Thanks @oldbrookie My main concern is outdoor activity. My son is a year-round pickup soccer player. He’s lost without it. It’s his identity. We’re not afraid of snow. We love it. But if the fields are buried from December to March every year it will be tough for him. But he’ll figure it out.
Got it. We are football, so we do snow, but would avoid it if at all possible. 
Good luck to you!
Naviance was finally updated with DS’s highest ACT score.
Glad to see his red circle is finally far right to the college averages. :))
I know that it does not mean a thing [-X [-(
Before, only his freshman year PSAT showed up, 185, thus converted to 1850 SAT. >:P
Our school had a common app boot camp where they rounded up seniors and spent 4 (!) hours.
I had already created Common App account for him and filled in the boring stuff.
He must have been bored to death ~X(
He moved most of the colleges To the Colleges I’m Applying To on naviance =))
No essays though! [-(
@STEM2017 We have indoor soccer. I hear it’s brutal.
@Collegecue and @HiToWaMom -
That’s how I read it. You send either ALL of your ACT scores OR all of your SAT scores (or all of BOTH tests), but you can’t cherrypick which scores among a given test to send.
So, if C17 did better on the ACT, send all of the ACT scores; if he/she did better on the SAT, send all of the SAT scores (that probably means subject tests as well, if applicable). If C17 did equally well on both tests, send everything!
The statement is ambiguous. The or could also apply to kids who only took one test or the other. If you are sending subject tests and don’t want to send sat scores, can they tell you are using score choice?
Caught up briefly in Iceland…
Volunteer hours: 60 hours required for graduation. 200 hours for a colored cord or tassel at graduation. DS has 200+ and still needs to turn in his hours for junior year.
Pets: DS is also allergic to cats, so would need to be in a dorm (or floor or alley) that doesn’t allow cats. It’s not that bad for a few hours, but trying to sleep (like at a relative’s house) gets very bad. Cats seem attracted to him, even the ones that are supposedly very shy.
School closures: I don’t know much about living with snow, but I did read a factoid that the reason for closures at 20 degrees has to do with needing engine block heaters around that temp. Places that have low temps already have these heaters. Southern places caught in polar vortexes would find it very expensive to get them for all their buses.
So far, I’ve only seen individual schools in our area closed for fire and flood reasons. No flood closures in many years.
@payn4ward , I checked after seeing your post. D’s SAT also out there, I had to convert SAT to 1600, otherwise it convert D’s score based on PSAT, it seems? And it is wrong!! 1500 PSAT converts to 2010 SAT??
So busy at work lately. Some days, I do wonder if we would be better off if I stay home and raise chickens while we wouldn’t have to pay sticker prices at colleges!! But the donut hole is pretty big, and we may still fall through!!
Not sure about how true that is. But I have a fair amount of experience with winter driving over multiple decades. Much of it with temperatures under 20 degrees. Lowest overnight temps for a car sitting outside was was -22 degrees F. No engine block heaters (in any vehicle I have ever owned). Car started right up and drove fine. Water with antifreeze freezes at about -30 degrees F I believe.
My dad was stationed in Alaska in the Army in the 50s. I know he dealt with engine block heaters. They would plug the engine blocks into heaters when they parked. I believe @dfbdfb is the one here from Alaska who can talk to that in more detail.
For our school district (no official confirmation but its pretty hard to contradict), closing for cold weather is simply because they can with no negative consequences (to the teachers and kids – parents are typically affected in terms of having to find some place for their kids in child care). State allows for a certain number of snow days per school year. They tend to use them.
If you look at a business, closing means lost revenue. So there are consequences of closing. As a result, its rare they close for weather. If employees were given the choice of closing for weather with no loss of pay, I am sure you would see more businesses close for weather.
“Safety of the kids” is typically given as the reason. But pretty much no one walks to school in our district. Are not that many kids who even walk down several houses to the bus stop. So they go from heated house to heated car to heated bus to heated school building. If there is a lot of snow there is a risk of accidents (but there is a fleet of snowplows/salt trucks to clear snow pretty quickly). But not for cold. And when there is a snow day, the kids tend to do the same things we did when we had snow days as a kid: go out and play in the snow.
