@mdcmom - Thanks for the info on Cornell. Cornell is ranked as one of the top pre-med programs but I keep reading that they have huge grade deflation.
Our school profile didn’t have an ACT section :-?
Community service: 60 hours required to graduate, 200 hours for a special tassel at graduation. DS has well over 200 hours, but a lot of that is that they count unpaid research because the UC is a non-profit. He has a fair number of hours tutoring physics and calculus for free (and some paid) and working at a LEGO programming camp.
Power tools: Lots of power tool use by both kids. DS17 does more electronics. DC21 just made his own skateboard starting by gluing and molding the deck, drilling the holes and installing the trucks and wheels. He also made one of those outdoor honor-system libraries for his English teacher as an end-of-year projects–got excused from classes to go build the roof and doors in the shop class.
Clothes shopping: DS17 needs to do that in the next couple weeks, as he needs to wear collared shirts to dinner at his summer program (polo shirts are OK) and doesn’t have any other than a couple dress shirts to go with his debate suit. It’s on the To Do list. I’m hoping DH will handle that, because I don’t like clothes shopping myself and I’m clueless about male fashion. I thought the Dalek polo shirts were cool (http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/eb25/), but DS says no to that and Pi, Death Star, etc logo polo shirts.
@whataboutcollege Our school has it because the State mandates all the juniors to take ACT.
@carachel2 yes, there is well over 100,000 recipients. GC really push it, they then to push anything the brings down college cost (Scholarships, BF, AP classes).
@Ynotgo Cool! I will have to get the Dalek for DS19 so that he wears a Polo rather than T-shirts sometimes. DS19 abandoned lego/mindstrom for now. :-S
Reading the comments, the seams undone, poorly made…
I’ll have to let go this until DS19 masters sewing. 
Our school has over 90 percent going to 4 year school. 3 percent going to military/other and 2 percent going to CC
@carachel2 good question regarding getting good scores but being lumped in with the rest at a top school.
My son is well above the ACT average and also above the median GPA. However, in class rank he is screwed. He didn’t take any AP classes as a junior, so he must have 100 kids ahead of him by .25 in Gpa scores. I think he’s around top 35%. Crazy. That’s for a kid with all A- grades on his transcripts 1st 2 years when the rank was calculated. They’ll re-rank at end of 1st quarter senior year I think, but I don’t think he’ll improve much because so many kids take 3 or more AP classes every year. My son will take 2 next year.
So, looking at him, you’d say wow nice grades and pretty tough classes, but you are barely in the top 1/3 of class. He might even drop out of top 1/3. That’s kind of crazy. Last year the highest GPA was a 4.99. AP classes count as 5.5., so if you stack up a bunch of those and crush it you can get there. My son will probably finish around 4.35 weighted/ 3.75 UW.
I’m not sure how some selective colleges will judge him at this point.
@2muchquan funny avatar 8-}
@Ynotgo loved the stephen hawking story. Now I want a donut…
Power tools: you’d think me being Jewish and my husband Italian that I would sit back while he would do all the handy stuff around the house - not the case. I appear to be the handy one!
Clothes shopping: my D just came in the living room as I was reading all of today’s posts and asked if we can go shopping. This girl can shop every day (with my credit card of course!)
Life skills: gotta teach my kids how to sew!
@mtrosemom my D16 will need a mattress topper soon, can you recommend which one you bought?
Interesting to see from some of you posters that certain schools have a minimum number of community service hours in order to graduate.
There’s no Class of '21 thread yet (rightly so), but I’m proud of DC21 for bringing up his/their grades up to 4 As and 2 Bs. Even an A+ in English! There had been an F in History in March and he brought is up to a B-, so I’m proud of him. 
I cleaned off the big White Board To Do List (WBTDL? Need a better acronym) and had a nice, clean white board for a few seconds.
I was talking politics with DS (California had its primary this week) and realized that he will be at the summer program during the national political conventions. I told him I’d miss having him to talk to about stuff like that. He agreed and did say he’d try to keep in touch. I hope so! They limit electronics use to the computers they have there at Boulder and phones only not when working on astrophysics stuff.
