Parents of the HS Class of 2017 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
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@novicemom23kids Many hugs. I’m on my first rodeo too, and there has been much foot-dragging around here from my D about the dreaded “brag sheet” as well. For one thing, these kids are winding up a very stressful year and I’m sure there are many frayed nerves right about now! And if you’re a humble, hard working kid, it can be hard to fill something out that has been labeled a “brag sheet” because people like that think of “bragging” as bad. I dearly wish they’d thought to call it something (anything?) else!

As for the school activity - which does she think she can write about the most easily? Maybe try having her draft a quick paragraph about each and see which flows the most naturally? I think they’re all terrific - you probably can’t go “wrong”.

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@novicemom23kids We have foot dragging here on the Brag Sheet also, but no fixed deadline. Bragging is tough on kids. Hugs. >:D<

DS has the same issue with a question similar to your “accurately reflects” question because of a couple B+ grades in 10th English. I think he will just say he doesn’t feel that those grades accurately reflect the quality of his work. He doesn’t want to say, “I don’t think the teacher read my essays.” He doesn’t want to attack the teacher or her grading methods, so he will probably be very general. Or, he may not say anything and hope that his other English grades and AP score call those into question. Maybe she can just be a little general about the reason?

For the activity choice, is one activity closer to the topic of the summer program? I think she can change the Brag Sheet later for colleges.

Or, tell her to flip a coin. If she isn’t happy with the answer the coin gives her, let her switch. She probably already knows what she wants the answer to be unconsciously.

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RE: the grades question…I don’t know if that question is trying to capture a response from the 4.0 student who has one B+ or more for students with less stellar transcripts?

I am wary of that ‘additional info’ section on the CA. Do colleges really want the student to explain something that wasn’t addressed elsewhere or is that section just to explain one’s in-school suspension?

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I’ve heard you can use the “additional info” space to explain some activities in a bit more detail than the tweet-length space they give you for extracurriculars. Maybe some class titles or programs the student was in need explaining too if the GC doesn’t do that.

I don’t think “additional info” is only for bad things.

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thank you @Ynotgo and @thermom - it helps to know that we are not alone on this. It is very frustrating and D is not handling it well.

For the “Choose words that describe you most question” all 3 of us (D, DH, and I) chose the top 10 words that we thought fit her and then cross checked - there were 5 words that were on all 3 lists (and DH and I shared 7 of the same words) - those were the ones that she chose and then filled in a few others to hit the minimum. She did end up writing some form of explanation about the grades reflecting ability question - especially since the math classes that did not have strict timed assessments she did great, and she did show consistent upward trend in those B+ classes as she figured out the teachers’ timing and testing structures -started with a C in calc and will be ending with an A. She wrote several different paragraphs about the activity question and said she will sleep on it and choose one in the morning. She is very practical and has decided that she has given too much thought to this - I really hate these questions and the form that she has been given but not sure what else the GC could do to help write all these recommendations.

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No. The Common App asks:

I won’t comment on ending the clause with a preposition. :slight_smile:

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Yes, such phrasings are the sort of nonsense up with which we should not put!

(The construction is often attributed to Churchill, but unfortunately there’s good evidence that it almost certainly wasn’t him.)

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@CT1417 Well, if he thinks he has it covered, he probably does. Best of luck to him on the test.

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Studying is happening! Studying is happening!

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re: PE in college. I didn’t have any, nor did H or the older kids so the concept of it as a required credit quite frankly seems ridiculous. I support being healthy but forcing it (at costly tuition rates) in college really kind of bothers me. I can see where it could be quite fun (ice skating, golf) but on my dime? Ugh. Me no likey that at all!

re: they who shall be ignored. I thought I had figured out two culprits but being that one of those does appear in “jail” and is confirmed to be none of the 3 on @itsgettingreal17 are in jail, it would appear that @2muchquan and I are thinking of the wrong people. I am most amused that the ignore list has a limit!

re: Englishes. Love that. Quite a lot actually.

re: Brag sheets. SO poorly named. Teach your kids to be humble. Oh wait, snap, not. Brag. S hasn’t done his yet.

