@payn4ward & @stlarenas — flash back to my HS days with all these book titles that were assigned for summer reading—but I never read any of them. Crime & Punishment, Anna Karenina, Brave New World…I am sure there are others that will come back to me once I see them here. We would discuss the books for a couple of days and then have to write an in-class essay. Could usually absorb enough by listening to class discussion. Fortunately we never had summer packets to complete.
Crazy honors English teacher who seated us all in a giant circle around the room and would fling paper clips at anyone who spoke during class. He was a hoot!
DS has a weird summer reading list, Dante’s Inferno and The Screwtape Letters. Plus, lots of AP Japanese homework. School starts Monday and I hope it all gets done.
On a positive note, his wisdom tooth surgery went well and he passed his driver’s license test and has a parking space at school. It will be weird to give up my second job as a chauffeur but I’m excited that he will have more independent experiences before he goes off to college.
@WWWard By everybody applying to 10+ schools, it really just feels that way on CC and some very competitive high schools but really the majority of students apply to 3 or less schools I think. Our school sends almost 100% of kids to college, the majority to pretty decent schools, and the average number of transcripts sent are 3. Even the kids applying to Ivies had picked 1 or 2 that they were interested in and were not applying to all of them like you hear about on CC fairly commonly.
@payn4ward, so do you think that tonight your daughter, while reading Dostoevsky, will start to argue for her moral right to not complete the summer reading. She might even argue that the time could be better spent doing other things and she has the right to rid the world of the vermin of summer assignments. She might even compare herself to Cal Newport who did such terrible things as not completing all of the class reading. Ah, I do love Summer Reading and the In-Class Essay er Crime and Punishment
D has slowed down a ton on essays (hasn’t finished one in days). And that summer homework … still not completed. She’s been doing orientation/training stuff and generally slacking all week. I’m so tired of nagging and ready for school to start, since I don’t have to nag even a little bit once she gets into school mode.
I’m going to nag until at least 3 more essays get done. I don’t know how the others will get done with her schedule, but she always manages. And she’ll only have mostly shorter answer questions left until September 1. Sunday we’ll go out for our annual pre-school year dinner where we discuss her goals and game plan for the year, then I can stop worrying and get back to my regularly scheduled program and probably won’t see her much during the week.
I have lost a lot of faith in both CB & ACT folks on scoring AP exam responses & essays. DS’ AP for US History was delayed for over 6 weeks - they lost his free responses. School just resent them and then somehow his AP score was released the same day - how did they score it so fast? Re ACT - on the scale that was in effect last Oct. - he got a 35 - he’s not the strongest writer (though the topic was one he could actually write about) but of course thrilled with it. BUT- colleges likely will pay little attention to the ACT/SAT writing scores it seems.
Question: Are you sending in the SAT Subject test scores before submitting the actual college applications? Are you sending them to all schools or just the ones that indicate they “want” or “require” them? We have 1 more to go – Physics in October so could wait for that or send separately. Thanks again for everyone being so kindly responsive.
Summer reading - just realized need to read 3 books for AP Lit rather than 2 – ugh!
Wisdom teeth coming out next week - hoping that 3-4 days will be enough recovery time for it. Planning to do a college visit trip before Labor Day when some schools are back in session.
@CA1543, we sent the subject scores using the 4 free scores, so yes, we sent them before applying and before knowing the scores Because of CB accumulated score sending, some schools have all her scores (she has 4 subjects) already!
@acdchai D is applying to ten schools because we’re hunting merit. She has one lottery school, one reach, and three strong matches. The other five are emergency backup matches (2) and safeties (3) in case she doesn’t get into the lottery or the reach, and she doesn’t get any merit aid at the matches.
The ones that could drop off are common app ones, and require so little extra effort that it seems safer just to leave them on there.
@nw2this D17 didn’t love her score, but we decided to leave it alone since the consensus from most of the adcoms has been that the ACT fubar’ed that up this year, and not to give it much weight.
We haven’t gotten that far. I do know that this year’s FAFSA form opens on October 1, so H isn’t going to look at it until then with D17. I don’t know when the CSS form opens. I’ll figure that out today. I doubt it’s sooner than the fafsa.
Yep, to the two that want them. This time she’ll use the “send them free” option for sending them before you know them because it’s not optional for those two schools. Not sending them to the other schools; they don’t need it and her SAT and ACT scores should be more than enough.
Her summer reading for AP Lit is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. She loves it and can’t believe Shelley wrote it when she was her age. There’s another book too, but that one stuck in my head.
My facebook feed has several friends dropping their kids off at school. One mom made a pillowcase for her kid that says “CALL MOM” on it in big block letters I’m so doing that, lol.
My FB feed is full of moms in full out mourning and their kids are going maybe three hours away. I guess I don’t get that but I know I should be nice and find the sympathy. One has been posting a photo every.single.day in a 30 day count down to sending her kid off to school. You would think it was days and days of travel away. But nope. 2.5 hrs away.
I would be so thrilled that my kid wanted to go to school that close! I could drive in and just meet her for lunch!
Different parents have different experiences/feelings in terms of kids leaving for college. Seems to me distance can play a role. But also, I think it is that the part of your life as a parent with kids at home is over. That isn’t distance dependent.
@saillakeerie …yeah, I get that. I think their sadness is more of the symbolic first move away from home and how it is the beginning of the leaving process. Probably at this moment my Ds quest to go OOS is clouding this process for my friends who have kids going an hour or two away.
I am sympathetic…didn’t mean to imply that I wasn’t. I do think the 30 day “countdown” is a bit overdone for a kid who is literally going a few hours away.
The movie Gattaca (1997) reminded me the old movie.
Because of CB accumulated score sending, some schools have all her scores (she has 4 subjects) already!
I’m so doing that, lol.