<p>Today was the last day of classes; now we have two weeks of finals and regents. DD has five finals or regents, so it is going to be a bit busy. She is also sitting for the ACT tomorrow to see if the ACT is “her test”. The ACT is shorter and has a science section, so colleges don’t need to see SAT2s. It might suit DD better than the SATs. We shall see.</p>
<p>Our HS is relatively small (870 kids). It is great for the “big fish in a little pond” HS experience. However, the down side being that there are not tons of different sections of the AP classes. Which means DD can’t always take what she wants. Here is her dilemma:</p>
<p>Jr - AP Env Science and AP Chem
Sr - Honors Physics and AP Bio</p>
<p>OR</p>
<p>Jr - Honors Physics and APES
Sr - AP Bio and AP Chem. </p>
<p>These are her two options. Other combinations don’t work as much as we would like them too. Why not AP BIO and honors Physics??? Schedule does not work. </p>
<p>Apparently AP Bio and APES over lay a bit. They are also taught by the same teacher. DD is thinking that she should do choice two because she will have some background for AP BIO from APES, making senior year not as hard as it looks, and making Jr year managable with APUSH and APlang too. I think colleges need to see either AP Bio or AP chem end of year grade and it would be silly to not take at least one Jr. Year. </p>
<p>What is everyone’s opinion about summer college visits? Do they really get a feel for the school, without meeting students, etc.? </p>
<p>I was talking to the mom of S2’s best friend and we realized that they both have one of the same schools high on their list (Oklahoma City University) so we are considering a road trip to visit this summer. Both are potential music majors, so they’ll have to go back senior year to audition. S2 is using up all of his college visit days for his junior year to go to U of Puget Sound - so would it be better to take an unexcused absence to visit OCU or just go in the summer?</p>
<p>I’d go in the summer. In fact, we plan on doing a visit this summer for ds2, just to get his feet wet.</p>
<p>Depending on the school, there could be plenty of kids around. Almost all my visits with ds1 were during the summer. He did a couple of others alone during the year, and then when he had it narrowed down to two, we went for a second visit to those campuses the last week in April of senior year (yes, he cut it close!). </p>
<p>We were able to rule a lot of places out and in, just being on campus. The way the admissions office was run said a lot about the school. Summer visits ruled OUT UT-Dallas, TCU, UNT, Southwestern and Hendrix. Summer visits moved UTulsa, A&M and Rice up the list. We really unexpectedly loved Tulsa; are y’all going there?</p>
<p>I’m a LAC person. Many LACs in our region have “older” dorms, small dining, etc. To me seeing it in the summer empty gives me a realisitc view of the actual “facilities.” I can visualize dressing things up easily. It also allows a view of the ease of getting to stores and around the area.</p>
<p>My son is the opposite. The actual facilities are the least important thing to him. </p>
<p>Our plan was to stay in a 2hour radius and let him see at least 1 school a week during the summer. Many would be LACs because our area has so many of them. He has decided he gets nothing out of these visits. We are basically abandoning the plan.</p>
<p>My advice - Go visit a school, but be flexible for future summer visits.</p>
<p>geogirl1, I haven’t had a child take AP Chemistry yet but I’ve had kids take AP bio and AP environmental science (as well as our school’s honor’s physics and AP physics B). I would recommend choice #1 just because AP Bio is a tough class and think taking AP Bio and AP chemistry together would be a very difficult senior year. I think the first choice would be challenging but not overwhelming. JMHO (Mom to S11, S14 and D13 who just changed from '12 to '13 to do an IB diploma at UWC Armand Hammer next year.</p>
<p>Youdon’tsay: I’ve heard good things about UTulsa in general, but haven’t looked at their music program. S2 has, at least, decided that he wants a “midsized” college - bigger than his HS, but less than 10,000 (UT-Austin is definitely out). I think he’d like Rice, but I’m worried about the cost. Plus, he doesn’t want to be surrounded by “brainiacs” all the time (his words not mine). His voice teacher wants him to go to a stand-alone conservatory, but we’re thinking that we’ll wait until graduate school for that. Why are there so darn many colleges out there? It’s so hard to narrow it down.</p>
<p>I can’t even get my dd to talk about college really. We went on one visit her freshmen year (low pressure) just a walking tour. Her sophomore year we did nothing we had a few conversations about it but she always cut me off 5 minutes into it saying I’m nagging her. Well now here we are in the Junior Year and she still won’t talk go me about where she might like to visit. I know it’s early but her schedule is really busy and if we wait to even broach the topic with her til second semester nothing will happen. She said her friends parents don’t talk to them about it so I shouldn’t either. One of her friends is taking all easy classes next year to get a 4.0 so it’s obvious that she did not get good college prep advice. Anyway I am tempted to just leave all the research up to her. Should I just put all the brochures and books in her room and leave it alone? She will probably end up at the CC because she won’t take the time to do the research but I don’t want to make her feel like I’m not giving her a voice in the process. She is not self-motivated and I really don’t k ow what to do.</p>
