DD and DS go to an out of district school that’s about 45 minutes to an hour drive each way. DD got her license shortly after she turned 16 (she was tired of catching rides with her dad on his motorcycle and having to find a place to stash her helmet and riding gear not to mention riding a motorcycle in Texas is very hot!). Now DD drives herself and DS to school and assorted ECs as she is able. DS turned 16 this week but will hold off getting his license until after spring break. His insurance will be much more and I want to put it off as long as possible. Next year he will be responsible for driving himself and his younger brother to school and EC’s as available. I swear it was just last year I bought them a Little Tykes car for Christmas, and last week they got their LegoLand driver’s licensees and now I’ll have two teenage drivers! I’m so not ready for this!
It’s like you can never get a break. IL now requires 6 hours of adult driving lessons at age 18+, it appears.
I didn’t even think of teen-driver car insurance. Though, I do remember that if your teen driver goes away for college, your insurance might go down for the duration. Plus, there’s some kind of student-in-good-standing discount, I think.
Yes, the social has really ramped up since DS got his license. It has been very good for him to be able to make his own choices about where and with whom he hangs out. I have been told that his car insurance will decrease when he is off at school without a car. DH and I have already told him no car freshman year. He will have one for later years only IF he has an internship/co-op that makes it necessary.
Yes, there are discounts for good student drivers. There are several ways to qualify. One is to have a 3.0+ GPA, another is to be in the top 20 or 25% of your class. I think there is a third way, I can not remember.
We had to submit D’s report card a few months before renewal time each year. This is the last year she will qualify, because she graduated college in May and is no longer a student. Her discount basically was equal to the higher premiums she earned from getting a ticket 5 years ago. The ticket will fall off at the next renewal and the good student discount will go away.
S is a safer driver and likely won’t get a ticket. He also doesn’t qualify for a good student discount right now. I told him if he does get a ticket, then he is paying the premium difference unless his grades go up enough to get the discount.
When D14 headed off to college across the country, we were able to take her off of our insurance all together. When she comes back for Christmas break and summers, she doesn’t have to go back on our insurance since she is just here “temporarily” but doesn’t “live” here (according to our insurance agent). This past summer (following her freshman year) she ended up staying in New York and working two jobs on campus, so she only came home for 2 weeks at the end of the summer. I think if she had been home for the entire summer, working and driving daily, then we probably would have added her back to our policy - even though our insurance agent told us a year ago that we would not have to.
We do keep her AAA membership active though, since she routinely rides in other students cars. I feel better knowing that if she is out and about in a vehicle, she (and friends) can get assistance any time day or night if needed.
@Booajo don’t worry about not having asked for LOR’s yet, I haven’t had one request yet and I will end up writing about 50 in the next few months.
@LKnomad Congratulations to your S.
S got his license a few days after his 16th birthday and has been driving 1.5 years now.
On another note, S has been studying so much for the two SAT subject tests next week and although he is doing well, he isn’t getting the results on the practice tests he was hoping for. I feel so bad for him because for the last two months he has given up so much just to study.
@Mysonsdad – Your son should remember that the curve on the practice subject tests is generally harder than the curve on the actual tests. Also, stating the obvious, he should note each question that he gets wrong on the practice tests and look at all those questions (and answers) one more time the day before the actual test.
Methinks that his hard work will be rewarded.
@Mysonsdad Sometimes we get nice surprises. DD took SAT only once. Her practice SAT scores were much below her actual score. Much, much below. I guess she was bored taking practice SAT over and over again and stopped focusing.
Ooh, excellent idea!
Thanks @Ballerina2016 and @AsleepAtTheWheel, like he says, he is in too deep now to give up.
@Mysonsdad good to know she isn’t as behind as I thought. Just bugs me because she is not taking responsibility for this or much else it feels like.
Relatively uneventful ‘back to school’ this morning for S16.
When we’d go to these things for my wife’s girls (now 37 and 34 y.o.) whom we raised together, we were among the youngest parents there. Now, this being our last ‘back to school’ about twenty years later, we’re among the oldest parents there. Oh well. I keep thinking that I look younger than my actual age, but last week I was given the senior citizen discount at the local movie theater even though I didn’t ask for it and I’m not old enough to qualify for it. My wife, who was not given the discount, has a smug smile on her face.
S16 is only taking five courses, and he has some excellent teachers and a couple of very good teachers. So no complaints. It’s hard to believe that we’re rounding third base and heading home with this whole high school thing, but in fact that is the case.
