<p>MDMom–I don’t think you are “behind” as much as some of us are ahead. We started early because I knew we wouldn’t have time otherwise. If our summer and fall calendars were not so packed, we would probably just be starting visits this summer. :D.</p>
<p>anniezz - yeah, she can take the SAT in the fall. But cross your fingers that she won’t need to because she killed the ACT :)</p>
<p>MDMom, I wouldn’t worry too much about thinking you’re behind. Most people end up doing a second round of visits anyway once the acceptances come in.</p>
<p>I’ve been out of town and now feel behind here. </p>
<p>annie, can she take the SAT in May?</p>
<p>wahoo, that sounds painful.</p>
<p>Apollo, grrrrrr. Poor kid.</p>
<p>Pgh, sorry for the bad overnight. I found the writeup. I can’t believe that the host didn’t go looking for him. I think my ds1 would freak if his prospie stayed out all night without any warning. Also, FYI, I don’t know if it’s like this at every college, but ds1’s school gives kids gift cards in exchange for hosting prospies, so you might get kids as hosts who aren’t doing it for the right reason, kwim?</p>
<p>Welcome, CBG!</p>
<p>Surprisingly, S2 is starting to think seriously about college. I think getting his SAT scores made it “real.” He’s got a preliminary list. Since he’s a music major and will have to audition, we’re limiting him to 6 schools. Maybe 8 since many of them have a “prescreen” requirement before you are invited to audition. But definitely no more than 6 actual auditions. </p>
<p>He says his current schools are (in order of preference):
Curtis (dream school)
Julliard
Manhattan School of Music
Westminster Choir College
Baldwin-Wallace (financial safety)
Oklahoma City U (financial safety)
University of Texas (academic and financial safety)</p>
<p>We’ll see how the list morphs by the fall. We’re going to visit Julliard and MSM in July and he has a two week camp at Westminster. So he should get a good “feel.” But, in reality, they’re all a crapshoot when it depends on audition.</p>
<p>anniezz: Hi, I’m new to this thread. Saw your post and my DD is sort of in the same boat. She took the ACT on the 14th and is scheduled to take the SAT in May, but there’s a big spring track invite that day (she’s looking at D1 schools) and wants to compete. She dislikes the SAT and prefers the ACT. I’mm 99.9% sure she’ll miss the SAT. She’ll take the ACT again fall of senior year and “maybe” the SAT at that time as well. She’s between a rock and a hard place because this is her first year running (XC, winter, & spring track) and has been very successful. This is a big season for her. Hope we’re making the right decision.</p>
<p>Wish SAT and ACT were offered over the summer! It would make so many lives easier.</p>
<p>My kid is another with testing conflict. He is scheduled for subject tests in May, but he may need to skip it. </p>
<p>I haven’t seen AP studying. Some of the study guides are beginning to collect dust. Uggh.</p>
<p>Megpmom - I know nothing about music, but I love Curtis! Wonderful location. Amazing talent. We are lucky enough to catch a performance a year. Some of the faculty will teach at area colleges as guest faculty. </p>
<p>Welcome CBGMass!<br>
My cousin just started considering college for her 11th grade son. She is still in the sticker price shock. With his sports, she has no idea when to do visits. He wants to stay close to home, so at least she can get some visits done in the fall on school holidays.</p>
<p>7 more days until ACT results come in!!!</p>
<p>I had to say it here. I don’t dare mention it at home 
I’ve decided that unless he actually suggests otherwise, I won’t have him testing again after the May SAT.</p>
<p>Reeinaz: S13 has pretty much said that no matter what his scores are next week, that he is done with the ACT/SAT. (With the exception of course of the SAT subject test in June.)</p>
<p>Sadly, he injured his hamstring a few weeks ago which has put a HUGE damper on his Track season 
But…it DID free him up to put extra work into his ACT prep. Part of his rehab for his injury has been acupuncture. And no joke…she used needles in his head the week before his test to help with brain activity and blood flow.
