@flatKansas I feel you on the transcript delay. We start after Labor Day but for my son the transcripts did not go out until the first week in October! The counselors are so slammed with schedule changes the first 2 weeks of school they won’t even start on them. For some of the rolling schools and schools that give housing priority to date of completed app it’s a disadvantage. They will send out transcripts over the summer but only if the actual due date is shown to them and will not include any counselor rec. My daughter has 3 apps in now but no transcripts so I’m doubting she’ll here on the earliest dates for these rolling schools though 2 are SRAR so maybe that’s enough…
@carachel2 --thanks for the heads-up. I recall staying in a rather nice and new hotel somewhere in PA when touring three years ago. I had not factored in the highway noise. All night long! And an A/C unit that is free-standing (beneath window) and you activate by turing a knob to red or blue. I thought that type of HVAC was only available in old properties. I now read reviews a bit more closely.
@2muchquan - We will be visiting CMU so I don’t think we will need the Pitt on-campus hotel. As to Chicago restaurants…we will go casual. After a long day of touring colleges, going on that Wendella Architecture boat tour, visiting the Bean and hopefully dragging the boys into the museum…we won’t really be ready for prime time or fine dining.
@caroldanvers — how awful! I had no idea c.diff could be contracted from antibiotic use. I do recall that reaction when my boys took antibiotics for four weeks to treat Lyme Disease (not both in the same year). Very messy while still in diapers, but clearly not c.diff as they were never hospitalized.
@2muchquan I totally agree with @paveyourpath regarding the Mandarin AP. DD17 is in the exact same place as your DD. Because of yet another job transfer, we will be moving so she is going to graduate after fall semester so as not to transfer again. She has researched her options a great deal and has come to the same conclusion regarding the Chinese AP exam.
I know when we lived in MN, the community of native speakers held classes to prepare for the AP exam and many of the kids who took the class were not even in high school yet. They would take the class for multiple years. DD’s teachers were both native speakers and often talked about the offerings within their communities.
DD is an excellent student of the language but is a bit scared to even attempt to study for and sit the AP exam.
About Senior Portraits. The studio our H.S. requires sends out postcards that tell you when your portrait will be. How does that really work for them, I bet they have tons of no shows. His was supposed to be yesterday or today when he was still away. Did mange to reschedule easily for next week. (He’s home Friday, talked with him for the first time in 2 weeks today. ) Thought senior photos was something DS wouldn’t care about at all but turns out he does. And because of Band he has clothes & we don’t need to go out and buy him anything.
@CT1417, if your itinerary takes you near the bean at meal time, there is an awesome gastropub across the street from millennium park called The Gage. http://www.thegagechicago.com/
Also, for your visit in Pittsburgh, you might not realize just how close Pitt and CMU are. At points, it is literally just across the street. We usually stay downtown though. We’ve never actually stayed in the hotels closed to Pitt.
The Porch is a good recommendation. If you eat there, you might also want to look at Conflict Kitchen. It’s very close to The Porch and only “serves food from countries with which the United States is in conflict.” The current menu features food from Iran. http://conflictkitchen.org/
Thank you @Dave_N.
I have not looked at a map so I did not realize how close the two schools are. Must carve out some time soon to organize this trip, but doing well with helpful hints here on CC!
Will add your restaurant suggestions to my notes file. We will be in Chicago three nights so do need to find places to eat, but not interested in destination dining.
Just looked at the Gage lunch menu. That is what I want for dinner! Perfect choices…
A friend suggested SpringHill Suites Pittsburgh Southside Works, but Trip Advisor reviewers commented about train noise from tracks that run behind one side of the hotel.
@paveyourpath and @2muchquan –
Regarding native speakers and AP tests, CB publishes a reasonable bit of data about this. See https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/research/2015/Student-Score-Distributions-2015.pdf for the score distribution of each test, including for each language (except Latin) the scores for the “standard” group that learned the language in class and the “total” group including all test takers. Since they show the number of students in each group, you can figure the number of home speakers by subtraction and estimate how much different the native speaker score distribution must be.
