<p>Admittedly, TCU is an outlier for DS. But he brought it up and at this stage of the “hunt” we don’t set too many parameters. The search will get more serious next spring/summer.</p>
<p>Vandy is a real OOS contender for him. And he has the academic “chops” to get in (pending ACT scores). Anybody have any feedback on visits or sibling experiences there?</p>
<p>Congratulations Stemfamily on S making first chair! What instrument does he play? (Sorry if you already said…I need some sort of spreadsheet to keep everyone’s details straight lol). </p>
<p>My D has started thinking about dropping band class; perhaps switching to chorus (her elective options are pretty much limited to band, chorus or drama.) She still likes playing the oboe. She is going to be in the All County band, and likes playing there, but doesn’t really enjoy it in band class, and the beginning of each year she has to play a different instrument because it’s marching band season. She feels ( and I agree) that that elective should be the class where she can relax and enjoy it a bit…and be less stressful, but since she doesn’t enjoy it, it doesn’t have that affect.</p>
<p>D got her SAT scores in an email today and she seems happy with them. 
I think she is agreeing that she might benefit from taking it again later this year…but I didn’t press for a commitment to it yet. She hasn’t really explored the ranges for different colleges, so doesn’t really have a full understanding of where her scores puts her, but I explained that for the schools she has expressed interest in, they seemed to put her ‘in range’, but maybe not the top of the range. Maybe she’ll do some more investigating now that she has some numbers.</p>
<p>I am glad to have numbers to work with. It just makes the college search slightly less of a guess. ;-)</p>
<p>We are making plans for the Christmas break, and it looks like we will get together with a cousin who is also a junior and doing the college search thing…so it will be interesting to see what those discussions might spark in D.</p>
<p>Has anyone put their kid’s stats into the website cappex? I love that it connects you to scattergrams for the schools you are interested in, and it gives you a little bar that is supposed to show you your odds of being accepted, based on the data you have provided. I am just not sure how I should be ‘reading’ that bar. The bar is made up of 10 squares, and then they shade in 1 or more of the bars to show where your stats put you. when I look at some of the bars, it seems like the shaded part if a little low, but then in looking at the scattergrams, her stats are right up there…for example, at one school, her blue bar is between the 7th and 8th square on the bar, but the scattergram has her in the very, top right section, with no ‘denied’ dots anywhere near that spot, so that looks like she is verly likely to get in.<br>
Is anyone else using cappex, and have thought on how to view those bars? This probablt makes no sense if you haven’t used it…sorry about that!</p>
<p>@shoboemom the website sounds interesting. I may check it out.
When my D. was in band, she had to switch instruments. She played the oboe for the concert band, but clarinet for marching band. Last year because of conflicts with AP chem, the teacher made her play percussion. (because she couldn’t practice with the rest of the band most of the time.) It was really a messy situation. I’m glad she is not in band anymore. She still plays her major instrument (clarinet) for the community orchestra and she is working on a solo.
There are many ways a kid can be deeply involved in music. Marching band really is not for music. D. enjoyed it because of friends. Too bad they can’t audition for All State unless they’re in school marching band. </p>
<p>@mihcal1 my d would be so jealous. she has four major tests before Thanksgiving!
This weekend is Doctor Who time. We are going to relax at least today. Then she will have to study for AP English, AP enviro, AP calc, and French. poor kid!</p>
<p>Hi All,</p>
<p>Do you guys know how to get past the restriction on this site for posting email addresses? All letters beyond <name>@ are showing up as asterisks.</name></p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>eth0up. If you post the name@, and then leave a space and say it’s gmail, or yahoo or whatever, that should work.</p>
<p>shoboemom, does your D not like the band director or the band atmosphere, or is music boring? D started on clarinet and got bored with the music they played, so picked up oboe and continued with clarinet in the middle school EC honor band. She learned to play all the saxes in 9th grade, first bari, then later tenor and alto, so she could be in HS EC jazz band. They didn’t have use for oboe and not really for clarinet either. First 2 years of HS she played oboe in band. Last 2 years of HS she learned to play bassoon for honor band, but continued with oboe in 2 youth ensembles run by the local uni and also some community musical theater performances with mostly adult players. HS loaned the bassoon and it was fun learning new instrument. She felt needed. For some orchestra concerts she filled in at, she played oboe AND bassoon, switching off between the 2. She took three instruments to solo ensemble festivals, played sax in school musical pit as they didn’t need dbl reeds. It got hard to keep track of which instruments she needed where and when. Chorus sounds like fun too. Branching out musically is a lot of fun for the kids. We don’t have marching band at our HS, boo, just ‘pep band’.</p>
<p>congrats to S, STEMfamily!</p>
<p>You could spell it out, but it’s probably better to get up to 15 posts so you can send that in a personal message. Google indexes this entire site.</p>
<p>We are off to NYC next week and since we can leave Tuesday, D and I will do 2 college visits Wednesday - Columbia and NYU-Poly.</p>
<p>How does Cappex differ from Naviance? Is Naviance more accurate because it compares you to kids from your school? Does it matter?</p>
<p>I am also looking forward to getting test data so that we know what we are dealing with and can start putting a reasonable list together. </p>
<p>Oh mom have fun!!!</p>
<p>I have not tried cappex. It sounds interesting. D tried comparing her scores on naviance and came away very frustrated because of all the variables that go into decisions that aren’t captured in the scattergram. I really wish they could add another color to the blocks like “athletic recruit” or “they have more money than god.” Lol! D is going to meet with her guidance counselor now that she has scores and at least first 1/4 and a little more junior year grades in order to generate a college visit list. I didn’t realize how helpful it would be to have a set of scores, whether baseline or final. </p>
<p>OHmom, have a great time visiting the schools! The nice thing about Columbia is that it will be bustling even when the school isn’t in session.</p>
<p>sally305 – my D is nowhere near good enough dancer for it to be an important hook for college apps. (She’s a “chorus” dancer, as opposed to “star”, at a “B-list” dance studio.) </p>
<p>She loves it tho, and it’s an important outlet for her creatively, and also for exercise and stress relief. Lots of days she comes home from school feeling overwhelmed – and then she goes to 3 hours of dance rehearsals, and comes back sweaty and smiling and able to power through her HW. </p>
<p>eth0up – not sure why you want to post emails, but you should think carefully before putting personal contact stuff on a public forum. A Private Message might be more appropriate.</p>
<p>shoboemom – you have to be careful with both Cappex, and Naviance too, which uses the same format for scattergrams. If the field gets too crowded then the acceptance symbols (blue or green dots on Cappex, green diamonds in Naviance) overlay the rejection symbols (red dots on Cappex, red diamonds or x on Naviance). Thus you don’t see the rejections even though they may vastly outnumber the acceptances. When you read the graph all it can tell you is that there are lots of acceptances in that GPA/SAT bin, but not any info on how many rejections, so no read on the likelihood of acceptance. It’s a weakness in their data presentation.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The joy of holistic admissions!
