<p>We did our trip for visiting schools over Junior Spring break so we would not have to miss school.</p>
<p>Reading the board (busy the last few days with work - can you imagine??):
- College lists - DD has between 35-50 on her list now but that will soon drop dramatically since softball & field hockey recruiting will be done with the self-selection process becomming evident. DD & I were up to 12:30 sending out emails to softball coaches for this weekends big end of Fall recruiting tournament in Quakertown, PA. Next on thlist will be emails for the HUGE field hockey National Festival Tournament over Thanksgiving in West Palm Beach on the Polo Fields.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Mid-term grades were given yesterday - solid A in Spanish, A- in Pre-calc (H), British Lit (amazing!), History & Photography (this is a real class with homework, projects etc) & a B- in (H)Physics…she is determined to earn a B or B+ if it kills her just to spite the instuctor. </p></li>
<li><p>D’s school certainly does not grade inflate, deflate perhaps. Freshman yearD earned a 89.7 in a class for the year and earned a B+…any rounding would have been up to a 90 and thus an A-.</p></li>
<li><p>State Semi-Final Field Hockey game tomorrow at noon and the end of season softball event on Sunday. Thankfully DD is good about getting her schoolwork done and can work in the car driving around.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>We just came back from visiting College of Wooster (no school today). I love the tours there (visited also with S 2 years ago) - you get your own personal tour guide and there is no generic info session. We had a one hour tour with a lovely sophomore who not only showed us the campus but also explained a LOT and was able to answer most all questions we had. D could have had an interview, lunch with a student and/or visited a class (overnights are available only for seniors), but we had plans for this afternoon so only did the tour.</p>
<p>It’s a beautiful campus and might be a good fit for D though it’s in our home state (strike 1) and doesn’t offer engineering except as a 3/2 with Case Western (potential strike 2 though she is still not sure about eng). The small classes, individual attention and emphasis on research/senior capstone project (#2 behind Princeton there according to USNWR) are all appealing.</p>
<p>She is keeping an open mind and said she’d consider applying. We’ve visited about 6 schools now (Brown, Barnard, Miami U, Temple U, Carnegie Mellon and Wooster, walked through a couple more) and I am not seeing a big narrowing down of priorities though she is developing a strong preference for consistent architecture…sigh.</p>
<p>I recently got my license and am now much more self sufficient - my parents are embracing the freedom from having to ferry me around the place and are reconnecting as a couple and with friends.</p>
<p>I have a busy schedule - school, extracurricular, college prep as well as friends. I also have a list of chores which I am sure is not enough to really pull my weight, but i routinely get to bed at midnight after completing homework and getting up at 6am to repeat.</p>
<p>I dont feel sorry for myself, and - as a preface - i would just like to throw out that I am not a stereotypical, entitles millennial brat that expects their parents to pick up after them - i appreciate them and what they do for me.</p>
<p>Herein lies the source of my original post</p>
<p>In the past couple months, M has been definitely been ramping down on the mothering front - particularly in the cooking department. Whereas in the past - i.e. for my entire life - she had always been a phenomenal cook, we are more often than not eating leftovers. Now leftovers are definitely not slumming it…once in a while.</p>
<p>On one hand I am reflecting on how privileged I have been for 16 years and on the other I wonder whether this is (1) Her sly plan to educate me in the ways of real life or (2) purely a function of her new outlook on life and busy social life. (or actually maybe both)</p>
<p>I know that this definitely falls into the spoiled brat, first world problems bucket, but wanted to see if there was a pattern amongst the 'rents here? :)</p>
<p>Threesdad - the History and Photography class sounds really cool! </p>
<p>There are various good reasons for applying to lots of schools. My oldest wanted to get out of our state and needed merit to do it, so he cast a wide net (14 schools). I’m so glad we didn’t trim many more off - I may have advised him to trim the one he ended up at, thinking it was a reach. He ended up getting a great scholarship (it ended up beign his cheapest choice) there and loves it. I think he’ll be a little sad to graduate this year. My middle son only applied to 3 schools. I suspect S’15 will apply to a lot of schools.</p>
<p>@headingtoschool - “M has been definitely been ramping down on the mothering front - particularly in the cooking department.” </p>
<p>This, sounds really bad. She is your mother, not your cook. Maybe, just maybe, after 16-17 years of taking care of you, she is simply tired. If your view of your mom’s mothering is based on this, you need to grow up.</p>
<p>Things move so fast here. By the time I think about the topic of discussion and have time to formulate a contribution, it’s several pages back and the thread is two topics removed. I DO think slowly, but really it’s a whirlwind. Lots of good stuff to mull over.</p>
<p>I had some thoughts when there was discussion about honors programs in big publics. We went through investigating some of those this past year. For those of you who haven’t looked into it much but are considering it-</p>
