D15 is also enjoying her PE requirement. She took racquetball last semester and will be taking mountain biking and basketball fall semester I believe. That is after she re-buys a mountain bike. Her bike went missing from the dorm bike storage room at the end of spring semester! >:P Luckily I did take out the dorm insurance, and the maximum payout for bike is just a tad under what we spent. Live and learn (and lock the bike even in the secure storage area!)
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Thanks for the clarification. I was afraid December would be too early for D to take the SAT II in her FL.
@CaucAsianDad Not that it will matter by this time next year, but kids in our HS who do not take the AP test after having the AP class don’t get the full GPA bump that they would receive if they took the test. Plus, D is taking AP Chinese as an independent study…so that wouldn’t look to good if she didn’t take the test. 
I like your thinking though.
I CAUGHT UP!
Safeties and visits:
D has visited two safeties (auto-admit plus affordable) so far and likes one of them, but not with much enthusiasm. A visit to WA is in our future to see Western Washington U and Gonzaga. These should be safeties (or close). She is really excited about WWU in terms of the program, natural beauty and fact that it’s fairly small for a public. Many thanks to @mtrosemom for the review that makes me even more excited to visit. I really want her to go in the fall, but she hates missing class and next year will be an especially challenging schedule.
We’ll visit either CWRU or RIT plus U of Rochester in the summer. Only RIT would be an admit safety, but their NPC doesn’t include merit, so who knows on affordability. We’ll also visit U of Vermont and VA Tech (matches I think) because they coincide with trips we’re making anyway. Neither of these is high on the list, but there’s no reason not to take a look.
Interviews:
Wow, I hadn’t thought of answering the “other schools” question. I hope they wouldn’t ask in terms of “What are your top 3 schools?” or similar because that seems a bit inappropriate. If they ask something like “What are some other schools you’re looking at?” I’d encourage D to answer with similar peer schools. Either way, I think it would be best if she could concentrate on the specific program type she’s looking for and how great a fit the interviewing school is.
In terms of interviewing at schools where it’s “optional,” that’s a really tough one. D has language processing delays and she can come across pretty poorly with people she doesn’t know well. She’s going to be up-front about her autism in the common app, so I think she may want to briefly explain her delays to the interviewer at the beginning of the conversation. Still some thinking to do on this topic. Any input appreciated!
No pants:
We live in the foothills of the Rockies. D’s first grade teacher wore khaki shorts and a short sleeve shirt every single day of the school year. It can be done! (Okay, maybe not in those really bitter cold places.)
@SincererLove, I don’t know what types of schools you are looking at, but Clarkson U is high on D’s list for engineering and they are also quite well known for their business program.
@nw2this, My D’s stats are a little below 50% at CWRU and their NPC estimated $22,000 in merit which is close to half. Seems like a good sign for higher stat students. We talked to a Case rep at a local visit they did and he mentioned that showing interest is very important as well as an interview. I’d consider it reachy for D.
@thermom, I’m going by notes here, but you said your D is looking at Smith and RIT? Smith is D’s first choice and RIT looks good on paper so she’ll definitely apply whether or not we visit.
@eandesmom, Hope your S’s wrist is healing! Poor kid.
I was at RIT for graduation two weeks ago. They have a very impressive campus! Very modern buildings but interesting architecture and landscaping. I was also impressed by the number of international students who graduated and the variety of the school’s majors. DH was a studio furniture maker before he was a pastor and already knew about their furniture design school, but there were lots of other interesting arts programs too. And I thought they were all engineers!
Ah, I see. Having a Phys Ed requirement does not mean you take PE “for credit” (necessarily), right? I don’t see ‘credits’ next to the PE courses in the example I’m looking at (Rhodes College), whereas core courses are listed with the number of credits.
If that’s the case, I’m totally fine with it.
@snoozn You touched on it above, but in the case of Case (npi) they ‘encourage’ an interview when you are there, on campus: https://go.case.edu/portal/campus-interview?_ga=1.192384746.1724785594.1462124293
I remember my sister taking self defense class as PE since other popular ones such as tennis, etc were already filled up. Come to think of it that would be a useful class to take, not popular though. She took skiing and golf PE for fun in later years.
DS is hoping whatever whatever college he attends has Scuba as a PE option. It was way oversubscribed at the college I attended.
I took fencing and tae kwon do in college, and both were fun. DS did fencing until being the youngest in his age group got to be to much of a problem to be worth competing.
DH took “ropes course” PE in college. There were lots of fun options.
Technically, you only have to “attend” the AP test and sign your name, you do not have to “take” the test.
OMG. My D hates PE classes. She (and I) don’t understand why PE has to be part of the college courses although options like yoga, dancing or self defense sound really fun. If Bryn Mawr doesn’t have the swimming requirement for graduation, it would go up to the top choice for my D.
