<p>Twogirls…I just double checked her score…she lost a point for each wrong answer in the reading section. Very harsh.</p>
<p>The reading section was her lowest on both the SAT and the ACT which surprised me. On the SAT she got all the vocabulary but missed a few on the passages. On the ACT she said she spent too much time on the first passage which kind of messed her up towards the end- planning a different strategy this time. Not sure if it matters because I suspect her composite will be the same as the December test. </p>
<p>I think CR section of SAT is hard. that’s just me. </p>
<p>SAT books - we had 3, I’ve already given all the them away to a friend’s D. </p>
<p>Has anyone else child gotten college mail that has made you laugh out loud. Macalester has been on and off son’s list and the first paragraph of the cover letter in the mailing put it right back on.</p>
<p>“Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah Macalester College, blah, blah, blah, blah. “Mac” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah high PSAT scores, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, great academic match for your interests, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah a college with a commitment to world community, blah, blah, blah, internationalism, blah, blah, multiculturalism, blah, blah, community service, blah, blah blah, in two of the most “livable” metropolitan cities in the U.S. blah, blah, blah.”</p>
<p>We toured Mac during the older kid’s search and loved it. If you are looking for an LAC that isn’t in the middle of nowhere (and, yes, I’m staring at YOU, Grinnell and Williams) but still has a really strong sense of community, it’s a great school. They also were doing “globalism” about fifty years before globalism was cool. </p>
<p>But, yes, their mailing campaign is single-handedly preventing layoffs at the St. Paul post office. </p>
<p>You all ROCK! Thank you, thank you for your words of humor and encouragement. I’m so glad I discovered this site. I may end up in the looney bin by the time 2015 daughter graduates, but at least I’ll have some folks pullin’ for me on the outside!</p>
<p>Snow day today here, which is a BOON. I went back to sleep after telling the kids “no school”; I dreamt school was actually open, daughter missed the College Entrance Exam (in my dream that was a thing). In missing the College Entrance Exam, it meant no college for her. I woke up with a pounding heart and trying to leap out of bed. Clearly, a snow day is good medicine for my frazzled subconscious. </p>
<p>Finally we have a no-snow day. and guess what? there is still no school - because it’s parent conference day. So why even have school. just let the students stay at home be homeschooled, and have some conferences once in a while. “just saying” in D’s words. </p>
<p>@Mom24boys, we got that. D saw “all you can eat dinning hall” and shouted “I’m going there!” :O) </p>
<p>@HeliMom74 I think every parent knows exactly how you feel. It is so hard to know when they need a little push and when they need a little break-we are all figuring this out as we go along. I have told my children more than once that I am learning being a mother on the job-there is no user’s manual for this. Try to take the positive out of last night-you asked your daughter and she was honest with you-that is huge! I know I have been over the top at times with mine-and I hope I have learned enough from my first experience with this to not make the same mistakes this time-but I probably will repeat some. </p>
<p>The best thing I got from being on the Class of 2011/2015 thread wasn’t about the nuts and bolts of scheduling and testing and applications-although I did receive great and helpful information. The best thing I got was a place where I could go when I was crazy and ready to hit my kid with a frying pan-they still remember the frying pan on there! I don’t think I could have gotten through this process and managed to help my son be able to attend a school which in just about every way has been great for him without the support of all the parents there. I at some point ranted and raved about every subject under the sun-and yet I received helpful advice or many times just a shoulder to cry on. I remember being annoyed at parents who had been through this before trying very nicely to give me the benefit of their experience-I thought they were dismissing my concerns by telling me things I thought were life and death really weren’t. I understand now what they meant and try and pass that on here-it may annoy some here but I hope it helps some as well.</p>
<p>I have real issues with my daughter I never had with my son-mostly due to personality conflicts I have with her that I didn’t with him. I regularly screw things up with her because I try and talk to her and work with her the way I worked with him. Well it isn’t working! So I am trying to praise her for the things she has done about college like making a spreadsheet and having thought about a lot of things about college so far and not harassing her about the SAT for example-and yet I still have to sometimes leave the room to stop talking and hounding her! I don’t like to be badgered why would she?</p>
<p>We are all going to get through this just fine! There are all kinds of students represented on this thread and all kinds of parents and all kinds of personalities. I always try and remember that what works for me may kill you and vice versa-there are no right answers.</p>
<p>I love the Bullwinkle reference! Thanks for that. I love the perspective from a math teacher-very helpful. I learn something from every single person here and I may discover in the process some things about me and my behavior that need to change-I may not like finding it out at first but I am better in the long run for it.</p>
<p>I do believe being here when my son was driving me crazy helped keep our relationship from being seriousnly damaged-I really do. I thank all of you for everything you bring here-</p>
<p>@Pepper, great and wise post, thank you! The hardest part for me is that what I learned with one child generally doesn’t apply to the next one. Worse yet, the things that drove me crazy about child #1 are the same traits I wish I saw in child # 3. In other words, be careful what you wish for…</p>
<p>@Helimom, umm you won’t be in that looney bin all by yourself. I can’t speak for others but we may be sharing a room. </p>
