Math tracking - D’s school separates the students into 2 tracks in 7th grade based on a standardized test and school test given at the end of the year as well as grade in 7th grade math. The top scorers are placed into honors algebra in 8th grade and the others into pre-algebra. Students definitely have the option of testing out of a course in the sequence later on and a small number of kids on the accelerated track are allowed to double up on algebra 2 and geometry in 9th grade so that they can take BC Calc in 11th grade, which is what my D did. For the kids on the pre-algebra track, there is no way to get on the honors track later, though I’m sure exceptions are made.
Vals and sals: My kids’ school doesn’t do the valedictorian/salutatorian thing. However, the entire class of 28 knows that there’s this one crazy incredibly brilliant kid with a 4.0, and that my daughter easily has the next highest GPA (both weighted and unweighted), and then there are a handful of kids clustered a little bit down from that.
The healthy thing is that by all reports, even though they all know their relative academic standing in the class, they really don’t actually care much one way or the other.
@CT1417 and @jedwards70 I’m getting my BA in studio art. The university I’m at doesn’t offer a BFA in studio art, which is fine with me since a BA is a little more flexible wrt finding jobs (I hope). I’m the same age as almost all of my professors 
One of my profs and I were reminiscing about the 80s and playing the Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark pandora station. The kids in the class were like, omg what the heck is that.
IF I can stick to my four classes a semester I’ll graduate next spring, just in time to start paying college tuition for D17 (with hopefully more earning power and a killer portfolio). I have to be careful to remember that the professors may be my social peers, but I am still a student who has a TON to learn, and keep that layer of deference there.
I do have one professor I don’t like (the one obsessed with Freud) and I have to be careful not to point my Resting Dragon Face at her. RDF is kind of like resting murder/bitch face only (according to my kids) they can’t actually tell how mad I am, just that there is a serious problem. Lol. Curls of smoke start to leak out my nostrils and you smell brimstone, run for the hills.
@Gator88NE yeah, I think I saw those stats in the 380 colleges book. If D17’s test scores come back within range for MIT she’ll take the subject tests in october. It doesn’t make sense to do more testing if she doesn’t make the numbers, though, and that’s the only school that needs the SAT subject tests that she’s applying to. She has the GPA and she has some cool nerdy ec’s, but I don’t think it makes sense to put all that effort into a non-common core application if her act and sat scores aren’t in MIT’s range.
The dog (chihuahua) ate a raspberry yesterday and he’s quietly farting next to me this morning. My god he’s like a thermonuclear fart bomb. Gah!
I don’t know if D’s school does Sals and Vals. It ranks (to my endless stress) and it’s huge with 800 kids per grade, so figuring out which kid had the most perfect grades has to be a gordian knot for them. Like Alex in Modern Family whose standing came down to one test in gym class…
Math track-don’t get me started. D didn’t make a 94 in AP Calc AB this year and that was the cutoff for doing BC next year. She’s fine with it, so I’m trying to be fine with it. I spent all of their middle school years trying to keep them from being shunted into easier math tracks because “why work that hard?” even though they had the scores and the grades.
@dfbdfb somehow we ended up watching American Ninja Warrior last night (it was dvr’ed from earlier in the week) and there was a guy from a teeeeeeeeny town in Alaska who competed in the first round and absolutely crushed it. H does Crossfit (has for about a year and a half) and is now interested in these shows, and I have to admit it was pretty amazing to watch these people compete-men and women do the same course. Which is devilishly difficult except for the Alaskan guy who literally made it look like a walk in the park.
Ok, today is “get all your homework done today” day. I’m filled up with double strength tea and I’m ready to kick it so I can focus on getting D17 to camp tomorrow =)
Check one off the list for me! I finished dd’s transcript yesterday, and I am thrilled with the way it turned out. It does a good job of representing her academic strengths.
Today I start on course descriptions (gag…I hate writing them. Every child I say I am going to write them each yr so as to not have to write them all at once, and every time, I fall succumb to the procrastinator’s doom. None of my kids have taken the same courses, so I can’t even use old ones.)