Will let you know next week how it worked out.</p>
<p>Any recommendations for a 4.0 / 33 ACT gay student. He is looking for a LAC that meets full need or great merit and I don’t know that his stats would get merit. All classes are IB.</p>
<p>Finding a school that is accepting to gay students is VERY important.</p>
<p>Also, should he retake the ACT? This is his only score and he really doesn’t want to take it again.</p>
<p>mom24boys, happy to give my thoughts on OU vs. Alabama. We visited Bama in October - wanting to make sure there was a financial safety - and tossed in OU at the very end (March!). He had been accepted at U Rochester (his definite #1 at that point); we were awaiting FA and I was worried it wouldn’t be doable - and wanted him to have an alternative without it feeling like he “had” to accept it. As it turned out, the FA at Rochester was doable. He was pretty set there until about 2 weeks ago, and then started thinking hard about the $, and then the visit happened. Those of you who have expressed horror at that experience - he lived through it, and it gave him “permission” to really think about his options. I probably will write an email to them when he officially declines in a few days - they did everything right up until the very last week, and then a couple of things went very wrong. I think either school is a good choice for him, so we’re being philosophical about it.</p>
<p>Anyhow, back to OU…</p>
<p>Bama is very Southern and very Greek and very Football. #2 and #3 are true of OU also, but OU seemed much more down-to-earth. We’ve lived in the South, so that’s not foreign, but DS didn’t want to go to a place where girls felt the need to shell out $100 for a houndstooth handbag to take to the football game. He also wanted a place where it was ok to be a bit of a nerd. At Bama, his tour guide for the honors dorms seemed completely confused by the question of whether there was any “nerd culture” at the school - she fell all over herself explaining that the honors students weren’t nerds. DS found a kid with a Star Wars t-shirt on to repeat the question, and the reply was that there was “some” nerd-dom. At OU, our guide pretty much wore the “slightly nerdy” label with pride, and when we visited the dorm, it was clear he wasn’t the exception. </p>
<p>Other random thoughts:</p>
<p>Bama’s honors dorms are much nicer (nicer than any other students’, in fact). OU’s are pretty much the same as other dorms - somewhat nicer and larger than the average college, I’d say, but not outrageous.</p>
<p>OU’s food is incredible - great quality, and (on the other end of the spectrum) there is an all-you-can-eat Chic-fil-A in the dining hall. We also had incredible BBQ in Tuscaloosa and Oklahoma City, so that’s a tossup…</p>
<p>Bama didn’t offer DS’ preferred major (linguistics), although he could have done a self-designed thing fairly easily, and the people he met with were very helpful in telling him how they would work with him on that.</p>
<p>OU offers more Native American languages (5) than any other university in the country (this is a particular interest of DS’).</p>
<p>Bama has several flavors of honors programs and OU only has one. The # of credits required are about even, although at Bama any course can be made an honors course, and that’s not true at OU; they’re more prescriptive. They’re also equivalent in terms of accepting AP credits (both quite generous). </p>
<p>Bama’s geographic diversity is better than OU’s, including in the honors program. I was also really impressed with their services to students with disabilities. </p>
<p>OU’s 5th year option works like this: there’s a “pool” of tuition $ in the NMF package. If you don’t use it all in 4 years (depending on the # of credits you take), you can either spread your program out to a 5th year or use it to continue into a graduate program. </p>
<p>Bama’s package includes housing but not food. OU’s package gives a smaller lump sum, but it can be used for room and board, including off-campus, or any other expense (and if you have a balance it would carry over to a 5th year, although I can’t see how that would happen unless you lived at home). Bama’s room and board total is also less than OU’s.</p>
<p>Bama gives NMF’s an iPad; OU gives $1500 credit for a laptop.</p>
<p>Bama gives NMF’s $2k for study abroad; OU gives $1.5k. </p>
<p>Happy to answer any specific questions if I can. Maybe I’ll become OU’s “mom2collegekids” - the OU presence on CC is dismal, and I think that’s a shame.</p>
<p>Re: APUS prep - DS used shmoop successfully (google it).</p>
<p>MDmom, don’t worry about being behind. We visited a couple of schools half-heartedly during spring break of junior year, but didn’t really do anything until the summer.</p>
<p>CBGMass, check out Earlham. DS has a couple of LGBT friends there who have had great experiences and gotten good merit $. I think Grinnell would be worth a look too - it’s tiny-town Iowa, but the campus is very progressive - he might want to get that ACT score up for that one, though. What are his academic and geographic interests?</p>
<p>CBGMass, these colleges were listedin Princeton Review’s top 376 as most lgbt friendly.
