<p>S1 is on his way home from college. S2 still has two more days of finals. I am trying to get as much work done as possible at office so I won’t have too much to do after the holidays.</p>
<p>S2 passed his Eagle Scout board of review Monday. I am a Mom of two Eagle Scouts! Woohoo!</p>
<p>An aerie of Eagles! Congratulations to sunnydayfun’s Ss!</p>
<p>@bovertine, the ACT Plan test only goes up to a highest possible score of 32, not 36.</p>
<p>@ mical1, I am beginning to think she may be an SAT girl too but without doing any fomal prep or even practice exams I just wonder how well she could do with the real ACT. When she took it in 7th grade for Duke TIP she scored a composite of 28 so here 's hoping she can grab a few more points when she takes it. I suppose that is the real question: when to take it for the first time when it counts?</p>
<p>*An aerie of Eagles! Congratulations to sunnydayfun’s Ss! * Love this and agree!</p>
<p>D has 2 exams down, 4 to go. I am one of the few people working this week at my office. It’s already feeling like a loooooooooooong week.</p>
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<p>Love this!!! I am going to steal this and post on my FB. :)</p>
<p>saismom – Your D’s PSAT score of 211 corresponds to an SAT score of ~2110. If you look up the SAT ACT concordance [url=<a href=“http://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/7/researchnote-2009-40-act-sat-concordance-tables.pdf]tables[/url”>http://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/7/researchnote-2009-40-act-sat-concordance-tables.pdf]tables[/url</a>], SAT 2100-ish that corresponds to an ACT score of somewhere around 31~32~33, depending on the balance of reading-math-writing sub-sections. That is in line with what the PLAN predicted for her. So it seems that she is equally strong in both tests, not particularly stronger in one or the other.</p>
<p>If your D prefers the SAT over the ACT, then it is fine for her to just take the SAT and skip the ACT altogether. There is no reason whatsoever why she would ever need to take the ACT “for real.” She doesn’t need it for college applications, since her SAT is likely to be as strong or stronger than her ACT. Colleges will equally accept either test. (I know of no exceptions – but you might want to verify this with the specific colleges and programs that interest your D). </p>
<p>Mom’s curiosity is not, IMO, a good enough reason to give up an extra Saturday morning to sit for an unnecessary test!</p>
<p>congrats to Sunnydayson!</p>
<p>2 more days… 2 more days!</p>
<p>^I’m with everyone who just wants this week to be over!</p>
<p>D broke down in tears a little while ago. She has a big Chemistry test tomorrow and doesn’t feel prepared. She played in the school’s Christmas concert which included a couple of cringe-inducing numbers (sick soloists and unprepared replacements), and got left out of her band’s “Superlatives” session–apparently the band leaders go around the room with special words of praise about a quality of each band member, but they forgot all about her.</p>
<p>More congrats to Sunnydayson, and to sunnydayfun–being a scout parent can be a lot of work!!</p>
<p>Oh crepes, that stinks! I hope your D has a better day today.</p>
<p>Oh, crepes - sorry your D is having a tough week! Especially being skipped over for the personal comments in band. :(</p>
<p>Congratulations to sunnydayson! And to you too sunndayfun–two Eagle Scouts! That is quite an achievement.</p>
<p>Crepes, welcome to my life. My kid is almost always the one leaders forget. She’s sadly too used to it. It’s not right that your D was overlooked. </p>
<p>And last night D was sailing along until last night when she hit a roadblock reviewing a particular concept in math. She started screaming “this is the worst birthday ever!” (yes, it was her 15th birthday and I’d tried to make it less painful by giving her a collection of little gifts to cheer her day and surprising her with a specially decorated birthday cake) and railing about the unit she didn’t understand. I urged her to talk to a friend and she started a full out tantrum that reminded me of the less than pretty parts of parenting toddlers. She’s barely talking to H or I today so I can only hope things go well. </p>
<p>I hope your D’s week picks up today!</p>
<p>Congrats sunnydayfun! That’s really exciting. </p>
<p>D.'s exams are going alright, I guess. I checked her English which had a high B at the end of last marking period. Now she has a 99 for this period. So hopefully she’s getting an A for the semester. That’ll make her happy. She is doing very well in her AP chem, I’m pleasantly surprised, considering she didn’t take H. Chem last year and jumped into AP chem. At the beginning of the year we were all very nervous about that. Now she understands the material reasonably well. Needs more practice and review so she can be confident for the exam in May.</p>
