Parents of the HS Class of 2015

<p>Our school’s NHS and NJHS make it easy for kids to do community service as a lot of it is done right at school. They can go make PB&J sandwiches after school, work the blood drive, they do “stuff-a-school” every Christmas where each organization does their own drive for coats, clothes, books, etc. For over-scheduled kids, it’s really helpful that they can accumulate hours without ever leaving the building.</p>

<p>Couple of things I learned about the SAT subject tests in case you didn’t know either.</p>

<p>No option now but to pay the late fee, $27.50. Online deadline is midnight Monday–also for the SAT. All registration deadlines are midnight. </p>

<p>You can take up to three tests. If you register for one, and want to take more they’ll bill your account. </p>

<p>If you register for two, or three, and want to take fewer, no problem, but no refund. </p>

<p>You can change the subject the day of the test. </p>

<p>If you take the test and feel like you’ve bombed, you don’t have to have it scored, and it will appear on your record as if you hadn’t taken the test. </p>

<p>Separately, I discovered that some schools, Yale, for example, won’t allow you to submit only your highest scores. They want to see all scores. They say this allows them to look at the highest section scores.</p>

<p>Good info, latichever - thanks! Here’s a list by college about each college’s policy on score choice:</p>

<p><a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat-score-use-practices-list.pdf[/url]”>http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat-score-use-practices-list.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>NHS stuff doesn’t happen at my D’s school until fall of Senior year. By that time, I’m not sure it’s even worth it for the kids to be honest.</p>

<p>D is doing the NHS process. At her HS it’s 3.5 (UW) and 40 hours service (at least 10 hours in at least 2 different areas, I believe). Then there are leadership and character requirements beyond that. The leadership essay was due last Friday, I think, no idea when induction is.</p>

<p>I think for her, it’s one more thing her cohort of “smart involved kids” does, along with the language honor societies and service clubs and sports.</p>

<p>As an aside, it’s always interesting to me how she sees and measures herself, she is so different from her older brother. There’s a kid in her Chem II class who, according to her, is super smart - in Calc as a junior, took AP Physics last year, etc…and he asked her for help with an assignment he didn’t understand. She reported this to me in a way that made it clear she was flattered, also a little inpatient with someone who could be in “harder” courses than she is yet not get something she finds easy.</p>

<p>There is no NHS at D’s school. There are peer tutors and this is the main function that the NHS kids used to fulfill in our public high school. The kids serving as peer tutors in the writing or math centers are supposed to be the ones recommended by their English or Math teachers but there’s such an enormous range of kids doing this that I am not sure it’s quite true. Anyway, D is a writing tutor and she’ll staff the center a couple of days/ month. </p>

<p>Is anyone out there planning on taking both the AP English Literature and AP English Language exams? Is there any benefit to it?</p>

<p>3girls, we looked into the AP English test question when my D’12 was deciding what to take, and it appears that there’s no benefit in doing both unless you want to up the number of AP exams for the AP Scholar designation. Most schools will accept either language or lit, and neither will get you out of requirements at many schools. (Check individual schools’ web pages, of course because these things vary drastically by college and year to year.)</p>

<p>My kids’ HS does not exclude from NHS, but there’s a very hefty service hour component above and beyond the graduation requirement (which is already a lot of hours).</p>

<p>Oh, in the ironic category: I moved D’s ACT from tomorrow to next month (for a price) because of the team programming competition she’s doing this weekend. One of her team members (a senior) is taking the ACT tomorrow morning. I asked D if she wanted to change the date back (and I don’t even know if that’s do-able) but she said no, that she didn’t think she’d be well-rested enough.</p>

<p>DD has a very average birthday…end of June, so I’ll have to continue to drive her to school thru the end of this school year…17 to drive in NJ.</p>

<p>As far as homework is concerned, the amount seems to have ramped up again this year. In 9th grade it was 2+ hrs a night; 10th 2.5-3 hrs; this year its 3+ hrs. DD seems to not complete her work until about 10:30-11, while beginning at around 7 when she comes home from field hockey practice/games. The dog keeps her company and i think we’ll have the smartest wofffie in Town by the end of this school year!!</p>

<p>School begins at 8 AM and we have a 25-30 minute ride(excluding northern NJ rush hour issues) so we’re on the road at 7:20. We’re all up and around about 6:30. Wife works 5 minutes from home so she hits the shower and gets ready for work after DD & I are on our way. </p>

<p>I have another 40 minutes to work after I drop DD at school.</p>

<p>My S2 turns 17 next month!</p>

<p>We let S2 drive with us everywhere he needs to go. During the weekend we have allowed him to take H’s car to the college prep or friends’ houses by himself. He is an okay driver, but since I am good at worrying so I worry from the time he leaves until the time he comes home. We are in a process of getting him a car (a truck is what he wants actually). Our insurance premium has already gone up since adding him. Don’t want to think about what it would be like once we add a 4th car. :eek:</p>

