<p>Pinot how is the “rah rah” sports atmosphere at Rochester? My daughter wants to be able to attend games where there is at least some school spirit.</p>
<p>Nice to see you PN! </p>
<p>OK, where are you momsings?</p>
<p>Tonight’s haiku asks
how each of you found this site
for me just dumb luck</p>
<p>Crepes…I will try to find out. I’ll get my H to ask ;).
3Girls3Cats…I will take a look at the websites of those schools. Thanks for the heads up.</p>
<p>I see that everyone is into the fall sports season full swing. D had an away game today and S18 had an away game yesterday. Our coaches have always required JV and Varsity to stay for each other’s games however they are allowed and expected to do homework.</p>
<p>I don’t know much about Syracuse generally but my sister went to the Environmental Sciences school and really liked it, found it challenging and had high achieving peers. (My sibs and I were all limited to state schools and were all qualified and admitted to Ivies/equivalents.) She went to one of the SUNY medical schools afterwards and is now a full professor at an elite medical school/university. </p>
<p>D started school in mid-August and is buried under her work. She’s already had a round of major tests and papers and we’ve had the first tears of the year. Twogirls, it’s nice to hear that your d is holding up better this year.</p>
<p>PN, how nice (and lucky! Rochester is not an easy place to be admitted) for you that your kids are at the same school! </p>
<p>Wolverine, my feeling is that we as parents have to be cheerleaders for all our kids and that we don’t get to see the effects of all that work until they have found their paths. (My youngest would say that I’m not a cheerleader at all and that I’m mean so let me amend that to say we should TRY to be voices of encouragement.) It’s so hard when they have narrow perspectives that are limited by their youth, when school is such a major part of how they define themselves, and when they gauge themselves against siblings, some of whom are either more driven or to whom academic things come easier. My D2 said that there was a day in high school when D1 was celebrated so much that a teacher came up to her to give her a pep talk not to compare herself to D1. Naturally, this backfired because D2 had hoped no one had noticed. Life was much, much better for her after she was in college and away from direct comparisons to D1 (and D3). </p>
<p>Suzy, I don’t remember what took me to this site the first time. Probably dumb luck as well.</p>
<p>I just lost it with D :(</p>
<p>She missed the school bus yesterday am and then coming home this pm, both times very much her own fault, poor time management issues. So when she called me from school and I picked her up we talked about time management. She has no homework yet (she’s had just 2 full days of school and finished it in study hall this afternoon) so I said that she really needed to catch up on PSAT/SAT prep and should take at least an hour on CR, an hour on math and 20 minutes of math tutoring online. I asked her if that sounded feasible and she said ok. </p>
<p>So I went up to her room a little while ago and she’d done maybe half an hour’s work at most!!! It was already 10:20 and she has to wake up for school by 6:30. GRRR!!! I lost it and I yelled. </p>
<p>This has been going on for days–she was supposed to do math practice and tutoring last night…and the night before…and she keeps on saying she’ll do it “tomorrow”. </p>
<p>Math is not really her thing but she does ok when she tries. But it’s like she’s not trying–maybe she’s hit a plateau or she thinks she’s just not close enough to a good score so she might as well give up now and just play games on her phone. :mad: I really don’t understand it–she says she wants to try for schools like Cornell but I have to tell her that she’s not going to have much of a chance if she doesn’t put in some steady review now that she has the time.</p>
<p>Hang in there crepes!! Some days our children are God’s gift to us…and some days they’re God’s punishment for our past sins. 
