@Ynotgo yes, it is community service in the themed houses. As well of course, as in the greek system. I just thought it was great that the community service for the pancake house, was feeding and engaging with the other students on the weekends. I had always heard lovely things about UPS but had never been there myself. Which is true for Western as well.
@eandesmom UPS looks like a nice school. I just browsed online, first time I’ve paid attention to it.
@eandesmom Thanks for the WWU tour report!
Glad to hear of some long lists of schools. It’s not just us. I mentioned 12 before, but that’s just what I think we’ll end up applying to if I had to guess. 19ish on the list right now. We’ve visited 5, 3 planned for the summer, and at least 2 more in the fall…and that will have to be it before apps go in.
@MotherOfDragons #5030 The SAT scoring also changed in 1995, so if you and DH took it before then, you get to bump up your scores according to the table at https://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/equivalence/sat-individual
@Gator88NE I took a Science Fiction Lit class at Texas A&M from a great teacher (since passed away). We read a bunch of short stories from the Norton Anthology of Science Fiction along with several novels. A fair bit of time spent on Asimov and the Laws of Robotics. It was a great class.
Texas A&M, although mostly known for its conservative bent, has a great collection of original SF manuscripts and fan literature in its library (including Michael Moorcock and George RR Martin). It also hosts a pretty great science fiction convention (at least when I was there). We got Orson Scott Card to be a guest when I was there, so all my older Card books are signed. The short story “Unaccompanied Sonata” is the best thing he’s ever written.
I’m enjoying lots of the other SF comments here. I loved The Martian, too. Fairly recently I’ve liked Ready Player One (fun for a kid of the 80s), Station Eleven, the first 1/2 to 2/3 of Seveneves, and some best of the year collections. I also spent a lot of time reading all the Game of Thrones books; not great literature, but page turners. I’m also a big Robert Sawyer and David Brin fan from years back. Agree that Heinlein’s women are not convincing; I like Joe Haldeman’s women in general.
I’m reading Icelandic sagas now, because we are going there for vacation in August.
I need to read All the Light They Cannot See; DH says its great. He also highly recommends the Wright Brothers book.
@snoozn Ian M Banks – sounds like I might like that; should I start with an early book in the series? I’ve read other John Scalzi and liked them.
To tie it back in with this thread, I’ve told DS that he should find out who the really great, do not miss professors are at his college and to take their classes even if it doesn’t particularly apply to his major. Science Fiction Lit, Philosophy of Art, and History of Science were those classes for me.
D just got an email from Carleton College for an all expense paid fly in visit this fall. Any thoughts? D is not in NMF range but had a good ACT score.
She is not really interested in LACs but if she should give it a thought then it might be worth investigating? We have a high EFC and I have not yet investigated their merit aid yet… It may not even be in range with what we need.
We have family in the MN/ND area so that would be a pro for sure.
Edited to add: it was an invitation to apply for the fly in. Lol. Big difference.
S has 13 on his list, 14 if you count one twice because of a separate application to a different college at that UC.
So, as near as I can guess, that’s 3 safeties (none 100% though), 3 matches (though some of them sound like reaches), and 8 reaches. He could add a couple more UC campuses to have some more matches without having to add more essays.
@carachel2 Careleton does not offer merit aid. Run their NPC as every school is different with respect to what it thinks you can pay.
How consistent are teachers with grading? We have couple of teacher whose grading is all over the place. Some tests and reports they grade very harsh (60-70% scores for most) with no explanations and kids struggle to catch up. I hate the catch up game given lot of ECs have state and national tournaments in April/May.
@CaucAsianDad Interesting. I’ve heard “Dyscalculia” before but never heard of “a statistical significant disparity” diagnosis. My D will move on to AP Stats rather than AP Calc. If she cannot raise her ACT math score, we just have to hope and pray that some colleges don’t mind the extremely lopsided subscores. (but like your daughter, she scored well on science.)
@carachel2 If the schedule works out, why not take the free offer? and visit Macalester while there as well?
I looked at Carlton on Naviance (for our school) and found it to be too high in “reach” side.
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=316
It is a 100% need met school so merit awards may be small/competitive.
I had Macalester on our list for a while as I liked what I read on the web and then decided MN too north, too cold.
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1789
@RightCoaster My D’s current favorite school is also a safety. It’s really nice going in to this knowing that she may be happy at a safety. Their minds change (umm, mine’s a girl), so we’ll see where it ends up come November.