P.S. @Mysonsdad – The final piece for your son is to walk into those tests with all the confidence in the world, i.e., that there is no way that he will fall short of his goals. Best of luck, but no luck is required.
One other thing to keep in mind with subject tests…there are some that have somewhat forgiving curves (not all though). My son came home discouraged a few months ago after taking two subject tests in May. He knew he had missed several things on the physics exam and really did not feel confident about it. I didn’t show him the curves before hand, but when he got home after the test and was quite discouraged, we looked at the old curves online and he was relieved to see he could miss quite a few and still get a decent score (physics is one of those with a better curve). That decreased his anxiety somewhat while waiting for the scores - and to his surprise, he scored MUCH better than he thought!
I am hoping all fall testing turns out well…good luck to your DC!
Another senior year right of passage event checked off the list. It all went really well so I think we can put this one in the “great high school memories” column. I am so glad that several of these families also have kids in my DD’s class. 
Well, the confidence regarding my D16’s apps was short-lived. I was reminded in another CC thread of the point made in The Gatekeepers that an applicant has a better chance of admission if the adcoms can easily confer a positive nickname on the applicant (if all app aspects are also competitive). Like, maybe, Rodeo Girl or…(can’t remember any). I have my own personal nicknames for my girl drawn from her positive qualities, but now I’m questioning what name/tagline her applications would inspire in an adcom’s mind. It doesn’t help that we have NO IDEA what the LORs or GC report say about her. If anything, maybe “Urban Do-gooder” comes across in her apps (all but one submitted already).
I do believe she’ll be admitted to her top choice and it’ll be financially do-able. So, my alarm is probably moot. However, I’m not sure how her reaches will play out, and for those, a solid image conveyed by the app would probably help.
So, given that some of your DCs are still creating their apps, they might want to keep this in mind. Apparently it can really help to inspire a positive nickname as shorthand for the adcoms.
Survey: What is a great nickname for your DC as an applicant? Why? 
I believe my DD will have a nickname involving her sport. She has been involved in this sport for so long that it is part of her identity. Especially because this is not a common sport.
So we are going to do a big, high risk, experiment. My son has decided to apply to two schools that are in the top 5 on the US News report. Needless to say both these schools have less than a 6% admit rate and applicants in the 10s of thousands. My son has the stats, without question. He has fair ECs but his ECs are limited by his disability of autism. It is very hard to get involved with things when you have a disability that affects your ability to socialize. Without this disability, who knows…
So we talked to an adcom from one of the two schools that he is interested in and asked specifically about disclosure. Would it help or hurt. Could it explain the lack of ECs. Would it cause harm. Her reply was “I cannot understand something I don’t know.” Then she talked about the school’s disabilities program with quite a bit of pride. We asked the best way to disclose the info. She told us that my son could disclose himself by writing about his disability on the application under the place where it asks if there is anything else they should know, or the counselor can do it. After a lot of thought my son has decided to go for full disclosure by adding a letter from his IEP class carrier. This will allow a full disclosure from someone who knows his disability well, and can talk about how his disability has changed over the course of high school. He has gone from someone who tried very hard to avoid people, to someone with friends and outside activities. Socializing took a tremendous amount of work on my son’s part. He made a conscious choice to go outside of his comfort zone these last 2 years and it shows. But it just doesn’t show up on the application. In reality, his school life has been somewhat miraculous. He went from a self contained special ed classroom as a young child to the top of his class at his high school. But as the adcom said, she cannot understand something she doesn’t know. So he is going to let her (or him) know.
He only plans to disclose at these two schools, both schools have a very small shot for admission, and he knows this, so the thought is, what does he have to lose? We have a meeting to speak to the council on Monday morning, and then he and I will approach the SpEd staff at the high school and give them free reign to say what they want to say. Total honesty. Total disclosure. Fingers crossed.
I know that several of you on this board have kids on the spectrum. Any thoughts? Anyone else going to disclose?
I think your strategy is excellent. You and DS16 have my deep admiration.
It makes perfect sense to me. Good luck to your son.
I don’t know about a nickname-it never even occurred to me. But I call her “the girl who signs up for everything”. Not sure what colleges would say.
Well let’s hope my son’s nickname does not turn out to be “the one with autism”. Just saying.
At one interview, the interviewer asked him how to pronounce his name, which is a strangely spelled foreign name. When he said, it sounds like X, she explained, you mean like [food name from the same culture as my son’s name]! My son said, yes, exactly like that, we eat it every weekend!
So I assume there my son will be know as [foreign food name].