For my sophomore year of college, PE class was decided by lottery. I picked a really sucky number and ended up taking golf. I hated it. All semester, I was digging holes in the ground.
On the shorts/pants issue, we lived in Minnesota for 3 1/2 years. I can’t tell you how many boys I watched going in and out of the schools (all levels) wearing shorts in sub-zero temperatures.
I figured the moms were picking their battles and something way more important was being negotiated. Though I still thought they were a bit crazy.
DS is officially a rising senior 
This has been a roller coaster semester. With 7 different science tournaments, couple of Speech tournaments, AP & IB exams and applying to few highly competitive summer programs. He missed 10+ days of school due to tournaments. With grades dropping in the middle of semester to not getting any summer programs but last couple of weeks have been great. Success in science tournament and hopes for summer research. he worked hard to catch up on grades. He recovered grades in 2 subjects he was most worried. He wants to apply to BS/MD programs and good ones expect 3.9 unweighted GPA and high ACT/SAT scores with 2 or more SAT IIs!
I took PE in college and grad school. Yoga, ballet, and sailing in UG and downhill skiing and rock climbing as a grad. LOVED IT! I think I got 1 credit per class. The requirement was showing up and trying. D has a credit requirement at her school that amounts to 4 PE classes over the 4 years of school. Her school also has a swimming requirement. At the start of the school year, all freshmen take a swim test. If you pass, you’re golden. If not, you get swimming lessons as a mandatory PE class. I am not sure why except it is an old school (one of the oldest in the country) and back in the day, all “gentlemen” should know how to swim. That skill set has stuck. The schools S17 is looking at do not have PE requirements.
Our PE was mandatory, pass/fail, but no credit, per se, as in, taking PE did not reduce credits needed to graduate.
@HiToWaMom – is Bryn Mawr’s swim test difficult? My school required swimming three or four lengths of the pool, one may have been on your back, but no strokes required. As in, doggy paddle would have passed.
@disshar – by boys wear nothing heavier than a hoodie with their khakis to school in the dead of winter in CT (not quite Minnesota), primarily because no one uses the lockers due to the square footage of the school. (More than 300,000 square feet for fewer than 1400 students.) Outfitting for college was an endless discussion of ‘you will need boots/gloves/hooded coat with fleece lining, rain coat, etc.’
Cornell still has a swim requirement. Not many other colleges do (and I suspect that number is decreasing – U of Chicago removed theirs within the last 10 years or so I believe).
@CaucAsianDad You are diabolical! Is there such a thing as a 0 on an AP?
@disshar Wearing shorts/no pants is one part of the equation. Wearing them comfortably is the other. (and i think it was the parents picking the battle, not just the moms. That’s what you meant, right? :)) )
Wow, I’m surprised by all the PE taken by you guys. No PE requirement at UofM for me. At least, not that I remember.
I understand that if you write your name on the AP exam, you get a 1. So I do not think you can actually get a 0.
@snoozn Yes! D has both Smith and RIT on her (short) list. Our tour of Smith was quite charming and D came away very favorably impressed.
And RIT looks better and better the more we investigate. D has a friend who will be starting there in the fall for materials science and she’s very excited about going. They have a lot of innovative programs in both science and art. I’ve also discovered that about half of the counselors at the computer camp my younger D will be attending this summer are current RIT students, so maybe I’ll grill some of them. 
No, they don’t include merit in their NPC, but they do list what the awards and criteria are if you go to their financial aid section - not sure if they’re automatic though. Their COA to begin with is a bit lower than many comparable schools.
@saillakeerie yes, Cornell has the swim test, and Swarthmore too! My D was a bit puzzled when she came across that in the Fiske guide, haha.
@CT1417 , This is what the students have to do to pass the test.
“Ten minutes of laps (can be doggy paddle and you can be sloooow, you just have to be moving), then one minute of floating on your back and one minute of treading water.”
Ten minutes of laps will be forever for someone who cannot swim…
@mdcmom a furniture maker and then a pastor? You have some very interesting people in your family!
I think we knocked RIT off D17’s list because it wasn’t urban enough, had too many dudes, too far from an airport, and it was colder than boston. I had no idea RIT had art/design stuff, although it makes sense because CMU does too-arts and sciences seem to go together, as does design and engineering.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek the cutoff numbers in that link-does that mean that number makes it, or above that number makes it and the cutoff number means you don’t make it? I feel so dumb asking that, but since D17 has a 218, and that’s the predicted cutoff number for Georgia, I kinda want to make sure I am giving D the right info.
My son didn’t like RIT because it had too many dudes too. Same for Carnegie Mellon.