@MotherOfDragons I’ll try to improve my driving, turn down the TV, and stop being so cranky as I walk around the neighborhood from now on. Sorry about that, my bad. By the way, where’s that lowered fence?
Best of the luck to all the ACT takers and their parents!!!
Hope all desired ACT scores are achieved this time for everyone!
Welcome @michiganbuckeye
@itsgettingreal17 my daughters school has the SAT in October as well and they automatically sign up every senior whether or not they want to take it. They did this last year and my D16 just skipped school that day. D17 is done with testing too so she will forego school as well. If you don’t show up its not like you get a zero, there is just no score to be reported.
@itsgettingreal17 ^^^^ sounds like a skip day in the works!
@greeny8 Typically she would just skip. But D will also be skipping for college visits. Finals at the end of spring semester are optional for A students. However, they are mandatory if the student has been absent more than a specified number of times. Therefore, D cannot afford to skip for something that shouldn’t be mandatory in the first place. She (understandably) does not want to take any finals this year.
First application submitted this morning by S17 to one of his RD match schools with a merit scholarship ED deadline…it seemed like a momentous threshold was crossed…with the final submit and signature button pushed by S17…moving instantaneously from the land of student control (whether to apply) into the land of school control (whether to admit)… 
Oh, and of course we’re $75 poorer for the privilege X_X
@Mother of Dragons: don’t forget that one day you, too, will be over 55.
Anyone’s kids doing FTC this year? DS is watching the just-released game video.
Any NMSF Engineering majors applying to TAMU? I think it has the best engineering school out of all the nmf scholarship schools, but it is also impacted. Any other thoughts about TAMU?
@nw2this …have you visited?
I’m an Aggie and we recently visited this summer and attended the engineering session. What questions do you have?
@Ynotgo -My DS went to the robotics kick off event today. I think they are doing FTC - will ask.
Anyone applying to USC Viterbi - wondering if an interview is important to do or not - there are regional interviewers it seems. We want to get the EA apps done in next couple of week, go see CMU, RPI &WPIs and there’s already school work piling up.
@building wrote
yes, I’ve heard we all age 
Some of us just do a better job of it. One of my favorite tennis partners ever was a woman named Micki. When we played together she was 82. That woman was a life goal for me-she’d never waste her time ratting out neighbors for code violations, she was too busy killing it on the tennis court and living life well. She kept going right up until 90, when she died in her sleep, having lived quite an amazing life. I loved listening to all her stories of where she’d been and what she’d done. Like I said, life goals.
@Ynotgo D18 is doing First, but the school doesn’t do the tech challenge, they do something called “grits”. I think BEST starts later this year? So many acronyms…
@Ynotgo & @CA1543 - My DS is not doing FTC, but he has an app for FTC. He will watch it later so that he can update it for this season like he did last year. PM if your kids are interested to know about the app.
oh well, we couldn’t resist the temptation and watched it on youtube. Even though DS is not in a team, he is already coming up with the strategy :))
@stlarenas We have attended 3 of the college rep nights in the last year. Two of them were multiple colleges touring. The last one we attended was one school that S17 was on the fence about. After the info session, S17 has decided to apply. The presentation was excellent and because it was just one school, the crowd was smaller. Two reps were present and they took a number of questions at the end. The make up was about 60% seniors / 40% juniors. The questions were very good questions that, for individuals with those specific questions, you would not learn from the website. The reps were bluntly honest. There were a couple of kids in the room that were interested in applying as transfer students, rep told them to plan on entering as freshman and not getting much, if any, of their credits to transfer. Said if they didn’t want to start over, find another school. A student was interested in applying to pursue drama. They told her the portfolio factors in 90% on admissions decisions. Many schools will say they don’t care if it is Math SAT I or II. They blatantly said Math SAT II is going to be considered strong than someone who submits the Math SAT I. Generally, we know this but they try to make it seem like either Math SAT II is fine.
For me, I found it beneficial because S17 is not ever going to read college conf and all of the info he gets is from his college counselor, fiske, websites and me. A good info session that synthesizes all of the important info for him is beneficial. I do all of the searching to find out if the school will be his academic goals. The vibe of a school, surrounding neighborhood(s) and interactions with admins/ students from the school is what S17 has to figure out.
Umm, I am about to ship our NXT Mindstroms that have been gathering dust to a friend’s son.
End of era of FLL and my short-lived coaching career. :((
DS took the ACT today. He felt the English,Reading and Science were easy but he started to run out of time on the Math section. He was able to get it all done but wasn’t able to recheck his last 10 answers. So we shall see if he does better than last time or not. Math is not his thing…Over all he thought he did well.
@Ynotgo my son19 does first robotics. He likes it,he’s having fun learning CAD.
ACT update: son came home and thought he did better, so that’s a positive sign. We’ll see.
On college rep nights: We only did one which was four colleges at a hotel. We were going for Case, but D decided she loved UofRochester after the presentation. We visited and she still loves it (probably won’t get in, or will but without enough merit). She also loved the Brandeis presentation – they sounded like a great fit except for their lack of engineering! We were both thumbs-down on the fourth school, NYU (no doubt a great fit for some kids, but not mine).
We got an email from UofR today thanking her for starting part 1 of her application. She hasn’t actually applied anywhere, so I think they are just referring to receiving her ACT scores. It’s still kind of exciting. She’s really looking forward to actually applying and I think we’re close now (before the end of the month for sure).
This is quite a relief for me. There’s so much talk on CC about how kids can’t possibly fit all their EC’s into the 10 slots provided on the CA and that the character limit is too low to describe the EC. My D had five activities (two of which were “club member” with no leadership or anything). No problem with the character limit. I’ve been telling myself that the higher tier colleges (i.e. ones to which my D is not applying) probably put a lot more emphasis on EC’s and expect impressive lists. It’s nice to hear from an expert source that her lack of EC’s won’t hurt much if at all.
I guess my only worry at this time is that she probably won’t get the box checked for “most rigorous curriculum.” She’s taken all of her STEM classes AP (except for biology, now that I think about it) as well as English. But her humanities have not been AP (some not offered, but for example no AP history). Again, I’m hoping this won’t be a big thing as the schools are not tippy top and the STEM classes (including a 4 year engineering program) seem like they should be the most important for an engineering major. Maybe I just need something to worry about.
DS is signed up for a 5 college event at a hotel next week. 2 of the schools are on his list, and he’s visited only one of them. Surprisingly, the event is within walking distance of our house; most of them require driving to Los Angeles.