Alas, that is exactly the sort of factor that the college admissions offices <em>don’t</em> want us to know.</p>
<p>In case you are still under the delusion that you figure out elite college admissions probability based on GPA/SAT, or that a “higher” SAT is better than a “high” SAT, consider these two bits of evidence:</p>
<p>(1) [this</a> graph](<a href=“https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7awsBPg9l2tNWJlNDZjMGQtZjZlMy00NjRlLWJiYjMtYzAyZGI5ZjUxZjMz/edit]this”>Sat vs Admit HYPM.png - Google Drive) from Hoxby and Avery’s [research[/url</a>] on correlations between SAT and elite college admissions, which shows a 93%ile SAT likelier to get you into HYP than a 98%ile SAT</p>
<p>(2) [url=<a href=“https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7awsBPg9l2tbDBZbzZfMTEwVVZZRzhyaG93emtsTFZXSkJv/edit]this”>MIT Naviance Scattergram from a CA HS.png - Google Drive]this</a> Naviance scattergram](<a href=“http://www.nber.org/papers/w10803]research[/url”>A Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities | NBER) of actual student data from a CA high school showing MIT admissions inversely correlated with SAT</p>
<p>mihcal - ^ do you know why?</p>
<p>I think that Naviance is useful for " lower tier " schools that base their acceptances primarily on GPA and test scores. When talking about the Ivy League or schools just below there are just too many variables. Of course I may be wrong - I just learned of a girl getting into an OOS state school with a 3.3 and a 23 ACT when Naviance clearly places the school at a 3.7/ 28 ( approximate-I forgot the exact number). I suspect it has to do with wanting the OOS tuition and the fact that the girl is not seeking financial aid. I guess there is more to college admissions than meets the eye!</p>
<p>Mihcal is right about Naviance " hiding" the rejections under all of the green squares. I find that I can enlarge the scatter gram on my ipad and if I look very carefully I can spot some red x’s that can’t be seen without the enlargement. </p>
<p>Now if there was only a scatter gram for merit scholarships it would make this “game” much easier. LOL </p>
<p>Question: if you are applying to an OOS state school as a " typical" applicant to that school and you are seeking financial aid, does that school become more competitive for you? I would imagine yes because you are not offering them anything and you are also asking for money. I think the school may give somebody else ( ie athlete , academic superstar ) a better package (?). Somebody recently asked me this question.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen Naviance and don’t understand what I’m looking at there.But anyway, how can that be? Maybe the kids with slightly lower scores who got in were more confident because they knew they had great ECs and projected the right personality in their essays so didn’t test as often, while many of the high scorers who were rejected got those scores because their anxiety about adequacy of their apps had them retesting numerous times to boost their chances?</p>
<p>Mihcal I am curious as to why. ? Another issue with Naviance is that we do not know the year. Our school gives data from 2006 until the present but the actual scatter gram does not tell us which year a student was accepted or rejected.</p>
<p>FromMD – Yes, I know part of the reason why. In the case of the MIT admissions from the CA HS, it comes down to special cases and extenuating circumstances. One shouldn’t read too much into small number statistics.</p>
<p>In the Hoxby & Avery results for HYP, it’s because athletes and other “hooked” applicants get evaluated on factors other than SAT and GPA. But you already knew that!</p>
<p>twogirls – the Naviance scattergram shows 3 years’ data 2011-2014</p>
<p>celeste–or, schools managing yield and rejecting the high stat students who do not demonstrate any interest other than filing an app.</p>
<p>CT that is another issue. It’s very impt to visit your safety and if that’s not possible then try and keep in touch through emails or college fairs etc.</p>
<p>michal–each school’s Naviance shows the #s of years of data the school has used Naviance, or elects to show. I have seen some schools that retain ten years of data. Our own school has six years w/o this year and the landscape of college admissions has changed so much in seven years, that I wish the old data would be excised.</p>