DS went to the UC yesterday to talk with an undergrad adviser about the classes he wants to take in fall. They think he can get into both the Linear Algebra and Astronomy classes. They weren’t so optimistic about “Automata and Formal Languages” (looks like math to me), which is an upper-division CS class. He has the prerequisite, which is Discrete Math, so I hope they let him take it. He will have to email the professor for permission. One of his ubernerd friends (going to MIT next fall) took it last year and liked it a lot (but with a different professor).
If he gets into all 3 classes, it would be 12 quarter units (3 classes) at the UC, 2 AP classes at the high school, and 2 HS periods of Engineering (no homework). Oh, and college applications and ECs. I hope that is not crazy.
@greeny8 You put the text inside [ b]here[ /b] and remove the spaces.
I think we have a community service requirement too. Pretty sure. They count lots of stuff that colleges wouldn’t consider ‘service work’ I believe. Maybe I’m wrong if she should include or not.
Looked back at our profile: 23.9 ACT avg. 1900+ avg. SAT (Only 10% take SAT so prolly skewed high) 84% go to college, half of those OOS. Well-integrated public school.
So after poking around I have discovered that my kids’ school’s profile is (like all the other schools, it turns out) on the school district’s site. There is basically no information of use in it—certainly nothing like average ACT scores or stuff like that.
I did discover, however, that the school district has a goal that 100% of all departments across the district, when measured for operational efficiency, will be in the top quartile. I know enough of math that this coming from an educational entity makes my brain want to explode… 
@Ynotgo that schedule makes me want a nap.
D is thinking of taking one of ‘her’ schools off the list. The local rep at the school invited her to coffee a while back. I suggested we still meet with her and see if, afterwards, she still wants to remove it. I figure it’s good practice with little risk!
@dfbdfb “When measured for operational efficiency”?? Not an educational metric I’ve seen much of.
@greeny8, search Amazon for “Sleep Innovations 2-Inch Memory Foam Twin XL Mattress Topper”. It is less than $60. D liked it a lot. If your D’s schools have twin beds, search Amazon for twin memory foam mattress topper. FYI, get a mattress pad that is deep enough to go over the topper. The toppers have a bit of a chemical smell, so it is better to have something between them and the sheet.
I found a profile for our school on a site called mycollegeoptions.com which listed the most common majors for kids going to college: 1) Criminal Justice 2) Mechanical Engineering 3) Biology. Which sounds about right, from what I’ve seen.
Community Service: My DDs school does have a service learning requirement to graduate, but I have no idea how many hours or what qualifies. I’m sure she’s on top of it as she is everything else. She was on our city’s Youth Leadership Council this past school year so not sure if that counts or not. She also did Interact in freshman year which had some volunteering involved. She was also student member of the school board first semester junior year.
School Profile: Our school profile is on the school website but is outdated (2010 I think). It gives description of school, ethnic breakdown, how many qualify for free/reduced lunch (50%!), mission and vision, describes block schedule and ECs offered, describes how grades are listed and weighted on transcript, describes graduation requirements and lists the AP and honors classes they have, lists SAT scores (not ACT) which seem really low, says 40% go to 4 year colleges and 50% to community colleges and then lists colleges where the graduates have gone. It seems pretty thorough and I’m assuming this is what they provide to colleges (but hopefully one that is more updated!).
PE: PE is only required freshman and sophomore years and my DD was able to take Jazz Dance instead of typical PE.
Dorm: I will definitely be getting a foam topper for DD. I need to get some dorm items now for her 3 week summer trip to UPenn. Things like surge protector/power cord, lamp, robe, flip flops, shower caddy, etc. and then she can just keep them for next year when she starts college.
UChicago prompts: My DD is applying to UChicago. @2muchquan Are those prompts for this upcoming year or for last year’s applicants? I’m not sure which one she’d pick. Interesting.
@Ynotgo I attempted to bold the headings, but it ended up bolding the entire text so I deleted. Is there a way to get just the headings bolded?
@dfbdfb Operational efficiency. I see that as the teachers not calling in sick all the time, not getting a lawsuit from parents, showing up on time, and bonus points if the science teacher is also the softball coach.