@Cheeringsection @carolinamom2boys My dad just wants to know the financial aid packages. You have to be patient Dad. I don’t think he gets it. It’s changed so much from 38 years ago(when he graduated). It took him a while to realize you have to start looking at colleges before fall of senior year.
@Undercovermom1 I’m already on the 2020 thread! It’s not too early!
We got financial aid packages in March/April last year. But I already had a good idea what our cost would be. Knew we didn’t qualify for Pell with our EFC. Only surprise was that we qualified for a state grant. And a subsidized loan.
We have academic, band and sports letters, but I don’t know if chorus or orchestra get them. I don’t think so. Our Academic Team and Debate teams are really small and all the kids who are currently on them get academic letters based on grades. No science or math teams. We have some kind of JROTC awards, but they’re not letters. Most of the JROTC leadership qualifies for academic letters though.
We have Tri M (music honor society), Thespians (drama) and Spanish & French honor society as well as NHS.
Traditional val and sal. The last couple of years it’s been down to three kids for two spots. I wish they’d recognise all three, because it’s so close (hundredths of a point difference), and has been between those three for all four years. Twenty-four, otoh, is way too many. And I think last year there was a school in Ohio that had something like 100 valedictorians?
@4kids2graduate I just refer to this as “my college bound parents’ list” most of the time. Ah, anonymity…or the illusion of it, anyway.
Mr Petrichor is completely clueless about college things, and I’m not sure he even knows which schools S has applied to aside from one or two that are high on the list. Since D is down to two, he’s good there. I do all the financials and just tell him about them after the fact. (We’re a team: he makes the money, I spend it. Or, more often, stretch it until it whimpers for mercy.)
Good luck to your sons, @LKnomad and @carolinamom2boys ! Welcome, @greeny8, and congratiulations, @Cheeringsection and @Almondjoy1 !
And hooray, I caught up before my edits expired!
Fun to read about how all the other places do things. We don’t have class rank, but they do recognize “top ten” using some kind of bizarre weighting system (that multiples percentage times honors classes plus ACT score??!!) they never have explained it well to us. I’m pretty sure D will be in top 10 based on everything I know, but it really bugs me to not understand fully.
Class speakers are voted on by the class. I’m CERTAIN D will not try–she is not a person who enjoys public speaking at all.
Back when I was in HS, we had val and sal. (Yale and Harvard bound BTW). Anyway, they were required to have their speeches vetted by the principal. They did, but val then gave a totally different speech, one quite critical of the school! It was quite the scandal.
Welcome @greeny8 !!
D16 never really talks about Varsity letters for academics so I don’t think they have them. Approximately 300 students and they rank with weighted GPA’s. Top 15 are recognized which equates to about top 5%. D is likely going to be Val, the weighting separates out the top kids a bit and I think they determine it after 3rd marking period.
Superlatives used for the senior are chosen each year by the yearbook committee and voted on by all, D’s review of this year’s choices was scathing shrugs
DW was asking about finances last night so we updated the spreadsheet with current scholarship offers and worked out clearer per year and per four year costs. Not complete yet, but the formulas are done so I can just plug in new numbers as we go. Now, the waiting!
This is the article about the multitudes of valedictorians.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/06/03/best-of-class-in-dublin-222-grads-tie.html
I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of recognising kids with all As, rather than high weighted GPA. I know that it would have knocked S out of the running because of 2 Bs in AP classes. He probably would have taken those classes anyway, but I wonder how many kids would avoid anything but easy As? I’m quite sure a lot of my kids’ classmates do that already. Some are in the top 10%, but not the topmost 5 spots. Those kids are pretty competitive with each other, but (at least this year) it’s pretty friendly. Ironically, the girl who will be valedictorian has said she really, really doesn’t want to give a speech. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to see her decline the honor. She’s already been accepted at her first choice school, so she doesn’t need it…
D’s high school experience has been so non-traditional, I sometimes find it hard to relate. Freshman year was a private school that did not meet our expectations, sophomore was our local public school, junior year an online charter school, and senior year still the charter school but all her classes are dual credit at the local community college.
She will be graduating with 33 kids and be a speaker as the Valedictorian, but hardly knows the kids she’s graduating with. The public school from sophomore year had 16 (out of about 300 graduating) Valedictorians last year. The were required to do a rap/dance thing at graduation. D was mortified on their behalf.
