<p>Thanks for the clarification, YDS. Too bad my DD13a was sick and didn’t take the PSAT seriously to begin with! Only needed a couple of points to get it done :-/. Oh well!</p>
<p>So on the unweighted grade thing, you add up all the points and divide by number of classes? Sorry, but I’m really math challenged.</p>
<p>How is everyone doing that is getting the severe weather today?
Last I heard, we’d gotten ten inches of rain in about four hours. Guess we are making up for our lack of snowfall/moisture this winter.</p>
<p>Several tornadoes too.</p>
<p>Hope everyone else is doing okay.</p>
<p>Girl dropped off at the mall - I really hate to say it but we have a few parents at our school who are worse than this father. You wouldn’t believe some of amount of stress some of these parents put on these children.</p>
<p>NMSF - I had no idea that S needed to take the SAT. He has taken the ACT and has no plans to take the SAT. Now I wonder if we need to add another test although I don’t think he has any schools on his list that will make a difference.</p>
<p>UC Berkley - we are way down south and UC Berkley is one of the big name schools that we send a lot of kids to. I think this year with a graduation class of 400 and about 15 of them that go out of state 5 are going to Berkley.</p>
<p>How do we find safety schools that S will love? He has a list of 6 or 8 schools that he thinks he could be happy with but none are both an admission and financial safety. S has 3 or 4 schools that are both admissions and financial safeties but they are schools that he calls these his “failure” schools. Meaning he will go if he has to but not be happy about.</p>
<p>Walker, you would add up all the points and divide by the number of CREDITS. You have to weight the classes, so a .5 credit class would get less weight, etc. Do you know your grading scale? ie, ours is:</p>
<p>95-100% A 4.0
92-94% A- 3.67
89-91% B+ 3.33
86-88% B 3.0
83-85% B- 2.67
Etc</p>
<p>So if you have 22.5 credits, 15.5 A, 4 A-, 3 B+, it would be:
(15.5<em>4.0) + (4</em>3.67) + (3*3.33)/22.5=3.852</p>
<p>(Our weighted GPA is figured by doing the same, but adding one point for each AP and .5 points for each honors. Weighted GPA is only used to determine rank.)</p>
<p>Mommydearest- I saw INXS in concert back when I was in college. Excellent! I have many memories of “laying out” poolside with my INXS cd on auto-repeat in the summer!</p>
<p>MomofBoston- where is your D going in Africa? My D went to Kenya last year for a mission trip. She came back fueled to work in the field of international adoption. Glad your other D is having such fun in Spain!</p>
<p>Fred’s dottir- Thanks for the movie rec! Haven’t heard of it but I’ll look it up!</p>
<p>Congrats to S, Dad! Our finals are next week too (well, D’s. But you know what I mean.) Four half days left until she’s a senior. Yay!</p>
<p>YDS- Sounds like your son has been busy and having a blast. Good for him! Good for the grades too. 
Don’t worry about catching up. Glad you’re back!</p>
<p>Thanks Asmuoh! I’ll look up the movie.</p>
<p>89wahoo- interesting parenting philosophy that Dad has. Hmm, a mall. Definitely motivating. If I was going to do something stupid like that, I would have at least abandoned my kid at a library or a Sylvan learning center or something! ;-)</p>
<p>Aw, MDMom, hugs to you (and congrats to your son, although I’m not Catholic so I’m not sure if that’s what you say…) I think we all have moments when we realize how soon this separation is coming and how much we’re gonna miss these guys and gals. As much as I love my two younger sons, I cannot imagine being in this house with all men and not having my daughter here with me. I am not even kidding!</p>
<p>Terinzak- laughing over the not needed quarters for laundry. I keep telling my D that it took me YEARS to be able to just spend quarters freely after I finished college. She looks at me like I’m nuts but seriously! I remember hoarding quarters (well, for laundry AND for beer pong. lol) Glad your S loved U of U!</p>
<p>Music- We need to add “Everybody Wants You” by Billy Squier. And like it not, you know Madonna and Wham! are gonna have to be represented.</p>
<p>Wherenext- that is just beyond wrong, leaving one’s daughter somewhere alone for hours and she doesn’t know where she is!! What is WITH these people? How can they expect their children to behave in a mature fashion when they are being A$$hats themselves?
