<p>Hey, Debbie, our school is thinking about putting on an after-prom event, too. its been cancelled for the past 2-3 years because of lack of interest. Can I pm you for more info on yours?</p>
<p>Debbie7542 - not to be negative but your daughter and friends spent hundreds of dollars between dresses, limos, etc. to win a $30 Wal-mart card? Plus, $90,000 for a party after the party? Boy, could I think of better places to use that kind of money!</p>
<p>I was also wondering about that $90K. Are you in NY or California? My D’s school is the opposite. Anything over $5 is looked down upon. That can also be inconvenient.</p>
<p>S took SAT Jan 22. Scored 800 M, 740 W and a very low 540 CR. Looked at the score report and found that he got 20 questions incorrect out of 48 questions in the passage based reading. Vocabulary section is not as bad. Any suggestions on how he can improve. He works hard and cannot explain why he is bad at passage based questions. He is taking the test again Mar 12</p>
<p>Welcome shankgom! Wow - your son got great W and M scores, i can see why he wants to get the CR more in line! I’m afraid I don’t have any good advice other than - do you have the SAT practice book? The one with practice tests in it. He could do some CR practice test between now and March. My son is taking it again in March as well, and CR is the section he’s hoping to improve also. Look at the college board website also - I think they may have some practice question online that explain the correct answers. Good luck to him!</p>
<p>Oh - and we got some good news today. My son works as a camp instructor every summer, and the adult head counselor has been unprofessional and hard to work with, creating a lot of dysfunction and tension amongst some of the counselors. We just got word that she isn’t returning, and instead the new head counselor is someone we know and think will be a big improvement. This should make the job a lot less stressful for my son! yay!</p>
<p>My S (a math kid, too) had a similar problem, and I spent a few hours going over CR passages with him and I noticed a few problems. On some of the passages, he could not figure out the main subject of the passage. The solution was to underline the thesis sentence. We noticed that all of the passages set up the topic right away, usually in the second or third sentence. There always seemed to be a question or two about the subject of the passage, even if the passage seems to be talking about something a little different - obviously trying to trick them. To improve his understanding of nuance, he beefed up his vocabulary. We noticed that a difference in tone is often only evident in subtle vocabulary, so vocabulary building really helped - he bought the Direct Hits books. I must say that his vocabulary is now quite remarkable!</p>
<p>Drilling and going through prep books will only do so much good - you really need to pinpoint what he’s doing wrong and focus on remedying the mistakes. It sounds like you have a very bright son, so he should be able to bring up his CR score with a little more work.</p>
<p>Wow, shankgom those are great scores! As gourmetmom says, get the big blue SAT book and have him go through the CR parts of the tests, then go over them and see what the patterns are. I’m guessing you’ll find some basic thing that he can work on. </p>
<p>(We are in this position with the writing-- the ones that have you finding the error in a sentence are very hard for her. Hard for me too, and I write for a living! But she has definitely improved as she works through them, one writing section at a time.)</p>
<p>So-- are we all off on college visit trips next week? (Or is Mass the only state with a vacation? I know NY has vacation too.) We are heading to NYC and Philadelphia, should be fun.</p>
<p>We don’t have spring break until April - that’s when we’re going to do a college visit trip! Can’t wait!</p>
<p>I agree that 90K for any party-after a party is ridiculous. I am in Texas. I was not involved in the planning or execution of said event. I don’t know if they managed to raise that much…I expect they fell short of that goal. All I did was join the Senior Parents organization (like PTA, but just for our seniors) and help them with events like the Senior Picnic and fundraising. We had a golf tournament, a skeet shooting tournament and weekly Chick Fil A breakfast biscuit sales. I sold MANY a biscuit, so I guess I contributed.</p>
<p>BTW, we did not spend 100’s of dollars on the prom. My DD’s dress was $75 and we split a limo with 10 kids. Prom cost us very little actually. The after party was all night entertainment and free for all the kids and her gift card was just a “parting gift” of sorts.</p>
<p>I wish we could do a big East Coast college trip over Spring Break. But I daren’t schedule anything time-consuming with multiple APs looming.</p>
<p>Instead, we’ll jaunt up to the Bay Area to visit Berkeley, UCSC (my brother’s alma mater – he’s delighted to be able to give us a tour), and Santa Clara. My mom lives in Palo Alto, so we’re already familiar with Stanford.</p>
<p>mihcal - I wish we could do the college trip thing too but we are too far South and DS and too much schoolwork to plan a trip. We may have to do June/summer visits (after the SAT’s).</p>
<p>Attended the junior parent meeting last night about college apps. Very little new info for me (thanks to CC). Only good advice I heard was to have Ss or Ds secure commitments (for letters) from teachers now or very soon --our school only expects a teacher to write for up to 20 students and many popular teachers DO say no at that point. They also indicated that there is a mand. spring assignment for all junior English classes – the college essay --so happy! And students will select what they want on the transcript as far as specific test scores, reported rank or not, ECs, awards etc…</p>