For Chinese (Mandarin, that is), 79% of the test takers speak or hear Mandarin at home.
For Spanish, 67% of the test takers speak or hear Spanish at home.
For what grade students are in when they take a test, see
https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/research/2015/Program-Summary-Report-2015.pdf
The AP Chinese test was taken by only 66 kids before 9th grade and 1252 kids in 9th grade.
The AP Spanish test was taken by almost 5000 kids before 9th grade and 5867 kids in 9th grade. (But, more than 10x as many kids take AP Spanish overall than AP Chinese.)
For lots more data, including scores by test for 11th grade, 12th grade, female, male, etc: http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/misc/ap/national-summary-2015.xlsx
Languages
I had started tracking that and then stopped as it became clear that while S would prefer not to take more language while in college, it’s not a deal killer if it’s the right school and if a new language. Or at least so he says now. Many of the LAC’s require it and may or may not allow you to test out, he doesn’t think he’d pass the test to pull that off. We will see how it really shakes out. He has 3 years at HS which satisfies some of his schools but not all.
@STEM2017 if the writing portion is only for placement in class, versus admission, skip the writing for Sept and take that version in Oct and you will be set.
Foreign language: DD took through French 4; the last year was Honors. She will not be taking AP French as her schedule is full and she already has four years.
She just got back from UPenn Sat night and is already saying she’s bored. I told her she should start her essays and apps and she just kind of laughed. She loved the freedom and independence at her summer program. They gave them a lot of freedom (they did have to check in by midnight I believe), she made great friends, and was in class all day and then stayed up late with friends eating, going to the gym, and ordering Insomnia cookies! She says she is so ready for college. She loved it. And she had no problem being all the way across the country. The only thing we need to work on before college is budget; she spent way too much!
@MSHopeful I haven’t checked my credit card bill yet. I bet D spent too much as well.
OK, ladies, check your credit card accounts and report back. This should be good!
@ynotgo Very interesting information. My son won’t be taking the AP exam. He will continue to take Chinese this year but no stress of the AP exam.
Yeah, reconsidering the Chines AP test as well. Thanks all for the info everyone. D17 has a classmate who did a similar IS the year before. I asked her to see how he did on the AP.
@IABooks wrote
I won’t lie; I have a LOT of friends and family in Boston, and since H doesn’t like the Northeast, getting back up there has been challenging. If she went to school there that’s an excellent excuse to visit at least 2x a year (to move her in and move her out). H did say on this latest trip that Boston was much nicer than he remembered (he hasn’t been there for 20 years).
@2muchquan wrote
Yeah, boy, ain’t that the truth. I shudder to think of what D17’s college list would have looked like before I understood what the NPC was or just how many kids are superpowered with regards to going to elite colleges.
She’s still got rosier colored glasses on that I have-until I actually see merit money and acceptances come back from her matches (and/or acceptance from her one reach and one lottery), I’m still thinking it’s fairly likely she’s going to UA. However, I’m not going to say that to her because I like UA and what it’s doing with regards to the honors college, so I don’t want to poison the well there by calling it a safety to her. But if she doesn’t get in to her reach or her lottery, and the matches offer no merit aid, she has to be ok with her safety choices. Thank goodness for CC for helping me to find those safeties.
@VickiSoCal wrote
D18 took a double block honors math last year and it was two grades, sorta-the first semester was geometry and the second semester was algebra. So it may be the case that she’ll get that kind of grade-IB Chem HL 1 first semester, and IB Chem HL 2 second semester.
@itsgettingreal17 wrote
That is just the best thing, isn’t it? I never thought my older kid would be, but this last camp really lit a fire under her.
@curiositycat333 we’ve been ignoring the senior portrait commands. Mostly because we don’t like being told what to do. >:) At some point she’ll probably sit for the one that goes in the yearbook, but only if it works for our schedule. I am really bothered by the money machine and lack of choice that surrounds the entire thing.
