is the kid interested in Lehigh business/engineering – I am trying to set up a meeting with the heads of our math and science dept so they can educate me on what our HS offers (lots of AP/IB) and what would be best for S.</p>
<p>So glad that S is so different than D… researching schools for him is a whole new project for me!</p>
<p>Thanks for the input on HOBY. S was happy to write (and re-write) the essay this weekend, which was submitted today for consideration for HOBY and a local Rotary Leadership Award. of course he was up reading Frankenstein till 11 pm last night (on the new time - ugh).</p>
<p>There is nothing you can do now but try to work out the Saturday class, or hopefully they will give the kids grace. I would be highly peeved that this wasn’t addressed until now. I don’t know your school so it’s hard to judge, but why wouldn’t they have looked for all requirements to have been met earlier…like last year? Our school falls down on several counts, so I guess it’s just what you’re used to (take the good with the bad). They do make sure all students are on track for graduation in the spring of their Jr. year.</p>
<p>Sorry if I wasn’t clear… I meant ANY activity your student finds near to their heart is good to have! I don’t think schools have much of a preference, just active involved kids. That’s been my take away.</p>
<p>blueiguana, this is primarily D1’s fault. She’s had the opportunity for years to take the classes online…if she had followed through on signing up. She had the opportunity to take the classes last summer through a local charter school. There was a fair amount of parental nagging, and again, she didn’t sign up before the classes filled. To our minds, this is now an issue of logical consequences. This may qualify us as bad parents, but we actually wouldn’t mind if we don’t have to go to high school graduation–it’s outside in the baking sun, a graduating class of over 700, the vast majority of whom we don’t know, limited tickets so it would only be us and D2. And the parking situation is horrid. The family will go out for a big celebratory meal regardless. So the worst possible case is one that D1 won’t be happy about, but would get a big fat life lesson from–which makes it, appropriately enough, part of the Life Skills curriculum. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I do think that if the school isn’t offering a district graduation requirement on-campus, and if there’s no other option for taking it, then the school does need to bend. This is especially true because the district said you couldn’t take the class online–the only reason that students could take it at one particular CC is because that CC doesn’t specify the class was taken online. There was no heads-up that the class wouldn’t be offered this year. The requirement is that the class has to be taken, not that it had to be taken before senior year.</p>
<p>SlitheyTove, Wow, That really IS stupid! A required class that isn’t offered?? </p>
<p>I now really appreciate our small school. A couple of kids actually drop out and don’t graduate with their class every year but I don’t think that anyone could miss a required class in their senior year, the GC’s keep really good track of that. They also have to take the required classes in a certain sequence with rare exceptions.</p>
<p>SlitheyTove-
Ah, I understand. Lifeskills is appropriate. It is unfortunate that while it continues to be a graduation requirement it is no longer offered directly. Rather a pain. Every school has it’s difficulties. Ours are generally a result of over-enrollment.</p>
<p>Hello everybody, Well I too wanted another app done this weekend which only partially got done. It’s an app that my S originally thought would be due by Jan 1 but he got nominated for the university’s scholarship program and now the app is due Nov 15. He really liked this school during his visit and initial research phase, and now after doing more research this weekend, is really hoping he gets in. He has yet to do the Why ___? essay, although he did most of the research for it. In addition, there is another long essay for the scholarship app; that draft was written and he brought to his GC today. Thing is, although it’s not due until the 15th, he’s got to get it done early this week. Next weekend is just too busy. He has a college interview for one of his EA schools, theater tkts for Sat night, a ton of homework and other apps to finish! </p>
<p>I. Can’t. Wait. for mid December when this app stuff should be done!</p>
<p>For NJ state requires one course in a “practical art” which GC and ds ignored until this yr, GC thought he might be able to take ds’ band and apply it there but apparently, shock to some, according to NJ state officials - “MUSIC is NOT practical.” So he sits in Marketing class all this yr with avg hs kids and is seeing how the rest of the non-AP HS lives. Eye opening he said. And yes, my jealousy of the robots (and yes, everything I say is tongue in cheek, don’t get me wrong! ) stems from my ds applying for engineering without having one ounce of intellectual interest in robotics, cad design…anything technical! If you give him an option for an elective, it runs in social studies/psych/philosophy area. But, someone must have let it leak out that engineers can graduate with a bs and get a job. He does like his money. So, in a year, we will see what happens when you take the humanities guy and put him in engineering 101.</p>