Never fear though…there’s always room for one more in the meditation sessions…and one more glass to join in on the drinking!! Hiccup!!</p>
<p>3girls3cats…I’ve determined that I must speak a different language than my wife and kids when I try to be a cheerleader. I tell my wife she’s beautiful…she snorts at me. I tell my kids they’re all fantastic individuals…they snort at me. I tell our dog she’s a good girl…she licks herself…and snorts at me. I’m sure they’re all snorts of love and respect…aren’t they?</p>
<p>Wow I went to sleep at 10:00 last night and missed a lot LOL!! Keepme- they are allowed to start homework, fortunately. In the past the district had two buses so that the JV kids could stay back and do homework before their game, and the varsity kids could leave right after their game. Now there is one bus ( unless they decide to re- visit that) and the kids must stay. I was very proud of my daughter for walking in the door and calmly sitting down to do homework rather than have a meltdown. We worked very hard on that and she know that if the meltdowns begin she will have to miss games when she has too much work- this is not looked at favorable by the school but " you do what you gotta do." She would get benched for the next game. Thankfully the season ends by the end of October and the practices end at 4:30, so it’s only once a week that she would come home later- sometimes twice.</p>
<p>Crepes I feel for you. Hang in there! It will all work out in the end. Has she seen Cornell yet?</p>
<p>Today is day #3- only 177 days left ( I think school is 180 days?). I really don’t want to wish it away because I will miss it when it’s over. As stressful as it is, it’s very exciting! </p>
<p>Today she is home at 4:30 and has SAT tutoring at 4:45. She will end up doing virtually all of her SAT work on the weekends. I can’t see how Monday-Thursday she will be able to fit any in.
Wolverine a few weeks ago somebody bought me a gift- two bottles of wine. It was the best gift ever LOL. Last year my daughter took up some meditation- I may try that as well.</p>
<p>Twogirls - the “rah rah” sports factor is not really there at Rochester. Ironically, that’s something my guys put in the “pro” column. I think the general consensus is that everyone is into doing their things, happy for others that they have their own things, but not very in to being spectators at someone else’s thing. Does that make any sense? </p>
<p>3girls - it’s nice to have them both there - they hadn’t been at the same school since 5th and 3rd grade, so it’s kind of cool that they ended up at the same college!</p>
<p>Good luck to everyone on the test prep and keeping life in balance! It’s hard to find that crucial “navel gazing” time when life has so many demands tugging at them! S is taking the ACT on Sept 21st and we’re hoping to find some time this weekend for him to do a practice test at home. </p>
<p>Wolverine - keep the compliments flowing - they are heard even though you’re getting snorted at! ;)</p>
<p>Pinot I think it makes sense LOL. My daughter is not a sports fanatic but she has been on student council and part of her job requires her to work the snack bar at home football games. That is when she discovered that she would like to go to a school that has a bit of " rah rah" to it.</p>
<p>I just got her an ACT account but did not register. Still waiting to see if SAT and ACT one week apart is do-able. She can always take the ACT again in February if necessary so maybe we will just do it. </p>
<p>Today we have a morning of 9/11 ceremonies at my job. Our kids were only 4 years old on that horrific day.</p>
<p>Wolverine…love the snorting, love the compliments. Keep them coming bc they are being heard by the recipients!! Well maybe not the dog, but she knows you love her anyway ;)</p>
<p>Twogirls…one bus has always been the way for us. They are even required to stay for each other’s home games. Hopefully your daughter will continue to handle it all. As much as we are sports crazy, our kids know academics come first. I am very thankful that our volleyball coaches think the same. Now our softball coaches? That’s a different story unfortunately.</p>
<p>There hasn’t been any test studying going on here either. I suggested it on Sunday along with the National Honor Society essay due next Monday. It’s early and I’m picking my battles. Testing will happen after volleyball season. There are 2 weeks off for Christmas break :)</p>
<p>“Some days our children are God’s gift to us…and some days they’re God’s punishment for our past sins.” </p>
<p>Wolerline - I am sure our kids feel the same way about us!</p>
<p>crepes - maybe she was having a bad day… Hang tight and hope you (and your D) have a better day today. </p>
<p>D had her first “wet eyes” this past weekend. She is taking Sept ACT and her score’s been stuck all summer and frustration finally got to her. She is so close yet still can’t get to where she wants to get to. At this point, I just want to get over with it. </p>