D17 is with H today at an Amazon cloud thingie. That is the only way I can describe it because when they started talking about it my eyes rolled back in my head. Above my intellectual pay grade, lol.
Something that is my jam-Pitbull concert tonight! Mr. 305! Woo! Remind me to bring my earplugs because I am old. \m/
@CT1417 - In Pittsburgh I would suggest staying within walking distance to the campus. We stayed at Hampton Inn near the hospital and an easy walk to both UPitt and CMU. Easy access to the highways and easy parking. The rooms were plenty spacious, neat, and breakfast was included. Southside Works is a great area to walk and explore but it is over one of the rivers from the schools. We got a great idea of the neighborhood around the college from walking and exploring - much more than we saw on the tours. Pittsburgh can be somewhat confusing to navigate because of all of the bridges and highways. We took public transportation downtown to the point and we drove over to Southside. YMMV
@MSHopeful My D also enjoyed her summer program at Columbia a lot. They went to Broadway shows, food festival in NYC, museums, etc etc, just too much spending :(. The school recommended every one to bring 900$ at least for spending money . The good thing is that she called me to check on my cc and tell her how much she spent 2 weeks into it so I know that she is conscious about it and paying attention.
Wisdom teeth: My daughter has to have hers out sooner rather than later, given how comparatively small her jaw is.
My horrible story: Because of some things that were going on immediately following the summer after my third year of college,* I had all four wisdom teeth out two weeks before finals. No real problem—except that one got infected, but painlessly, so I didn’t know until it burst as I was finishing up my final exam for what was probably the single weirdest class I ever took in college. It was not an excellent moment.
- Third of five—I lost a year in transferring, changing majors, &c.
Frozen vegetables: It’s worth remembering that in most cases (and not just up in Alaska!), frozen vegetables are actually fresher than those you buy fresh in the produce section (and often even than those you can buy at farmers markets)—they’re processed way earlier in the process than anything you’d have access to.
Language requirements: If my daughter goes to Alabama, she’ll have to complete a language minor to complete one of her planned majors (and you have to actually take a certain number of credits to get one, you can’t test out of any and get credit, though whether that’s the case for AP/IB credit—which she won’t have—is somewhat opaque). This is one of her concerns about the school, actually, because she could do a double major easily, but a double major+minor gets tricky.
Other schools have a language requirement, but only a minimal one and/or one that she’d get credit for, given her proficiency level and tests taken and such.
Games: We have a massive cabinet (okay, a couple cabinets, really) full of games that we play now and again, plus some we’ve been given but not yet gotten around to. Our current favorite is an utterly original card game called Gloom (we have several expansion packs, which we combine to make it really insanely complicated) with transparent cards that may or may not cancel each other out. In our lighter moments we also like Fluxx (wish you could easily combine decks, though) and especially We Didn’t Playtest This at All. We’ve gotten out of the habit of playing board games, but at larger family gatherings some of the grownups have been known to have all-night sessions of Rail Baron (with a number of house rules to make it a bit more balanced), which is a game you should try if you like moderate to high complexity and can find it at a reasonable price (since it’s now out of print). We also do some tabletop roleplaying games—we’ve played a lot of Faery’s Tale (since the youngest is still pretty young, at eight years old), but there’s been some interest in Traveller from the kids, now that it’s available in a revised version (where it’s less likely you’ll kill your character during character creation, among other improvements), given what I’ve told them about it.
Can our seniors take their AP exams from the beach next May? Because that’s where their brains will be.
They won’t be alone. Goal should be taking AP classes that are filled with other seniors as well. So they all take the AP exam from the beach.
@dfbdfb The major won’t let you test out or your Dd won’t have AP credit to exempt? I didn’t quite follow your post. I have never heard of a major at UA where test scores didn’t give you credit toward your major. If she doesn’t have AP credit, she could always take the CLEP exam. Above a certain score on the CLEP gives something like 14 FL credits.