Congrats to your S15!</p>
<p>The best thing on our tour today was a dad when we were touring a dorm. He asks the tour guide who cleans the room? The tour guide looked at him and said “your son”. If you could have seen the look on the dad’s face! Then someone asked how 4 kids shared 1 bathroom…Tour guide says it’s never been a problem. The only girl in the group looks at him and says “You’ve never lived with 1 girl let alone 4”…poor tour guide 
</p>
<p>The dorms at this college were all built for the 2002 Olympics. There;s even a wall in one of the dining halls that has all the olympic athletes signatures. Very cool. Overall a very good day! Loved the campus and all the building going on. DS’s face lit up when he heard that one of the founders of Pixar graduated here.</p>
<p>@MommyDearest: Sadly, I do not, nor can I find it online. I’m just going to guess that an A is 4.0, B 3.0 etc. </p>
<p>So if I did my math right 17 A’s plus one B is a 3.94 unweighted? If so, that one B really effed it up, lol! Worst mistake in high school… I guess the rigor of schedule will make up for it though. </p>
<p>RE: A Malling (haha) - it was an extreme thing to do, but did the mall close without him showing up? If not, idk how it can be called endangerment. She is 16, not 8! She could have called a friend or something. And ordering him out of the house until finishing parenting classes? I really think that is overboard! At least he gives a crap in his own demented way.</p>
<p>To all my peeps out there suffering through bad weather, please be safe!</p>
<p>It took two days: “I’m bored. I’m ready for school to start.”</p>
<p>I suggested that he get a job. :)</p>
<p>S13 spent the day in his room cramming for the Physics SAT I hope it helped. He said hes confident about the Math II. If he bombs these because he procrastinated, hell be using his own money if he wants to take them again in October.</p>
<p>Right now hes at the first of 15 graduation parties he has over the next two weekends. I told him to buy a bunch of packages of the money holder cards and told him to pull out his checkbook. I was going to give him a stack of 20s but I figured it would be good to learn how to write checks (although, its almost obsolete anymore.)</p>
<p>Momofboston Where in Africa is D going? How exciting Id love to hear more about that!</p>
<p>Dadotwoboys congrats to your son for the HM all-county he should be very proud! So many tennis parents on this board. I dont know a thing about it!</p>
<p>YDS sounds like your S is making the most out of being out of school! I hope my S can do half of that before he leaves for the summer. And congrats to him for pulling up the Calc grade! </p>
<p>Ahsmuoh its a good week to be grounded! I should have thought of that for this past week before the SATs . . . Im sure hes done something I could have grounded him for! (Actually, probably not. lol)</p>
<p>Tx5 no senior projects like that here, but it sounds like a great idea! </p>
<p>David congrats on the Japan homestay!</p>
<p>Terinzak glad the visit was a hit! Did you find a couch? I love upholstery fabric shopping!</p>
<p>Vandygrad I saw INXS a couple times in the 80s before I got into classic rock, then I saw The Who, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, the Eagles . . . and my all-time favorite, Steely Dan. Im not a movie goer, but I also heard the Marigold one was Oscar-worthy good.</p>
<p>wherenext, oooh, I like the bass! It does sound like a good way to start the weekend!</p>
<p>89wahoo, I hope that you and Vandygrad stay safe with those storms passing through. I grew up in the prairies and although we never had a really bad tornado there were roofs damaged, metal sheds literally twisted off their bases and so on. Here you just don’t want to be on the water with high winds (or stuck at a ferry terminal waiting until it’s safe to cross to the other side).</p>
<p>drmom, I think that both you and your D sound like you need a break!</p>
<p>mommaof5, let us know how your S and his team does at the meet. Good luck to them!</p>
<p>Walker on any grading scaling 17 A s and 1 B is going to be an excellent GPA! A 3.94 is awesome!</p>
<p>YDS I guess I spoke too soon! Thats just crazy!</p>
<p>Forgot to add that we know one of the aliens in MIB3! He is one of the orange fishes and the dead alien in the bowling alley scene! Gettin paid scale and hangin with Will Smith and Josh Brolin? #winning!</p>