I graduated from a large, traditional school in southern California with almost 900 graduates. I loved all my “normal” experiences from being the school mascot to theater to sports. I wish that high school was as meaningful to D as it was for my husband and me, but it wasn’t in the cards. As someone earlier mentioned, my dream now is that college gives her a lot of those traditional experiences, and she loves the next four years. 
@carolinamom2boys : " I think my sons and I actually hurt my husband 's feelings a little bit when we chuckled at his comment."
I think my husband wondered what planet I’d dropped from when he learned I did not know what tailgating was. (Alas, we have translated for each other for 20 years now and counting.)
Our class size is about 400 and we have one valedictorian and one salutatorian. Somehow they calculate the first and second in the class. Kids are upset that the past years its been someone who moved into the district junior year and I guess the way the grades get translated in gives them a bump (?). D is very good friends with the girl who had been #1 for three years and is now #2 due to someone moving in.
My husband has also been on the sidelines in this college search though has been getting much more involved lately. D and I went on a tour of the south last April during her vacation week and hit many of the schools that she is applying to. H wanted to come until he realized that it would be many long hours sitting in the car and he hates that. Then we did a two day trip to Alabama in December to check that out (currently our least expensive option thanks to their generous merit scholarships). H stayed home with our younger son. So he hasn’t seen either of the schools that are at the top of D’s list right now. I think we are going to do a second visit to one of her choices in February for an accepted student day. He may come to that one if we can find someone for S to stay with for a couple days.
It looks like we’re the big PowerBall winners in here! $7!! 
Too bad H spent $20.
There are about 1200 students at our HS (public). They don’t rank, but we have a Val and Sal. They went to Harvard and Princeton. I think only one other student went to an Ivy. Not many do.
Not sure about superlatives. If I had to pick one for S16, it would be “Most Likely to Flee the State for College (and maybe never come back)”.
@RyanG1207 My son didn’t receive a superlative , but it should be " most likely to miss the prom playing Zelda"
I saw someone mentioned that no one hit the powerball jackpot yet? After finally completing FAFSA last night and seeing our EFC, I think it’s time for us to buy some tickets for the next drawing. My DH’s comment after seeing the EFC - “that amount is spread over 4 years, right?”
My H is somewhat involved in this whole process-he is a black history expert, so he knows more out of the box about locations and colleges that D looked at, whereas I’ve had to research about them. But he leaves it to me to track deadlines, applications, order the test scores, etc. He plans to be a part of the family discussion in which D makes her final choice.
But I am the impatient one! I would LOVE it if we got $$ information in the acceptances. I am NOT a patient person! But I realize that it doesn’t work that way, so I am trying to temper my impatience.
$0 on my tickets, but I’ve already got some for the next drawing.
D’s school graduates about 200-- usually everyone gets a superlative in the yearbook. Only one val, one sal-- using weighted GPA- this leads to some scheming to max out AP classes, which can be an issue in that a kid may not take the multi-var calculus (post-AP) in favor of the easier AP stat, or may drop band/choir in favor of AP psych just to get the point boost. I’m glad D chose classes that she was truly interested in rather than playing a numbers game. In the long run, she’ll get more out of taking challenging, interesting classes than being a val or sal.
Regarding Powerball, last night S had two friends over for dinner because one was turning 18. His two friends have terrible home lives due to divorce, fatherless homes, alcohol/drug addictions of mom and unemployment. S told me that while he worries about where he will be accepted, his friends worry about where their next meal is coming from. I said if we won PB I would donate enough money for all of them to get into a top 5 school so they could go together.
@Mysonsdad Go buy some more tickets.
Anybody here with no college savings who will need, as a family, to come up with at least $12K to $15K per year (x4) to pay for their DC16 to attend college? We are trying to find a way with a mix of cash flow, very small student loans, and student jobs (10 hours in school and 35-40 hours in summer). I doubt D16 could obtain any outside scholarships that are stackable (she’s checking on stacking policies at her top schools now). Also, I’m guessing fall 2016 semester full payment is due by June, and have no clue when spring semester payment is due. I’ll be checking on that. No matter what, we have to be ready for that big first bill quickly followed by that second big bill, I assume. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Am I missing anything? Any suggestions?
my experience w/ tuition due dates has been about Aug 5ish for fall term; and Dec 5ish for spring term. Most schools have a payment plan where for a small fee ($25 at my D12’s school) you can spread it out so that you pay in 3 month installments (Aug,Sep,Oct- for fall term; Dec, Jan, Feb for spring term.)
Add: I am considering that our current annual spending on D16 will be absorbed by the coming college spending. So, maybe $4K of the needed $15K is already covered.