A six minute mile is good for anyone, asthma or not! My D is lucky in that she got a PE exception for marching band. The joke at her school is the football team is not allowed to practice as long or during the hot periods of the day as the marching band.
@2muchquan …wow, your school doesn’t count band as PE? Here in Texas the marching band kids are outside, 100 plus degree heat and marching for hours. It totally counts as a PE for them.
As a healthcare provider, it is one of my pet peeves that sports physicals are not required for those kids. We had a girl at my high school who collapsed and died from undiagnosed Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy… a condition that can usually be caught with a pre-participation sports physical. I always urge ALL of my marching band parent friends to take their kids in for a sports physical even though it is not required.
On power tools: my D loves them as well and loved her wood shop class. The wood shop class is for sure keeping her out of the top 5 rankings at her school because it was not weighted but oh well…she loved it! Have a great trip to Kentucky this week. Sounds like a lot of good hard work.
QOTD: Our school profile is on our school website. It does not have GPA deciles, but our school ranks by weighted GPA and puts the rank on transcripts.
It contains a pretty wordy description of the school “nestled between the mountains and the sea…,” parent organizations, collaborations with community groups and local colleges, programs to support struggling students, and highlights of awards won the previous year. The info I doubt any adcoms read takes up 2/3 of the profile.
As far as facts, it contains ethnic and low-income percentages, AP and IB courses offered (but is vague: “physics” isn’t very exact when there are 4 AP Physics courses and they only offer 2; also # of IB courses is overstated), # of AP exams taken, # of IB diploma graduates, dual enrollment courses offered on the HS campus, # of Engineering program graduates per year and a bit of info about it, average SAT and ACT scores vs. state, graduation requirements, and percent of students going to 4-year and 2-year colleges.
The only info it has on GPA is “Our transcript shows two types of GPA calculations. The Total GPA is 9-12, non-weighted and includes all classes. The Academic GPA is 9-12, weighted and excludes P. E. We use the weighted Academic 9 - 12 GPA to determine rank.” and “We consider AP, IB and __ Dual Enrollment courses to be equally rigorous.” Doesn’t say weighting is +1 or anything about +/-.
^Did I miss the question mark? :))
It sounds pretty similar to ours, but ours does not have ranking information. It does give the weighting information, as well as teeny tiny comments about the highest W and UW GPA the year prior. So, you can glean a tiny bit from this for the tippy-top students, but that’s about it as far as inferring rank.
QOTD: Our school has a pretty complete profile PDF online. Updated each year with GPA range for each decile, SAT and ACT averages and percent by range (annoyingly large ranges on these, the top range on the ACT profile is 28-36), NMS stats. Also info on which classes are offered by subject, such as AP and/or honors sections. Our high school doesn’t weight anything for ranking or transcripts, and all grade are out of 100. Our school does release ranking
PE: Required, approx every other day, all four years, graded, counts towards ranking. DD is athletic, so I don’t know if grading is based on effort/preparedness or ability; her PE grades are very good so we’ve never asked.
@2muchquan This QOTD was asked by @payn4ward in post #6945.
@2muchquan Nice avatar 
QOTD: school profile
Only homeschoolers will understand. My chest feels tight and my heart rate increases every time I read the words “school profile”. It reminds me of all the other Common App things I will have to write this summer, like the counselor letter. I am very afraid of what will be required by the Coalition App %-(
My older kids’ high schools had very complete yet precise school profiles, listing avg test scores w comparisons, AP data, % heading to 4yr colleges, courses required of all students, and course weighting/GPA calculation with a description of the school population and mission statement.
QOTD: our school profile is on our website as well. Well, it sends you to the state site where you can choose what you want to look at from a huge menu; enrollment, class size, teacher turnover rate, % on free or reduced lunch (39 for what it’s worth), average state test scores and how they stack up to the rest of state, what have you. No GPA ranges though.
It would be nice if sports counted as PE here. All my kids would have had an extra period every other day!
@2muchquan Nice new profile pic. I should probably look for a good one now that I’m approaching 100 posts.
