<p>“Better that he just do it his own way, own the process and hopefully own the results”
Huge sigh here too seiclan!!! I tell myself that everyday as college info and SAT studying material sits in his room and he goes off to do a number of, in my eyes, not as important things. His SAT tutor has emailed me and said that he needs to be more prepared when he comes to meet with her and to not wait till the hour before to do his practice tests. URGH!!! I don’t think he is going to have much time now to meet with her because school has started and he just got cast in the Fall musical. I just pushed his test date till January too.</p>
<p>5Boys - Do you think that this a “boy thing”? My girls, when signed up for SAT prep, took it seriously, did the work, tried their hardest each and every time they took a test. DS dosen’t seem to want to do this, like he is trying to put off the entire college prep process. BTW, DS never opened a prep book for last years AP exams (Statistics and World History) and he still passed both.</p>
<p>To keep 50-50 ratio, many schools need to lower stats for boys.
D1 said few years back jokingly that girls should just get together and decide not to be so organized and perfect. She said boys are the smart one, they play video games, hang out with friends, have a normal high school life, while the girls are killing themselves.</p>
<p>Now that we are on the third child, a boy after two girls, I guess we will see if there is any perk to this Y chromosome. Although it would make sense, I tend to doubt it would make a difference at most of the schools on my son’s tentative college list.</p>
<p>“Do you think that this a “boy thing”?”</p>
<p>Mostly likely, but boys will flex their muscles in college and graduate school.</p>
<p>“Better that he just do it his own way, own the process and hopefully own the results”</p>
<p>Not a good idea. What if one day, he asks “Why didn’t you do something then, I was only a kid?”</p>
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<p>He is not that kind of kid. He is going through a head strong, leave me be phase. If he learns nothing else from his teen years, he will still know that he is responsible for his outcomes (because he has refused, very loudly, any and all my efforts).</p>
<p>^^I hear you seiclan. this is a classic CC debate. unlike earlier developmental phases (learning to walk, potty training) when it was okay to say " each child gets there at their own pace", the college search and application process is, for the most part, on a fixed time table, so those of us with kids who refuse to engage in the process as early as we would like get easily frustrated and concerned. I know I did with D1 whose GPA suffered from her “I will do what it takes to get by, instead of what I am capable of” attitude and who had no interest in talking about possible colleges until well into her junior year, and then only I think because I wore her down by starting so many dinner conversations with “oh, you know what I read on CC today?” ;)</p>
<p>I vented my frustration on CC and was told more than once that I just needed to push her harder, impose stiffer consequences, etc. </p>
<p>but at a certain point I decided that I did not want to spend her last year at home fighting constantly. it meant MY letting go of some of the more reachy schools - schools where I knew she had a shot because of her test scores/NMF status and interesting ECs and leadership positions, but where her mediocre GPA would keep her out. I had to remind myself that there are dozens of “good schools” beyond the top 50 (Ivys and top LACs) and that she would end up in the right place, which she did.</p>
<p>PRJ - Where did your D1 end up going? Maybe it will be a good one to add to my son’s list. ;)</p>
<p>She is at Brandeis. She visited in October of her senior year, fell in love, applied ED and was accepted. So much for all those schools ***I *** researched and all those spreadsheets of stats and safety/match/reach designations I complied and all the nagging about SAT prep and insisting she take SAT IIs ;)</p>
<p>She just started her sophomore year, happy as can be.</p>
<p>Brandeis was one of those my D1 took off the list after visiting. She got an “earthy crunchy granola” vibe and she is a louis vitton, MAC make up type of girl. DS is down to earth, quirky but not birkenstock (a T shirt and basketball shorts kind of guy). He is looking for a school with a smart/intellectual student culture. Would Brandeis be a good fit?</p>
<p>Absolutely. Quirky/smart/intellectual describes Brandeis perfectly, IMO. And it is large enough (3000+ undergrads) that there is plenty of diversity in the student body.</p>
<p>What other schools did your D1 take off her list? “Crunchy granola” is at the top of D2’s list of criteria 
(In fact, she just uses the word “crunchy” and was amazed when we told her the derivation - she’d never heard the “granola” part!)</p>
<p>My eldest also decided that Wellesley, though beautiful, was not for her since she realized that she wanted a coed campus.
