<p>Thank you both for the quick replies! I will look into these. I very much appreciate the help!</p>
<p>Hi everybody. H went to a conference to Northwestern today and S is taking a bus to a soccer game at the other end of state after school, so all alone here.</p>
<p>S has no work this weekend, promises to do a couple sample PSATs. We’ll see. He hates the CR. Maybe if I make cookies, he’ll be happier about it.</p>
<p>My D got study abroad scholarship money as an extra with several of the big NMF scholarships. It’s just money though, and then student has to work with adviser to look at programs. It doesn’t seem like enough money to me, just 2 or 3 thousand. At her school it’s worded so she can use it for research or study abroad. The research deal is you approach a professor you’d like to work with. When she hears that you have money to pay yourself for awhile, she is more likely to hire you, doesn’t have to find money in her grants to give. Then presumably by the time your money runs out you have a relationship and she respects you, is happy to keep you on and pay you herself. UNC-Chapel Hill sent around something with a laundry list of opportunities which she was to rank. Some were highly competitive full scholarships for science research. Others were just to be in honors program, sorts of things. Then they offer you a couple of them close to top of list, though maybe not the competitive ones. One was a study abroad deal, don’t recall much about it, but more elaborate than the thing D has at her school. I think this is fairly common. It’s the new fad. Everyone wants to be part of it. It’s more attractive, offering a few thousand packaged that way, then just offering the money, which is not much as scholarships go. But I don’t know anything about the LACs, no experience, and it sounds like so many here have kids mostly interested in those. </p>
<p>Northwestern was the first school D and I visited. That got her fired up to study for the big tests. Before that I don’t think college seemed real, though we do go to H’s dept. receptions all the time and she spent her teens in the university music bldg taking lessons and in ensembles. Northwestern is great. Looking south along the shore to Chicago, so pretty. But once we figured out that there is no merit and it’s full EFC, she dropped it from her list. One of her old GScout buddies is there, did ED. It’s a popular school here for those who can pay. Gorgeous campus, not too far away and terrific school. It can be very windy there, have to bundle up in winter.</p>
<p>suzy, Oh I’m stupid.I just read your post more carefully and realized you are asking a different question than the one I answered. You’re looking for something now, not i n college. Forgive me, nursing a bad cold, feel kind of foggy.</p>
<p>celesteroberts, I was beginning to panic as I read your post, thinking <em>I</em> had misread Suzy’s post. well, I covered HS and you covered college.</p>
<p>Exactly^^! Both are very helpful! Hope you feel better soon cr.</p>
<p>Northwestern is a lovely school, and could be a really good fit for my D, except that she hates wearing shoes. Cannot do winter in Chicago in flip-flops. :eek:</p>
<p>Determined bare feet lovers manage somehow, no matter where they end up. We lived in Ames, IA when the kids were preschoolers. The family behind us had a son, good friends with D. Dad and S wore matching Birkenstocks year round. Their concession to winter was to add socks. It snows a LOT there, and blows around in huge 10’ high drifts. And ice storms that closed the schools, ice-skating on the sidewalks. They were devoted.</p>
<p>Thanks, Muf123, I needed that!</p>
<p>My kids wore flip flops through many a Connecticut winter!</p>
<p>Oh hey Apollo, I just saw your son’s school on the evening news. Does he know Malala?</p>
<p>I just watched it online. 
Actually, Malala was offered a place at AC but turned it down to be able to stay with her family but it was my immediate thought when I first heard about her that she needed to be a student at a UWC. I’m glad her friends are there. The students are such an inspiration to each other. My son hasn’t said anything about her friends but I’ll ask him.</p>
<p>Gotta give a shout-out to my Tigers heading to the ALCS against the Red Sox!! Verlander throws 8 beautiful innings and they survive another “interesting” bullpen performance…but we’ll take a win no matter how it comes.</p>
<p>Any other baseball fans?</p>
<p>When I die early, the proximate causes will be a poor diet, job related stress, and the Tigers bullpen. Thank goodness for Verlander.</p>
<p>Amen SOG!!</p>
<p>Hello fellow parents of class of 2015!
Please allow me to introduce myself: I am a parent of a Grade 11 daughter. We live overseas but she plans on going to a university in the USA. She also wants to go to a top, competitive school. I cant believe this board is already 365 pages already! I will try my best to read as many previous posts as possible and learn from the experience that this group is very generously sharing. But in the mean time, here is my main concern of the day:
I am involved in project management at work, which spills over to my personal life at home. Being organized and planning far ahead in advance are second nature to me. Unfortunately this is not a genetic trait which my daughter has inherited (i wish it was!). So for example, she has a school holiday, a whole week of no classes. If it was me, i would take advantage and turn this into an SAT bootcamp, and i have been asking her several weeks ago to try and take advantage of the school break. But today she woke up and played computer games, and now is watching tv. Yesterday she watched 3 movies on tv and studied for 2 hours. I am doing my best not to scream at her (i know thats really barbaric but i really feel like doing that right now), and maintaining my cool. I asked her very casually when she was planning to begin studying today and her reply was “if you ask me to study then i wont study”…Deep breath and count to 10…
So are there other parents of procastinators out there? I dont know if procastination is the correct term. I feel like she is over confident of herself and her abilities. She thinks she can pull it off, while in reality that happens sometimes but it wont continue, especially with standardized tests…She has to read a novel for her language course, practice SAT (Jan 2014 test date), practice her SAT subject test (Nov 02 test date), write 2 articles for the newsletter…i dont know when she will be able to complete all these tasks, and that thought is consuming me all day every day!</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>I just remembered that i have previously submitted a post to this board and introduced myself to everybody!