<p>Rant of the night: what, really, do elite colleges have to gain by sending out mailings to kids who won’t get in? Are they truly so craven as to want to pull up the hopes of these hard-working kids just so their acceptance rate can drop from 6% to 5%? S got a letter from Harvard this week. Bless his heart, there is no flipping way he could get in, so I am baffled as to why they sent it. Really, *** was Harvard thinking? It’s not like they’re some little undiscovered jewel of an LAC in Arkansas. So it’s not like they need to be put on someone’s radar. I feel like they are just manipulating kids for their own ends and it calls into question all of their judgment with regard to kids’ best interests. Luckily, S is pretty grounded and threw the whole thing in recycling…but what if someone like crazy mall dad gets such mail?</p>
<p>PS. Good luck to all SAT-sufferers tomorrow.</p>
<p>Just checking in. So glad it’s Friday.</p>
<p>MomofNEA. I agree. A lot of those mailing seem disingenuous in their tone, even for students that would be considered strong candidates. I think they should put in a disclaimer with their acceptance rate for a reality check.</p>
<p>We have just finished our first week of summer vacation. D left yesterday morning for Austria with her youth symphony. She was beyond excited. I would have liked to have gotten her a cell phone for Europe but the chaperones discouraged it so I didn’t suggest it. One of the chaperones is posting on the Facebook page but we won’t have any personal communication for 10 days. Biting my nails but I suppose it’s practice and I trust the chaperones.</p>
<p>D got a phone message from Colorado State today, probably since we had gone to an information session a couple months ago. The student mentioned told her she should check out the Class of 2017 Facebook page that has already been started!</p>
<p>S15 is through his first week of Driver’s Ed and no accidents! (Course he hasn’t been behind the wheel of a moving vehicle yet either 
)</p>
<p>^momofnea I love the way you put that.</p>
<p>@MomofNEA: I don’t think anybody can get into Harvard :). I’m not even sure if either of my kids got in with a free ride that they would be interested. They both like to learn but they like to do lots of things outside of academia. I’m not dissing the ivy’s, but most of them aren’t really within our financial means let alone academic matches. I think the ivy’s are missing out on a lot of great kids. Their loss!!</p>
<p>I think we do need a break!</p>
<p>walker1194: my brother in law went to Harvard and said the most difficult part was gettin in; and, he was taught by TA’s. My kid, even if she got in…would not do well learning from TA’s. We’ve seen a few IVY’s because she was (and still is a little…) thinking she “should” apply…I just don’t think they fit her. But, we have time…and it is unlikely she’d get in anyway…
I do think schools are just sending tons of stuff in order to get kids to apply and “lower” that percentage of acceptance…such a game…and such an awful thing to do to the kids.
FINALLY, I heard DS say something close to "if the school doesnt appreciate what i do…than, “I am free to do what I want”…which I think means she’s beginning to understand that an acceptance or rejection does not define/change who she is…</p>
<p>CBGMass - we have the same “safety” school (financial and academic) problems here, plus the Goldilocks Syndrome (not too small, not too large - just right). Seems S’13 prefers the 5,000 to 12,000 undergrad size schools. I can’t blame him - that’s what my wife and I liked also.</p>
<p>I think we’ve discussed grade weighting before, but around here the AP, DE and honors class weighting is cumulative, not averaged in. So, the kids get a grade based on the standard 4.0 scale (only whole grades here, no + or -) each semester, and UW GPA is based on that. Then AP and DE classes provide a .08 bonus and honors classes add a .04 bonus. These bonuses stick with the overall GPA and can add up fast. The paper today had the vals and sals of the district high schools. Several vals were over 7.0 , 5 went over 8.0 and one crossed over 9.0 (only possible with online AP and honors classes starting in MS). But it’s only useful for class rank as colleges all refigure the kids grades using their own methods.</p>