Sounds like the essay session went well. S knows what he wants to write about and will pick from these 3 depending on how he decides to frame it up. Any of them could work and he is passionate about his topic. Major progress!
Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?
Describe a problem you've solved or a problem you'd like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma - anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.
Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek that’s pretty careless then on their part. I see numerous errors. I’ve literally looked at every single school on every US News list so am confident in saying some of those are not correct.
@itsgettingreal17 Interesting. They are publishing a new book due out in a couple of months. I would have assumed that these are things they had vetted to include in their book!
I have been going down the list of schools and looking at the ones we haven’t already investigated to seeing if they offer Russian. So far the only school that we haven’t looked into is Kansas, but Kansas’s NMF scholarship is only equivalent to IS tuition, so the list hasn’t helped yet and I have almost gone through all of them (though a lot I already had based on Bob Wallace’s list.)
@itsgettingreal17 They are all way too expensive. UCLA, UW-M, and Portland are all OOS. All CA publics are a no go and UW-M is anti-merit. Portland is a suitcase school with an older population. That is concerning bc you can’t get any further across the country. BrynMawr scholarships are not big enough (we don’t live in Boston or Houston which is required for their large scholarship.)
Poor choices for accessibility compared to the Arabic programs. (2 are very merit friendly, Ole Miss and OK.)
AP Lit: I noticed that Trevor Packer (AP dude) tweeted yesterday that “AP English Literature students continue to find analyzing poetry more difficult than prose, in both the MC and FR sections of the exam.” Maybe they should be reading poetry over the summer? Probably not going to happen for DS. I found a couple lists of recommended poems and commentary by Googling “poems to read for ap literature” – and I’ve even read a few on the lists.
I was a big Dickens fan in high school. Liked Oliver Twist better than Great Expectations, though. I’ve never read Wuthering Heights, but I should. Somehow I’d mentally lumped it in with Jane Austen.
My pre-1986 Orson Scott Card books are all signed, because we got him to come to our SF convention at Texas A&M that year. Highly recommended: his short story “Unaccompanied Sonata”
Wow, @jmek15 – that’s some heavy summer reading. I’ve read Sophocles (Greek drama fan) and Beowulf from the summer part of that list.
Scores: Congrats to those who are happy with ACT scores today! @picklesarenice S’s Feb. ACT scores were about 1.5 weeks late. No explanation, but they did show up.
Vaccines: DS got his 2nd of 2 meningitis B vaccines yesterday. We had cases a couple years ago at our UC, so I wanted him to have this even though it isn’t required. Both kids have had the HPV vaccinations. (Yes, boys can get it, too.)
@Mom2aphysicsgeek well that makes little sense given the purpose of the flagship program. :-S Better to either provide government funding or have them in schools that offer enough merit to make it more accessible to students. I hope your D ends up with a great option. She sounds like an amazing kid.
Today’s camp report: D is loving accounting and finance. (I was sweating a little that I’d have to start the list from scratch if she didn’t. :)) ). Her only complaint is how jam packed the days are.
@carachel2 6 days. Picking her up on Friday. They introduce the kids to accounting and other programs in the business school. The program is very cool. After the parent orientation, I wanted to stay. :))
Wow - what a busy day! Congrats to everyone happy with ACT scores, and whose kids are finishing up school, getting drivers licenses, etc. !!
For anyone interested, I have an update re: UC schools “admission by exam” and A-G requirements. I emailed ucinfo@applysupport.net with a very specific question about admission by exam and my son’s missing VPA (Visual/Performing Arts) credit, and this is the response I received:
Hello,
Thank you for contacting the UC Application Center. The University prefers applicants who meet all the admission requirements regardless of where they attend school (in state, out of state or out of country). The University welcomes applications from students who have demonstrated academic achievement through coursework (and strong test scores for freshmen) and believe they will be able to succeed at the University.
However, UC understands that there may be circumstances in which a student has not met all minimum requirements. The student should include an explanation in the Additional Comments in the Academic History section on the application. Every application submitted is reviewed regardless of whether the student has met al of the requirements or not. While not meeting all requirements will lessen the chance for admission there is still a possibility that one or more campuses may make a case-by-case exception.
If you have other questions, please feel free to contact us again.
If every application gets reviewed, but missing the VPA credit puts an applicant at a disadvantage regardless of their test scores (which is what this email seems to be saying), then I really don’t understand what the “admission by exam” policy is for.
At this point, I am inclined to advise DS to skip the UC schools. If their admissions policies are this opaque, it makes me worry that there will be a lot of bureaucracy/red tape to deal with if he were to actually attend one of their schools.
@eandesmom My D hated FL. She did three years including 8th grade and she didn’t want to go any further. I wanted her to continue but she was adamant, she was done. If she continued, she would have been miserable. I wish your sons good luck! Will your S17 continue FL next year?
She met up with her counselor, too. Counselor insisted D take AP Calc instead of AP Stats next year. D said OK. I’m so afraid!! After Pre-calc, I thought the math drama was over. Sigh.
@RightCoaster Was that in an article? If so I would like to read it so could you please post the link?
I’m not really surprised. I was having a related discussion with a friend just yesterday about parents refusing to help their children and how it was more common than we think. I can’t imagine being able to help my D in some way and refusing to do so. I think often its that the parents paid their way through college so they expect their kids to do the same, not realizing how unrealistic that is with today’s costs.
48% of parents have no clue about their EFC, Federal loan limits and the current cost of college.
I’ve given three college planning sessions in the last two months. I have one slide with a quick reference table for EFC and when I asked “how many of you are learning about and seeing your estimated EFC for the very first time?”…every single hand went up.
Heck, up until a year or so ago that was me. My brother and I both paid our way through school. Heck…why couldn’t our daughter?
Because tuition in 1991 at Texas A&M was $18.00 an hour.
I agree with @saillakeerire. We are right there in the we cannot really afford to help pay for college category. Our measly contribution would probably classify us in the expect their kids to pay “most” of their college expenses category. The difference is that I work incredibly hard at helping them find scholarships. Our older kids have managed to earn their degrees with no debt for either them or us.
Fwiw, CC is a HUGE bubble. This is not the college search reality for the vast majority of kids. Most kids are going to attend a CC with thoughts of transferring, enroll in their local university and commute, or enroll in their state flagship. In going though this process multiple times (this is our 5 high school sr), of all of their friends (church, work, activities) only 3 families that we have known IRL (virtually is different) have pursued OOS options. (One family’s kids went to MIT and Stanford, another family’s to Franciscan, and the other to ND.) All the other families’ kids have stayed in state…either local or a flagship. Dd was talking to another sr this weekend and the response was local. That young lady does not want to be far from home.
And these are all professional families. So it is far more the norm to stay close to home and keep costs low.
(I was sweating a little that I’d have to start the list from scratch if she didn’t. :)) ). Her only complaint is how jam packed the days are.