<p>Thank you so much for the info, @staceyneil. I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>@staceyneil, I love looking up CDSs and have looked up the SAT ranges at all of the schools of interest. My D’s Math score is far too low. This is my concern.
Your D’s hour-per-week study approach sounds much more doable than most of the study plans I read of. My D is simply not going to spend an hour a day studying SAT Math. Her level of resentment would outweigh any other possible benefits.</p>
<p>I was wondering about the Subject Test ranges. My D’s US History score is “average” based on the College Board data but her Literature score is 97th percentile. So, I’m thinking she should not submit the History score. OTOH, Vassar requires two Subject Tests. Perhaps she should study for the US History Subject Test and take it again in the Fall. Vassar is probably too much of a reach, though, so it should probably come off the list. (It’s been on my list, not hers 
)
D’s in a tough position if she cannot bring up her Math SAT score b/c she won’t want to submit. But she is “high-income” applicant and so now I’m afraid it will hurt her not to submit and, as you suggest, look suspicious. Ugh. Very frustrating.
Ideally, she needs to be able to show off her high scores, while not having her low Math hurt her too much. As a “Humanities kid”, I’m hoping this will be possible at some of the schools.
Perhaps this is something she should ask about in her Smith interview next week.</p>
<p>Thanks again!</p>
<p>Congrats @momoftwoboys! Sometimes donut holes are great!
Welcome to all of the new cruisers I missed!</p>
<p>Happy to report that D was invited to an archeological dig with a prof from our local U during July. She worked with a school counselor to contact him. He works on a Native American site in the PNW. She will also be able to work in the lab starting this fall. She is thrilled and it will let her see if she is really interested in Archeology. Of course she had to change her summer schedule around and change her fall class choices (dual enrollment), but it is totally worth it for her. She will go on her first dig in a week and a half and she is thrilled.</p>
<p>What a great opportunity for her mtrosemom!! Congrats! <:-P </p>
<p>@ClubAcres
My takeaway is that at small LACs, and perhaps especially the womens’ colleges, they are not so by-the-numbers. If your daughter is not stating she wants to major in some STEM field, and is clearly humanities-oriented, I think they will be more likely to forgive lower math scores… ESPECIALLY if the CR and W scores -and subject tests- are high.</p>
<p>Math is also my D’s weak point. She found this book quite helpful in raising her math score: <a href=“http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/secrets-to-conquering-the-sat-by-accepted-inc-regina-a-bradley/1111674878?ean=9780985621407”>http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/secrets-to-conquering-the-sat-by-accepted-inc-regina-a-bradley/1111674878?ean=9780985621407</a>
It is MUCH thinner and less daunting than a lot of the prep books. Concise.</p>
<p>My daughter also had to take two subject tests because Wellesley required them. In her junior year she took Spanish and Literature. She got a 790 on the lit, completely surprised by that, but absolutely bombed the Spanish. Like 430 or something! So she was stressing about what to take in the fall to meet the Wellesley requirement. She was in IB classes, so there was no logical AP-class correlation. She needed to self-study for whatever subject she chose. She did several of the practice subject tests on the SAT site and chose World History even though she had not studied that since Freshman year. My D is also not a big studier. She was grudging about studying for anything, but by fall of her senior year she finally found the motivation because she REALLY wanted to get into one of these very selective schools and her GPA was pretty low due to some unusual circumstances earlier. She self-studied World History on a pretty rigorous schedule I made for her after some online research. (I made the schedule but then didn’t nag too much.) I think she spent realistically 4 hours a week or so on this in the fall (the schedule was for more like 10+ hours) and took the test in December, I think. She got a 720, so she was pretty pleased that she’d put in the effort. </p>
<p>If it matters, Wellesley was a super reach for my D. We did not think she had a chance at all. She was shocked when she wasn’t rejected during the Early Evaluation round, deferred to RD. Then she fully expected a rejection, but was waitlisted. Her dream school was really Mount Holyoke, so she was not at all upset, but it just goes to show that you really never can tell. We certainly did not expect her to get that far at such an uber-selective school. If your D loves Vassar, and has other schools she also loves, it doesn’t hurt to leave it on the list.</p>
<p>I’m finding the stress of the day is being seriously relieved by a lovely chilled glass of Yellow Tail Sangria- pretty darn nice for $8.99/bottle.</p>
<p>Mtrosemom congrats!! That is very exciting news. </p>
<p>We have had stress around here the last couple of days too. He wants to apply to Penn, Princeton, Yale… we did the NPCs and we get nothing. A small loan… so nothing. We can’t and won’t pay $60K+ for one of those. So he was mad, and sad… though we had talked about it many times before this was the first time he really listened. So he came up with a couple more schools today. Less of a reach and with a chance of merit. But I am sad and stressed and would really love to win the lottery!</p>
<p>@wrights1994 we leveled with our kids at the start of high school 3 years ago and D finally gets it.