UGH.

re: summer jobs or jobs in general. S17 now apparently has 2. One which I expected to be pretty ad hoc and sporadic officially starts tomorrow and then another stint on Saturday. While I am happy for the kid to be paid for work he was previously doing for free, it is getting into finals and he has one hand and my mom’s 70th birthday party is sunday plus a babysitting gig. I want to be supportive, but ugh. Not loving the timing.

I am starting to freak out a bit that safeties are really matches and we have no safeties. Niche is messing with my head even if Naviance and other data tells me differently. I also really dislike the variance I see with admission rates in places. It should not be this hard.

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@skieurope – he took the one official CB blue book practice this evening and feels comfortable with 7X as apparently up to 15X will still produce a score of 800. He put in more time studying up on the concepts of the questions he got wrong.

@eandesmom – Cornell charges for the PE classes, much to the dismay of the parents who are already paying $65K. My son tried out for the men’s lightweight varsity crew team and the 14 day tryout served as one semester of gym. That was free! And he saw parts of the campus and town he may never visit again.

I agree that the entire admission process should not be this difficult. Our Naviance results are skewed by ED athletic admits to Ivies and the NESCAC, so I have no clear idea on safety-match-reach.

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Well, what a day at the races. Today was state qualifiers, and you go to states if you win or if you don’t win but you post the best time that beats the state qualifying time, a high hurdle. DS desperately, desperately wants to go back to states and was attempting to do so in the 800 and the 4x800.

So in the 800, he finally got to race against the fastest runners in the section. Our section is rural and very large geographically, so we don’t get to race against everyone in invitationals; they’re too spread out. One guy from way up north took a solid lead and never looked back, but DS and another ran neck and neck at a about a 1:55 - 1:56 pace (which would qualify)…until DS collapsed 10 m from the finish line. He had just pushed himself too hard and his legs just failed.

The other guys on the 4x800 saw his devastation and determined to make states as a team. This really didn’t seem to be an option b/c their best time this season was 8:23, well off the qualifying time of 8:07, and our rivals in the section have a stunning batch of runners this year. Plus DS was completely spent and he usually is the anchor. They switched him to the first leg and ran the race of their lives. DS was very slow but the other three smashed their own PRs and the team came in second, but at 8:06! Qualifying!

They celebrated for an hour but then when they waiting to get on the awards stand, they found out they HAD BEEN DISQUALIFIED for a bad handoff. Why did the judges give them a time at the end of the race, when usually the team would be told of the DQ? The rules committee wasn’t sure. Who had called the DQ? They weren’t sure. Which handoff was it? They weren’t sure. I had the whole race on video, and every handoff looked clean, but you’re not allowed to enter that as evidence. Those boys were so distraught. It was terribly sad to watch.

So, a sad quiet ride home, and off to bed b/c DH has to go to the hospital to have a kidney stone broken up at 5:30 am tomorrow. But of course I couldn’t sleep because I was so sad for my boy. So I got up to surf and try to relax, and found a text from the coach: DQ reversed, the 4x800 team is going to states.

Talk about roller coasters.

Oh, and I met with the Bryant coach. He is very young and seemed very nice, and gave us more information about academic merit aid there. He’d like us to send DS’s stats for a preread, so we’ll see.

Still not sleepy

@-)

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@CT1417 talk about adding insult to injury. I do like your sons approach, that is brilliant! S17 did manage to get a full year of PE waived in HS by doing 2 different HS sports (rather badly but he did them). I appreciate the creativity all around. I am not remotely opposed to exercise and sports, I just fail to see the need for it in college as a required item.

