<p>Congrats on all those ACT scores and some big gains! I don’t think d realizes that SAT scores will be out on Thursday, but I’m getting anxious on her behalf. It’s just subject tests, but it’s not like a re-take is possible in the event of a bad result. Chemistry is probably fleeing her brain already, and will assuredly be gone by fall.</p>
<p>ACT = Absolutely Crazy Test - Love that !! </p>
<p>D has a skype interview today and of course I will be at work. We tested skype 3x, picked out her outfit, positioned the laptop accordingly so that the background shows a neat area with no clutter- of course we could have cleared up the table but oh well… It is cluttered again with college stuff. I reminded her again to brush her hair and her teeth. Last night when we tested skype I saw how close up you look and any food stuck between your teeth ( TMI) can really show up. I reminded her to keep her cell phone nearby because if they have a problem they will call her. We practiced the interview questions, and she is good to go. I read an article written by somebody at WF who does these interviews and she said they are looking for " fresh and edgy teens and not mini 50 year olds." I was not sure how she should answer the question " what other schools are you applying to." My friend does interviews at a very top school and he said it is fine to name top schools on your list because it lets the interviewer know that their particular school is not an academic reach surrounded by all " lower" schools ( I hate saying that but you know what I mean). He also said to throw in the state schools ( non reachy ones). We threw in a few general current events type questions and I was surprised that she was able to come up with some intelligent responses- she has had her head buried in the books for so long I was not sure what to expect. I also read by the same admissions lady who does these interviews that there is no pre-set format to these interviews and that the student can guide the conversation based on his/her interests. </p>
<p>Congrats to all those receiving good news on the testing front, and sympathies to those who didn’t receive the scores they were hoping for. It’s a hard call to make when the time has come to “drop back 15 yards and punt” on re-taking ACT/SAT/SAT II but I worry about the stress levels it puts on some of the kids.</p>
<p>No major resume-worthy plans for the summer for either D2 or S. They wanted to mostly just relax this summer and spend time with friends/family…and I’m all for them doing just that. As far as we’re concerned, the die is already cast as far as college applications go. Whatever they’ve done up until now will determine where they attend/merit scholarships/honors programs/etc. There will be enough stressful situations as it is just in the planning/logistics involved with starting college, so we just want them to enjoy every minute they can between now and then. <:-P </p>
<p>@GoAskDad No scores here either. My son seems to think all of his friends that took it without writing got their scores and those who took it with writing did not. Did your student take writing? Not sure if his theory is right. </p>
<p>D leaves this morning for a vacation with a friend and her family. I’m actually going to miss her I think! We did get into a good discussion last night (finally) about the schools on her list and were able to take some off, so now I think we are at a reasonable number.</p>
<p>@twogirls, good luck to your D today! I’m sure she will do beautifully. We got the same email and have not yet decided if WF is on the list, but she may go ahead and do the interview just for practice. Let us know how it goes!</p>
<p>There is no theme today. We’re dusting this one off simply because the Smithereens are darn good, they’ll take you back to OUR college days, and unless you were one of the lucky obsessives who booked an in-home concert with Pat DiNizio during his “living room tour,” you probably haven’t thought about this band in a while. Enjoy!</p>
<p>[Smithereens</a> – “Blood and Roses”](<a href=“The Smithereens - Blood And Roses - YouTube”>The Smithereens - Blood And Roses - YouTube)</p>
<p>Nice, SOG. Unfortunately the Midori ad before the video also brought back memories…and not very pleasant ones.</p>
<p>2 more schools to visit today. Absolutely stunning weather here in the upper Midwest. A cloudless, windless, pristine 80 degrees! B-) Have a great day!!</p>
<p>@wolverine86 I agree with most of what you say. Unfortunately my daughter has everything she needs except one gaping hole-the standard test scores. </p>
<p>I managed to forget SAT scores are out this week-I am not expecting anything from this test as she took it with no prep again.</p>
<p>She will have to make a decision about these. She can decide to prep and I have an offer from a friend to tutor her in the CR/W area-I am sure if she accepts that offer and works hard and gets perhaps some Math tutoring she can increase her scores for the October sitting. She can decide the scores are what they are and apply to the schools she wants to and see what happens. She has a lot to do this summer and she may want to take the time she does have for herself to use in a way more enjoyable to her. </p>
<p>I will support either decision. I trust her to make the right choice for her. It is not easy for me to step back like I have started to but it is the right thing for her. I finally realized when I was talking to her the other day that she really is not like her brother. I also accepted that is OK-that was very hard for me.</p>
<p>@ahsmuoh, D took the test with writing and got her MC scores yesterday.</p>
<p>D still loves Emory, but is having more concerns about larger classes. She is worried that she is going to end up only accepted at large state schools…her ‘safeties’ that she doesn’t really like. :-(. She says she thinks she could be happy at New College, Florida, which we visited this past spring, but in am not so sure. </p>
