<p>I agree with you, mamabear. My kids never seemed to have too much homework with AP classes. Of course, they go/went to average urban public. And my D entered college with 30 hours of AP credit (7 AP classes, I believe). I guess every school handles APs differently.</p>
<p>I agree with those saying that they would not touch their kid’s summer program application.
The heck, DH could have done PROMYS application for DS, while DS was busy studying for/taking 4 AP’s and a college physics course. We nagged, but we did not touch anything. In the end he is not going, because he was too busy with his other things - lesson learned for him, I don’t know if he will have time to do the challenging problems next year…</p>
<p>As for AP’s…I think every school is different, every kid is different. Last year DS took 4 APs, only one was really challenging in terms of workload required, one was in the middle and two were very easy. I think looking at the scores from AP tests sheds some light.
At our school AP Chem and AP Euro are considered to be very difficult/time consuming classes, but all the kids get either 4 or a 5 on the AP test. On the other hand, this year’s AP Bio class was VERY easy BUT the teacher covered only 45% of the material (by her own admission). Should be interesting…DS actually stopped going to classes before his AP exam so he could study the rest of the material 
Awaiting results anxiously, when do they really come out?</p>
<p>Kel - AP results don’t come out until July. I’m anxious, my son, on the other hand, has already forgotten about it. </p>
<p>And how do you stop going to class? Not an option where I live (public or private).</p>
<p>Lots of graduation parties here. I’m just very fruustrated with parents assuming my kid will get plenty of $ for school because “A” got over $200,000 and “B” got over $150,000. Even the parents of kids who are off to college don’t seem to understand the difference between Merit and Grant Aid. My neice racked up another $10,000 in the last week with scholarships. My SIL doesn’t believe me that the $10k will reduce her grants, so she’ll end up in the same place. Why believe me, after all it is clearly on the University’s site that this is the method used for outside scholarships. Uggh. I need to learn how to do that smile and nod thing better.</p>
<p>Longhaul I hear you! Many just don’t believe it until they see it in black and white and even then they don’t admit it!</p>
<p>We have one more week left here though I am pretty sure D2 has checked out for the year. Ah well she hung in there longer than expected so I can’t complain! I don’t think it helped in that respect that D1 has been home from college for a month now.</p>
<p>D2 is signed up for driver’s ed next month and needs to get her behind the wheel scheduled too. She’ll be eligible for her license if she gets it all done by the end of July. Now when I’d actually let her drive is a lot longer than that As it is I make DH take her driving because she stresses me out driving although I had no problems when D1 was learning. D2 is much more similar to me in personality and I think that makes the difference, LOL!</p>
<p>No summer assignments here (her HS doesn’t do assignments over school breaks so students can actually enjoy their breaks) but I’m going to make sure she is all over her required readings for AP English. Other than working as a lifeguard she doesn’t have much else planned so she can’t complain too much :)</p>
<p>Shillyshally - I see we have kid’13 and kid’15 :)</p>
<p>
AP Bio test was the same day/time as AP Music Theory. DS took AP Music and AP Bio as a second date, almost two weeks later. He figured he will learn more by studying by himself than going to class, which was already over anyway. The teacher was fine with it as long as DS did all the assignments the class did. He ended up with an A. At our school most of the classes after AP tests are “non existent”.</p>
<p>Hi all, I am here after a long time, Just catching up with all the messages so far. </p>
<p>Longhaul: what do you mean by $10,000 scholorship reducing the grant? I am a novice in college admission process and both my H and myself has gone to collge outside USA.</p>
<p>One more week of class for my S. His final exams start tomorrow. He has got a good number of summer assignments. His regular english reading assignment(3 books or so, He is taking Honors English), APUSH teacher has assigned them page 1- 347 in the text book and a book- I forgot which one- to read. APCHEM has a big packet due at the first week of school which is mainly a review of what they have done this year. His current chemistry teacher is the one who is teaching AP Chem next year. The teacher has set up two sessions over summer- attendance not mandatory- if they need help with the topic being covered. And he will get his AP Computer science assignment today. He will have pretty much 2-3 hrs of reading/learning to do in summer. In all these classes, They have a test in the week of school. Good thing he is not complaining about it. </p>
<p>We have not visited any colleges yet, may not do so until the spring of next year. He has taken some enrichment classes at a well known univesrsity here for the past few years, so that is the only exposure to college for him right now. However, S has been talking to a lot of seniors and kind of know some thing about the college. He told me once that he likes to go to a college whcih is bigger than his school. His high school has just over 1000 students.</p>
<p>Confession: I had planned to have a big discussion yesterday afternoon with D2 about the “college process.” I think she’s in pretty good shape in terms of thinking about things, but I just wanted to strategize, talk about expectations and scheduling, and make sure that she’s comfortable with my role as “executive assistant.” I want to make the process less stressful for her, not more stressful.</p>
<p>But then I got home, and she was being all silly with DH & D1 and I couldn’t do it. </p>
<p>Think I’m starting to understand how it’s different when it’s the baby of the family & not your oldest…</p>
<p>The whole family had a great two-hour talk last week about college with ds2. It started out with how the whole SAT/PSAT prep was going to go starting last weekend, and then, because it was going so well, I went ahead and went through my spiel about college admissions as a game, etc. It was really great. I got him thinking about how he wanted to present himself, how to pick a safety/match/reach, etc. </p>
<p>On Sunday, he did his baseline SAT and scored exactly what he thought he would, which was pretty darn good. He’s going to be so close to the NMSF cutoff that I will be on pins and needles all fall. Our school is one that doesn’t release scores until after winter break. ARGH!</p>
