CC is so inspirational and aspirational. Oh, and irrational 
@MotherOfDragons I’m going to send off ACT scores to a few more colleges, too. I see no reason to wait for those that are likely to receive an app from D.
@RightCoaster Sorry to hear about the father of your son’s teammate. Sad.
You HAVE heard of the Boogey Man, right? He only comes out at night.
@WhereIsMyKindle I’m right there with you in terms of the writing score. Dd’s SAT writing score from the Mach test is low. It is crazy. She is a phenomenal writer and has been writing excellent essays since middle school. The writing score does not reflect anything about her academic abilities.
She is not willing to retake the test, so it is what it is. She gets in and is awarded scholarships based on what she has. If not, she is ready to move on.
Home Alone: D17 and S20 have stayed home alone before for about 4 days. We’re good friends with the neighbors, so we had someone to check up on them daily. I don’t like leaving them home alone because S20 is such a picky eater that I’m always worried he won’t eat anything his sister makes and just go hungry until I return. Luckily, everything worked out during my trip. Once D goes to college, S20 probably won’t be left alone.
I’m so sorry to all the kids suffering from any illness. As parents, our greatest wish is always to see our kids happy and healthy. I hope that they all feel better soon and that the doctors’ visits pay off with successful diagnosis and/or treatment
We have left D’17 and S’20 home with S’14. We also have left S’20 home with D’17 for day trips.
S’14 is very responsible and usually gets on us for not being strict enough.
@2muchquan Ha! Yes, and I’m much more likely to be scared by odd sounds at night than S is.
I am sorry to hear about the health issues of so many of the 17ers on here. That puts things in perspective. Good vibes to all you dealing with that.
unfortunately ACT writing scores are all over the place. Couple of DS’s classmates retook ACT with 35/36C since they got low 20s in essay. Not sure if they improved it not. Luckily DS got good score. He took in September (first one with new essay format). May be he got lucked out!
Wow this board moves fast during the day. I won’t be able to keep up.
Thanks @MotherOfDragons for the commended info. Looks like DS will get commended. YEAH…
S17 is quite lopsided, limits the schools. Excellent May SAT’s (non essay part), he only took once without really studying and it’s high enough I see no reason for him to take it again. Still confused about the essay grade, he got a 17/24? And B- GPA… He’s stronger in Math/Science than Essay writing and thus takes AP’s in those subjects and not in the humanities. And he had a very bad second freshman semester.
We are in CA. Looking mostly at state schools in the West, both in & out of state. S17 isn’t sure what he wants to do. Probably STEM and we are keeping Engineering in mind. But not sure… will see after AP Physics & AP Comp Science are taking this year.
I have seen this asked on CC, and found this explanation on the CommonApp website:
Seems as this may be another way to ‘Show Interest’, although I guess you can always show interest by applying :))
I have also heard that this may be a way to get a fee waiver to incentivize you to complete the app…don’t know how much truth behind this…
Seems like both ACT and collegeboard are treating class of 2017 as guinea pigs :((
@srk2017 Which is why I wanted S17 to take the SAT last fall but he refused. I’ve decided not to worry about the SAT essay part since we don’t know what schools are going to do with it. I’m not going to have him retake the exam just for the essay part. Plus for S17 only half the schools will even care.
Thanks for the heads up @2muchquan We just logged in to CA and “demonstrated interest” in 14 schools. :))
Briefly reading while we have wifi. I am only partway through the 200 p
@midwest67, @wherand @flatKansas, a friend set it up and invited us. The tour company they booked with is called Icelandic Mountain Guides.
D received that lovely Yale book everyone has been talking about. Love my alma mater but it’s not in the budget (and of no interest to D) so headed straight to the trash. :))
** Re: sick kids** I hate seeing and hearing about sick kids, it’s sad and adds a lot of stress to an already stressful time. Good luck to your kids, I hope they start feeling better soon.
** Re: father who died** thanks for the thoughts, still feeling bad for them right now. I almost lost my wife last Thanksgiving when she had a weird medical thing going on out of the blue and was put into intensive care for 2 days.Very disturbing. It’s never a good time to pass away, but dying when you have kids in school is a particularly bad time. I had a family member recently lose his wife, and he has 4 kids under high school age. Brutal. I don’t know how he is holding it together.
** common app ** going to demonstrate more interest asap 
** act writing scores** all of the scores my son and his friends have received have been stinkers. I wouldn’t worry about, a lot schools mention they are not requiring it any more anyways.
@rightcoaster Glad your wife was OK.
Health is such a previous gift. Our oldest ds almost died a few yrs ago from pulmonary embolisms. He has permanent lung dsmage from them, but no thanks to the ER he is still alive. (They told him he had pneumonia and to suck up the pain and go home.)
I think I jinxed dd talking about her health. She now has a major symptom of a flare and I have scheduled an appointment with an adult dr for Friday. (The pediatric specialist couldn’t see her until the end of July! )
vacation w/o kids we left our D16 and D17 alone the first time this past November. Since they were both driving I didn’t feel it was necessary to have my parents come from 2 hours away to stay the weekend. I was of course completely stressed out, but just because I was going to miss them. I trust them completely (plus I’m close with my neighbors so they were on the lookout). We would text at least 4 times a day abd FaceTime every night.
Welcome to the best parent group @NerdMom88 and @curiositycat333 and anyone else that I missed (I’ll see a new name but second guess if they are really new because they don’t announce it and think I’m just old and forgetful)
@NerdMom88 @NCComputerNerd and @Mom2aphysicsgeek I’m sorry to hear about all of your chlldrens illnesses. I hope the treatments and future health have positive outcomes.
@RightCoaster sorry for your loss. Breaks my heart.
I’ve been reading the parent 2016 thread and I keep seeing people post things about kids dying. It’s awful!
Just to clarify (a little confusion when mod said d15 she meant her d was 15) I thought that when I say D16 or D17 I’m talking about the year they graduate HS.
Oh no @Mom2aphysicsgeek. Glad to hear your son is ok
Sending out good health vibes to all!!!
I wonder what happened to the OP of this thread…
Yes, @greeny8, the Dnn or Snn refers to the year of graduation from HS.
It’s weird now b/c graduation year ('17) is close to the age of most of our kids. If you had a kid graduating back in '08 it would be more evident you were not talking about an 8-yr old.
ACT writing scores: We went ahead and did the rescore (successfully), but because the percentile was so out of line with the percentiles for my daughter’s English and reading subscores.
I wouldn’t worry about apparently low-looking writing scores, though—colleges’ admissions offices know enough to look at percentiles rather than just what scores look like when evaluating applications—not to mention that even many schools that require the writing section don’t actually use it for evaluation, except to make sure that the student has done it.
I don’t know… With an ACT composite of 34 and a 36 in reading and English, I think D2’s 18 writing score is going to look very out of place.