As we are not looking at schools at those levels I hope they are not skewed by athletics…I do not think they are but…they could be skewed by music and theater in some cases. The reality of the situation is…schools where S17 will be above the 75th percentile are simply schools I do not want him at. Period. I mean…ugh. It would seem to me that if naviance shows 100% or close at his stats (and I know there aren’t hooked outliers and there is significant data in naviance for those schools), he’s 50th percentile or better and it has a high admittance rate (78% or greater) is that really just a match?

Some of the matching sites are great but as a lot of them are self reported…it is hard to know how “real” or inflated things are, if they are at all.

The whole system makes the A-/B+ kid feel like a total failure. That is messed up!

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@mdcmom What a day! Congratulations!
Hope it’s a smooth one for DH. It sounds terrible though.

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Not all of the Cornell classes cost extra, just a lot of the interesting ones. So DS’s TKD class cost money but not his juggling class. It seems to depend on whether they have to bring in an outside instructor and whether they have to use specialized facilities like the rock wall.

They are 1 credit, pass/fail.

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@mcdmom that is wicked fast! Our boys did not do so well this year but the girls were a different story. But oh, what a roller coaster. A good friend of ours had a less than stellar state meet and I can only hope it didn’t hurt his recruiting. Did you wake your son up?! Those poor boys! I cannot even imagine. Glad for the end result but sorry for the stress.

It is interesting though, I did notice tonight in Naviance that at least one recruited T&F athlete, while showing as enrolled…doesn’t show as applied and admitted so there is no data. Perhaps as it only the one athlete for that school and to protect their info but hmmm that was interesting. First time I’ve been able to isolate it like that.

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Still behind, so maybe ~100 pages ago you were talking books for parents. Well, what books are your kids enjoying, that is if they have time to read with everything else. . .

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Been reading along but haven’t tried to comment on anything as we were traveling and helping D14 move from one off campus rental to another. Fun times but now I can’t sleep so I’ll add my comments and questions for the most recent posts.

@nw2this DS has been slowly working his way through the Games of Thrones series. I think that’s all he’s read for fun all year. Before that it was mostly Rick Riordan books.

Re: PE in college. I remember doing two units, aqua aerobics and something that involved weights and stationery bikes in the phys ed center, back in the day, but I don’t recall if it was two semesters or both units in one semester. PE was required, but I think intramurals also met the requirement. D14 doesn’t have a requirement at her state university.

@mcdmom Glad it worked out for your S’s relay in the end. What a story and an emotional event!

Re: brag sheets. I don’t think DS’s school has a set form, and we’re not on Navience. I will Google a template but can some of you provide what basics are on yours? So far, I’ve suggested that DS put together a resume to help anyone he asks to write a LOR (maybe using the NHS app as a starting point), but I never would have thought of listing words he thinks describe him.

Welcome to those who’ve joined us and congrats to the rising seniors. One final later today for DS and then he’ll officially be done with junior year as well.

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@mdcmom Congrats to your son and his team!! What a roller coaster!

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Re: PE, I really haven’t paid attention to that requirement at the schools on D’s list. I guess I should? Is it mostly private colleges that have this requirement?

My HS required PE every semester and that every student pass a swim test. Since I couldn’t swim, that meant I had to take the swim class. I eventually passed but was not a good swimmer, so breathed a sigh of relief to be done. Imagine my surprise to arrive at college and realize that again there was a mandatory swim test and this one much harder than the high school one. So swim class again it was. Thankfully I was able to pass at the end of the class though still not a good swimmer. IIRC, 2 semesters of PE were required. In addition to swimming, I took aerobics. Many took more interesting classes, but they were hard to get into. (sorry, I don’t care about hanging prepositions when writing on the internet :)) )

This reminds of how important priority registration is in college, which is a huge selling point of honors programs/colleges. When I was in college, contrary to the general belief on CC that its easier to get classes at smaller schools, I was never able to take some fun classes that I was interested in because they were always full after seniors registered. I don’t think my school was different from most.