<p>As for our NMSF cutoff score for HS15s’my guess is that the cutoff score will go down for our kids. Maybe it’s just a wishful thinking on my part but if you look at the data for past 10 years or so, whenever cutoff was significantly higher (class of 07, class of 12, for example), the following year scores go down a little. This year’s scores look like somewhere between 07 and 12 scores - slightly lower than 07 but slightly higher than class of 12. So, based on my flawed analysis with no hard facts, I am guessing (and hoping) it will go down for HS15 kids. Time will tell I suppose.</p>
<p>Delurking…</p>
<p>FromMD, luckily(?) D is so far from the NMSF cutoff that it’s a non-issue for her. She would have to raise her score from last year by 25% to be in range. So, the PSAT is just another test on another day. </p>
<p>I did sign D up for ACT in October and SAT in November. It’ll be her second time taking the tests. The first times (in June) were eye-openers; she thought, somehow, that she would spectacularly with minimal studying. So, hopefully D is studying a bit harder this time around. She knows if she manages to get decent scores (2000 SAT and 30 ACT - she’s not applying to the top 50), she won’t have to take them again.</p>
<p>Wolverine, D’s HS has the online system for grades and assignments. I seldom go on to check grades; it’s a mini-heart attack each time. When the teachers enter an assignment but not the grade, the default is 0/F, so grades go down and up. Also, when the kids fail to hand in homework, they get a 0. In the end, I handed my username and password to D and told her to check the system everyday (she’s young, she has a strong heart).</p>
<p>Now for my question - how do people plan the college visits? And how do people manage to visit colleges in different parts of the country? We’ve visited colleges near us to see what type of college/university fits (small, remote, liberal arts, very liberal with biology and psychology). Now D has a list of schools all over the place including Hendrix in Arkansas, NCF and Eckerd in Florida, Bard in NY, Allegheny in PA (that’s okay), Bates in Maine, Earlham, and UNC-Asheville, Lawrence in WI. The current top pick is St. Mary’s College of Maryland (tuition-remission school). </p>
<p>Do people plan vacations in Arkansas, Florida, Wisconsin and Maine? (Not complaining - there’s a great dude ranch in Arkansas and I love Maine - just clueless).</p>
<p>Wolverine, you’re lucky you only get snorts. And yes, they are snorts of love :)</p>
<p>Crepes, I lose it with my D on a regular basis. It’s part of being a parent to a teen, at least it is for me. The good news is that things right themselves quickly, at least most of the time. The last blowup was about the state of D’s room. She’d promised to clean it and weeks went by, summer was over, and the “I’m doing homework” excuse was back in action. The time management thing is an issue for even the most disciplined kids. Heck, it’s a problem for disciplined adults! My D has taken to saying that she’ll figure it out on her own and I don’t need to ask. Mostly I respect that but there are moments… </p>
<p>Slackermom, I can’t speak for others who have been much more active in doing these visits but for us, we did a combination of vacations and local college visits with my older girls. That was when we were living on the east coast and it was easy. There is such a huge concentration of schools in the northeast. We did local trips (a couple of hours travel) to places like Vassar, Connecticut College, Barnard/Columbia, Brown, Tufts, Brandeis, UPenn, Swarthmore/Haverford/Bryn Mawr, Lehigh, Lafayette, Muhlenberg, F&M, Amherst, Smith and Mt. Holyoke. And those are just the ones that pop into my head! We did take a vacation to look at the 5C’s and both girls visited (and rejected) Stanford while visiting family in San Francisco. D1 flew out to Oberlin and Northwestern and took the train to Johns Hopkins only after she was accepted at those places. (By the way, I loved Northwestern. Aside from the wide range of excellent departments the school offers and the wonderful setting in Evanston, the place seemed really friendly. We were really lucky and met an academic advisor who was ready to step in and help my D plan her schedule in a very personal way. I was personally very sad when she elected not to go. Now I’ll grant you, we didn’t visit in winter.)</p>
<p>It’s much harder now that we are on the west coast. We will probably do an east coast trip this spring with a very targeted itinerary and a second trip over the summer. The nice thing is that we no longer have that northeast bias in our heads and we will look at the midwest and south more more closely this time around.</p>
<p>SlackerMom…Congrats on achieving fully “delurked” status. Feels liberating somehow…doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Our plan for visiting campuses has been limited so far to regional schools (we’re in Michigan) on day trips. With my work schedule (I’m a charter pilot for a private company) I’m always on call and vacation time is hard to come by, so we’re grabbing opportunities when and if they come up. Our one big hurrah for OOS campus visits will be over spring break this school year and will be a “logistical challenge” to say the least. We’ll massage the list of schools between now and April depending on PSAT/SAT results from October, but that’s the best we’re able to manage around our schedules.</p>