A MEGA thank you to all who welcomed me previously!!
:-)</p>
<p>Welcome again LOL!! My advice is to hang in there, although it may not be very helpful. There are a few things you can do: let her take her first SAT without any pressure to study ( she can take it again)- either she will do great, or she will get a score that bothers her. You mentioned that she wants to go to a competitive school so on some level she has to realize that she needs a decent test score. If she gets a score that is low ( for her) then that might motivate her to study for the next test. The next suggestion is to break it down into much smaller goals that are less overwhelming ( this works for my kid): instead of suggesting that she turn it into an SAT bootcamp, ask her to do one hour per day during her week off. When school starts up again ask her to do two hours of studying during the week, broken down however she chooses ( ie 20 min per day etc) and then spend 3 hours on the weekend. I would not present her with a weeks worth of goals. I would simply say " how about tomorrow doing one ( out of 3) sections of math." </p>
<p>I told my daughter yesterday that this weekend I want her to do the PSAT test that the school sent home ( it’s a 3 day weekend). This is in addition to her SAT homework and the ACT science section that I want her to do. She looked at me and said “no.” LOL- I am going to ask her to do one section each morning and we will see how that goes!! </p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Hi JazzlandMom, pleased to meet you. where do you live?</p>
<p>I’m not really like you although I’m more organized and plan more as an adult than I ever did as a teen. I had a colleague who had the same dynamic with her daughter - high achieving well organized mom and not so diligent but smart daughter. Um, it didn’t end well in terms of college although they have reconciled.</p>
<p>What is your expectation for the break week? My daughter is like yours - lots of screen time, not so much studying - unless she is with other kids who have to study or I set study goals for her. So either specific study times or specific goals but not both.</p>
<p>I learned this from one mom when the two families went on spring break together. Her son figured he had to study for two hours a day in the mornings and maybe another hour of reading in the afternoon. Well, the parents (I need to meet more like these) just had ALL the kids (there were seven or eight) sit at the dining table for two hours a day to work on school stuff. It may not sound like much time but my daughter got all her work done during this break.</p>
<p>When I have D set the study goals (like one practice SAT I and one practice SAT II, finish the novel and whatever projects) for the week, D will actually do them, just not on my suggested daily schedule. I found for me and D, saying you need to study this on Day One from such and such time until this time the least effective way of getting her to study. D is very independent and that level of detail just sets up something for D to resist.</p>
<p>BTW my daughter is also overconfident. I let her find out on her own what happens (it’s not pretty). She’s taken the SAT and she was quite shaken by her scores. She thought she would do much better than what she got. So this time, she’s actually studying (I can tell because she’s told me the tricks to answering questions). I don’t know how much better she will do, but I think her score will definitely go up.</p>
<p>Reading this thread it seems the high achievers are always on edge because they don’t seem to think their work is good (enough? surely they know the work is good?) while the not so high have an (ever so slightly) inflated sense of accomplishment. I guess that is the difference - the kids who really push themselves get the results.</p>
<p>Welcome jazzlandmom! My advice is probably different from the majority on this thread, but I’d say if she doesn’t want to study, let it go. Especially for her first attempt (as twogirls said). She’ll either do fine without prep (lots of kids do), fall short of her own expectations and be motivated to study next time, or fall short and decide that’s OK and start looking into schools that don’t need perfect scores. </p>
<p>I do find that TV can suck a kid (or me for that matter!) into wasting hours more time than intended. I’d probably give her half the week to completely decompress and chill out, and then around mid week of break tell her no more screen time. I find that once TV is off around here, people tend to wander off and get some stuff done. </p>
<p>My oldest wasn’t a natural high scorer, and he didn’t believe in studying (felt it was against the spirit of the test. LOL - wouldn’t budge even though he knew a tone of people do study for it). He found other things to do with his time. I can honestly look back and be glad we didn’t spend his junior year fighting about taking practice SAT’s at home. </p>
<p>Slacker - I love the story about successfully fitting in some study time every day on vacation! I hope you sent those parents some flowers or something! :D</p>
<p>Jazzlandmom…what about some good old incentive/rewards? My D got her learner’s permit a few weeks ago and a simple promise of “you study for x amount and we go driving” is working wonders for me. The fact that it doesn’t involve buying something is such a bonus!</p>