<p>My D is a freshman in the honors college at one of the most populous campuses in the country, maybe even #1 for that. But partly because of their honors program, and partly because of how her depts. run their classes, she has relatively small intimate classes and that will continue throughout her time there. That is a good thing because she is also a kid who likes to have strong relationships with her teachers and would hate big lecture halls filled with hundreds of kids. Her honors MV calc and required honors humanities have about 20 students each, capped at 20-25. She is taking the 2nd semester humanities in spring with the same teacher who reserved space in her classes for her current students to continue with her if they like. Her math next semester is again honors, capped at 25. After 2 more math classes most of the math classes will not have honors sections, but the math dept keeps it’s upper div. class sizes in the 25-40 range, so nothing huge.</p>
<p>That is her 2nd major. 1st is music, which is a special case as a major, admittedly. Her music studio classes have all or part of a group of 15 students studying the same instrument, same teacher throughout. When she went for her lesson last winter to meet him, she was quizzing him about his plans re retiring/moving, LOL. Piano class has 10. Then there are the music theory and history classes- one or 2 each semester. The larger classes required of all have at most 50-70. Not small, but it’s the same kids each semester as the major is tightly structured with classes offered once a year. </p>
<p>All possible minors are similar, with small honors sections in lower level classes available and upper div. classes not too large. I can’t say that this is the situation throughout the university, Possibly popular majors run large classes throughout. Stemfamily? Input?</p>
<p>In the honors dorms freshmen are grouped by school. So her floor and the one above are all music/arts kids. They are all on the same wavelength as far as being deep into serious study already 1st year, hit the ground running, because of the major choice. The music kids text each other to get up for their 7:50 class, go to breakfast and then class together most days. </p>
<p>The honors program is well thought out, not just window dressing. They have an enormous staff, thanks partly to generous endowment. And they know the kids. The clerk in dining hall who runs ID cards knows everyone by name. I could go on for pages more, but if your child decides they like that format, then figure out what parts of the honors appeal to him/her and then compare carefully as honors programs vary widely (wildly?) Some don’t have residential college, perhaps just a building with dedicated lounge and computer room. They may have more or less in the way of honors classes. There is issue how faculty are supported in offering special classes. Facilities, food, stats of kids in the program, quality of honors advising, research opportunities, etc.</p>
<p>I found the online course catalogs very informative. Browsing those and major maps, one can learn a lot.</p>
<p>headingtoschool…I am a mom, and i have found myself starting to participate in more activities (art class, bell choir) perhaps in preparation for my empty nest.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info Celeste. I have a friend whose daughter is in an honors program of a state school and is very happy. She graduated HS in the top 10% ( but not the tippy top) and she received a lot of money. She likes being with her honors “nerds” ( as she calls them) and being able to also hang out with the " non honors nerds." My kid prefers to always be with the " nerds" I think ( she considers herself a nerd)… That may be a problem! </p>
<p>I am so stressed that I am eating Halloween candy… Ugh</p>
<p>I asked my D, and she swears up and down that it’s not her posting to CC as headingtoschool! :o</p>
<p>headingtoschool – consider this an opportunity that your mother is generously providing you to learn to cook quick yummy meals for yourself. It’s a skill that will serve you well when you move off campus (probably after your first or second year of college) and for the rest of your life.</p>
<p>I think my D in computer science will probably have more classes in the 50-70 range than celeste’s D in music/math. But I don’t think she minds either. She likes the smaller, discussion-based classes in Honors English/Human Event (humanities) but doesn’t really mind the lack of discussion in her technical classes. </p>
<p>I will second celeste’s comments about finding things on the schools’ websites. You can almost always find the classes required for any major AND get to a class schedule that often lists class limits and current number enrolled. (Maybe not for very small schools.) We also used it to see how often some classes were offered. A website might list several electives for a major but you can sometimes see from the class schedule that some are only offered every other or only every 4th semester.</p>
<p>headingtoschool must be an S, no? Can’t imagine a D saying that, or at least not in quite that way. </p>
<p>I’m constantly amazed by resources at D’s school. They have free compressor stations around campus for filling bike tires and D’s having trouble with the one near her dorm. So I browsed around (not her strong suit, unfortunately.) They have a bike coop on campus that does free flat repair and tune-ups, loans tools for free, teaches kids to do their own repairs, even does skateboard adjustments. I’m just agog at what universities are like today. University has bike valet parking, sells cheap packages of ulock/helmet/lights to encourage safe riding, you name it.</p>
<p>What STEMfamily says about the online catalog. Yes. It’s also a way to check if a proposed double major is workable at schools, as in small majors or small schools, could find that the time overlap of critical courses makes it very difficult. </p>
<p>…And for honors programs another thing to check is whether kids get scheduling priority. At D’s schools and others, honors kids get to schedule before anyone else on campus, along with athletes, vets and disabled. It’s such a valuable perk. Not all programs offer this. UMN-Twin Cities, for example, cannot, according to the director. He told me it would violate Midwestern egalitarian sensibilities, ha. What a way to spin it.</p>