I think the concept is so foreign to most 17-18 years old what 240,000 really is in true dollars. D finally got it when we started doing a imaginary budget. We gave 2500 a month and she gets to actually budget the money. H and I did a rough estimate and we figure this will be the cost of college her first year.
After writing down all her cost and subtracting it out …the stars came out of her eyes and she is much more realistic.</p>
<p>@Hoosier96… I don’t think it really made any sense to him until he saw it on paper. He still has lofty goals, but hopefully he will understand that if does not get merit at some of these schools there is not a tree full of money that will pop up in the backyard. He did start to say that 25% get merit here vs. 3% that get merit there… so we will keep working on it!
We have been honest from the start about how much money H makes and where that puts us as far as need. Now he is wondering how much people make who are able to send their kids to Ivies… </p>
<p>@staceyneil I can’t thank you enough for your generous sharing of info. I am so happy for your daughter (and you!) that she is going to her dream school. Wonderful. We visited MHC (twice, briefly) last summer. So lovely - and such excellence all around.
Very, very interesting about your D’s experience w/ self-studying for the World History Subject Test. You have inspired me to have my daughter try again (studying for it this time) with the US History Subject Test - and perhaps even one more, either World History or French. Studying for subjects she enjoys and is good at, is not nearly as much of a problem as studying subjects she wants to be done with!
I keep thinking she needs to be finished w/ all testing by November - but she doesn’t. Nice to hear your child took the test in December 
Great score!
Thanks again - you’ve helped me so much. And I am going to order that book right now!</p>
<p>Wrights1994 I understand your dilemma as we are in a similar situation and it honestly breaks my heart- I can’t lie. D would love to have the opportunity ( maybe) to at least apply to Cornell and Brown ( not saying she would get in), but I can’t let her apply because if she gets in I will not take out the loans necessary to make up the difference in price and we will not get any FA from these schools, especially once D12 graduates. I had to explain to her that some people make enough or have saved enough to attend schools that total $240,000+, some people take out loans, some people get money from family, and others qualify for financial aid. There are still others who do not want to spend the money especially given younger kids to consider. We do not fit into any of those categories. That being said, I snapped myself back into reality and told myself that there are plenty of affordable schools that would love to have her, and where she will thrive. D mentioned the other day that if if she were allowed to apply to an Ivy, she is not sure anymore that she would as she is scared of the intensity- it made me feel better to hear that. </p>
<p>Agreed that @hs2015mom has the first acceptance on this thread, which calls for…FIREWORKS! (I believe I can scrounge some of those up at the moment…) </p>
<p>@hs2015mom, do you know if your DD’s KU early admit puts her at the front of the dorm selection line? How does that work at KU now? @Wolverine86, I seem to recall that you posted something previously about applying early at some schools to get best pick of dorm rooms. Was that you? DS won’t be back until late Sunday night but I’m wondering about this KU app. He’s not anywhere that has an Internet connection though. </p>
<p>In hindsight, that D’12 applied to an Ivy (and a “public Ivy”) and got accepted into both, and then realizing the value from merit aid her present school was offering, was very beneficial for her.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I would discourage S’15 from applying to an Ivy or uber reach even though I wouldn’t bend over backwards to pay for it if he got in. You just have to lay the real acceptances and offers side by side and make an informed decision. If you don’t get in? then the financial component is moot. Sometimes just knowing that you got in (or not), is reward enough…and better than never knowing at all.</p>
