Parents of the HS Class of 2017 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
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@PengsPhils – Sooooo glad you are on this thread!! My son is very interested in CS & in EE. We just visited last Wednesday – saw CS building - tall one with dorm on top. That space was very nice but we understand undergard CS courses are held in various buildings. Saw some classrooms on engineering tour though not much lab activity in the summer.

Can you share what areas in CS you think NEU is particularly strong in? Also, seems there is much excitement but also much mystery around the new interdisciplinary STEM bldg - ISEC- –http://www.northeastern.edu/isec/ Have you heard much about the courses & labs hat will be there?

Many thanks!!!

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DS just texted that his plane landed in Denver. Checkin and security went smoothly, and his bag was just under the 50 pound limit. We tested Facebook messenger video yesterday, and that’s the plan for keeping in touch for the next 6 weeks while he’s at Boulder. :slight_smile: :frowning:

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We have not yet “talked” with my daughter who has been in Germany for about 2 weeks. Exchanged some texts and pictures. And a couple emails with parents of the family with which she is staying. So far everything seems to be going well. I think its a good opportunity for her to spread her wings a little outside the nest. In about 14 months, she will do so in a much bigger way at college. Miss her a lot though.

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DD’s plane also just arrived in New York for her summer program! DH is accompanying her to check her in since he needs to go there for business.

We only finished packing last night and everything fit into the check-in luggage including 2 pillows, bedding, fans, and alarm clock (thanks to @Ynotgo’s earlier post).

One thing we used for the first time but really helped getting everything to fit was one of those plastic bags that squeeze out the air. It doesn’t require any additional hose or vacuum. DD received it as a gift last Christmas and we weren’t sure if it even works. Since there are so much to pack for DD’s summer program, we thought we would give it a try and it really helped us fit everything into the luggage. I just thought I mention it for anyone who might need it next year this time. :slight_smile:

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And, to add to everyone else’s, my daughter just barely landed in Allentown for her week of neuroscience camp at Muhlenberg! First time she’s ever flown solo, so she was incredibly nervous, but it seems to have gone well.

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My head is swimming with discussion of taxes and co-ops. I learn so much from this thread!

D17 has senior portraits this week (scheduled by the school)…almost had a panic attack scheduling her an appointment to have her hair styled that day. For some reason, that made her senior status a bit to real! Do I recall a discussion about this already? Anyone else doing senior portraits over the summer?

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Too lazy to look at previous post. Do you all think AP Stats or AP Calc AB would be more beneficial for a business major? My DD is signed up for Calc, but was thinking about Stats.

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So glad the students are making it to their summer programs & enjoying so far! Look forward to hearing how they enjoy them - seems like lots of wonderful opportunities DS heading to Hotlanta on Tuesday for the FBLA conference & competitions but there will be a large group going together so should be ok logistically. He ALWAYS takes TOO much stuff so imagine the baggage will be his challenge. He has done several college campus based programs in past years but just too much to do this summer with science research project, wanting to take physics course, college visits, apps, IT internship, lots of summer work for next year’s AP courses (we start after Labor Day so there are summer assignments unfortunately) & maybe taking driving lessons (have not yet planned), Hope we can take a short vacation though somewhere.

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@jeepgirl I think it would be a function of how much she likes math and what her likely future major will require. My D’s business minor required stats but not any other math. She also said her stats class at the college level was much easier than her AP calc AB class. On paper I think a college would see either AP class as a sign of rigor, and not care that it wasn’t calc unless she’s applying to STEM.

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@jeepgirl As a business/finance professional, I would suggest that statistics would be more useful to a business major. HOWEVER, your DD should also try to take some version of calculus as higher level math is useful to everyone. Maybe a combination of AP Stat and Calc 1(non-AP)?

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@BlueAFMom, DD just finished her senior portraits last week. We had to schedule it early due to her summer program schedule. The photographer spent about 5 hours with her the first session and said she ran out of time and asked us to come back. The second session took another 3 hours. We didn’t ask for such Marathon photo shoots and I am not paying it by the hour. I think the photographer wanted the extra session to focus on more ballet posts. DD is an easy person to photograph and I enjoyed going around town with the photographer and watch the whole process.

I thought about scheduling hair and make-up appointments for DD’s photo shoot but the photo shoot starts at 8:30 in the morning in order to accommodate the hot weather. So we ended up doing hair and make-up ourselves. DD and I had to get on-line and watched how-to videos to learn better techniques for doing make-up for photos. Prior to that, we spent a week on and off shopping for the right clothes.

The day before DD left for summer program, the photographer called to say the preview is done and asked us to go look at them ASAP (the photographer was so excited and told us that we had 3X more proof than others, well, I wonder why :wink: ) I ended up picking them up and bringing them home to show DD as we were still in the midst of packing for her summer program. When DD returns home in August, we will go through the pictures and decide which package to buy. I am sure I will end up spending some serious money on this.