<p>octoberdana, Your daughter sounds like my oldest son who will start college in the fall. We took him to visit schools within driving distance but he never had anything good to say about them. He never expressed interest in college research or choices. In the end he only applied to one state flagship university. Dad submitted the online app for a state private and I submitted the app for the other state flagship where he qualified for automatic merit. Good thing we did because when it came to the end, son’s preferred institution never offered any merit aid but the other flagship offered a full tuition scholarship. Son’s program didn’t seem significantly better at his choice than the other so we offered to give him a parental scholarship of the difference between the scholarship and cost of attendance that he could use either place. He could have chosen to take out loans and have a part-time job to attend his preferred institution. In his field of interest he won’t have trouble finding employment and paying back a loan. However, he preferred to be debt free. While I feel some regret that he didn’t aim higher (he had a 34 ACT and graduated 29/650 with at least 4 good AP scores), he’s satisfied. What can you do? Sometimes you just have to let them go (but send in those easy apps yourself so there’s a safety net And I have younger sister and brother to aim higher.</p>
<p>Regarding summer visits, my opinion is that they are better than nothing, but definitely inferior to visiting while students are on campus. With my 2010 S, we visited the first couple of schools in late August just before his junior year, when colleges were in session but high school in NJ hadn’t started yet. The big college visit trip was spring break junior year, which was an ideal time to visit colleges. Then one school during the summer, and another school in late August before HS started. </p>
<p>The one school we visited in the summer without students there felt strange, and I think you couldn’t get as much of a feeling for what the student body was like. S and I joked about the aliens that came and took all the students away in their spaceship.</p>
<p>Call me hard core, but I would NEVER fill out a college app for my son. The kids have to take some ownership, and if they don’t (after an appropriate amount of nagging ), then let the chips fall where they may. My mantra: “I can’t want this more than you do.”</p>
<p>I agree with other posters about summer visits. This summer, we are visiting some less than likelies because we are dropping her off at camp in NC. </p>
<p>D says she wants to go to California, so we are planning to use Junior Year spring break for that. Now, with 20/20 hindsight, my S’10 did like the schools visited during Junior Year spring break, because they were jammed with kids at that time.</p>
<p>We don’t really have a choice about doing some summer visits. D has pre-season in August before school starts, fall sport season, no fall break, only 2 days off in April for spring break, plus a spring sport. She won’t miss practice or games. I will have to pull her out of classes to do some visits here and there, but with 5 AP classes next year, it will be hard to miss too much.</p>
<p>So far she has looked at some smaller LAC’s and medium size universities, and sees positive aspects of both types of schools, so we can’t rule out much yet.</p>
<p>If the schools don’t allow time off, and kids are busy with sports on the weekends at meets, etc., the only time to see colleges is during the summer or spring break. Most parents I know are doing the tours this summer. Most of the big universities are very busy and chock full of kids due to all the summer programs, so you do get a feel of what it is like with kids on campus (unless it is a small college out in the boonies). </p>
<p>Another option that a lot of students are choosing where I live is to do a lot of online research and decide if the college has what they are looking for, and then they apply. Once they are accepted, then they go and visit. It sounds backwards (at least to me), but it has worked especially for those who just can’t afford the cost to travel.</p>
<p>In private schools, no more than 3 ap’s are allowed per jr and sr yr because of the volume, scope and magnitude of the work. That is why the colleges only accept max 4 aps per yr after sophomore year when they consider the applicants. A true AP class requires 2-3 hrs of hw per night if the college board syllabus is followed (which could translate to 4 hrs depending on the teacher), so you are talking about 6-9 hrs of hw after school! In my d’s school, the regular classes in science, history, english lit, and an honors language, were extraordinarily difficult. My d never had less than 5-6 hrs of hw per night and that excluded math. I don’t know how the kids who stay for sports do it (sometimes kids don’t complete all the hw in which case they fall behind). My d would work until 2am if she stayed to do theater (since rehearsals are 7-9). We had to give it up last year, only because of her illness and commute. The schools tell the kids to get sleep, and yet, they give so much hw that it is impossible for them to get more than 5-6 hrs. </p>
<p>So many of the alumni from my d’s hs said that college was a breeze after her hs. So we’ll see.</p>