Grinnell has a crunchy granola reputation. New College of Florida is very alternative and crunchy. We also have heard the word crunchy used to describe Oberlin.
BTW, D1 ended up at the University of Florida (she graduated last May) where she joined a sorority and spent 4 years happily attending home football games in sundresses and heels. :0</p>
<p>Sounds like your D1 made the right choice. (attending football games in heels? :eek:)</p>
<p>Grinnell is my (and DH’s) alma mater and I would be thrilled if it made D2’s list. At the moment she is adamantly opposed partly because of the family connection and partly because she wants to get out of the Midwest, but she has agreed to visit. New College of Florida is definitely on her list and we will visit Oberlin simply because it is a short drive from home. In fact Oberlin will probably be her first official college visit, just like it was for D1.</p>
<p>seiclan…Yes, I do think it is more of a "boy’ thing. I have a lot of friends whose girls are so on top of everything and all my friends with boys are frustrated as ****!!! They just think they know it all and want no advice, especially from their nagging mother’s. Unfortunately I have a hard time with this because I am also type A and VERY organized. He has to meet with his college counselor this Fall with a list of some colleges. I can’t even get him to start researching. He is the typical high tester/low grade boy that seems to run rampant in HS’s today. I think I read somewhere that girls get better grades in HS but boys have higher test scores. That seems to be the norm around here… and I should know, did you see my screen name??? Have pity on me:(((((</p>
<p>@PRJ</p>
<p>On the list for my crunchy D: Wesleyan, Vassar, UVM, – might consider Hampshire if it were further from home. Brown and Swarthmore for crunchy reaches.</p>
<p>1012mom - great list. Vassar is already on D2’s radar; the rest are now on mom’s radar ;)</p>
<p>5boys - I think you are right about this being much more prevalent among boys. I searched in vain on CC to find other parents of girls in the same situation. and the good news about boys that I’ve heard over and over is that boys grow out of it. girls, not so much :(</p>
<p>Visited colleges with my 2012 daughter this summer and her top pick (based on Carleton, St. Olaf, Macalester and Grinnell) was Grinnell. I guess that makes sense since she loved Kenyon when we stopped by two years ago. Dh and I loved Macalester - the small campus in the suburban St. Paul, international flair and thought she’d like that, too, but no… What do we know That’s okay - after I checked out the books they read in class, compared to the lower level books in the St Olaf’s bookstore, I thought Grinnell looked pretty good.</p>
<p>PJR - when we hear the “I will just do what I need to do to get by” we sing the “Fine, but get by without a cell phone” tune.</p>
<p>glido… LOL!!! You have made my night. This year we have implemented the " nothing with a screen during the week"rule. Hoping this will help with the " doing the minimum so i can watch tv, ichat, text etc…" mentality. I’ll keep everyone posted on the results…heavy sigh!!!</p>
<p>Our DS is also a boy who does the bare minimum. He sees no difference between a 90 and a 95; “they are both A’s mom”. It’s also a problem in that our school doesn’t calculate GPA on a 4.0 scale, they do percentages. So, the whole concept that a 94 is WAY better than a 93 is totally alien to my DS. Of course, being a teen age boy it does not matter how many times I explain it to him, my opinion is not important b/c I have no idea what I am talking about! </p>
<p>My DH and I discussed how to best movitate him. We decided that the carrot was better than the stick. Mainly because he reacts very negatively to the stick, he is already very independant (good) and I didn’t want to have to check up on him all the time. Asking about all of his work just creates strife with him and I didn’t want to spend his high school years in a constant battle. So we found his currency and essentially said we will give you X every time you make the 95% and above honor roll. It movitated him. Now he does just what he has to do to make 95% GPA. When we did this, little did we know that it includes gym and art classes. If I had known that, I would have offered it for his 5 “core” classes. However, he has stepped up to the plate and he has made 95% and above since his 2nd semester of his freshman year. He’ll be top 10% with that. Top 5% will require him to work harder, but that is up to him now. We use money. My cousin uses the desired “expensive item” of the semester as her carrot. I could see using unlimited texting or whatever is important to your kid.</p>