I believe my son is doing his EE on Panama Papers. Not sure why a science geek picked that topic 
@srk2017 …sounds interesting at least!
D is having writers block and really needs to just.get.started.
I know at our school it’s a little more complicated than just choosing your favorite subject. Each teacher will only advise 3 to 4 students. So if the chemistry teacher fills up you may not be able to do chemistry.
Question: Received a letter from UVA’s Dean of engineering school. It looked like a commercial letter for the engineering school. But I think we’ve only seen letters from AO offices. Any value to it?
@VickSoCal
Lots of IB EE Pain over here too. Another STEM kid who decided to do historical research. Reading a 1 foot stack of history books on the same topic is not as interesting as she expected.
@VickiSoCal …yep, hence the reason my science kid is doing a lit paper :((
Mine is also starting her research for her big paper in HL History of the Americas. She became fascinated with Pinochet when we were in Chile last year and went to the museum. She is finding the book she checked out on Democracy in modern Chile to be less interesting than looking at bullet holes on the presidential palace in Santiago.
I decided to read my book (I am Pilgrim - great read so far) instead of this thread and now I’m paying for it!
Good luck to all the wisdom teeth removals. Both my kids had them removed in middle school. My H still has his and he has room to spare! I had mine out when I was 30.
games…love cards. My family has dinner every night and it always consists of playing cards.
Still no apps, essays or even thought on where she is definitely applying. Breathe, breathe…
Here’s kind of a weird course-selection situation… :-/ DS is still figuring out what 2 classes to take at the UC in addition to his 4 HS classes. He’s confirmed for Linear Alg, but has to request permission from a professor to enroll in another class that interests him and fits with his schedule
He was going to take Astronomy, but after this summer program, the astronomy class homework available online looks far too basic.
One of the options is the 1st class in the physics sequence for a separate physics major in a separate college at the UC (billed as “a graduate school for undergraduates”). Think of it sort of as an honors college, I guess. It’s pretty selective for admission, but we know of students who have taken their math major’s freshman class while in high school (and said it was tough).
The weird part is that they do Pass/No Pass grading and award 1 to 5 units:
So, there’s no way to fold that into a high school GPA as dual-enrollment. Luckily, he doesn’t need more science credits to graduate. I guess that’s what those “do you have anything to explain about your academic environment” questions are for on the applications. For students applying to grad school, they say to submit the course descriptions.
Maybe I need advice on how to make that work on applications from our homeschoolers?
(Other options that interest him and work schedule-wise are a CS class called “Automata and Formal Languages” and a Geomaterials class in the Geology department. He sort of has the prerequisites for both, but they are both upper division classes for majors.)
Day 15 of trying to find anyone at the school who knows when anyone will be around that knows when transcripts go out.
Ultimately I figure transcripts will go out after school starts, but now I’m completely invested in the Great Mystery.
THANK YOU @Dave_N , @2muchquan, and @carachel2.
A CMU student suggested The Porch so that is now two votes for the same place. Menu looks great.
@2muchquan – in Chicago, we will be staying off Michigan a couple of blocks north of Water Tower Place. Am not sure what area that is considered! Son’s friend suggested Portillo’s but after taking a look at their website, I will not be eating there.
OK—all of you people chatting about essays are starting to alarm me again. Nothing happening here…
@2muchquan For the Mandarin course what is the course title/ description? My son will be taking his 7th year of Mandarin and the course is designated ADV rather than AP. The number of kids who receive a 5 on the AP exam is close to 65%. It is known that the vast majority of those sitting for the exam are native speakers and it has been reported that native speakers start to take the exam in 9th grade to start building up the number of APs they take. Colleges aren’t looking for a language course to be an AP course; they are looking for continued progression. I don’t think there is really a right or wrong answer. It depends on the school and it depends on the major. Loved the joke of the day. The POTD was fabulous. I think we all know a story exactly like that and it’s what causes some of the anxiety even with applying to safeties and reaches.
