@2muchquan my son reads The Week magazine most mornings while eating breakfast. He feels like he knows a little about everything. I like the house of the week section.
@2muchquan my s reads The Week every morning. It is a good mix of information. I like the house of the week.
Never heard of the week. Will have to investigate. My girls and I watch foxnews or cnn every morning before school. It’s become such a nice routine and keeps them up to date with what’s going on in the world. And the every night at 5:00 the five is always on.
@greeny8 Wow, my kids barely have time for breakfast in the morning. Maybe this summer, though. I’m thinking BBC-type news, though.
Gonna check on The Week @jedwards70, I’ve not heard of that.
i’m vaguely sure that it means that since there was a huge push for schools to offer it free in school that the initial test takers involved a large contingent of kids who arent college bound and wouldnt have taken either test in the first place.
i have no idea if in school testing was common in other parts of the country, but afaik, this was the first year our district offered in school free PSAT testing that was mandatory. one of the reasons was because it was one of the choices for a grad requirement and since PARCC was so horrendous, they needed alternatives Here you can be proficient on the PARCC, PSAT, SAT, ACT, Military one or do a portfolio, but you need to “pass” at least one to graduate.
so the VoTech path kid (not that they arent smart too, its just not the target population) tested right next to the Ivy bound kid, therefore dragging down averages.
anyway, thats my understanding.
@CA1543 Would you mind sharing the name of the site you use to track/organize college essays?
I feel like I’ve had a second full time job trying to figure all this college stuff out for my D, and yet I still feel woefully behind! Then I tell myself that I’ll be an expert by the time my D who is in 5th grade (I refuse to calculate her HS graduation year, lol) is going through this process… except I’m sure it will have completely changed by then.
Wow, this thread moves fast, but I have to say, it’s a haven compared to some of the nuttiness going on in other sections of this board. 
@2muchquan My younger kids watch CNN student news. http://www.cnn.com/studentnews
My dd listens to TV5Monde (that isn’t helpful for you you, but I get the BBC desire. We have very interesting discussions about the different spin on the news between our news reports here and Monde’s reports)
Wait. There are daily news sites, apps, emails? I don’t think S has found those between the latest games and weird podcasts he watches :))
He does a great job with current events when part of an assignment but doesn’t generally make an effort to stay up on them. And breakfast is usually eaten in the car on the way to school since he’d rather sleep an extra five minutes than make time to eat.
@thermom The site is College Essay Organizer. And, I feel the same way as you some days. One day, you have it under control. Then someone on here may mention something that makes you feel like you’ve been wasting your time in one area, and you need to start looking at something else. CC will drive you crazy, just realize if you’ve put any thought into a college destination by this time, you are way ahead of the game. You’ll be FINE! :)>-
Oh, and thanks for the NYT suggestion @CT1417. I missed that. My kids would sound so impressive if they could tell people they read the NYT!
@thermom – Someone else actually posted it up thread – it is: http://collegeessayorganizer.com/ I am just at the beginning of checking out how it works and might help us with this extensive process. Once the colleges release their essay questions for this application cycle (should be by Aug. 1 I believe - some have already such as the UCs) it will be helpful to see what the organizer indicates to do – but college websites & common app will of course be most important.
I don’t know what DS’17 reads, but he seems to be way more on top of the latest political statistics than I am. He’s a big Sanders fan and is frustrated that he can’t vote. I’m not in the same camp as he is but it is so much fun to have these discussions.
His older two siblings tended to not talk politics but science and geeky stuff, so this is different and satisfying, especially for DH who doesn’t have the science background I do. (But I miss my mathy dinner conversations! In a couple of weeks I’ll have that back for bit :D/ )
“My daughter’s school ran a fire drill in the middle of her AP Stats test!!”
You have GOT to be kidding me! I’d be furious. Incompetence makes me koo koo for cocoa puffs. Those poor kids!
@WhereIsMyKindle I reply to each of the posts here, then choose “save draft”, then keep scrolling forward after I cut and paste so I can remember all the things I wanted to reply to. Then I post the comment once I get to the end-all of it is saved in the reply window.
The only news on my feed for FB is hyper-local from the county paper and the sheriff’s office (they are excellent about posting anything from traffic accidents to why is that naked man running through my backyard).
After listening to a Freakonomics podcast about how news is really just mostly entertainment because you can’t do anything about it and it tends to depress you and skew your world view, we don’t watch it at all anymore. Sometimes we’ll watch Squawk Box on CNBC for the financial stuff, and we listen to POTUS and Fox on Sirius XM occasionally when we’re road-tripping, but most of the time I avoid the news. We do watch science and technology “news” all the time, though. Love that!
No news is good news, and if the news is bad enough to make it through my filter, it’s pretty bad and it’s something I can do something about (like a tornado warning and everyone goes to the basement).
D17 was paging through one of the giant college books this morning and smiling about some of the stuff-yay! She still likes Drexel, and the way the book described it she was like “yeah, this looks promising”. Since her dad is always flying to Philly for work, he’s planning on taking her with him on one of the trips so they can go see it.
Can’t…keep…up…
Re: news…
DS20 reads the Skimm and the sports section of the NYTimes.
DD17 only gets entertainment news plus whatever she chooses to pay attention to when I have NPR on in the car.
DD reads stuff mainly from social feeds of friends. However she is very well informed of current events. I am suspect of the news sources since she has some radical conservative views. She mainly views news when I have CNN/MSNBC/Fox on. I am a news junkie so those are all the TV I watch
S reads BBC news on his phone. He likes the more international perspective. He’s also a fan of the FiveThirtyEight politics website. We don’t watch much TV news, but do still get a hard copy newspaper.
Question of the day: will you require your child to work in college? Why or why not?
I’m still struggling with the answer to this one. D currently works and has worked all through high school.
We don’t watch TV either. Our tiny TV shows 5 or so channels as we canceled cable and it’s mainly hooked to PS4. We really need better TV even for gaming.
I get my news on FB feed and on radio NPR/BBC in the car.
Since a third of my FB friends are scientists/physicists, I learn about who won Nobel prize first thing in the morning in October on FB.
@itsgettingreal17 I’m hoping S will get some work study and work/do paid research during summer to be responsible for some of the college cost. S has never worked before.
It would only make sense if work does not interfere too much with study. If one cannot graduate on time or get very low grades because of work, that would not make sense at all.
If one cannot find time for socializing/parties because of work, I have no sympathy.
@itsgettingreal17 As for working in school, it may depend on the school. I would like her to, but I also want her to have a good experience, academically, right out of the box. Also, since she will be a science major, research opportunities will take precedence. TBD.
Holy Crap! Some of you commented on this thread. I learned a lot, and recommend it for those who will have more than one in college at the same time: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1882287-what-is-each-kids-real-efc-when-two-are-in-school-at-the-same-time.html
Interesting about all the news sources.