DS can’t count marching band as PE either (sigh). I’m starting to realize that no matter what we hear from those familiar with the admissions process, there is no way adcoms can adequately compare across systems – it would be way too much to manage. I’m sure I wouldn’t get a copy of our profile from DS’s guidance office, and definitely not until school starts – do others have access to GCs over the summer? Ours are gone and the office staff generally just says they can take a message for August – but regardless, I’m sure it overstates much of the case. Twice DS has registered for AP classes only to have something else on his schedule (which isn’t final until school starts) because they didn’t have enough interest to offer it. We finally said the heck with it and encouraged him to take shop electives (small engine repair and cabinetmaking) next year. We’ll see if he’s also in the AP classes he registered for senior year.
Yay for power tools! It freaks my suburban neighbors out when I pull out a chop saw and start slicing boards in my driveway. Apparently, there’s still a perceived gender gap in who is capable of using a miter saw and a level. I also forced DS to help me replace a light socket – he says he wants to be an engineer, so he should be able to handle a simple rewiring and understand electrical circuits, right? Plus my arms got tired working overhead.
@WhereIsMyKindle At least my profile is written. Our profile includes information about the surrounding community and local school stats and then our course options, stats, and educational outcomes of older siblings.
Oops @Ynotgo. b-( X_X 8-}
@IABooks This may not work for you, but it’s how I found our school profile the first time. If you have a school website you can enter this in a Google search box:
Just use your school address instead.
@2muchquan Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, I got student and board member profiles (bios). /
TBH, I wasn’t surprised. The guidance office mostly offers inadequate class scheduling and not much else. They wouldn’t think of putting a thing like that on the website. And even if they did, it would require someone to upload/update it. Regularly the daily announcements page is a blank PDF.
Dorm Stuff: “I do know that DS wants a memory foam topper.” D15 has a memory foam topper and said all her friends were jealous. It made the bed comfortable. The one I bought came from Amazon and was not horribly expensive. When we get closer to actually “needing” to dwell on this type of stuff I’ll share the info.
PE: S was able to get outside credit for his Tae Kwon Do training for his black belt. D was able to get outside credit for her ski training and racing. Caveat here in that our school is so small that there is only one PE choice and it is general fitness.
School Profile: I just re-looked at the Profile and it has a brief description of the school, Mission statement, Faculty, accreditation affiliation, graduation requirements for the district, curriculum, ethnic breakdown, DE options, grading scale, test scores for the graduating class, AP info (no IB at the school), and a list of colleges that students have been accepted to over the years. It is concise and useful.
They’ve placed our HS profile in the guidance area of the web site.
It’s pretty thorough. School description, programs of study, gpa info, list of all classes offered, SAT and ACT ranges, student achievement highlights, Natiomal Merit winners thru the years, AP class info, pie chart of what kids do after HS. Interesting read.
I’m surprised that the average ACT composite is around 25. That seems low. The school has a lot of high stats kids, so I guess the low scorers really drag the average down. It claims the national ACT average for 2015 was 21, and in MA the average was 24.
This thread moves so fast!
School Profile: I know I wrote one for my D11 who was homeschooled, and hopefully I can find it in a file on the computer. As I recall the school profile wasn’t that bad, the guidance counselor recommendation was a lot harder to write.
Driving: I didn’t let my S sign up for his drivers test last month because I was worried the insurance would cost too much. I called the other day after seeing all the talk on this thread and the insurance company says it will add about 10% to our premium, so surprisingly small. I guess because we already have 2 young adult drivers on the policy, and we only will have 3 cars with 5 drivers. But now he can’t get a test time until mid August!
Essays: I had my son go through the common ap prompts last week and brainstorm a list of possible topics. He probably won’t come back to it for a few weeks, but at least he has started thinking about it.
Leadership: S has lots of leadership in Scouts. He is leading his venturing crew, and just told me he wants to run for a council level position. This would mean helping organize and run one of the big council wide campouts next summer. I told him he has to pass his drivers test the first time if he wants more leadership positions, since I am tired of having to go everywhere with him.
In totally unrelated news but exciting in our house…it is the last day of jazz band!