I have alos been reading “The College Hook” in 15 min snippets. I have decided not to have my Dd read the book. I am going to have her read selections, but I don’t want the book to deflate her. She has a lot going for her and I want her to capitalize on her strengths and not be intimidated by the suggestion that working in the Congo, being a Broadway actress, or a published author are necessary accomplishments. (I think the fact that those kids needed a professional to help build their applications is rather pathetic myself.)
Agh playing catch up here, you’re all preventing me from reading my book because I spend so much time reading CC.
@MotherOfDragons I wish I had your drive to go back to school, but after sitting in presentations for my D16 orientation, it’s definitely not for me. I like tof self teach from Google. Glad I am done with college. Your posts lays make me chuckle. Farting dog. My dog actually hates when someone else farts. He’ll jump up and run away. PTSD? My family loves Amercian ninja warrior. Last year was amazing as two people made it to the end and both finished. Kinda bummed that only one was crowned winner.
I think I have great news! My D17 report card says she got an A in Latn!!! She’s not sure how it happened but I am cautiously optimistic. The thing that I’m worried about is the final exam that counted as 20% of her grade may not actually be factored in and we may not know for over a month. Really frustrating.
Vals and Sals: Our local HS only awards one of each. However, we do “senior” awards night, and the top 10 (out of a class of 600+) get recognized, go to Epping Forest for nice group photos, etc.
Our school district (the 20th largest school district in the nation) has it’s challenges, but it does offer a great deal of flexibility, between the large number of magnet and charter schools, to IB, AICE, AP/Honors and DE. If you don’t test well and can’t get into an IB/AICE program, you always have the option of loading up on AP’s classes or earning your AA degree via DE. Most of the brighter kids are on an IB or AICE track, so don’t take BC Calc till 12th grade.
@jedwards70 We’re not far from Lawrence, but I haven’t spent much time on campus there. Lawrence is a fantastic town, but very hippy hipster. Objectively we know KU is a good school, but historically KS is bad with merit aid so most competitive kids from our HS leave the state unless they are engineers (and whatever else KU is especially good at). If you visit, try to get your student into the (stunning) core campus as quickly as possible, as the outer buildings (dorms) are all sketchy and depressing. I know one kid starting this fall who might be in the honors program if you need a resource later.
@jedwards70 Not super recent or super specific info, but we visited KU with DD14. We went in one of those large visit days. I would say Lawrence is a nice college town, and the campus is also nice. Nothing especially noteworthy but a traditional campus with some hills. We were there on a super cold (for Kansas) sleety fall day, and I’m sure it shows better in beautiful weather. I can’t recall what your DC is interested in, but they seem to be strong in the premed, sciences and grad areas. The campus tour was not the best run–groups too large to hear the guides, lining up way deep in a dorm hall for the dorm room walk thru while kids were trying to get through to go to class, etc. but they did a better job on the breakout sessions. DD was undecided for major and that session was horrible. We still laugh about the presenter. We didn’t do any one-on-ones as D lost interest.
We saw Kansas State the next day, and although it was nasty weather there as well, D felt at home immediately and is now looking forward to her junior year in Manhattan (which is a great college town and the campus is gorgeous). The land grant universities seemed to be a better fit for her than the “universities of” in all our visits.
Not sure what you’re used to from a GPA system but Kansas State and I think KU gives 4.0 for any kind of A, 3.0 for any kind of B, etc. If you C is looking for merit and needs to keep a certain GPA for scholarships, it’s something to keep in mind.
Vals and Sals Our school has one of each but it’s probably easier to distinguish the top two in our school than in some others because (like @itsgettingreal17) our grades are on a 1-100 scale rather than A B C D. DS’15 was sal with a 99.86 and I think the val had 99.9 something. There was some frustration on DS’s side because the difference was that he took every music class that was offered, and music had no weighting. Until last year, that is. They started offering an honors track for music that would require extra work (honors choruses and bands at the county and state level etc.) and that extra work was all stuff that DS was already doing (and then some). But administration didn’t allow Honors Music to be weighted last year because it would “change the class rankings.” Ya think?