<p>Yesterday, we scheduled his first official visit, at a school that is an academic safety but not a financial one. He has taken courses there in the summer, so he wrote one of his old profs to let him know we’d be on campus and to ask a couple of questions and he wrote right back! I love that ds isn’t nervous to reach out to contacts. :)</p>
<p>Meanwhile, tomorrow are his last two driving hours. Saturday, he gets to go to an event with the congressman. I’m irrationally nervous about it after what happened to Giffords, but ds assures me there are lots of plainclothes cops in the crowd. It’s sad when you have to worry about your kid when he’s trying to do a good thing.</p>
<p>Donrivian - most colleges will reduce their financial aid if you get outside scholarships - and when they reduce their aid it will reduce their free money first typically (so grants, etc) and then loans. There are some schools that let you stack scholarships with their aid but that is the exception to the general trend.</p>
<p>So if a school costs $35,000 and is giving you $20,000 in grants and then you secure $10,000 in outside scholarships, it is very unlikely you will only be left with $5,000 to pay. Most likely scenario is the school would reduce it’s grants by that $10,000. </p>
<p>Kelowna - yep - my younger 2 are the '13 and '15ers 
And they will be much different through this process than my '10er was :)</p>
<p>Question: Do SAT prep classes help with PSAT? S2’s school has offered to pay half the cost of an SAT prep course for him this fall. But he probably won’t take the SAT until the spring. I know that the PSAT is in October, so, if the prep work is the same, we’re thinking of taking the school up on its offer. Does that sound reasonable? (I hesitate because S2 is not the kind of kid who can easily sit in a classroom for 3 hrs and concentrate. I don’t want to put him through that kind of torture if it won’t help him on the PSAT.)</p>
<p>Thank you very much ShillyShally. I get it now. </p>
<p>I don’t know much about SAT prep courses, But I would assume that SAT prep should help in PSAT- after all they deal with the same topics. At least in math, the college board’s prep questions are similar for SAT and PSAT. I too have to ask my S to think about it and help him get some prep- either books or a course.</p>
<p>DONIVRIAN: As far as scholarships reducing grants. At D1’s school the scholarship reduced the grant, at S2’s school the financial aid office explained there policy as: Your parent’s EFC will not be reduced. If your EFC says your parents can pay $10K they will be expected to pay $10K. But when S2 got a couple of outside scholarships they reduced the student loans and work study first, and then they reduced the grants. So definitely it varies from school to school. But the bottom line is that your outside scholarships will take away from the financial aid they initially offer.</p>
<p>I can’t remember all the differences between the SAT and PSAT. I think the PSAT math is a little easier, and certainly the test is shorter. That, to me, is one benefit of using SAT tests to practice for the PSAT – they get used to working longer so the PSAT is a piece of cake, endurance-wise. Remember, they’ll get the free practice PSAT in the booklet when they register so even if you use the SAT for practice they’ll still get one shot at a real PSAT-length test.</p>
<p>tx5athome: Thank you. So many variables. I can’t wait to be June 2013 and be done with it.</p>
<p>My child is always changing his position.
Son wants to do some summer visits to “large” schools that will still have kids on campus. I suggested he visit the easy to get to by train himself – He’ll go see U of Penn. He has already been to Temple & Drexel on “unofficial” visits due to summer programs & workshops.</p>
<p>I thought about taking him to see Bama since I think it may motivate him to study for PSAT/SAT. Unfortunately, the airfare & car rental costs are more than I want to pay (over $1000 + hotel!). I don’t think I can handle driving that distance in the limited time I can take off work.</p>
<p>Definitely coming to the realization that if he continues to want far away schools, that he will not be visiting until after acceptances & FA packages. There are about a dozen schools on our long, flexible list that are over an 8 hour drive. Of well - maybe by next year he’ll decide to stay close to home.</p>
<p>@Longhaul: a trip dedicated for school visit is luxury to us, you can integrate your summer travel plan with school visit together to make it more fun of family. BTW, motivating a kid to study hard is never an easy job. For now, from previous posts, I agree that for this age, more important thing is to explore/dig their interests, to make them think their career or what they think it’s fun to do to make living and do it for their lives. For me it’s hard job too, so they can’t complain in the future that parents make the decision for them.
For the discussion of SAT vs PSAT, there is no question that SAT is harder. Many kids score well in PSAT but never performed well in SAT. DS scored well above 230 on PSAT, but never scored above 2300 even after hard study.
Big day next week, SAT subject test score release. DD is nervous since she will have to move out her own private study room to public space to study if her scores are not as good as what she promised.</p>
<p>^^ :)</p>
<p>We too are awaiting the Chem. SAT result. </p>
<p>Finals going on in full swing. Two more days of finals and The academic year is over.</p>
<p>Math II here.</p>
<p>My D2 bailed on taking the Sat II but that was probably for the best - if she isn’t confident (which she wasn’t) it would have been a disaster.</p>
<p>Last night she took all her notes from pre-calc this year and headed out to the recycling bin - I tried to get her to keep them as she could use them with AB Calc and she said “Mom, you and I both know if I keep these I still won’t ever look at them so let’s not pretend otherwise” which is very true for her so I let her dump them. Not worth the fight when it was about 2 cubic feet of paper and she was right, she won’t touch them!</p>
<p>She has one more day of finals and then she’s done for the year!</p>
<p>S3 has 4 days of finals left of school. He has pretty solid A’s in everything going in, so I don’t anticipate any problems. Although I still wish he would study. I don’t think I have not seen him crack a book in a couple of weeks. It has been really hard with D1 and S2 home from college for the summer for S3 to maintain a regular schedule. He will is eligible to take the driving test in 30 days. I am leaving it up to him to make the appointment.</p>