<p>Looks like we’re catching up to the rest of you with snow days. The call came at 5:40 this morning that we are closed. So that makes 3 snow days and 1 two-hour delay so far. Apparently the storm of the century is coming next week. Which just means that I will be sitting in terrible traffic to get to and from S1’s Memorial Day volleyball tournament in Richmond since we’ve already lost all the days surrounding Mem. Day weekend.</p>
<p>Threesdad, I forget. What sport does your D play? Is this a scouting tournament? Good luck!</p>
<p>We are on the 8th day of no school due to weather. Got a lot of snow and ice last night. I’m exhausted from juggling work commitments and shoveling the snow. Forecast calls for possible snow on Saturday. Hoping that doesn’t cause issues for the ACT that D is taking.</p>
<p>D’s school ranks and the kids play the weighting game. In a good way, I didn’t figure out the game until it was too late. D will be in the top 3% and that will be enough I think. Since there is no way for her to make val/sal, she doesn’t feel that pressure and she can (and does!) take unweighted classes that she really likes. </p>
<p>This is our 8th snow day here, and the third and final one that can be done online. Any more and we have to add days in June…UNLESS our state legislature votes to give us more and that vote is happening in less than two weeks. So we’ll see…</p>
<p>Suzy: this trip is for field hockey. Softball will be later this Spring & summer</p>
<p>Threesdad good luck with the sports!! </p>
<p>Our district is on their second snow day today. The district happened to be closed ( scheduled ) during the last storm. </p>
<p>I am hearing all kinds of rumors about the storm this weekend- anywhere from 3 to 30 inches…</p>
<p>:-q </p>
<p>Best of luck to Threesdad’s D! Very impressive!</p>
<p>Thumbs down on all the wintry days. I remember them well. The winter of 2010-2011 was a miserable one in Connecticut and I remember all the worries about the weight of accumulated snow on roof tops and the enormous icicles that formed on the gutters. I also remember not being able to shovel the snow at a certain point because the mountains alongside the driveway were more than double my height!</p>
<p>Stay warm and safe everyone. And remember to console me when out here we either can’t flush our toilets due to unprecedented drought OR we endure a sudden onslaught of Noah’s Ark-type rains that bring on mudslides, erosion, and flooded houses. One or the other is on its way. Boo Mother Nature. </p>
<p>Our school doesn’t rank, thank goodness. And there are NO A+s. The best the kids can get is a 4.0. Honors aren’t weighted, but I think APs are (but the kids can’t take as many as they can at other schools). There are no 4.5s on the Naviance grid – it’s just not numerically possible. </p>
<p>As for number of applications, I was really thinking about the ones that have the long supplemental essays and questions. I understand applying to many schools trying to get merit. Around here, people count the UCs as one application (since it really is just one – you just check the box if you want to add on schools, and of course pay another fee, but for a kid the work is the same whether they apply to one or six of them). We haven’t been able to narrow things down to a manageable list yet, but I am determined to after watching kids too stressed because of all the apps they are working on. Too bad they can’t complete the process over the summer!</p>
<p>The common ap used to offer an essay choice to write about whatever you want - not any more. My older kid wrote his essay in the back seat of the car on a family drive across the country. We were new to gps and my husband chose an Australian female voice named Karen. She inspired son to write about having Karen guide him through life - it was very funny and several admissions officers wrote to tell him how much they enjoyed it. If they only knew he wrote it in 20 minutes somewhere in Indiana!</p>
<p>need2learn – I love that! I am sad that they removed that option from the common app. I think it let kids be creative and tell something about themselves.</p>
<p>My older D got to write about a topic of her choice. She wrote about a scavenger hunt that she participated in, and the essay depicted her personality beautifully. Need2learn that is a great and unique essay!</p>
<p>D15 took a look at the prompts and unless they change, she seems to be going with the one related to describing a place where she feels perfectly content. The idea was sparked by a 2 hour task that she completed over the summer. Hopefully she can pull it off… B-). She is already saying that she does not want my husband and I reading her essays. </p>
<p>Content essay response-from my daughter, “on the couch watching the Big Bang Theory with my daddy.”
Don’t know how many words you can write on this , but I guess you won’t have to worry about going over the limit. 
</p>
<p>Hi. Don’t get chance to post often but with D in this year and teacher of AB and BC Calc thought I would way in.
Children attend different school than I teach in. Both schools limit the number of AP’s per year to 4 (5 needs special permission). Very selective so that almost all students get 5’s. Our BC program had one non-five score in past 9 years. Same true for other Ap’s although AP Chem had two 3’s last year. Our schools were finding that highly competitive colleges rarely accepted non 5’s, especially in Math. Both schools do not weight averages or rank at all.<br>
Both schools are determined to be sure that students, not parents, drive the college process. Starting in frosh yr. students meet in small groups to explore colleges. Big/small, coed, rural/city, distance from home, rigor, cost, etc. No one was more surprised than me when D came home as soph with preliminary list of schools she wanted to visit. Have done 8 visits with 6 more in spring. About 80% will apply ED or EA.