<p>Regarding NM for your D, don’t completely give up on the idea. Many students see a 10-15 point pickup between sophomore and junior year just based on new material learned, so you never know what might happen. :)</p>
<p>Slacker- sometimes we plan a day trip if a school is 2-3 hours away. Other times we choose an area ( ie NYS) and visit 7-8 schools in a week. We went to Boston for a long weekend and saw two Boston schools. We took a day trip to Lehigh and Mulenburg. In Feb we are heading south for a week and hitting schools in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Georgia. My husband plans these trips and organizes the visits accordingly. Although we have done summer tours, most visits are done during school vacations. We also make sure that my daughter has several hours each day to work on school work. These college tours have actually become our vacations, which we can’t do anymore because of sports, etc.</p>
<p>@twogirls, Same here - basically no time to study for the SATs in weekdays. d. is taking the history test in October. Now she really wishes she took it last May or June. She didn’t take it then because of an important music scholarship audition. Now she has to study for history, even though she thinks she is ready. She wishes she could take it right now to get it over with. But since she can’t, she can’t just forget about it. It’s hard. Also she plans to take the SAT in November. We haven’t done much school visit except the two in the summer. Too many things to take care of.</p>
<p>twogirls, That’s a lot of territory (Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Georgia). Hmmm… I’ve lived in all four states. Driving from Atlanta to Philly, you can hit the major universities/colleges along the way (Georgia Tech, Emory, Agnes Scott, UNC-CH, Duke, NC State, UVA, Georgetown, American, George Washington, UM-College Park, Johns Hopkins, Goucher). Okay, I’m beginning to see how it’s done. If your daughter is doing school work, does that mean she is taking time off from school to visit colleges? I’m not so disciplined to make sure D is working and on top of all her assignments.</p>
<p>3girls3cats, life was honestly easier when I had the East Coast biased worldview. So many schools in so few states. But like you, D discovered colleges in places called the Midwest and Pacific Northwest.</p>
<p>Our California school visit trip was spring break… we were gone 10 days and only toured 3 schools, wandered around one. So definitely more vacation than school visits. We are about an hour from Michigan so we did that on a day off of school in February. Our midwest trip this past summer was 8 days, again 3 visits, one walk through. Going to see Vanderbilt in November, flying in sunday morning, flying out sunday night. S15 would love to see U of Miami, FL, so we need to plan a specific flight to see that one too. I am thinking east coast for spring break, but we will see how things go between now and then.
So much talk here about preparing for SAT/ACT/PSAT. Is anyone not really studying? S has a couple of books but he is not spending much time with them. When we first starting talking about college we were trying to be so focused on what the colleges wanted from him. I am feeling as we get closer that he should just be who he is and if a college likes what they see then he will get what he gets as far as merit. Is anyone else feeling like that? Don’t get me wrong… I would love to see big numbers in merit… but at the expense of what little time we have left with him full time? I am not sure about that? This is so hard!</p>
<p>Wrights, I’m right there with you. Our issues are different but the net result is the same. We tend to stress more over activities and the “soft” part of the application and less about grades and test scores. D is not interested in sports or teams and is too quiet to run a club. It’s just not who she is and when I push her too hard it only results in misery for both of us. She has interests but no passions lol and there’s no compelling story that’s going to leap out at a reader in an admissions office. As the time we have with her at home gets less and less, I’m feeling more and more that I want to enjoy her as she is and let the chips fall where they may with the college stuff. (Don’t get me wrong though. I’m not a saint. Some nags will definitely still get through. :))</p>
<p>I just wanted to say I love reading about all these exciting colleges in different parts of the country. I’m going to miss those sorts of school visits since my son, due to him wanting to keep his professional acting momentum going while in college, will only have schools in New York City or Los Angeles on his list. I want to see cute little college towns, rolling hills and pastures. I’m going to have to work over my 12 year old and impart a love for Ohio on him right away!</p>