Diesel engines might have that problem, doesn’t it gel in very cold weather?
@STEM2017 as @payn4ward says, indoor soccer. Maybe see if you can find any info on intramurals on the school site --might give you an idea if there’s a winter soccer league or options for indoor facilities. S plays outside beginning in March until early November here, so we have seen him play on snowy fields or with snow falling at least a couple times a year. With hats, gloves and tights, they’re toasty running around. It’s the spectators who mind the weather as I’m sure you’ve experienced.
Upenn puts up a huge inflatable bubble over their student soccer field for the winter. Other schools might do similar.
The snow in East Lansing is not going to be as bad as Buffalo, it just doesn’t snow as much. You will get a few snowstorms at MSU but it won’t be the relentless day after day snow that you can get with the lake effect snow in upstate NY. But it snows enough that outdoor soccer is not going to be an option for a few months.
And @mommdc is correct, diesel vehicles don’t start without a heater in cold weather, and school buses are diesel powered.
@SincererLove The score update on Naviance has been inconsistent for us. I would not worry about it or inform the GC so GC can manually update the scores if missing.
DS took the old SAT once but it never showed up in his naviance. Thus, his red circle from old PSAT had been far left of the college averages. [-(
@STEM2017 You got me curious. Per http://www.imsports.msu.edu/facilities/IM%20Sports%20West.html there is an indoor Turf facility that is used for soccer, among other things at MSU.
Other Space
The IM Sports West is the largest of the four Recreational Sports and Fitness Services facilities with a total recreational space of 175,600 square feet. It houses the turf arena, used as a multipurpose area (tennis, soccer, cricket etc…) and the Sports Arena, a multipurpose gym capable of seating 650 spectators.
Myth #2: Diesel engines won’t start in the winter.
“Today’s technologies for cold-start are very effective,” Ciatti said. “Modern diesel engines start in cold weather with very little effort.”
The problem is that diesel jells at low temperatures. Below about 40°F, certain hydrocarbons in diesel turn gelatinous. “Since an engine depends on aerosolizing fuel, you don’t want goopy fuel,” Ciatti explained.
Often this is remedied with glow plugs, which are heated by the battery and help warm up the fuel so it can vaporize.
Low temperatures aren’t a problem for gasoline engines because gasoline is much more flammable than diesel. Even at room temperature and pressure, gasoline is partly vapor. “Toss a match into a pool of gasoline, and the match will never even hit the surface of the liquid; it will ignite the layer of vapor above the pool,” Ciatti said. “That’s why gasoline has to be handled extremely carefully around any ignition source. Diesel isn’t so volatile; if you tossed that match into a pool of diesel, it would go out.”
Glow plugs and other remedies, however, effectively vaporize diesel to prepare it for combustion.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2011-06-myths-diesel.html#jCp
We usually get ZERO snow days even on days with more than a foot of snow overnight and continuing.
Kids are like, yeah! a foot of snow! what no snow day?!
On the rare occasion when we do get a snow day due to blowing snow (zero visibility) once in several years,
kids are like, what? a snow day? It snowed not even two feet!
In Minneapolis we have maybe a couple snow days per year and it’s cause for great celebration. I just looked and our school policy states it must be -40 windshield or at the discretion of the superintendent. Typically it’s more for ice than snow since if it’s really cold, salt won’t work on the roads. We have lots of underground heated parking, tunnels, skyways and ways to keep warm.
We also put domes on select fields to play soccer year round.
My car always starts, my husband does plug his car in if super cold and our riding lawnmower turns into a riding snowblower. I think because snow and cold are expected, everyone is prepared.
@STEM2017, this has probably been said but there is indoor soccer in the areas where you can’t play outdoors all year long. Indoor soccer is much more fast paced and a lot of fun. I played in grad school at the U of Utah. It kicks my @$$.
Also in Utah, I was out doing field work with a fellow student. It got very cold. He had a diesel car and totally freaked me out by lighting his camp stove and putting it under the fuel line to heat the fuel to start the car. It worked because diesel is not very volatile.
@Collegecue You should check with the school to be certain but Georgetown has a similar requirement and their interpretation of that statement is send everything…SAT and ACT. The OR was intended for the student who didn’t take one of the tests.