We all get to sleep in an extra 30 minutes for the next 2 weeks. :-c
Ah, power tools and button sewing. S17 has those down too. Gotta love stage crew for life skills. S19 on the other hand, on the road to Eagle Scout…not so much. LOL!
Marching band does not count as PE at the school however there is a summer city wide band kids can do that you can get PE credit for. It is an insane amount of hours between practices and parades. S17 did not do it but some of his friends did.
Re: laptops. It will definitely be a PC and not a grad gift, just a needed tool. It will likely be a relatively inexpensive one and he can store everything in the cloud, probably a 2 in 1 tablet/laptop. Unless my FIL buys him one has he did for the other 2 older ones. If that happens it will be some giant brick but it will work. The kids share a Mac that we all despise. Bought it when S17 was starting HS as I was very tired of fighting with compatibility issues from the MS which is all Mac based. Making him suck it up for another year, between the school iPad and the Mac, he will live.
Re: foam toppers. We will do this for S17, it saved SD19!
@2muchquan they have to give up lunch for band? That is awful! Way to kill a music program. Ours counts as fine arts (1 credit/2 semesters required) until that is full and then as an elective as well, unless you do it all 4 years and then it fulfills the occupational credit category (1 credit/2 semesters) as well. My kids end up with a ton more credits than needed to graduate.
Is that a Habitat for Humanity project?
Do we really think colleges care about PE? Just sayin…
Well maybe those that have swim tests do. LOL! Although honestly that is a life skill. Funny story on that. S17 did swim team his freshman year. He can swim but not well and had never done any kind of swim team. Talk about a way to improve quickly. The kid was exhausted. He did tennis the year after that instead (which he had never ever played lol).
@Mom2aphysicsgeek I am horrified at the departmental treatment. Whatever school that was I assume it came off the list (and I’d take it off mine by association lol!).
I doubt you are the oldest. I am definitely up there. No great stories about computer cards though…although I will say my one computer class in UG, basic DOS, was one of the most useful classes of all time that I’ve leveraged post graduation. It is also the final I slept through my senior year and had to take in the professor’s office. The ONLY time I went to a professor’s office in all of UG or even interacted with one live outside of the classroom.
@Ynotgo that is a riot! I would be absolutely speechless (which NEVER happens) if I saw Stephen Hawking. DH might pass out. As for insurance forms, I wasn’t thinking EOB…which DH can’t understand. I mean actually filling out the forms at a new doctors office, entering in a plan number kind of thing. SD19 STILL hasn’t gotten new glasses as apparently the idea of actually going into Costco, ordering them, giving them the insurance info and her Rx is beyond her. His inability to do this was illustrated while at the Ortho for the fractured wrist.
Of course there was the issue that he couldn’t actually write…
@WhereIsMyKindle the shorter list is a mixed blessing. It is the right thing but…I really liked some of those schools as did S17 so it’s sad. But cutting the cord now is the right thing. It gets us down to a list of 15. 8 of which I like, 2 of those I can afford and another 2 I could live with. So really in my mind, a working list of 10.
Not crazy about the remaining 5 but will let S weigh in before the scissors come out again. Of course, 2 of those 5 are also affordable. Sigh.
QOTD
School profile. I know some schools will show percentiles/grade distribution, ours does not. It is available on the website. Ours includes
Grading System (4.0 scale +/-, no weighting, no ranking is stated)
Grad Requirements
Test Scores. It only lists SAT which is annoying, no ACT.
AP/DE/Honors classes offered by specific class
Post Grad Plans of previous years class
Departments
Basic school profile stuff, athletics, clubs, general info, diversity breakdown aka the marketing plug
Question…My S has done pretty good with almost everything except the community service. He is so involved with band…UIL academics…dual credit classes…tennis…student council among other things and there is no time for community service. Any suggestions? He contacted someone about playing the trumpet (Taps) at military funerals in the area however they never got back with him. After 3 emails he gave up. We need some different community service things to do.
@tgirlfriend I wouldn’t worry about it too much. My son doesn’t do a lot either, but that doesnt make them bad people or bad students. The only thing my son sort of liked doing was peer tutoring. He did that junior year and he’ll do it senior year.