Wisdom teeth: Had the consultation today and all 4 coming out next week.
Senior Portraits: Had our meeting with the photographer today to finalize details for the photo session which is in a few weeks. I am so excited and although my son was just going with the flow because he knows how excited I am about the photos, he left there saying he really likes the photographer and it’s actually going to be fun. Ha! Coming from the kid who doesn’t have patience for pictures. This is going to be painful on the back-end. The possibilities are endless!
@CT1417 there are lots of good expensive restaurants around there. Most to least expensive, all good: Del Frisco’s Steak House, Francesca’s On Chestnut (a fav), and Connie’s Pizza.
@paveyourpath Her class is really just an independent study where mostly it would just be prep for the AP + some additional stuff. I did not see her proposal to the dean. She is out of available classes at her HS.
A while back some of us talked about what to put for # of languages you are proficient in on the Common App. I noticed D17 put “1”. C’est la vie!
We visited WUSTL during the school year and though the campus was beautiful and the students very friendly we did have issues with food service. My child also got some complimentary meal coupons. We went to a sandwich station and we walked to the park across the street to eat and found that the roast beef on my sandwich was totally green like I’ve never seen before. We were very lucky that I opened the wrap to add condiments! Someone made that sandwich in front of us and served us that. We also had a giftcard for a few more dollars and went the next day and had some very stale breakfast pastries. She tries to eat cleanly and mostly vegetarian and we looked through all the menus for the week and found that there was not a lot of variety across venues and day to day. Perhaps it is a more midwest style of dining that isn’t the norm in our very multi-cultural neighborhood? It’s still on her maybe list but we would need to balance whatever financial aid she gets with a need for her to purchase food off campus or at some of the non-covered places on campus. The presentation was quite good and far above average for the million we have seen now but the tour was not well done (guide was very low energy and unenthusiastic).
Living the EE dream here too! DD’s is up to 1850 words (after reading and researching!) and I feel like I’ve been there every step of the way. We haven’t had one holiday or break yet that we weren’t working on a project or essay. I’m looking forward to college so she will get some true breaks!
@CT1417 …for hotels, do NOT stay at the Quality Inn near Pitt. UGH. The room was icky and you could hear sooooo much street traffic. The hotel ON the campus looked decent enough and it is steps away from where the tours start.
D is back from ND. She had a great time and is very excited about college. We had dinner after she got back so she could tell me everything she didn’t get to text or tell me on our brief nightly calls. Sounds like it was a great program. Lots of memorable moments and deep late night conversations. There was a lot of work, but ND gave them a lot of freedom to explore campus, use the facilities, and manage their time (most programs don’t), so she really got a taste of what college will be like and loves the college lifestyle.
@IABooks 2 years of foreign language is the requirement at almost every school that requires foreign language. Many of the better schools recommend 4 years but it really seems to depend on the major how much they care. My son at UChicago only took 2 years and he got into a number of top schools. He didn’t take junk or study hall though with the extra time he took extra AP math and science classes plus he is a comp sci major. UChicago was one of the few schools that even required a year of foreign language in college for students working towards a BS. There comes a point where you can’t worry about every single detail and they need to do what makes sense for them. My 2017 child loves foreign language but stopped before 4 years because our for lang program is extremely weak. I’m just not concerned at all about it. She’s taking 5 APs and 2 DEs I think that’s a ridiculous amount of rigor and it makes sense with her future plans more than for lang does.
@VickiSoCal Double classes count as 2 grades in our school. The teacher mixed and matched with the online grade book so the grades weren’t the same but he usually tried to re-balance at the end.
Just a quick note on wisdom teeth, when my oldest D had hers out she ended up with c.diff from the antibiotic. I thought only old people in hospitals got that, but that is not so. So I’d recommend having your child take probiotics, and if they have diarrhea a few weeks later get it checked right away! My D ended up very sick in the er after 3 days of symptoms because she assumed it was food poisoning.