<p>Apollo6- your story gave me hope! Ds12 wants to look at schools, just doesn’t know how and really doesn’t want our involvement at all. He is 17 going on 30. I never understood that saying until now! The difficult part is that his interests are changing and since he doesn’t know what he wants to do yet, he doesn’t know where to start looking. We are going to see 4 or 5 schools this summer, but otherwise he really doesn’t want to talk about it. I read the Class of 2012 board and all these parents are telling their kids to give them their app by July X, and I’m thinking I could never tell my kid to do that. He is far too independent to have me dictate anything like that! He is a different kind of kid than my DD13. She will also come with us to see the schools, so she will get an idea of what it is like. DD13 is much more open to parental involvement. </p>
<p>Kelowna- hahaha… we are looking at Cornell, Geneseo, Binghamton, Colgate…Can you say cold and wet except for the 3 months a year the kids aren’t there? At least we are also going to see U of Miami. That should be nice when the kids are there, but boiling and muggy when we visit this summer!</p>
<p>I think this generation of parents is so used to optimizing every thing associated with their kids that we create a lot of angst for ourselves about visiting colleges. The bottom line is to visit when you can. My kids are fully entrenched in sports, academic competitions, ECs and well, school, that visiting during the school year is not really going to happen. So we are embracing our summer visits! It is what it is, go with it.</p>
<p>Kelowna - Try U Oregon - they were very generous with merit and they have a few really stellar programs particulary in enviromental studies and architecture.</p>
<p>octoberdana - I had the same problem with D1 - here is what I did to keep the peace. We sat down and discussed the process of independence - a general life discussion. Part of that discussion involved laying out the rules of using the car, taking a summer service trip without parents and just the general overall expectations of her when she turned 16 (chores, laudry, keeping room clean, etc.) At the end of the discussion I brought up the college process and our expectations of her participation. She yesed me to death and at first I was loose about everything but then I tightened up when she “put up a wall” and really wouldn’t discussed college. So, I gave her a timeline - I said, on this date we are going to discuss possible majors. Please prepare for our discussion by looking at these resources. I gave her a month. When she showed up at the meeting without preparing, I took aware her driving privledges and told her she could have them back once she was ready and prepared to talk about it. She came back to me prepared but I was still angry so I made an appointment with her for a few days out to cool off but told her I was too tied up with work.</p>
<p>The next item on the timeline was a specific school discussion based on the results of the first discussion- she had three weeks. Once again, she showed up unprepared, so I took away the driving again. We played the game for a bit but then I said if she didn’t want to be independent then all the priveledges of independence go away. That meant we were going to treat her like a 6th grader. I started monitoring her homework, calling her teachers, taking away driving, and just being a pain in the neck. It also includes choosing her college. If she didn’t want to participate then I would tell her where she is going without her input…and I mentioned the nearest college only 10 miles away.</p>
<p>Once she realized I was serious, she became engaged. </p>
<p>Now that she has graduated and is heading off to college in the fall she has thanked me. I overheard her say to D2, I thought mom was crazy at first but she really made me think everything through and take ownership. So listen to her, she knows what she is doing.</p>
<p>So I am starting the process with D2. Our first “meeting” is the end of June.</p>
<p>Youdon’tsay, I would never write an essay or short answer for my kids, but fill in basic info on a college or scholarship app? You bet! Sometimes kids just don’t know what they’ll miss if they don’t take action. I have a son and daughter at free selective summer programs this year because I filled in the apps online. I did have to get S to dictate an essay question and had D email me hers but if I hadn’t submitted it while they were in the middle of studying for APs, they would have nothing to do this summer. They have both thanked me and are having a ball.</p>
<p>Hmmmm…no - I don’t think I could fill out any application for my kid (once they are over 15 or so). IMO, if they don’t want it bad enough to even fill out a lousy application, then I’m not spending my money on it. I’ve told kids that if they don’t get off their butts and actually apply for college, then community college it is! (Actually, my foster son went to community college and ended up getting a nice steady job that he loves).</p>
<p>medavinci, I am confused by some of your statements about AP’s. My oldest D’s college accepted more than 4 AP classes per year, and she went into college with 23 or 24 credits. I don’t know that all private schools restrict kids to 3 AP’s per year. At my kids’ public HS, taking AP classes is the only way to get challenging courses. On the other hand, the private HS I went to did not offer AP classes, though the honors classes were rigorous enough that I took several AP tests after them. And as for 2-3 hours of HW a night, many of these AP classes are one semester college courses, spread out over a year of HS, so the workload is not that much at our HS.</p>
And I have younger sister and brother to aim higher.</p>
</p>