<p>I keep trying to encourage her to consider more schools where she would be comfortably in the top quartile, but she doesn’t like the idea of being in a school full of low achievers…like she sees in the general population in high school. Do some of your kids have that concern?</p>
<p>Shoboe I understand what you are saying as one of D’s friends has that situation. The schools that are on D’s list put her at the top however the other students in the school are still very strong students-if that makes any sense. Schools that did not meet that criteria were taken off the list because she would prefer our state school over the type of school that your D wants to avoid. Does that make sense? For example, she falls well above the top at a school such as Lehigh, however the students there are all very strong students. We tried to cross off any school where being at the top would mean that the rest of the school was similar to kids she wanted nothing to do with throughout HS. It’s very hard to do that, especially if you are looking for merit. It’s a real balancing act and at the end of this journey she may very well attend our state school where she will be surrounded by many kids similar to her. We shall see. </p>
<p>@ahsmuoh, that’s a good theory and so I just posted the question over in the June ACT discussion thread to see if we can get some additional input. DS took ACT w/Writing - and I will have to ask him if the other students he talked with took the ACT w/Writing, or took the standard ACT, or if he knows. I think most of his classmates took the ACT w/Writing, though. For the Feb test, DS also took the ACT w/Writing and he got his scores back on Day One (though we didn’t know there was also a Day Two, Day 10, Day 48, etc…). </p>
<p>Anyhoooo, since he broke his new Ticonderoga pencil in half at the end of the Math section, I think we can safely say DS didn’t do as well in June as he did in Feb. He (and I) are just sort of stressed in wondering <em>how much</em> difference there is between scores. DS is concerned that there’s a fairly significant difference.</p>
<p>Parents: It’s correct that the DC can send only one ACT score to a college, correct? (Except for those select few that require <em>all</em> test scores.) So when DS selects “Send Scores” in the little box by his Feb test scores, ACT sends ONLY those Feb scores, right? (And yes, we can call ACT to confirm…I am just being lazy here.)</p>
<p>At this point, DS will probably just send his SAT and not send the ACT at all.</p>
<p><strong><em>For those w/DCs who got June scores back on Monday, did your DC take the ACT w/Writing, or the standard ACT?</em></strong></p>
<p>D said her interview went well. She had a young woman who made her feel comfortable and she was very nice. The interview lasted about 25 minutes and the woman asked her about her family, school, and town. Then they discussed a book that D read followed by a discussion about one of her activities in our community. She felt it was very relaxed and went well.
The kids here who got their scores took the test with writing. </p>
<p>@shoboemom, OK thanks. I see now that we do have at least one ACT w/Writing score that came out Monday, so I think I know what happened in the case of my DS: ACT reads this thread, saw my prior complaint about paying for so-called online test prep when, in fact, ACT changed-up the June the test a bit, and they held DS’s scores back in retribution! That has GOT to be it :)) </p>
<p>Is anyone familiar with the Columbia and/or UPenn campuses?</p>
<p>I am working on a NE college tour for the end of August and I am trying to decide if it is worth including them. S immediately wrote off Columbia because on his one class trip to NYC he “didn’t like the feel of it, and needs to see the sky,” but it seems to have so much to offer that I have asked him to give it a chance. Is the campus spacious with plenty of green space, or is walking to class like walking down any other Manhattan block? Is it somewhat cocooned, or just wide open to the surrounding area? I hope someone understands what I am asking, lol.</p>
<p>How about UPenn? I have read many comments about it being “urban.” Can someone elaborate?</p>
<p>As a frame of reference, he is very comfortable with Pitt-yes, I know it is no Philly or NYC but it seems “urban” to me.</p>
<p>We are home from college tour #2! We visited Tulane, Emory ( again), Oxford at Emory, UGA, and U South Carolina.<br>
I did the report on tulane already, and can warn you not to expect much of a report on UGA. We got there. D was very reluctant to even consider it from the beginning, and it is just huge. Even the area around it, a large busy commercial area, seemed huge and overwhelming. I told D that I have read a lot of reports where the student refused to get out of the car and she could exercise that option. 
The response was immediate, and we headed out of town. One crossed off the list.
Before that, we visited Emory…
D already loved Emory, practically sings songs of Emory…We had visited once before, in the Spring.
The info session wasn’t as good this time, but was ok. The admission person running it seemed to be very philosophical, and not so into facts and figures. He said the best letters of recommendation are from teachers who know about things you do outside of the classroom as well as in the classroom. He said the be sure to tell them about yourself in your essays, not to miss that opportunity. He was sort of waxing on, and I was getting anxious to get on with the tour. Lol. The young man giving the tour was very good, a rising senior, very professional about it…polished. He had shoulders about 3 feet wide…just strikes us a funny when these strapping young men get to the point in the tour when they are pointing out the blue emergency light system and telling us they’ve never felt unsafe on campus. Lol.
He said the class sizes are a mix; some large lecture style, some smaller. D loves the open, modern feel of the architecture…bright open campus, inside and outside the buildings. The dorms are nice; varied, of course. The dorms we saw had a nice kitchen on every other floor, then a small rec area on the alternate floors.