NYU
Stanford
Emerson
Bennington
Univ of Wisconsin-Madison
Macalester
New College of FL
Prescott
Sarah Lawrence
Grinnell
St. John’s (MD)
Olin
Hampshire
Swarthmore
Boston U
Bard
I’ve also heard that Loyola Chicago is very lgbt friendly. And take a look at Elmhurst college also. Oh and is he looking for an environment where people really don’t care one way or the other but are simply accepting or one that’s more activist minded?</p>
<p>DONIVRIAN – my daughter swears by Larry Krieger’s prep books and he actually has 2 for APUSH – AP U.S. History Crash Course and Direct Hits US History in a Flash: for the AP and SAT II.</p>
<p>CBG: I have heard wonderful things of the lgbt community at NYU.</p>
<p>CBGMass–Macalester would be a great option. Not only is the campus friendly but Minneapolis and St. Paul always rank up there in Gay friendly communities in general.</p>
<p>Pgh, I’m glad you’re reppin’ OU. I don’t think ds is going to make the cutoff, but if he did, I’d definitely have him look at OU rather than 'Bama for all the reasons you cited (sorry, 'Bama friends). I just like that Oklahoma, where I was born, is more Western than Southern.</p>
<p>CBG, Grinnell is a good LAC that offers merit aid, and, interestingly, there’s a current thread going about being gay at Grinnell. On the 2010 thread, a mom has a gay son at Northeastern. I would think that would be a great situation – a LAC in a large city so that your social life isn’t constrained to the 1,600 kids in the middle of nowhere, kwim? Macalester is a LAC right in the Twin Cities, so kind of the same thing.</p>
<p>ETA: So many of us are thinking alike!</p>
<p>Thanks for all lists. Of all the schools we have visited the only one that came close to what he was looking for was Emory. I realize it isn’t considered a LAC but that was the feel he got. He is very interested in having a city close that he can visit on the weekends. Mostly interested in an accepting school not so much interested in activism. </p>
<p>He would like to study anthropology and Spanish eventually maybe med school but doesn’t want to take the traditional med school major. We are from the deep south (very poor area) and the only schools even known around here as far as what he is looking for academically is Davidson and Wake Forest and from what we have seen neither of these fall into the accepting of gay students column.</p>
<p>CBGMass–surprisingly enough, even the Catholic school I attended back in the dark ages was accepting of Gay students. Obviously the Catholic church has some issues with the Gay lifestyle but the Gay students were accepted just fine. I think the general student body thought of it as a non-issue for the most part and roughly 10% of the student body was reported to be gay.</p>
<p>By the way - for those interested - hosting a post-prom breakfast worked great. Kids liked it and had a good place to go. We knew where they were and the other parents were happy for that. The draw back is we were up until after 3 and I don’t recover from late nights as quickly as I used to. C’est la vie.</p>
<p>PG- Thanks, that is lots of great info to think about. I agree OU could use its own “mom2collegekids” on CC. I think you should re-post your thoughts on the two schools (or maybe just on OU) on the National Merit section of CC since so many juniors are just starting to look into options.</p>
<p>Welcome to all the new members, “May the odds be ever in your favor” and may we be Oddly Lucky.</p>