DD and I are typically not that into photos/clothes/make-up/hair even though she does ballet. However, this whole senior photos experience was fun but really time consuming so I am glad that we got it done before school starts.

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Thanks @flatKansas and @STEM2017. She has already taken pre-calc, so I’ll let her decide.

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Good luck to all FBLA competitors. I know couple of kids (from different schools) who are competing @ the nationals.

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Good ACT score news today!! So proud. She went up 2 points from a very solid starting score, so hopefully this will help with merit/scholarship aid. @dfbdfb glad to hear your daughter survived her first solo plane ride. We will be in the same boat in a couple of weeks when we send our D off to summer at Smith. But she fared well on her first overnight train ride a few days ago, so hopefully the flight will also go well.

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Just came back home after dropping D off at her 3 weeks program. Already missing her :">

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@CA1543

Oh awesome!

So WVH (CS Building) houses all the labs, professors, and some deans/advisors, with others in another hall a few minutes away. All college events are held there too, as well as tutoring and office hours. The main lab is a bit of a tutoring/homework/social hub for CS - you’ll run into professors there as well.

As far as ISEC goes, I have gotten the impression that it’s mostly a Science/Engineering building - CS here already has tons of amazing resources, so I don’t think we will be taking up much space in the building. I do know we will have some sort of presence there, but I don’t have any details.

For the whole school (undergrad and graduate), the classes are held all over, as the room doesn’t really affect the class - you can teach CS effectively everywhere. In cases where you do need a specific lab (robotics, etc), then, of course, the room matters.

I came to NEU specifically for CS (and co-op/Boston) - the biggest strength of the department for the general population is the teaching philosophy - we don’t start with an industry language, we start with a language called Racket (developed and maintained at NEU), which is a variant of one of the oldest languages around, Lisp. The philosophy is really spearheaded by Matthias Felleisen, who teaches software development and will also be teaching the intro class this semester. The program really forces you to think about program design over making something work, and the principles of the first semester (and year) curriculum follow you all the way through. I actually love it so much that I TA the intro class (going into my 3rd semester of that) to help the new CS students through - the support staff has dozens of tutors and TA’s with round the clock office hours for both them and the professors.

There’s really a lot there, but I would highly recommend reading this essay which details why the approach is so unique:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/Thoughts/Growing_a_Programmer.html

Research-wise, our strength is in Programming Languages (go figure), where US News has us in the Top 15 for the focus. We also have a lot of great networks work. In terms of research weaknesses, I would say that AI is a bit lacking, but everywhere else (Robotics, Systems, Theory) has tons of interesting work going on.

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congrats to all on successful arrival of kids at their summer programs, lovely increases in ACT scores and getting senior portraits done!!!

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Congrats @picklesarenice on the ACT score!!

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@picklesarenice – congrats on the nice ACT score improvement!!

@PengsPhils – thanks so much for all this info – really appreciate it and your enthusiasm - clearly you are thriving & enjoying - so nice to get your perspective and insider views!!

Re Racket - seems like a nice starting point for some students – & way cool that it was developed at NEU – sure that students come in with different experiences – my son has learned Java, C++ and Assembler too - and (to out big surprise) he self-studied with an online course & achieved a perfect score on the AP CS exam as a sophomore – so I hope that students are placed at whatever level is appropriate. Nice to hear the strength is programming languages! .

Thanks again so much for all the info – re ISEC - I feel like a lot is to be determined - there may not yet be a fully fleshed out plan - had heard CS, Engineering 7 other STEM fields would be doing research there. Since courses are all over campus - hopefully that is a good opportunity to meet & interact with other students.

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@CA1543

Re placement:

The intro course is a crucial part of the curriculum - I had a similar level of CS experience coming into freshman year (5 on AP CS, Java and C/Arduino work) - I was advised to drop everything I knew before going into the first course (Fundies 1), and I really think that’s one of the best things you can do. Every semester, students come in with tons of experience, thinking everything is a breeze for the first few weeks and not really focusing on what the course really teaches - a logical thought process and program design. They get by for the first month or so on what they already know, but by the second midterm, they can fall behind students without any experience because they assumed they knew it all from the start.

The language doesn’t matter, and often people confuse “knowing language X, Y, and Z” as a high level of CS understanding when it’s much more about how you use the language. In the end, languages change, but the underlying thought process and principles don’t. Part of the reasoning behind Racket is that the syntax is so simple that you barely have to worry about the language ever.

The class isn’t a class you can skip out of, no matter your experience. This semester they’re offering an advanced/accelerated version for those who do have more experience, but it’s still the same class with a bit of extra material at the end. Transfer students have to take Fundies 1, even if they are 2 years into CS from their old school.

If you get through Fundies 1 and have a ton of Java experience, you can manage to skip Fundies 2 with Dean approval, but very few students elect to do that. I knew of only one student in my year who did, and he is now currently on co-op at Google.

All that said, it sounds like your son is very ahead of the game and will be poised to do well just about anywhere :slight_smile: