@eandesmom – very entertaining post! I am not laughing at you—just smiling at the visual.
Agree about travel. It is such a hassle and expense to get to any of the NYC airports that I really hope my son finds a school along the Amtrak line. Once you layer in flight delays, TSA delays, etc…you can easily lose a full day simply traveling to or from school breaks.
My D can read and write Enochian (the ways she comes up with to waste her time and brain cells) but I doubt it is on the pull down list either.
She made it though Spanish III, but after spending time with her Cuban born friend and her family realizes she is no where near proficient.
@itsgettingreal17 @MotherOfDragons OK, I think figured out who you have set to “Ignore”. :))
@2muchquan I’m starting to get the feeling that that certain poster is just sitting behind his computer laughing as he types and reads everyone’s reactions to his posts. :))
Way to go @CT1417 son - how cool is that?
@eandesmom Tulane is certainly not an easy destination for us in the PNW, but it may be worth it if he likes the campus and gets merit. And that’s a big no to Santa Clara - the Martha Stewart of universities. It’s a stunningly beautiful campus where every blade of grass is the same height and the facilities look like a country club. The Spykids have several friends who are quite happy there, but it is not even remotely a close fit for Spykid.
Try flying into Roanoke regional airport from just about anywhere (D15), but particularly the west. I think it took her 24 hrs to get to Hawaii (school field trip, I kid you not). However, since it was Hawaii, I didn’t really feel a whole lot of sympathy.
@Agentninetynine Colorado will never be hot enough for melting but is dry, so he might sublimate like snow here. 
University of Denver has merit awards. Boulder campus is beautiful and spoiled DS’s “idea” of college campus.
@CT1417 it was a bit surreal. After my trip 2 weeks ago where the guy next to me in first class was tying to be funny and asking what I was headed to Denver for (I was on a flight to Atlanta) and the overtired flight attendant asking me if Chicago was home I do start to get confused at times. The music hasn’t restarted, that is a good thing.
That is very cool about your son and the linguistics even if he didn’t move to the next round.
It is a pita to get SD back and forth from her college. No great way to do it. Either you fly into a major airport and bus, train or drive or you do a hop into the regional airport which offers few (and pricey) flight times. Miss a flight and you could be stuck for days. Unfortunately we have experienced that!
@Agentninetynine that’s hysterical about Santa Clara. The schools on his list aren’t exactly unattractive…
@CT1417 The NACLO competition (is that what you’re referring to?) is the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad, and so my understanding is that kids who code do well because computational linguistics really is a cross between linguistics and programming. It goes the other way too; DD’14 started out in linguistics with no coding background (little to be had in our school) but now her best grades are in CS and she’s adding that as a minor.
There are lots of other areas of linguistics, though. DD’s original interest was in mapping and developing written alphabets for groups with endangered languages, for instance. @dfbdfb can give a lot more info there than I can.
Congratulations on the excellent result! Very cool.
Seems like DS pulled through in one final. He needed to get 97% to get an A- . Finals are done, but waiting for grades on couple of subjects.
Ok, well, I am spending an embarrassing amount of time reading and learning from this thread! So thank you all for sharing your thoughts and experiences. The language discussion made me wonder whether ASL would fit in there somewhere. My younger daughter (high school class of 2020) has been teaching herself for a few years now, started her own Instagram video account to show different signs and interact with the ASL community and shows no signs <snort!> of stopping. I need to try to find her a tutor around here I guess. I’ve been thinking of it as a great EC for college applications, but didn’t consider it for a language. Obviously it’s quite different from verbal communication though. </snort!>
My older daughter (D17) has been pulled aside a few times in the last couple of days by school administrators to congratulate her on her April ACT score. She’s had a very rough spring emotionally for a lot of different reasons, so she really needs that confidence boost. But still haven’t been able to get her to study the few easy topics she needs to cover for the upcoming SAT and ACT she’s signed up for this weekend and next. It’s maddening, but I am trying not to be too pushy. Our last day of school is June 10, so she’s still wrestling with finals, term papers etc.
Thank you to whomever mentioned the Western Undergrad Exchange program. I had no idea! That makes a lot of public schools in the NW much more attractive for us. I’d been writing them off due to OOS tuition and (most likely) lower merit aid options.
On another topic, does anyone know how to search for posts from a specific person on CC? I thought there would be a list if I just clicked on the user’s name, but it just takes me to the profile page that tells me the number of texts but doesn’t show them. I think I must be missing something really basic…
I have had to look up some of these languages as I have never heard of them. I am continually amazed by how much more motivated our children are to learn than I ever was.
@mdcmom – yes, NACLO was the name of the competition.
“DD’s original interest was in mapping and developing written alphabets for groups with endangered languages”
See my comment above about the motivation of these students!
As someone commented earlier…will it be difficult to add CS as a minor, since it is such a popular major?
CS at our school is not strong at all, but my son has found three friends who share his passion, so they enter these on-line coding contests (Capture the Flag, I think, and PICO, when it runs…there are others but since he does not need to be driven anywhere, I am out of the loop). I wish these contests took place during the summer as they are are huge distraction from schoolwork, and their participation is not school-sanctioned. They attended two or three of these 24 hour code-a-thons hosted by Code Day, but I think the reality of staying awake all night in an office building in lower Manhattan lost its allure. They all like sleeping at night eventually. The all-nighters really wrecked the weekend and often Monday also.
And for anyone looking for merit from Tulane, test scores matter, so push for that extra point on the ACTs, as it could be another $5K/year. Also take care with the Why Tulane essay. Their website was very easy to navigate, or at least it was two years ago.
I have no idea who the mystery poster is. The intrigue…
@picklesarenice To see comments by a CC user, click their name and look in the left menu (using a browser, not the app) and you will see links for Replies and Threads. That’s what you want.
@2muchquan Thank you! That’s exactly what I needed to know.
FWIW Saturday
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/getting-ready-sat-subject-tests-2015-16.pdf
http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/prof/counselors/tests/sat/2006-07-SAT-subject-tests-preparation-booklet.pdf
http://media.collegeboard.com/homeOrg/content/pdf/teachersguide-to-the-sat-subject-tests-in-math.pdf
http://media.collegeboard.com/homeOrg/content/pdf/teachersguide-to-the-sat-subject-tests-in-science.pdf
@picklesarenice When you click on the user’s name, there is a menu on the left side of the screen that shows their threads and replies. You can scroll through those, but if there are too many, google is a more efficient option if you know what you are looking for in particular
@agentninetynine Would he consider SMU in Texas as a safety? They are known to have good merit scholarships and have the majors he is interested in.
@eandesmom New Orleans. It can be a hard city for a business trip if you don’t have any fun attached. We visited New Orleans with S last year on a road trip. After seeing the sidewalks at 7 am on a Sunday morning and being accosted by a homeless person, he said that Tulane was out of consideration. I know Tulane is a great school but he won’t even consider it now.
@dfbdfb I’m curious about what a linguist does, too. Enlighten me. I always think of Henry Higgins when I picture a linguist. I bet you get that reference all the time.
@itsgettingreal17 For the double major thing, if it is for UT Austin, definitely talk to an admissions counselor. There are very specific strategies for choosing a major there.
@payn4ward Thanks for those links on the subject tests. S is taking them this weekend and hasn’t prepped a bit. I can’t imagine that it will go well. Sigh…
DS didn’t take the Japanese Language Proficiency exam last year because it was the same day as the SAT. Bummer. I think he would have done well and the next test offered in the US is in December. I suppose if he has nothing else on his calendar that weekend he can take it then.
On another note, he met with a Bama rep today and came back with a different attitude about the school. He really needs a few safeties to add to his list that he would like. If we can manage to fit in a tour this summer, I think it is worth the time. He knows some girls that are going there in the fall and they are smart cookies.
@picklesarenice Welcome!!
@picklesarenice Welcome! I had a great cat named Pickles, so I agree with the sentiment 
Lol, so in my desperation to help D find study materials for the Chem subject test this weekend, I stumbled across a released test from 1994 - 5 years before my D was born. I have no idea how much the curriculum has changed since then, but she’s sitting at the dining room table giving it a whirl!
Some were grumbling about CollegeBoard earlier, and yeah - I’ve got lots to say about CB and none of it is good! Between how much they’ve messed with tests (SAT & AP), dates, scores for the poor kids of the class of '17 - it’s just too much. Hasn’t anybody in that organization sat down and realized that making all these changes all at once was a bad idea??? The ridiculous length of time it’s taking them to release scores is just the last straw. X(
Terrible news about UCLA 
I think S could probably claim proficiency in Spanish (he’s finishing Spanish 4 this year), but he probably won’t (he also refuses to take SAT2 in Spanish, even though I think he’d probably do quite well on it… he doesn’t feel that he’s learned anything since Spanish 2).
He is signed up for 3 subject tests on Sat (USH, Chem, & Math2). He has done zero prep. Over the weekend we asked him if he planned to study and if he wanted any “help” (i.e., nagging) from us, and he said “If I haven’t done any studying by Thursday morning, then you can remind me.” Ugh… this is driving me crazy! Also, I don’t think any schools he’s considering require a non-stem test, so I tried to convince him to skip the USH (he took APUSH last year, and hasn’t studied at all), but he insists on taking it. I think chem and math should be fine if he would just spend a few hours brushing up (especially on math since he’s a year out from precalc and doesn’t remember all the trig). Oh well, it’s his life and there are plenty of schools on his list that don’t require SAT2 tests, so I guess he can just send those schools his ACT scores if he bombs these tests on Sat.