<p>Oh, I’m WAY behind here. I get a little busy and all of you zoom on without me!</p>
<p>PSAT is a relatively big deal at D’s school. About 1/4 of the class will be NMSF and there will be another bunch that are National Achievement Award winners. But they don’t give the PSAT to anyone but Juniors. (They do threaten bodily harm to 10th and 12th graders who can’t be quiet the night before the PSAT – they get that sleep is important – and there’s no classes on PSAT day, so nothing is due. They really encourage sleep. Problems of a residential school.)</p>
<p>Congrats to OH’s daughter making NHS and Boppers D passing her road test!! It’s probably old news by now!</p>
<p>Our HS IB program has the reputation of not being very strong in math. Some kids say that they were not prepared for AP calc senior year. One girl goes to Cornell and is taking calc for the first time because it’s not offered in IB and she did not take AP senior year. She is having a very difficult time.</p>
<p>My daughter got her transcript today and she did an excellent job of staying away from the chatter. It’s amazing to me how many kids walk around discussing their GPA and test scores.</p>
<p>Another day of a good mood!! She is tired ( went to bed at 12:30) but happy.</p>
<p>FromMD, I actually think D. has very little chance to get NMF. But at least we won’t feel bad if she doesn’t - because nobody ever did.
I know your part of Maryland. I’m from there and still have many friends (some are tiger moms and dads) in the area, and go often for work related things, etc. There are very good schools. Feel lucky your kids get great education. </p>
<p>Congrats to NHS and so on.
D.'s school give recommendations to NHS. People who get above 3.75 GPA get recommended. She will need to fill application materials and get 2 -3 rec letters, etc. At least it’s an honor.</p>
<p>@Maxwell – “I actually think D. has very little chance to get NMF.” I am not sure why you say that. I think her score of 212 as a 10th grader gives her VERY good chance of making it this year. So, just keep encouraging her to review the problems and practice when she can. Not too many problems needed to get to 223 from 212… I think she will be fine. </p>
<p>Yeah, I know. This area is full of crazy parents (myself included) and “over charged” kids. But I am sure we are not the only area like this…</p>
<p>I was down and out with a migraine for the last few days…trying to catch up!</p>
<p>I am surprised that our school doesn’t seem to put much emphasis at all on the PSAT. It seems to be you can sign up if you want to. I would think that, particularly in the advanced classes, they would be doing at least some basic prep for it.</p>
<p>Now that I have come to the conclusion that none of the colleges that D is likely going to be interested in actually offer major merit for NMF, it really is just a practice test for her now, and in a way, might actually be better if she didn’t make nmf, as it can be a little painful to turn down that kind of merit aid. </p>
<p>On the expectation of merit aid…since our kids are smart kids, I am sure that many of us have been hearing from well meaning friends and relatives, since they were young- how they are sure to get scholarships, etc…usually just offhand remarks, but until we start researching and meet up at CC, we tend to think that it’s true.</p>
<p>^you are right!! Of course we are chasing the money, but I am trying to be realistic in the process when it comes to getting money from certain schools. I am sure that if we cast a wide enough net my kid ( and yours) will get SOMETHING from SOMEWHERE, but will it be enough and will it be a school that she likes better than our state schools? We shall see…many times schools dangle a " carrot" but it’s not enough to make a dent. If you are lucky you get enough money from a school that you like- that’s always the plan!</p>
<p>Our school puts scholarship info on line each year ie who got what. It gets reported by the students. I am waiting for 2013 to come out, but in 2012 there were quite a few decent scholarships obtained by our students to a wide variety of schools ie Northeastern, BU, Fordham, GW, American, UMD, U of Vermont, U of Miami, just to mention a few. My older daughter received a decent scholarship from a private school to bring the price down to a reasonable level, but she actually liked our in-state options better. </p>
<p>Several years ago a kid from our school received a full merit scholarship ( not FA) to two top 20 schools AND $40,000 from Duke ( again merit, not FA). I did not believe it until I read about it on our schools web site. Shocking, to say the least. </p>
<p>Kind of like the lottery- you have to be in it to win it!!</p>
<p>Backing up to the AP Calc discussion, D found out there is no BC Calc class this school year bc not enough kids signed up for it. The ones who did were put into AB. I am adding it to my list of questions for the GC. I know of 4 kids in D’s grade who will absolutely sign up for BC so I need to find out what number they need to hold the class. Grrr. On the bright side, D was able to help a senior on her volleyball team who was having trouble with a Calc homework problem during the JV game last night. This senior is currently ranked #1 so D was happy she could help her.</p>
<p>Twitter was abuzz last night with the announcement that a local softball girl verballed to a school in our area. Rumor has it she got quite a nice bit of athletic money but I know this girl wanted to go away. I just can’t get over all these early verbals when these kids don’t even know what they want yet and they don’t have any test scores.</p>
<p>Last year S15 hockey teammate committed to an ivy as a sophomore. I’m not sure how these offers are made when there are rules about when coaches are allowed to contact an athlete.</p>
<p>A friend of D’s is a volleyball player who apparently committed after her freshman year.</p>
<p>D met with a rep from Northwestern who was visiting the school yesterday. She is now very hyped on Northwestern. This is good - she is FINALLY getting engaged in looking at colleges. But this is bad because of course NW is very hard to get into and gives very little aid. She was telling me that they give “lots and lots of aid!” and I had to show her the NPC calculator and where we would likely land. It was a good reality check for her, but kind of a bummer too. I love that school.</p>
<p>The lax kids around here verbal very early, most as early sophomores. Some of them just turned 15.</p>
<p>That was the other thing that made me chuckle about Arizona softball. I’m sure they already have their 2017’s lined up and are starting to look at the 8th graders!</p>