<p>I just looked at our schools Naviance for the University of South Carolina and it places the school at a 1600 ( CR/math), 24 ACT and a 3.2 GPA. When I go to USCs web site I see that the honors program is completely different- there is a HUGE difference. Is this common? College data places the school at a 29 ACT. Things seem to be all over the place…</p>
<p>I have the school on the big list. We will see if my daughter puts it on the list that gets narrowed down. I think she will, as it appears that she has the potential to get some nice merit ( I realize nothing is a guarantee, but one girl in our school with lower stats got 19,000 in merit- not FA).</p>
<p>Oops not 1600 CR/math- 1200 CR/math</p>
<p>I found that the most reliable data comes from the Common Data Set. I think other entities like USNWR and College Board, etc. get their data from the Common Data Sets. And, since the CDS is dated, you will always know the vintage of the data. Just search “University x common data set”</p>
<p>The CDS does not have separate Honors College data and those can vary a lot depending how restrictive the university decides to make the Honors College.</p>
<p>For engineering data, I use profiles.asee.org/profiles published by the American Society for Engineering Education. It has separate ACT/SAT scores for the engineering school although sometimes the data looks a little wacky like the person who submitted it didn’t understand 25th/75th percentiles.</p>
<p>Wait for me! I can’t keep up! lol</p>
<p>I just don’t seem to have the ability to grasp all the details of college finances. We hope to sit down and go over the money issue this weekend. We have worked on it before, and come up with what we thought would work…but I think I have had, in the back of my mind, that D might get merit money that would reduce what we actually had to come up with (EFC), but I am realizing…but maybe not ready to accept, that is not how it works.
I started this thread about it and have gotten a lot info…some from contributors to this board (thank you).
Do you all feel like you really understand this?</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1573631-what-colleges-allow-you-stack-merit-need-based-aid.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1573631-what-colleges-allow-you-stack-merit-need-based-aid.html</a></p>
<p>On honors colleges…I think this can offer the best of both worlds, but as others have said, they vary a great deal. In Florida, most of the larger, more well known schools have an honors college, but, while they have benefits (like 1st choice of classes), there doesn’t seem to be that small college within a large college feel. They have additional classes, often in odd subjects that are honors, and might have some of the basic courses offered as honors only options, and maybe an honors dorm…that may or may not be actually available, and may or may not be limited to honors college students. Beyond that, honors college students would take their other classes (the majority of them?) with the general population of the university. </p>
<p>I guess I have a hard time reading ‘college speak’ on websites. Sometimes the info about programs seems a little vague, or could be interpreted in different ways. It gets especially challenging when looking into a handful of schools, and I can’t seem to get myself to stay focused on just one at a time. Something I see on one school’s site will make me wonder if such-and-such school has the same thing…so off I go to the other school’s website…</p>
<p>What I want to say about that thread is that some of the people posting don’t understand the question, and others don’t understand the answers they are posting. Crazy thread.</p>
<p>I think the upshot is that since so many schools don’t meet full need, or meet much of it with loans and work-study you can reduce your costs by getting merit that will defray gap/loans/work-study, and it seems a lot of schools use merit against those before reducing any need-based grants. That is helpful. </p>
<p>Or you can get SO much merit that you cover any gap and all of university FA package and then start to cover your EFC. In the in between range it seems unfair since you’re reducing need-based grants with scholarships, but that’s the way things are. I think. Am I wrong?</p>
<p>We are going to visit as many schools as possible, with the understanding that we can’t visit every single one. If a school that we have not seen gives her money, we will visit. USC does not track interest, so that will be a school to visit if the merit aid works out. I think she is narrowing it down to a mid to large size “rah rah” ( no smaller than 5,000) - she likes school spirit. She wants to be able to make some friends who are not drinkers, and who enjoy going to dinner and discussing academics. She also wants some good internship experiences ie NIH. She just decided to change her major from bio to chemistry, with a double major in Spanish ( or a minor if necessary). Not sure what sparked this change. My experience is that it’s very hard to feel the vibe of a school without visiting, but I have a friend who disagrees and her kid went to a school sight unseen. </p>
<p>My daughter becomes very close with her teachers. She is always staying after, attending extra help, emailing them etc. My concern with a larger school is that this experience would not be there. Maybe I am wrong.</p>
<p>I start to feel that we should forget about college visit altogether. Whenever her school is off, colleges are off too. She doesn’t want to miss days of school, or she’ll have so much work to make up. She went to a math competition and was placed. The award ceremony is during school time. She doesn’t even want to go to that one, because she doesn’t want to miss AP classes. First of all, I don’t understand why they have to do the award ceremony during school time. secondly, I don’t understand why she even bothered to do the competition. She seems to care nothing when she heard she would be awarded. ugggghhhhhggggguuuuuhhhh too much stress!</p>