Of my calc classes (totally 62 students) only 11 did not have at least one college acceptance before Dec. Many had several! Lots of ivies and tier one. Students are encouraged to take 2 SAT and 2 ACT.
I think I do not stress at all about college and try to keep my D calm. She is a hardworking (not always A) students and my concern (and our school’s) is that child finds best fit.<br>
Hard to watch students stressed bc of unreasonable stress from community or parents. This too shall pass…</p>
<p>Thank you for sharing your perspective @eerboco . I always find it interesting to read about the different approaches that schools take - and you have a case study right there in your family. I totally agree about limiting the stress - son has enough of that with school work and just being a teenager! He needs levity from his family and that is what we provide! Of course he is my kid that is a self starter and goal setter - so he is kind of on auto pilot. My older was ADHD and a social media magnet - he needed to be reminded to do HW. But as you said - this too shall pass - he lives in another city now and we all miss him - almost wish he still needed to be reminded to do his HW!</p>
<p>PS: I’m feeling so proud that I finally figured out how to link to someone’s name with the @! I’m not very tech savvy so this is a big step for me! :)</p>
<p>@eerboco–why does the school suggest that the students take both the ACT & SAT twice? Just curious….I had my son select one and focus on it, but am curious about your school’s thoughts on why students should take both.</p>
<p>The school feels that the FIRST set of each is to get a feel for which is the better exam for THAT student. Some students feel equally matched so then they are encouraged to only take one more of each. I should have clarified that some students show clear preference (my D was one) and then they are only encouraged to take one more of that exam. The school’s goal is to have students take MAX of 4 exams. My D took both, feels better about ACT, and will take it once more. Then we are done. They really want students to complete the exams before finals and AP’ s set in. </p>
<p>@eerboco it’s interesting to see how your school deals with AP courses. That was what I thought it should be done. Instead, my D’s school does exactly opposite - everyone who wants to get in AP, can. There is no prerequisite, or any kind of selection criteria. When I helped with AP physics the other year, the students in the class had mixed background. Some did honors physics and had decent PSAT math scores. Some never did any physics and had very poor math scores. As a result, the teaching was very difficult. At times I felt we were doing a disservice to the students who should be in the class, or maybe I should say, we were doing a disservice to students at both end of the spectrum. </p>
<p>About SATs or ACTs, I’m glad our school never suggests anything. I’m hoping my D will be one and done. We are not fans of any of those tests. Time and energy are better spent other places, imo.</p>
<p>@need2learn, (lemme link your name lol) It’s interesting to read about your older child. I’m always wondering when kids who are “social media magnet” get over that. Was he finally bored by social media, or did he finally find better things to do in life? At times I feel my D is that way. Yet other times she is so focused. I never know how to define her. 
</p>
<p>@herandhismom I’ll let you know when he gets over being a social media magnet - it hasn’t happened yet! He is on Twitter now and has a pretty decent following of total strangers - a bit scary for the mom. He is in Chicago doing improv comedy so he feels Twitter is a good place to announce his shows. He still is on fb - he’s the kind of guy who writes some little ditty on fb and instantly has 300 likes - little brother just shakes his head. I usually have to google whatever he wrote just to understand the reference - he has a target demographic and 56 year old women are not in it!</p>
<p>@eerboco–that makes sense. We used the blue & red book practice exams the same way. I shouldn’t say ‘we’ as my role was to purchase the books and remind son to take tests, but he timed them and scored them and decided he was not an ACT student. I think that may have been b/c of more exposure to the SAT from the PSAT. School offered PLAN for first time ever last spring but his graduating class missed that opportunity.</p>
<p>I’m very happy that mine did not move beyond the SAT. I understand why it might be worth taking a * practice * test for both the SAT and ACT but I am not sure that it’s really necessary that every kid take both tests officially just for the purpose of setting a baseline. </p>
<p>I think D’s school handles APs the same way as eerboco’s school for the most part but there are always those kids who get into the classes from waiting lists or by making special application–and that seems fair to me. My sense of the classes is that they move at a specified pace and it’s up to the student to keep up or drop back. The only exception to that is English where all juniors are automatically enrolled in AP level classes and not all have the capability to handle the work. (I wish they’d stop that practice.) </p>
<p>Actually, the AP label isn’t all that big a deal at the school because the upper level classes are for the most part either AP or post-AP. Kids do “chase the APs” in freshman and sophomore level classes for the gpa bump those classes carry but it’s kind of a moot point by the time they are seniors.</p>