<p>Aw, 3girls3cats - sorry your D had such a rough night. And sorry it’s all your and H’s fault. ;)</p>
<p>My S will be wearing an elf costume to school tomorrow and handing out candy canes to kids during passing period.</p>
<p>Seems like many of our kids are on edge. Softball girls has 2 low A’s, she doesn’t test as well as she does in the class, so she is really nervous about keeping those low A’s. Would stink for her if they dip to a B , since she has had low A’s most of the semester. She hasn’t had a " B " yet. I remembering some one commenting that sometimes it is good to get that B early on and out of the way.</p>
<p>Pinot noir- the thought of your son in a elf costume makes me smile. I am sure the kid would be written up for being out of dress code at our public school!</p>
<p>Hang in there 3girls3cats and crepes. Hopefully, they will come home all smiles today!</p>
<p>Sending good thoughts to all the kids finishing up this week and the parents suffering as well.</p>
<p>Here is my D in a nutshell: last night she was looking at her grades and asked for my phone to use its calculator. She is right on the borderline in some classes, so I was kind of glad she was taking the time to figure out what she needed. She then announces to me that all she needs in Chem is an 80. I was all like, What? You just barely have an A - how are you going to maintain that with an 80? And she informs me that she was calculating what she’d need to get an A-minus. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>^^^ That’s my D2. At our HS an A- is a 4.0 in the GPA calculation just like an A, so she figures it’s pointless (pun intended) to bother earning the extra points.</p>
<p>It makes me nervous – what if she miscalculates and ends up with a B+?(**) That earns 3.0 points, same as a B or B-. But she hasn’t missed yet, so I guess I just need to chill. Anyhow, it’s not like there’s anything I can do to change it. The Serenity Prayer is my mantra for dealing with this child!</p>
<p>(**) We have unfortunate experience with this. After trying her best (diligent effort, doing all the HW and attending every help session) D1 finished her first semester of AP Calculus with an 89.97%. One single point, anywhere in the entire semester, even on a single HW problem, would’ve put her over. She asked her teacher about rounding up, leniency on grading, or allowing her do to some extra credit, but he refused. Now that it’s Ancient History we can joke about it, but it caused tears at the time and much angst throughout the college application process.</p>
<p>I am sure 89.97% would be an A in our HS. We don’t have A+/- . AP classes have a 1 GP weighting , so a B in that class is still a 4.0. Many parents have failed to realize that the Georgia Hope ( free tuition in state) rules have changed and these classes don’t have the same weighting any more.</p>
<p>D1 received her first ever A- in college this semester. That 4.0 is gone never to return : )
She handled it well. I am relieved that she was OK and it happened to D1 before D2.</p>
<p>There is no rounding up at D’s school either. Last year, she missed getting a flat A in a class by .2 - so like a 92.8 I think. Not as close as yours, mihcal, but still it made me crazy, and the + or - counts in the GPA calculation here. Oh well, nothing I can do to change it either and thankfully D was not particularly disturbed by it.</p>
<p>Gibson, maybe that A- is a good thing, and she can relax a little, but not toooo much?</p>
<p>Yeah, Suzy I agree. imagine the pressure senior year… We can now tease her a little that she is no longer the " perfect" daughter. My h jokes that it is because she now has a serious boyfriend! ( he got an A- too! )</p>
<p>Our HS grades assignments and tests numerically - a paper might be worth 40 points so is graded 35 out of 40, for instance. A homework assignment might be worth 10, and so on. So the result is a number.</p>
<p>What kind of confuses me is why that number is converted to a letter grade (in our case, A+ on down) so it can then be converted to a numeric GPA. </p>
<p>You take an exact number, assign a grade based on a range (like above - 89.8 is very close to 90.1 but one is an A- and the other is an A, or whatever), then make it a number again.</p>
<p>Never understood it, but I went to a hippie progressive Quaker high school where we got page long evaluations from our teachers every trimester and no grades at all. :)</p>