<p>Our HS has two arrivals in the morning. The early arrival is at 8 and regular arrival at 9. We don’t like to get up early in our house so S2 has the regular arrival. Most of days he goes to bed at 10:30, wakes himself up 7:15 to 7:30 (I think) and we are out of the house around 8:15. The school is less than 10 minutes away so he goes to library to study or goes to cafeteria to hang out with friends before the first class.</p>

<p>He is invited to a friend’s 17th birthday party Saturday night. She is a good friend since they were in middle school. S2 said that birthday girl said no gifts. I feel strange going to someone’s birthday party without giving a present. Should he bring one or not?</p>

<p>The answer we came up with for AP Lang & Lit was a little different, so I’m sure it depends on what schools you’re looking into. For the ones I looked into, some gave credit for Lit by not Lang (Rochester was one, and I don’t remember any the other way around). Some will give credit for each - I know our public schools in Indiana do.</p>

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<p>Our HS does both. AP Eng 11 is Lang and AP Eng 12 is Lit. So most kids do take both - those are the only AP English classes.</p>

<p>S received college credit for both and was able to skip the required Frosh 1st-semester English class for, I think, Lang. The other was just a general English credit.</p>

<p>My H is on the graduate admissions committee in his dept at the U where he works. He tells me that AP scores are the one bit of info from HS records that they see. All else disappears. They don’t see HS classes/grades. AP scores are stored in a part of student’s college record with other test scores that makes it onto the transcript. I don’t know how much it matters at that point, but if your child is a crack test-taker and wants to add a bit of something from HS days to grad school app, that’s a way to do it.</p>

<p>My D’s college is similar to OHMomof2’s S, and many of the colleges she looked at that are generous with AP credit are also like that. AP Lit got her out of 1st semester fr. Eng. If she would have had AP Lang as well, she would have received some other lower div. English credit, and still have to take 2nd semester fr. Eng. They want students to go through at least one semester of college level training in writing. She had so many humanities gen ed AP credits from history classes and art history that the additional English credit would not have advanced her. As a dbl major, she doesn’t need any more random credits. She needs credits that satisfy requirements.</p>

<p>IMHO it is high time college board develops an AP class that will satisfy the cultural diversity requirement :)</p>

<p>Are people here aware of the disparities in scoring curves between various AP tests? AP Lit has about 7% score a 5, while calcBC gets about 50% scoring that high. </p>

<p>My D is not a science kid, doing music/math, but another thing we noticed when applying to colleges this past year is what happens with the AP science tests. AP physics, chem,etc. often receive credit, but it seems that frequently the credit is in some lower level sequence which may not fulfill requirements for science majors and so those kids have to repeat the class. Not that this is a bad thing. They probably cover a lot more material at college level. Just saying that it is a good idea to spend some time carefully reading AP credit and gen ed requirement material on websites of colleges kids are considering so that you understand and aren’t surprised. </p>

<p>In many cases, by May of HS senior year when kids are tired, they may choose to not sit for exams that won’t benefit them directly at their college. Especially if they cost $100 like at our schools.</p>

<p>On the other hand, it benefits the high schools and teachers of the classes if they have many students take the exam and score well, validates that they are running a good class. I do care about them, but the $100 is a big hurdle.</p>

<p>When D got a 2 on APUSH this May, my biggest concern was how that would reflect on the school since the APUSH teacher prides herself on kids consistently scoring all 4/5s, with maybe an occasional 3. D didn’t need those credits at college really, but did the rescore thing, as a point of pride also, and got score raised. Made sure CB sent updated score to HS. So they can continue to claim they get all 4/5s</p>

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<p>S satisfied it with a DE class called…drumroll…“Cultural Diversity”.</p>

<p>You can pay them money to look at kid’s test. For $7 they will send you your copy of FRQ booklet, no grades or anything, just student’s writing.This forces them to see that a score is recorded for that part of test and it is the right booklet, not lost or something.</p>

<p>For another $25 they will rescore the MC part by hand, not machine. This also forces them to look for missing/damaged/mismatched tests. They won’t tell you exactly how things changed, because they hide behind their veil of secrecy, but sometimes you can figure out.</p>

<p>Either you get an e-mail saying your score is unchanged, or you get lucky and they find something and tell you your new score, no details included.</p>

<p>We think they lost D’s MC, since the FRQ booklet was delivered, but score raised and the $25 refunded. If she’d call them she might be able to find out more, but she won’t. She is sure she aced the MC, but if they find a part is lost, they upgrade your score based on the part of test they have, so gave her a 4. And she is so angry because she is sure she got a 5 that she doesn’t ever want to hear of CB again, just livid, trying not to think of it.</p>

<p>I thought I was replying to something in my post above, but I must be tired, don’t see it. Time to quit CC for the weekend I think…</p>

<p>@sunnydayfan, maybe your S could give the friend a birthday card with an ITune gift card.</p>

<p>My daughter successfully made it through the first round of papers/ quizzes/ tests. I think the fear of the unknown ( new teachers) made it worse because one never knows what to expect. Once things get rolling and she realizes that it all works out she feels much better.</p>

<p>celeste–I appreciated the explanation about rescoring as I didn’t know that. So, even if you did not need to add that explanation, it was most helpful!</p>