D gets a weekly email from the University of Portland offering free application fee, quick admissions decision, and early scholarship consideration. We sent them a respectable ACT score, but nothing spectacular. They encourage her to visit, so they don’t seem to realize she has visited. Too bad she’s no longer interested.
S has unsubscribed from a lot of college emails. There’s one he’s applying to that tracks interest, so he subscribed to that on their website and clicks links in their emails.
D got a frisbee from Augustana this week. She spent a week there last summer. Very pretty campus. She liked the dorm and really liked the food. Nice to get her out of her high school bubble and meet Chicago and downstate kids. No interest in applying.
Yikes, it’s weird to hear someone say that algebra in 8th grade is late by accelerated standards, when that’s what the accelerated kids do here and we’re happy when they can do that. Ah well, we love our school anyway. Sometimes all the APs that other schools have sound cool, but the pressure that seems to often follow doesn’t sound so cool. So I guess I’ll be content where we are 
.
School budget vote tonight. State law limits our budget increases tightly (last year we were only allowed an 0.02% increase even though many costs had increased 
) and this is the first year we’ve been able to try to replace a couple of key teaching positions that were lost. Hoping it passes.
@eandesmom Funny, NAU (Northern Arizona for those of you that aren’t familiar) is my daughter’s #1 stalker school. Why, I have no clue. She really wants out of the mountain west, so it’s not going to happen. But Flagstaff is lovely and there are many varied landscapes within reach, some are even green. Snow happens.
@jedwards - D17 gets a fair amount of USC spam too, but not for dance, as she has gotten off the dance intensive circuit and doesn’t intend to major in it.
Her first stalker (since Freshman year) who continues to show her the love is Wash U St. Louis. How they found her at that stage is a mystery. Her chances of getting in are as poor as anybody else’s.
The paper love bombing was intense after the sophomore PSAT and has become much more selective after the junior PSAT.
We’ll see what happens after the SAT results come back.
@262mom - my daughter’s 6th grade math teacher was truly life changing. D17 went from “I’m just not a math person” to heading a math tutoring program.
Thanks @Ynotgo I’ll check those out.
@mdcmom Your school sounds similar to ours, and I’ve also decided to be content. If it helps, our engineering focused tour guides have talked about needing to repeat required math classes instead of passing out through AP or CLEP. I’m sure it varies, but I don’t think S will be “behind” because he doesn’t have the same accelerated math options.
No freebies from colleges here either, but I don’t have access to S’s email to see what he’s ignoring.
@mdcmom, in some of the schools around here, high achieving kids can start algebra in 6th or 7th grade (with grades already counting towards their HS GPA, which sounds super stressful to me). In our school, a very small number of students take a test to accelerate in a similar way, and I used to worry that my kids would be “behind” by following the standard curriculum, but I sensed that DS felt stress/pressure around taking the test so I discouraged it. In retrospect, I have no doubts or complaints about my kids’ math education, and don’t think there was any need to start earlier (though I know of kids who have done so and thrived). I guess what I have learned is that there can be many different paths to successful outcomes (and would rather have a good teacher than an accelerated curriculum if I had to choose one or the other).
My DD got a personalized flyer from University of Oregon. It had her first name printed on a license plate on the front and a personalized link to get more info. Was something like firstnameoregoninfo@oregon.edu. I can’t remember exactly but thought it was quite odd. She also gets a lot of mail from UChicago. I wonder if she’ll start getting more now that we got her ACT scores?
Gosh, it has been so long since I just read a book for pure pleasure that I can’t remember what title it actually was. I have enjoyed going through books with my dd that I would never have read on my own.
Fwiw, we also both love short stories. Classic shorts has a good list. http://www.classicshorts.com Quick reads, but the profundity of some them can haunt you for days.
@BusyNapping - I also like Sanderson. I am reading the Mistborn books because I just finished the books with Waxmillian.
wierd here to say Algebra is delayed as that is the standard upper math track here in 8th as well. A small group has it in 7th but it’s really really small and all out of a special, self contained program. Algebra, as well as Geometry in MS can count for the HS transcript, but does not have to. You decide your senior year if you want to carry them over. Most kids on those tracks don’t need to so only do so, if they help the GPA.
@mamaedefamilia funny about NAU. It is a bit of a stalker school here too though we have never demonstrated interest.
All the schools we’ve visited so far have become stalkers. UVM is quickly turning into one but once interest is expressed I expect that. There are a bunch of others but a lot of them are quite random and all over the country. Idaho in general seems to be all over S, as is Linfield. Linfield has been on and off the list as a safety but S really hates their mailings lol.
D’s list is currently 19 schools and seems to hover around that number with one school coming off and another going on. A few we’ve barely looked into, so I’m not sure how “on the list” they really are.
ACT scores have still not come in. Her adviser told her that the tests with accommodations usually take longer, so I’m not sure how long we’ll have to wait. I don’t know why that is. She had extra time (and maybe a separate room – can’t remember), but the exact same test as everyone else. Oh well, I’d much rather she get the extra time and have to wait for scores!
Her stalker school remains Case Western Reserve. She had some others but they’ve all been unsubscribed. Case remains because they are actually on her list. I’m so glad we set up a separate “college email.” That way her regular email doesn’t get gunked up and we can both access it. Guess who checks it the most? 