<p>On a lighter note, ds was informed that he won “Best Dressed” and “Most Likely to Become a HS Teacher” for the yearbook. See what I mean?</p>
<p>rockvillemom, taking Life Skills as independent study would of course be a practical situation. Which is why I’m sure the district will say “no”. </p>
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<p>Been there, done that, when D1 took the required computer technology course a few years ago. It was nothing that a computer-savvy kid doesn’t already know: how to use a word processing program, create a powerpoint document, use PhotoShop a bit, browse the internet. She had the only A in the class. There were a few B’s, a smattering of C’s, and a big hunk of D’s and F’s. In a class of 30-some, there were only 6 parents visiting this class at Back To School Night, and two of them were me and the spouse. It’s a Title 1 school and I suspect that many parents were still at work, or on a second shift. Quite seriously, it breaks my heart.</p>
<p>My son has spent hs in non-AP social studies…couldn’t stomach the thought of APEuro. These classes drive him nuts. He goes to an excellent school. Last year there was a student in his US History class that continually asked him if he had ‘shrooms’. He finally said ‘Seriously dude, do I LOOK like I have them?’. He never asked again. I don’t know what students ‘look’ like that have these, but evidentially it wasn’t my son.</p>
<p>State of Missouri requires a semester of Personal Finance for graduation; school district requires a year-long practical art. He took keyboarding as a freshman.Those are our sons only two A-minus grades!</p>
<p>He took PF second semester of junior year and there were several “stoner” (his words) seniors taking the class for the third time in order to graduate. </p>
<p>I’m traveling for work the rest of the week. As I sneak out the door, I will leave instructions for two essays that have to be written by next week for local scholarships. It will be a nice change for my husband to be the one badgering him! And he thought he was done after the SAT II’s on Saturday! Ha! Not so fast!</p>
<p>ST, your last comment tugged at my heart strings. I have two sons, eldest (Sr) in a private hs, youngest (Fr) in public. both schools –one in NYC; the other serving two suburbs, one affluent, the other not at all– have a lot of diversity and an enormous range of socio-economic backgrounds. the range of challenge and of engagement is eye-opening. i think the kids at the private, particularly those who are “lifers,” take for granted the quality of their education. My S, who until high school was in our public school system, counts his lucky stars for having his fantastic teachers and curriculum, and since this is a “test-in” school, his amazing, very engaged peers. My other S who wanted to remain in our public school system, is doing a lot on his own, completely self-directed – lots of independent reading, writing at night after hw – to supplement what he gets at school. Aside from math, this hs doesn’t track kids until 11th grade when the APs begin. I’m seeing two different points on the US education spectrum. Like everything else, each has its good and its bad points.</p>
<p>Question for all you in-the-know parents. Are your kids attaching an activity list to the CA? I had read that an activity attachment was a good idea and read on CC that the book Rock Hard Apps had a good format. I got the book from the library for S2 and sent him on his way. I saw today that what he intends to attach is about 4 pages long! That seems like too much – gut reaction. However, when I look through the book, it appears that the examples given in the book are, in fact, this long. So, does it make sense to send something this long? He does include things that are already listed on the CA in the EC section, but his format is easier to follow and, of course, there’s more room for brief comments. He also was able to group things so that you could see where his interests lie. I’ve been reading threads regarding attaching resumes and activitiy lists on CC today, but the responses seem to be mixed. Any first-hand experience to share?</p>
<p>Yeah, it’s usually the required Health class that opens my kids’ eyes. One D took it at summer school. When they got to the unit about recreational drugs, one kid (who had been sentenced to the alternative school) pretty much taught the class…he knew way more than the teacher did.</p>
<p>Son took regular math for a couple of years. When a kid at school OD’d, it was the kids in that class who knew him and knew what had happened.</p>
I don’t think schools have much of a preference, just active involved kids. That’s been my take away.</p>
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It is unfortunate that while it continues to be a graduation requirement it is no longer offered directly. Rather a pain. Every school has it’s difficulties. Ours are generally a result of over-enrollment.</p>
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