<p>D’s friends have now started her talking about what subject tests they’ll take this spring. She’d been tossing around History, Math, and Lit (which she insists is easy, poor deluded girl ). All of a sudden she came home with the crazy idea that she might add another test in a language she hasn’t studied since middle school. WHAT? I have some familiarity with this language and I looked at the practice questions online. It starts off ridiculously easy but gets pretty hard pretty quickly. By question 10, I was unsure. She said she was getting everything correct up until question 30. I think she’s crazy to consider this. She says I’m always negative and pessimistic. </p>
<p>OK, little rant here - D is annoying me somewhat. :-w She’s taken the SAT one time (in December) and came really close to not having to take it again. And she really doesn’t want to. Since she was also signed up to take the ACT, her thought was to study up for that and then maybe she’d get a score good enough to replace the SAT. So I got her the “ACT 36” from the library that was recommended here and have asked her to take a few practice sections. Has she looked in that book? Maybe once on a Saturday for an hour or so, while watching TV. Has she done any practices? No. Is the test the day after tomorrow? Yes. She’s gonna wind up having to take one of these tests over, ugh! She knows, I think, how nice it would be to have these tests behind her, to not even have to think about them senior year. But maybe the fact that no one else she knows is planning this far ahead is keeping her from taking it seriously. I guess this is another lesson she’ll have to learn the hard way… :-< </p>
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<p>@3girls3cats - Help me out. Why is this inappropriate? Am I really out of touch? I ask students I know all the time what they are thinking about in terms of colleges/majors, etc. </p>
<p>I don’t think asking what college a kid might want to attend is inappropriate - it’s the followup comments that usually send me over the edge. Most people (CC devotees excluded) only know Ivy League and football schools. Hit them with the name of an LAC in the middle of Ohio and no one has heard of it and will comment that it must not be a good school (this actually happened more times than I care to count with DS1)</p>
<p>FYI - our flagship is having sophomore and junior visit day on President’s Day
<a href=“http://www.admissions.umd.edu/explore/SophomoreAndJuniorVisitDay.php”>http://www.admissions.umd.edu/explore/SophomoreAndJuniorVisitDay.php</a></p>
<p>Forms for AP exam registration came out this week, so we’ve been discussing spring testing. It still seems a long way away.</p>
<p>IJD - I was wondering when they were going to ask for the AP $$ - I guess it’s time to pay the piper!</p>
<p>@W2BeHome, I guess the context is missing. It’s not inappropriate to ask a kid about where he/she might want to attend college. I admit though I do think asking an 8 year old where she wants to go to college is a bit off and I’ve always found it kind of creepy when kids in early elementary school tell others with confidence that they already have a dream school. What do they really know about it at that age? How do they envision “college?” All it tells me is that the parents are already filling the kids’ heads with propaganda. (I know, I know, I’m biased on this point.)</p>
<p>The greater context in this case is that the only schools that matter to this particular group of relatives are certain big name schools. This person just wanted to hear my daughter say she wanted to attend Harvard or maybe MIT. I was delighted when she responded as she did. </p>
<p>The price seems very high this year. It hasn’t changed, though.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s inappropriate to talk to a Junior about college. It’s the same conversation as you have with an elementary school student about what they want to be when they grow up. We’ve warned D that she’s hit an age where that’s what people are going to talk to her about, since almost everyone she runs into has the experience of going to college, which makes them all instant experts. She needs polite ways to respond to people. (Actually, we run in circles with a lot of academics, which means that they <em>are</em> experts in a way.) So “what colleges are you thinking about?” and “what are you thinking about studying?” are perfectly appropriate. The only reason it’s annoying is because of HER back-story, not the conversation generally. No matter what she says, they are likely to respond appropriately. It’s not a fraught conversation to the adult.</p>
<p>@3girls3cats - I went back to re-read your first post and now see that when you said “her” you meant your 8 yo, right? I thought you were talking about your elder d. I definitely see your point there. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Thanks for clearing that up. :)</p>
<p>Just to be clear I was talking about an adult asking my then 8 year old about her college plans. Sorry! I wasn’t clear.</p>
<p>I also think there is a huge difference between children’s fanciful ideas about what they want to be when they grow up and a high school junior’s more concrete and sometimes realistic ideas about their not-too-distant futures. I have no problem with adults asking either question but I think the questioner approaches the two questions quite differently and one is treated with a great deal more indulgence than the other. </p>
<p>As to dealing with the question as a high school junior, there’s no problem on D’s end. In fact, she answers the question by saying she really doesn’t know yet and asking the questioner if he has any ideas for her based on her interests. She’s open to all answers and listens to all suggestions. She comes home sometimes and asks me about schools because the name has come up in a discussion and someone has suggested the school. It’s all good information. Now this may well change as she focuses in on what she wants and where she wants to go and she starts to hear the judgments. </p>
<p>Heli you are funny!! My D actually decided to take Lit and chem subject tests last year and at the last minute chose not to take Lit @-) no problem as I have plenty of money to waste on tests. Next time she can add one while
she is there and let them bill me. Count me in as joining everyone in the LB. </p>