@eandesmom Great reviews! I’m glad your S found 2 “hat schools” within the space of just a few days. UPS sounds amazing – too bad there’s no engineering for my D. I’m glad to see that WWU sounds pretty amazing too. Are Fairhaven classes available to students not in the program? Sounds like it might be interesting. I’m thinking we’ll want to visit in October on one of their Discovery or Fall Welcome days.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Wow, I’m blown away by your D’s language skills – I just don’t know how people can fully learn a 2nd language (or 3rd, etc.) once they are beyond young childhood. I lived in Germany for almost 5 years and at the end had just the basics to make myself understood and usually had to ask Germans to slow down. D11 went to German kindergarten from age 3 to 6 and promptly forgot all her German when we moved back to the US. She took it in college for her FL requirement and did fine but no superstar. However, her prof said her accent was flawless so I guess something stuck. (But I bet she’s forgotten it all again by this time.) Anyway, a big congrats to your D!
@Ynotgo That sounds like a SF class I took at GA Tech. It was so popular that you couldn’t get in until senior year and even then you had to be lucky. It was worth the wait! I second Ready Player One. I liked Haldeman’s Forever War, but I still need to finish the trilogy. You probably should start the Banks series at the beginning. I didn’t because I think I just saw it at the library and didn’t know it was actually the end of a series! Yet more books in my “I should read these” list because I liked that one so much.
I love reading all the book suggestions. I’m going back to the beginning of that discussion so I can do some cutting and pasting. Have to mention I also read Jonathan Norrell & Mr. Strange and it also took me a really long time – must be a thing. H loves Sanderson and Rothfuss, but I usually can’t get into fantasy. H laughed at me for reading all the Game of Thrones books because he considers them “lower quality” than the fantasy he reads.
@CaucAsianDad Wow, is that related? Of course S19 failed to learn to bike till last fall, age 14. Last fall, he did outdoor activities with group, canoeing and mountain biking. He managed to mountain bike since then.
He is very cautious and careful, so I thought that was the reason he couldn’t learn. Fear of falling.
When he was little, he sat by the pool refusing to get into water while his older brother took swim lessons for an entire year before starting swim lessons. He swims well but forgets strokes during fall/winter and needs a little refresher in summer. (How can you forget how to swim?) Same thing with skiing.
Music is not his thing either. After 5 years of lessons, it’s no longer painful to hear him play.
I’m that patient. :)) It used to sound like furniture squeaking. Still, he used to say “I like music” just as he used to say “I love math” in 3rd grade. I love his positive attitude =))
He reads a lot and writes much better than his mathy brother.
He enjoys Art, paper crafts - he would print out schemes from internet and make paper crafts of Dr.Who (and Tardis, daleks, etc) and robots from Robot Wars out of cardboards.
@CaucAsianDad Bike and math? My D still doesn’t know how to ride a bike! I did learn but I was always a scared bike rider and never liked it. That’s why I never pushed my Ds to learn it and they never showed interest. Are they really related?
How about swimming? I was horrible at swimming and my Ds still don’t know how to swim. They did take some swim lessons when they were small but again they never wanted to continue and I didn’t push.
Either they are all related or we are just not mathematically and athletically talented.
My daughter was getting 20–30 emails per day, and it was a little crazy. She’s been steadily unsubscribing from every school not on her shortlist (except the Ivies—she says the ego boost is fun), and is down to 3 or 4 per day—much better.
Topic for today: Letters of Recommendation. Don’t forget, it’s time to ask teachers for next year, especially if your C will be applying ED/EA.
Our plan (accepting suggestions): Ask Calc BC, Eng Lit/Lang, and AP Physics teachers for a little variety. HS gave us ‘brag sheets’ to fill out. Calc teacher gave us a specific form for him. Counselor gave a brag sheet for both parents and C to fill out (about C lol). Not sure if we need to actually turn in brag sheets this year or next.
We did notice a couple scholarships that need a specific LOR, so we need to look at that and see who to use. I remember one having to be a ‘community member’. That will be interesting.
Have your C get on the list! We have large public HS, so teachers get lots of requests.
@2muchquan - you saved my day. We are scheduled to meet GC today during lunch and I completely forgot about it until I read your post! I was more focused on free BBQ lunch @ work
@2muchquan great reminder. D is using the same teachers that wrote LOCs for summer programs. Same for counselor rec. So they will only have to update those letters for her. She’s using BC Calc, AP psych, and AP Chem teachers.
Letters of recommendation are causing us some angst as homeschoolers.
D currently has 2 outside teachers, her Arabic prof (She won’t be taking a uni Arabic class next semester–due to major/minor course shuffling, the class she needs next won’t be offered. She’ll be doing the material with a tutor-yet-to-be-found.) and her online English teacher (she’ll have her again next year).
D’s MUN advisor has offered to write a LOR for her, which is great.
I’m hoping she really connects with one of her profs this summer.
I have to write all the guidance counselor stuff. I’m trying not to think of that until mid June because :(( ~X( 
Letters of Recommendation: Does anyone use foreign language teachers? My S has had the same teacher since freshman year for Japanese so I think she is the teacher that knows him the best. He also really likes his math teacher so he may ask her too. I would think an English teacher would write the best recommendation but I think S’s teacher will be inundated with requests. His AP chem teacher was his favorite but she recently got sick so I wouldn’t want him to ask her and put any pressure on her right now.
How many do you generally need? I thought it was one teacher rec and one counselor rec. His counselor knows nothing about him so I’m sure it will be a very general letter but it sounds like schools are used to that anyway.
Most teacher recs on the CDS are rated as not very important so I’m not going to worry about it too much.