<p>@ Apollo, My S has a handful of STEM classmates who were advised to stick with the SL IB maths and keep the HL sciences. I’m assuming this is to maintain a stronger GPA and class rank. In the past, the schools SL students scored well in the SAT math subject tests to gain entrance into very good STEM programs.</p>
<p>My poor D has been up past midnight every day this week. She is absolutely exhausted. APUSH is taking it out of her in a big way. It’s a great class but a weird hybrid of college and high school. The level is definitely college level and the workload is at least as much as what you’d expect in a 200 level class. The key difference is that it meets every day and there’s hefty amounts of work required for every class meeting. That’s pretty unusual for a college history class where you’d have 2 or 3/x week classes and at least a bit of time to get all that reading done. Her mood is surprisingly good though. The first quarter ends next week so I’m hopeful that things will ease up as of this weekend.</p>
<p>Suzy, I also love Northwestern. We toured it with my eldest when she was considering transferring and had already been accepted. The school is enormous with a range of really excellent departments. I was concerned that it would be too big. We attended an academic advising meeting open to all prospective students and we were the only people there. The adviser talked to my D at length and was ready to craft her schedule for her. I was very impressed and told her that it wasn’t always a given that you’d be able to find an advocate who would help you jump over the administrative obstacles, especially in a school of this size. I also loved the way the various communities helped to make the school smaller and more personal. And Evanston is great! We did not visit during the winter and that may have been a mistake. We’re used to cold northeast winters but we’ve never experienced a Chicago winter.</p>
<p>@FromMD, Thanks very much for the encouraging words! The reason I said I was not hopeful are multiple. She did a couple sample tests. the results are so inconsistent. If she does her best performance in the real test, she may have a chance. Otherwise, she’ll still get what she got last year. And, in her school, nobody EVER talks about it. There are a couple seniors who are really good and shooting for ivies. but they just wave their hands when they talk about PSAT. At one point this week, when I talked to D. about it, I found that she even forgot there would be PSAT next week! When you have that kind of attitude, you probably won’t get very far. But that’s okay. Like many people said here, not getting into NMF is not the end of the world. Of course I hope she does her best. We’ll see. </p>
<p>In her school’s senior class, there are some very good kids. Two are hoping to get in top colleges, and I think they actually may be able to. Their ACTs are very high, APs are good, and great ECs. If one or two get in good colleges, D. will be encouraged. </p>
<p>@3girls2cats, My D. is the same way. She is absolutely exhausted. She has 4 APs, and the teachers give them a lot of work, except for AP psych. She started a club, and is elected to several leadership positions in two clubs, and NHS applications, (even though it’s not much), and she wants to apply for another study abroad program next summer. They are all due late this month. It’s funny (and sad) how she came back home last Friday, started to list all the things she needed to do, shed some stressful tears. sneezed a couple times. Then, started a serious episode of cold, which lasted the whole weekend.
Hope your D. do well in APUSH. I’m sure she will. D took APUSH last year. It’s A LOT of work! But she really loved it. She just took U.S. history subject test last weekend, with her runny nose and cold.</p>
<p>My daughter did not take APUSH because the amount of work was too time consuming and she was nervous she would not have enough time for her other subjects. She commented on how these AP classes give tons of work every night when in college the classes meet every other day and there is more time to get it done.</p>
<p>@3girls - when D was taking APUSH last year, I noticed she spent a lot of time “taking notes” from her text book. You may want to check and make sure she is summarizing what she needs to know vs. simply copying the text book. Sometimes kids haven’t learned how to sum up long narratives and end up spending a lot of time rewriting, my D included. </p>
<p>@Maxwell - Understood. Hope she has a good testing day and she makes the cut. I’d love to hear you tell us they framed her picture one of these days!! :)</p>
<p>FromMD, I’ll keep an eye out for that, thanks. I’m not even sure there is a textbook for this class. I should know this, shouldn’t I? I only see what’s up when she comes to me to quiz her or to give my opinion on a definition or direction. I do know that she says that even when they study for tests, the kids are required to do a lot of outside reading. </p>
<p>The last assignment involved reading a primary source document and identifying the speaker, audience, purpose, and significance of the document. It seems as if it should be straightforward and short but it requires a thorough knowledge of the context surrounding the document. Since most of these kids don’t have that knowledge, they have to do a fair bit of reading and researching to understand the meaning behind the words. Even identifying the actual speaker is not always so obvious. I think these are excellent tasks and they build up critical thinking skills but they are hard and time consuming. She’s enjoying the class very much in spite of the exhaustion.</p>
<p>Maxwell, I bet she’ll do very well! My own sense is that the practice scores are less important than the practice experience. The lack of pressure at her school might make things more relaxed for her and enable her to take the test without a terrible case of nerves.</p>
<p>My S did not sign up for APUSH this year because he does not like the writing assignments that AP history classes require to do. He chose DE instead. I am glad because he won’t have time. He is spending a lot of time every night taking notes from the textbook for the AP PSY class. So I am wondering if he is summarizing or just rewriting.</p>
<p>3g3c, I imagine we will visit Northwestern at some point on a trip to Chicago. D says she doesn’t mind the cold. The finances are what will be the killer.</p>
<p>Random question here, but does anyone know of any programs that offer summer study abroad programs with scholarships?</p>
But I am sure we are not the only area like this…</p>
</p>