<p>Giterdone sometimes D comments that she may apply to an Ivy just to see if she gets in. If she does not get in that’s fine, but sometimes I wonder where that conversation would go if she happens to beat the odds and get in. </p>
<p>D is doing a " color run" this weekend- some kind of a run where you get colored powder all over you :-? </p>
<p>DS is stuck in the Phoenix airport. So far his flight is delayed by 5 hours due to the weather in Florida. If it doesn’t change again he will get in around 1 am. It’s going to be a very late night here! Hope all our Florida people are weathering the storm okay…</p>
<p>Good luck to your son STEMFamily. I wish him a good trip. </p>
<p>Ugh, @STEMFamily, wishing your S a smooth and safe trip home.</p>
<p>Congrats @hs2015mom on the 1st acceptance on the thread! We have some fireworks that we bought in Canada (not legal in our state) including “The Burning Outhouse”, which used to be the burning schoolhouse until the manufacturers realized what that could lead to. If we set them off this weekend we’ll think of you!</p>
<p>@Mom24boys, very glad for your DH and welcome back to the donut hole–if only we could eat our way out!</p>
<p>@W2BeHome, ouch on the poison ivy, hoping you get some relief.</p>
<p>@mtrosemom, what a cool opportunity, congrats! Don’t people wish that we’d had more opportunities like this when we were HS kids?</p>
<p>@BunHeadMom, thanks for the calendar reminders even though I shudder to see that the Common AP goes live in a month–help!! 
D is going to be away next week, at a National Science Foundation-sponsored program at RPI and I think that at 11 am Wednesday when AP scores are released she’s on a field trip to a rural area of NY, to see a power plant, so may not have phone coverage.
And thanks for the SUNY HESC STEM links upthread. D is thinking that Binghamton and Stony Brook are her smartest financial safeties especially with the possibility of paying no tuition. She was afraid that she might not qualify for it, not being in the top 10% of her class. Her school doesn’t rank but she’s sure that at least 10% of the class has a higher average. But her GC told her that they could write a letter for her ranking her in the top 10% because of the rigor of her courses–and I do know t a number of the students with higher unweighted averages aren’t taking Honors and AP courses like she is.</p>
<p>@twogirls, I know what you mean, why all this stress when they have good safety options! D and her friends actually joke about how they’re burning themselves out with all this work–and then maybe they’ll just end up at SUNY Farmingdale or SUNY Old Westbury. You do know that the Cornell contract colleges are included in the HESC STEM scholarships? I don’t know if it covers the full Cornell in-state tuition or just the standard SUNY tuition, can’t really tell from the website. <a href=“http://www.hesc.com/content.nsf/SFC/NYS_Science_Technology_Engineering_and_Mathematics_STEM_Incentive_Program”>http://www.hesc.com/content.nsf/SFC/NYS_Science_Technology_Engineering_and_Mathematics_STEM_Incentive_Program</a>
But even just the latter would be a nice bite out of it, making it around 22K?</p>
<p>@GoAskDad Thanks for the fireworks! They’re not legal here in Illinois, which makes them especially appreciated ;)</p>
<p>I’ve heard of your acceptance date determining your place in line for housing choice at other schools (Alabama, maybe?) but haven’t heard that about Kansas. I’ve looked around the website a bit, and am still not clear. You can sign a contract starting in September and you choose rooms in the spring. Nothing about priority. I did learn that they’re razing an older dorm to build a couple of new freshman dorms: <a href=“http://housing.ku.edu/new-halls”>http://housing.ku.edu/new-halls</a></p>
<p>It won’t take your S long to fill it out once he gets back; you need to enter the transcript, senior year courses and test scores. D said ‘no’ to the honors college question so that she could skip the essay for now and do it later.</p>
<p>I think I will call HESC on Monday to see how this impacts the SUNY part of Cornell as now I am curious. I suspect that the tuition will be reduced by what a typical SUNY costs and not what the land grant costs. </p>