ACT essay score - Add my D to the list of students with a writing score out of line with the other scores. 35 Composite, 25 Writing. :-S
Seems like that’s the new norm for ACT!
Unless you have only one dream school to which you are applying, what do you do about the different ways colleges recalculate GPAs? Some look at weighted GPA. Some don’t. How much do they weight if they do? Some count just core classes. Some treat passing a pass/fail class as a C (could argue for counting it as a D, right?). So if a kid is applying to any number of schools, seems likely GPA recalculation (if one is done at all by a given school) will vary by school. Different methods may help or hurt any given kid. Now what?
@thshadow, it depends on the kid. To D, stat is harder than BC, Chem or Bio. It doesn’t come natural to her at first, but she was able to adjust. If your D just had honor Chem, it may make sense to do AP chem.
@theshadow At DS’s school I would rank those 3 AP’s hardest to easiest AP Chem, AP Bio, AP Stats. Unless your school teachers it differently AP Stats is without Calculus It’s by far the easiest but I’d personally add Econ rather than Stats.
I would rank the AP’s the same as @curiositycat333
It took D all day but she came up with a good topic to double for the Common App and Coalition App main essay. It’s going to be a long summer!
Summer is getting longer and longer for my DS also, with 12 hrs gone for research and commute having hard time not finding time to spend on essay!
I think you need to decide why she is taking an AP and then if she wants credit and what score would she need. For example AP Stats is one of those AP’s where some schools give credit and some don’t. DS13 took AP Stats in 10th grade and DS19 will take it this year. GT does not give credit for AP Stats however DS13 said it was an interesting class and for him was worth taking. Also at GT you need a 5 on Bio to get credit but only a 4 on Chem. It might be worth checking her target schools to see what credit she can get.
About essays- Our D15 didn’t begin her common app essay until late August, and she did just fine with her results. I think that sometimes an essay that is written later and is therefore less edited can be very effective.
@longwood - That’s true if you are a good writer. DS13 didn’t have anyone edit at his essays and he submitted one with 5 minutes to go to apply to South Carolina’s Honor college. I just about had a heart attack thinking he would miss the deadline.He got in to the Honors college but didn’t go there. However if writing essays isn’t your thing and you need to have someone look at it like DS17 then it’s best to get it done early in case changes need to be made.
@geogirl1 My daughter also had a low writing score compared to her composite and is also applying to top schools. We are just ignoring it. It seems like most schools aren’t even looking at the writing anyway. I briefly considered doing a rescore I think she has a 27 but she only took the ACT once and I don’t want colleges to know we requested that rescore so we didn’t. I felt like the few points she might gain could be negated somehow by that process. I’m sure the report doesn’t say rescored but I worried they might adjust the date or something else that could be detected. She got a 5 on AP Lang so I think that proves she can write more than that silly writing prompt.
Since we are at the writing scores, just curious how does the old SAT writing score of 12 compare to anything?
I wouldn’t count late August as being written later. Mid October for EA or ED or um…Jan for a Feb RD, that’s later. LOL!
@carachel2 I’m one of the ones with kids taking many AP classes and a reasonable homework load. Busywork is rare here and homework is not allowed to count for more than 10% of the grade so there is much more emphasis on teaching than worksheets. Our AP pass rates are quite high and neither of my kids ever studied specifically for their AP tests. Each class would spend a class or two reviewing and each class did a full AP test as a practice (usually counted as their final exam grade for the course). Between my 2 kids they have 20 AP tests so far and 2 were 3’s, 2 were 4’s,and the rest 5’s. A few teachers totally did teach to the test and nothing else but that was rare.
@thshadow AP Stats would be the easiest of the 3 then probably BIO and Chem. BIO will be mostly memorization where Chem is problem solving.
Question of the Night – for our college process vets here – I corresponded with a mom about her child’s experience - valedictorian - applied to Ivies and Rice, Tufts etc - great standardized test scores and many APs with 5s. Limited ECs though. Even had connections with Rice & Tufts - but child applied to late for their interviews. Rejected or wait listed at all -never cleared a waitlist . Scrambled to find any college after Ivy Day - of course this is a huge reminder to find and apply to safeties but I would love your thoughts on this – a top nonIvy college told the parent (even while asking for an alumni donation) 
The mom asked one of the schools where the child was a legacy - about his wait list and rejection – and shared this — she emailed one of the universities - “The President of the university actually e-mailed me back saying that they are looking for students who will contribute to the school and not just ones who can excel academically there. He said that even being the child of alumni does not trump that.”
So here is my question to anyone with experience about this – what do college really expect from students when they say they want those who will “contribute to the school and not just ones who can excel academically there” – kids who are leaders, really active outside the classroom, have some novel talent they value - how would anyone know?, do lots of volunteer work – what are they looking for to “contribute to the university”?? BTW - parent was full pay - not a money issue either and the Sal of their high school got a very good college acceptance.
Thoughts??? Suggestions???
@Mom2aphysicsgeek I had seen that some schools give an A or leave it off entirely for P/F classes so I guess it’s somewhat dependent on where you apply. We have a mandatory life skills class that is only offered P/F so I’m hoping my poor kids UW 4.0 doesn’t get messed up by a P becoming a C at some schools. I think Driver’s Ed is recorded as a P too even though it wasn’t a separate class just a component of Health/PE that is required for a license here.
@acdchai I wouldn’t worry about classes like those. The case I am aware of actually pertained to core academic subjects and they found out after rejection that the Ps were converted to Cs.
@CA1543 We have known a few people in a similar situation of not getting into numerous schools that statistically they should have had a good chance. There was one in my son’s high achieving group of friends who was only accepted to 1 school out of 12. Frankly though he was a very arrogant guy and I wonder if that showed through on his essays or recs? Some of the other kids we’ve known who had this happen were very nerdy and I wonder if they didn’t let any of their personality show in their applications trying to play up their intellect too much. You definitely see this kind of thing happen and wonder what it was that all the schools saw as an issue or just nothing compelling them to want to admit when you know they had all the basics covered but when it’s every school there must be something. Not if they are all lottery type schools because that’s just a crapshoot for most everyone.