When I used to read, I loved SF. I have a signed, personalized copy of “I, Robot” (I think that’s the one that’s signed) by Isaac Asimov. Can’t wait to read something other than CC some day.
(I know, boys change their minds too 
)
Great scores from so many kids. Congratulations to all! I need my son to “fix” all his scores lol. I don’t expect that to happen but a little bump here and there would be really really good.
@2muchquan. What do you mean by pseudo-superscore?
@jmek15 thanks for posting the naca link, it reminded me to look and see who is planning to be at ours in the Fall. Sadly, right now it’s only one school of medium interest but I’ll check back later and perhaps it will have expanded. I can hope.
Interesting conversations at my house last night. Had dinner club at my house (my sorority sisters lol) and several class of 2016 kids in the mix. Very interesting to see who got in where, who was waitlisted, etc. and the decision making process for each kid post acceptance. Some interesting and surprising results from our flagship.
@snoozn I am cracking up at your thoughts on S18’s GF.
Books. I love to read but do not seem to find the time like I used to. When I do, I tend to devour.
A recent favorite was Boys in the Boat. Granted, I have a strong connection to this book but absolutely loved it, H is reading it now and S19 is up next.
@thermom I loved Jonathan Strange & Mr, Norrell! But yes, it is massive.
@greeny8 I enjoyed The Nightingale but also found it very disturbing and difficult to read at times.
@gator88ne my H would love that book! So would S19…. I did get through Stranger in a Strange land but didn’t love it, possibly for the same reasons as MoD but at this point I cannot recall.
I will go through bouts of “real” books and then mindless junk. Some that has a historical fiction aspect to it, like
@jmek15 I have a lot of Philippa Gregory and loved The Paris Wife * and am a big fan of Katie Morton. Historically a big fan of Jasper Fforde, Anita Shreve, Ian McEwan , Stephanie Kallos Sing them Home, Broken for You/i], adore John Shors Beside A Burning Sea and [the Wishing Treesand Jodi Picolit though the latter can annoy me at times. And then re is some that well, is total mindless junk. I used to read a lot of the kids’ books (Enders Game, HP, Twilight, Percy Jackson, etc) but they are doing less reading for fun and more for school so we discuss those books instead and I am not up on my YA options. I am about to red * The Martian now that H is done with it. I need some new books though so am checking out what everyone is posting!
Math stinks. That is absolutely me. I honestly do not recall my own SAT scores, which is a big frightening. Back in the day we had what was called the WPC (Washington Pre College) test and you could use that, in state, versus the SAT. I did much better on the WPC so used that. I stopped taking math after my sophomore year in high school which really appalls me now. 3 out of our 4 kids will have taken significantly more math than I. I can help with the history and English, H, the engineer, gets all science and math related items. My 8th grade Algebra teacher killed the subject for me (and many of my friends) and it truly is unfortunate. I didn’t hate it prior to that. I went out of my way to make sure I didn’t have to take any in college and managed to pull it off.
On random other notes
@RightCoaster we were very impressed, it’s a lovely lovely school. I did not realize until just before we went that it was a CTCL, not sure when it was added but that was a nice surprise. I’d always heard good things about it but zero direct experience.
@brindlegreyhound, my pleasure.
@ynotgo that’s a great idea with the “do not miss” professors. Mine was our Russian Lit professor. Loved him so much (and fought with the hundreds of others to get a spot in his 350 or so seated classes) that I took two classes from him.
@carachel2 I’d run the NPC and if it seems remotely in range, then apply for the fly in. But if she really isn’t interested in LAC’s it may not be worth your time.
@srk2017 our teachers are a bit all over the board as well. S is falling behind a bit right now between ECs and testing and assures me it’s all fine and will show as caught up but I am silently freaking out a tad.
Thanks everyone. We will talk about it later. The small class feel of her IB program has her literally marking through every school that advertises that quality as a good thing lol!
The best part of the safety schools my son is interested in is that they are significantly less expensive to attend than the 2 Boston based schools. 2 safeties in Northern New England might give him some $$ based on a few friend’s results this year. I doubt we’d get any $$ from the 2 Boston schools, so at full pay we are talking 65k per year. Yikes. The safeties might be closer to 30-40k per year with some some merit $$.
We are also thinking of selling our houses in Maine and Boston burbs and buying a place in VT, perhaps becoming residents there in a few years. That would enable us to get in state tuition for a year or 2. My younger son loves UVM, so if we could somehow convince him to go there we could save a bundle. It would be a wonderful plan. Sadly, I don’t think either kid is going to end up there and $500,000 is going to vanish into thin air. I may resort to bribing my kids to attend the cheap school Is that bad?
@srk2017 I hate the catchup game also. For us, sometimes it’s just teachers who aren’t on top of data entry for the online grade portal. And, at the start of a semester, grades fluctuate a lot because the denominator is still small.
It’s really tough to be out of school for ECs and make up work. Our school marks kids unexcused absent unless its an official school trip. So, we have to decide whether to call him in sick for things. I decided to tell the school he had “an appointment” for his multivariable tests and UC interview, because those would have been unexcused if I’d given more details.
We have some pretty inconsistent graders in our English department. Last year’s English teacher didn’t comment at all on most essays and just wrote letter grades at the top. I don’t think she felt she had time to read essays since she was busy coaching Mock Trial and the online student newspaper. Anecdotally, some bias against boys and STEM kids, too. She also yelled at the class a lot. I think the two B+ grades S got from her were a good learning lesson about how to deal with that later in life. But, I don’t think her averages were 60-70%; I think she just gave most everyone some sort of B. He thinks he can do well at AP English Lang and AP Lit to help show that those grades were flukes.
Some of our AP science and history classes have average test grades around 60-70% and little to no curve, but those grades don’t seem arbitrary and DS does fine. The school pushes some kids into AP classes who probably aren’t ready for that level.
I would never say no to an all expenses paid trip to anywhere. You never know what you’ll discover. Even if the school is a wash there are probably other things there to see. Just make sure she knows going in if this is just for fun (because it’s not affordable) or it’s a serious contender so she’ll know how to frame it.
Once when we lived in Osaka we took the subway all the way to the end of the line just for syits and giggles. We discovered an abandoned world’s fair site and spent the afternoon exploring it .
Any time I can go see the world I do, with the exception of places that might cut off my head for being a woman improperly dressed. Those are off my list for now.
Teachers having ethnic or gender biases is really bad. It even shows up in ECs like Science Olympiad where all results are combined to determine the overall winner and one or two kids out of 15 can impact team chances. I hear these stories from my S and makes me mad/sad, but I tell him that teachers are also human so entitled to make mistakes!
@greeny8 I read both I Am Pilgrim and All the Light We Cannot See. Both are great books. I Am Pilgrim is terrifying and, at times, graphicly violent. You’ll need a breather after those two. A good, lighthearted read that I really liked was Attachments by Rainbow Rowell.
@Ynotgo For Science Fiction, have you read “The Breach” by Patrick Lee? It is a great trilogy. I love SF! I had no idea that class was offered at A&M or I would have taken it. Your S’s schedule sounds really tough. I hope he can work it out.
@IABooks Anna K. is a tough read. I also love P&P. One of my favorites, too. I loved The Martian.
@mdcmom I also love Terry Pratchett. When I read his last Tiffany Aching book, I had a tear in my eye because I knew it was his last. If you like Terry Pratchett try Jasper Fforde if you haven’t read the Thursday Next series.
@2muchquan Congrats on the great ACT score!
@snoozn I’m also reading the Silo series!
@MotherOfDragons I loved Pattern Recognition. William Gibson is great. The Raven Boys is great. The author was in town recently but I couldn’t go see her. Bummer. Have you read any Connie Willis?
@jmek15 Edith Wharton’s house is gorgeous. If you haven’t already, you should book a tour at one of the other houses to see how ahead of the times she was in design. It is a really fascinating tour. Feed by MT Anderson is so weird but good. It is scary to think that is where we are headed. That is a great ACT score! Congrats!
@thermom Johnathon Strange and Mr. Norrell is a slow read. That one took me forever too. I want to see the series that came out last year. It is supposed to be fantastic.
@payn4ward I love audiobooks! I subscribe to Audible and also get them from the library. I even have favorite narrators. DS and I were super disappointed when they changed the narrator for the Percy Jackson series halfway through the Greek/Roman crossover series.
@eandesmom I love these tour reports. Kinda wishing that the Pacific Northwest was on S’s radar.
So, maybe this is why S doesn’t have solid list. I really need to stop reading books for fun and start reading the Fiske Guide. Seriously though, I am reading Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari right now and it is fascinating. So glad I’m not a millennial.
@eandesmom What I have seen of the schools listed as ‘superscore-ing’ are schools that do a normal superscore (best score for each section, recompute composite score), and schools that do something a little different. Some will accept your best score for each section, but will not recompute the composite score, while other(s) will superscore for admission purposes, but not for scholarship consideration.