This trip we went through a computer lab building we hadn’t seen before, with a variety of places for students to use computers…little alcoves where you’d bring a computer, stations set up with computers, etc.
the campus is very walkable, compact and enclosed…with one public road that runs through it, past the Emory hospital, right on campus, providing intern opportunities, and medical help right there. They Also have the usual student medical services on campus. Outside of the campus you are on the outskirts of Atlanta, so there is a lot nearby. Two areas seemed like walking distance, Emory Commons, and another area…with small places to eat, some variety ( we grabbed subway subs on the way out of town there) . Not really quaint little shops, but at least there is “stuff”. I think I’ve heard the area described as a suburb of Atlanta, but it feels a bit more city…more traffic, busier than what I think of as a suburban area. Tour guide said that Emory provides shuttles (weekly?) to local stores for errands, and provides buses for trips into Atlanta for specific destinations. Students sign up to go. I liked this as a way to get to see the sites but not have to deal with traffic. I got the impression this was monthly, but not certain.
Talked about the mascots, the eagle that no one pays attention to, and Dooley, the skeleton. They love Dooley week, when Dooley comes into classrooms and dismisses classes.
Then we were on to see Oxford…to be continued.</p>
<p>D loved Penn but did not like Columbia or NYU. Penn is located in an urban area but when you are in the middle, it’s very nice like a regular campus. The perimeter of the campus will be busy streets. You should be able to go to YouTube and see videos of the campus. </p>
<p>@planner03, many people think Penn is very urban. There is a College Green but mostly the streets cut through campus so some people don’t like it. Locust Walk is the main walk goes from the east end of campus (33rd Street - Math department, Palestra, Engineering) to the west end (40th Street with the high rise dorms); it does cross a couple of streets but they’re not particularly busy streets.</p>
<p>It’s an open campus - there are no gates. Safety was an issue when I attended many years ago. It sounds like it is still an issue. IDs are needed to enter all dorms. Many buildings are locked during off-hours (I remember having keys). There is a large campus police force. I think it’s a vibrant community but it may not be for everyone. Penn has really built up the campus around the edges (I don’t recognize many new buildings) but the core is still the same.</p>
<p>@shoboemom - thank you for your trip reports. I really appreciate the time you are taking to share all those details. Looking forward to hearing the rest!</p>
<p>Shoboemom, it’s a complicated topic. My son has these concerns about our state school. The first issue is that in this instance his concerns are largely misplaced as of the incoming freshmen, over 2/3 have UW HS GPA 3.75+ and and over half graduated in top decile. So he’ll say he knows of this or that kid who went there whom he perceives to be a not very good student. Every school has a bottom quartile, even UChicago, as my D discovered on a visit when she sat in on an education class. Of course the level of the bottom quartile rises too as you climb the school level ladder. But anyway, my S is not the type to want to have deep philosophical convos with random people he meets in the cafeteria. Much more likely to want to sit and discuss the latest world cup game. His concern is more about how these issues affect the level and quality of classrooms. So then one has to examine one’s likely programs at the university. Are they strong, have a good reputation? Are they mathy/sciency? Then they are likely to draw more students from higher academic levels and the classes will be fine. That is assuming one has an idea of some likely programs. Kids can sit in on classes on visits(preferably not XXX101, but something a tad higher so it is full of majors) to check the intuition about this.</p>
<p>Then I try to work certain ideas into our talks to be sure he has a truer picture of things. One of the ideas is that incoming freshmen have to learn to work hard. It isn’t public HS and if you don’t perform adequately they throw you out. As you get past the freshmen level, you see fewer and fewer laggards in your classes at every school in every discipline, because they are gone. If you attend a state school that is generous with AP, you will have no or few survey classes to fulfill gen eds, so it isn’t much of an issue anyway.</p>
<p>In our case, his worries involve imagining transposing his entire HS mentally into the state school, though I don’t know if he realizes he is doing that. But the 2 HSs my kids attended are very bimodal. The top quartile or so are truly amazing, going to top 20 schools and populating clubs that win national and international awards with coach teachers who are winning their own awards. Then the bottom half, well some will go to community college, but many aren’t even graduating. This was a serious issue in elementary and middle school when everyone is in the same classes together so that everything gets dragged down. Had to send my kids to private middle school as it got to be unbearable. Less of an issue in our HSs, especially since by the time S got to HS, our district finally had relented(read got sued) and instituted honors and AP for all grades. When D13 was in 9th grade, there was no honors or anything at all in social studies at any grade or English 9/10 and similar in most other subjects except math track and a few tough classes in 11/12 some subjects. It wasn’t just the academic level that suffered. Discipline problems. Crazy kids acting up and disrupting, oi! Pretty stressful. S is very happy to have friends among all types of kids, but have all his classes with the academic-minded kids. I tell him to imagine college like that, since our state school is very very strong in the programs he might choose and pretty strong as a state school in general, IMHO. He seems to be imagining a repetition of his elementary school experience, which is not very rational. I tell him to imagine just the top quartile of his class at the state school with him, since they admit practically no students who didn’t graduate at least in top quartile.</p>
<p>But… if your D is the type who wants to spend all her time in dorms and sports meals and every activity of her life surrounded by like-minded driven high-achievers and is unhappy otherwise, then she may be right in her assessment of what sort of schools to look at. You have to know your kid and what environment makes them happy. </p>