@MotherOfDragons, that should be good enough for merit awards! I was hoping S would get a 33 when he took the ACT at school in March, but he didn’t quite achieve my goal. =)) We are waiting for his SAT score from June. Blech. Also waiting to hear if his requested rescore on the ACT writing went higher. I wasn’t going to ask for the rescore, but his counselor insisted.
I agree that the coalition app essay prompts look better than the CA essay prompts. None of S’s schools use the coalition app.
@Ynotgo It is always a good idea to read a book for fun in case an interviewer asks. 
A colleague once said he got a new faculty interview for the student newspaper, when asked, what was the book you read most recently? be honest! he had to answer Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. :))
Our AP Lit syllabus is out, so I got them all:
Required summer reading:
Crime and Punishment (yikes!) and Wuthering Heights
Texts:
As I Lay Dying
Hamlet
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Beloved
Waiting for Godot
The Things They Carried
I think my dd could use the same essay for both the common and coalition app! She is planning on answering the first 1 for the CA and describing how she is in charge of choosing her subjects and helps design their content and how that has allowed her to feed her internal drive for deeply exploring her interests and how her self-designed subjects have influenced her future goals.
After she talked to me about, I figure that she may as well highlight being homeschooled. I was totally shocked a few weeks ago when I was reading stats about Bama and the really low number of homeschoolers admitted. They only have the breakdown for the state of AL, but 2011 and 2012 had 0, 2013 and 2014 had 1 each, and 2015 had 5. Yikes, that is low for a state flagship in a state that has a lot of homeschoolers. Those numbers seem insanely low.
So, I told her to go ahead and go for it b/c apparently our bubble view of homeschooling is definitely a bubble! She may as well capitalize on something that is different and that she has definitely made work for her.
@MotherOfDragons Great score! <:-P <:-P
After the SAT chemistry let down, DS got better scores too! :D/ :D/
Now we wait for 7/5 AP scores and 7/21 SAT scores.
I’m Liking ACT’s fast scoring so much better 
, in spite of recycling tests. :-w
Congrats to those who are happy with the ACT scores. I am not in that bunch, D score didn’t change from last time. Time to move on. She is still waiting for the June SAT. Her SAT and ACT scores are great but for her one selective school she’s applying ED to its in the middle 50 and I was hoping to be in the 75. Oh well.
I like the Coalitions prompts better as well. I’ll have to research how many schools she’s looking at accept it. Her ED school does so we might go in that direction.
Off topic, if anyone is familiar with Jimmy Kimmel and the Father’s Day pranks he does every year where you send in a video, my brother was on tv last night as part of the videos picked! They were all pretty funny. I love when he does it for Halloween and the parents tell the kids they ate their candy.
@payn4ward Hopefully nobody asks what the last book I read was. I seriously cannot recall. I read a lot. But I like reading magazines of all sorts. I read adventure stories in Outside and Bike magazine. I read Fast Company and other business mags. I read the Wall St journal every day. I read Popular Science magazine. I read a snowboard magazine called Frequency where my friend is the editor. I read Lax magazines. I read travel magazines. I read magazines on all sorts of projects I’m interested in from woodwork, house design, gardening etc. I’ll buy books on hobbies and subjects I’m interested in, but all non fiction.
I read all of the time. All sorts of subjects. Just not any fictional literature.
@Ynotgo AP lit summer homework here is
How to read literature like a professor, Thomas C Foster
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
He is dreading the first and excited for the 2nd.
@Stem2017…thank you.
@Ynotgo…thank you. I will be sure to let my S know what he can expect to write about.
D’s AP lit summer homework is the same as @eandesmom 's plus write a college application essay. A great idea!
Qotd College book recommendations? Has anyone gone through A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs? I looked through the look,inside feature on Amazon and can’t tell if it is worth it. Our library doesn’t have any of the books I want to look through. But I really want a book to thumb through to see if any goo options are elusively in a book somewhere. I am getting sick of browsing college websites. I have been doing that since Sept and I need something fresh to inspire me.
Dd list is way too teeny tiny. She has dropped UKY off her list after meeting with USC. That is the only college we have visited that has remained on the list. We have 3 more to visit. But, I would really like to add a couple of others.
I want a book broken down by majors and includes scholarship information.
Oh no @Mom2aphysicsgeek I didn’t realized UKY wasn’t going to work 
@whereismykindle It could if she had to, but she really doesn’t want to. Their dept is so small and getting to the advanced levels is fairly uncommon. At USC, they told her that they have had students get to adv-high, not many, but some. Well, if she can’t get to superior, she will settle for advanced high. But she wants to be somewhere that they will really work with her to achieve her goals.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek I read the book and it was very helpful for the schools on D’s list that were included. A few we are interested in, however, are not. It’s definitely worth the purchase in my opinion.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek A book brown down by majors and including scholarships information . . . wouldn’t that be nice?! I don’t think it exists, however. They like to make it hard on us to put the pieces together, I think. You wouldn’t believe all the work (and number of hours) that I put into D’s list!!!
The University of Alabama is going to be making some changes to the scholarships for this year.They may or may not have made the decision when the Application opens up. IMO there is no way they are going to “lower” the score for the Presidential. If you needed a 1400 on the old SAT I am pretty sure you will need a 1450 on the new or a 32 ACT… My concern it that they may even make it higher than that for example some colleges require a 1440 Old SAT or a 33 ACT…
Also if you look at the table ACT to new SAT a new SAT of 1400 is the same as a 30 on the ACT, a 1430 is the same as a 31 and a 1480 is the same as a 32.
@itsgettingreal17 Actually, I would. B-) Dd and I were talking about it yesterday. We started researching early last fall and started making college visits the end of Sept. I spend hours researching. The problem is that I can’t change reality. The schools that would fit and are affordable don’t offer high enough levels of Russian and the ones that do, we can’t afford.
Re: AP Lit summer reading: All I can say is I am thankful that I am not in AP Lit! All of the books you listed do not sound remotely interesting to me. I am more the Brave New World, Catch-22, Gulliver’s Travels, some Shakespeare and maybe the Iliad type of person. I did like Of Mice and Men too. Truly, I am more of a sci-fi/fantasy reader. I was happy when the kids had to read Ender’s Game because I got to read it too.
@MichiganGeorgia I can’t wait to see what BAMA does with the scholarships. When we toured at the end of May they told us that they didn’t think they would be changing, so who knows!
D has picked her likely essay topic (for prompt #1: “Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.”) But no progress yet on actually writing it!
My D won’t be taking any English classes next year as she is done – yay! But I will comment on the book selections anyway. D and I have both read the Handmaid’s Tale – I liked it (though this was years ago), but she was mixed, leaning toward negative. I did not like the Great Gatsby in HS and gave it another try not too long ago. It was good, but I would never pick it as some kind of amazing classic. I loved Wuthering Heights. Beloved is great too, but so so dark – not a great choice for everyone. I did not care for Moby Dick or The Old Man and the Sea.
Not an AP book, but the school librarian suggested All the Light We Cannot See for D (she is a WWII history buff) and D loved it. It’s sitting by my bed to start after I finish the mindless thriller I’m currently reading. I admit that most of my reading consists of psychological thrillers and science fiction, but I do like occasional literary fiction, historical fiction, and classics. Crime and Punishment – haven’t read; we’ll see!
I posted a thead on the Bama forum asking even though Dd isn’t applying. I’m curious bc it might be an indication of how other schools will proceed. Even with conversion, Dd makes it past Bama’s threshold, but she doesn’t at some of the others with more competitive scholarships. Her list is so small and she really doesn’t want to retake, so I am a tad nervous.