<p>College search appointments with GCs start after our Feb. break (and parents aren’t invited to those --just the October one to solidify a list). It appears they have a system in place that encourages early completion and some degree of control given to students. </p>
<p>Parents were complaining after the meeting about GC loads… 60 students per GC. These folks haven’t been on CC to see how good we have it.</p>
<p>We had our college kickoff meeting last Saturday. Since this is my second, and because of cc nothing new for me, but the good part is my D is partially engaged in the process more than previously. We are a small private ~65 kids in the grade. There is one main fulltime college counselors and then a couple teachers who take part of the load. One of the teachers was previously the main counselor, but wants to keep some classes also. D has him for history this year and also had him in 9th grade. She asked him if he would be her counselor and we got confirmation yesterday that he is. My older D had the new main guy so I am familiar with both and know their biases. I am happy with her match.</p>
<p>We are going to visit two colleges next week and then a few more in March in their longer break.</p>
<p>Someone mentioned upthread (oldfort?) about daughter at home wearing clothes of daughter away at college. Same thing happens in our house and D2 has been busted on skype :D</p>
<p>Our school is on trimesters and winter term just ended today. Expect stronger term than the fall. ECs have kind of stagnated, but she wants to focus on the classes and for the level of school she is looking at is probably a good choice.</p>
<p>Not sure about the prom which will be in May. With the small school, all sr/jr/so are able to go and fr as dates. Kids get tired of it if they go every year esp stag. Older D went as a jr and a sr with dates. I suggested D2 go if she has a date otherwise wait until next year. No lavish after parties and thankfully! no patterns of sleepovers at beach houses. We were lucky with D1 in that she always had a crew race scheduled for the next day so that put a damper on big plans after prom other than denny’s.</p>
<p>AP chem test is Mondy following prom, so DS will have to decide how much “after-party” he can handle that weekend. DS is working hard to pare down a college list so he dosn’t have to visit so many schools over the summer. Funny, he asked for a small LAC in the Midwest and now complains that they all seem too similar.</p>
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<p>How do you decide who to ask for recommendation letters? Clearly in subjects kids are doing well, from instructors kids get along well, I guess. Beyond that what do you do?</p>
<p>Usually you request recommendation letters from teachers in core subjects, such as English, Math, and Science. If the class was AP and your student did well, that helps, too. My D used her AP English teacher since she had also taken Honors Sophomore English from her, and a science teacher she had for both Honors Biology and Human Anatomy & Physiology. </p>
<p>This could be different depending on the interests of your student - if music is their main passion and focus, then a music teacher might be a good choice for a recommendation letter.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is the potential writing ability of the teacher - some are more skilled at writing letters of recommendation than others.</p>
<p>Some of her teachers discussed letters of recommendation at the beginning of her senior year - they shared their personal deadlines, conditions, etc.</p>
<p>The GC’s will likely know who writes the best letters-- and that’s important. If the teacher loved your kid but can’t put it into words very well, it’s not much help. D is getting one one from her chemistry teacher. D has really had to work at chemistry, but GC suggested that between the writing ability of that teacher, and the fact that D has struggled and studied and found a way to do well in the course, it should be a way to show off her strengths. (She’s also getting recs from teachers in her best subjects.)</p>
<p>college_query - Do core subject include Latin or other FL? </p>
<p>My D’s GC doesn’t suggest individual teachers, just one from humanities and another from math and sciences. My D could ask either her Lit teacher or Latin teacher. They are both good. She isn’t sure which one.</p>
<p>Do you think it is okay to ask specific teachers to write letters for specific schools? For instance, at one school we would really like to ask the A P Chem teacher to write a letter since they enciurage an alumni letter. That letter could also be combined with his teacher recommendation, but would more likely stand on its own. Obviously, that letter wouldn’t work for the common apps though, so DS wants to ask him to do a teacher rec as well, but doesn’t want to, in his words, make him think that his alma mater is not his first choice. I think the teacher would still write a teacher rec for the common app, but we have other teachers to ask just in case. This particular teacher knows DS the best (did inernship with him, DS runs a tutoring program for his classes, etc). We don’ want ot overwhelm him especially since he is also the basketball coach and writes a lot of recommendation letters.</p>