Ah well, they both got to speak at graduation and DS had such a fun speech, interweaving words of wisdom with singing lines from songs. Of course he closed with “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye!” which got the whole class singing too. People still tell me how much they enjoyed that speech 
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** Math Tracking ** Here kids can get put into Regents 9 algebra in 8th grade, which allows geometry in 9th, trig in 10th, precalc in 11th, and calculus in 12th. No AP math available, and the calculus is a little shaky; DS’15 had some catching up to do even though he started with first year calculus in college. Kids who move here can slot in pretty easily I think by taking the next math in the sequence, but they may run out of math classes if they are way ahead.
Math tracking is what pushed us over the edge into homeschooling. There was no way to accommodate a fourth grader who was doing geometry over her older sister’s shoulder. “Just wait until she’s in sixth grade. Then she can start pre-algebra a whole year early!” Uh, no.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek I have learned from all those “woe is me” posts to keep on top of course descriptions! That I have (well, except for the courses yet to be determined for this coming year :)) ) Now the transcript is another thing. I will wrestle with that beast this weekend. I know what I want it to look like and do, but I’m having so many problems with the macbook.
D chose to not receive any mailings on every single standardized test she has taken. She only receives email and snail mail from the schools she contacted for information. American emails her twice a week, as if flooding an invbox will make a kid want to apply 8-|
@whereismykindle I spent a lot of time reading about American. Its reputation for bait and switch is pretty ugly. That is enough for me to shake my head no way.
When I look at dd’s transcript, 15 foreign Lang credits and 9 foreign Lang awards (3 of them being pretty dang impressive), plus solid test scores, I am still wondering if we are missing a competitive scholarship somewhere. Most of the schools we have looked at with competitive awards only offer limited Russian courses. With such a tight budget, I am driving myself crazy.
In terms of course descriptions, at least I have the skeleton from her summer application. But that is not on par with what I usually create.
Eta: The bio class she wanted to DE was canceled due to low enrollment, so she is just going to do it at home. It is only offered in the fall as a one night a week class from 5-930. Far from an optimal time.
…ooooh D17 is looking at the BOD and the 380 schools book. Shhhh, don’t startle her…
Btw, I hate autocorrect. No matter how many times I try to get it to switch back to what I want it to type, it changes it (Lang for example.) Or when I am not paying attention, there is no noticing what it sticks in mid-type. It capitalizes where I don’t want it to. Ugh. Yesterday I realized it changed self-report to self-respect after edits timed out. I am really far more literate than my posts suggest!
Val/Sal: I’m not sure we do this anymore since we’ve gotten rid of ranking, but not sure.
@MotherOfDragons I went to an OMD concert last week! :)) they played with Howard Jones and BareNaked Ladies. Good times!
@MotherOfDragons What is the 380s school s book?
^^Princeton’s Guide
LACs really were not on our radar, but D just got an invite to a free trip to visit Bates. Anybody visited the school? We are not first generation or URM, so we are surprised that she was invited. She has been a STEM girl who wants to go to Engineering with potential double major on Pol Science or Business. I am not sure it is a good fit for her. Thanks!
Vals & Sals: I don’t actually know if we have them. I haven’t been to a graduation, but the speeches are given by kids who write the best speeches. Usually a tribute to a kid in the class who passed away and the story of a kid who overcame adversity. I think there are several speeches. We rank by weighted GPA, so the top of the rankings is usually about taking the most DE classes or substituting DE health and DE foreign lang for the unweighted school versions. All As are 4.0, so at least there isn’t much stress over that. DS is not in the running for top 2.
@SincererLove A friend’s son plays hockey at Bates. As far as I know, he’s happy there. A bio major with an eyento med school, I think. She has mentioned that the to/from is a bit difficult, even though we are in the MidAtlantic region.
We don’t have vals & sals. Students decide (vote) on who speaks at graduation.