Sorry to hear all the news regarding the tragic loss of kids in your communities. That is a major bummer, and I don’t like reading stories like that. Feel really bad for those people 
@doTexe - I hear you on the ACT costs. DS has two 32’s but he has a 33 super score. Honestly I’m not sure it’s worth extra the money for us to bother and send the second test for the super score.
Great news on your kids with those awesome ACT scores! Wow, you have some smart and persistent kids!
I just checked son17’s scores and he improved by several points up into the low 30s. Yay. He didn’t really study a bunch, but he did make an effort. I’m still convinced he could score higher if he put in more time test prepping, but he just doesn’t love doing it. So it is what is, and fortunately most of the schools he is applying to his score should now be more than sufficient. Really happy to not worry about that anymore and am proud of him for giving it another shot and improving. With his new scores I think he has a legitimate shot to getting into all of his school choices and may get a bit of merit at a few.
Still waiting on word from lax coach on what’s happening there, so that is a bit of anxiety.
Went to school night and met with son’s H Pre-Calc class. She said she teaches the toughest class at the school and she is the hardest teacher, and the kids should be happy to earn a B. Not awesome.
Other classes and teachers seemed interesting though and senior year is off to a good start.
@mamaedefamilia – Huge congrats to your DD - great news!
For today’s laugh,
when DS17 was applying for private high schools (he was accepted but chose to stay in his public K-12) they had a prompt for parents,
I wrote, When DS was 6 or 7, there were finished worksheets sent home from school in his folder. They were reviewing reading/comprehension skills. There was a box of text followed by short prompt questions and multiple choice questions. The first text was titled “Astronaut.” It read, “While the spaceship is orbiting around the earth, the sun rises and sets many times a day, so the astronauts use eye shades when sleeping. During the meal time, astronauts have to be extra careful opening the food packaging unless they want to chase around the food floating in zero gravity.” The question was “Why does an astronaut use eye shades when sleeping?” The clue was in the beginning, the sun rising and setting many times but that wasn’t where DS’s “eyes” were. DS wrote “So he doesn’t have to chase the eyeballs floating around.” I learned that children are not born with inference skills but fortunately, with creativity instead.
Congratulations on all the great ACT scores! <:-P <:-P <:-P
Congrats to all the ACT takers. Must feel great to be done with the tests.
Congrats to all those with great ACT scores and good luck to those still waiting. Good luck with writing scores as well.
**Random PSA **
the “red bullsye store” has all of their dorm stuff on clearance and there were some decent deals to be had in the basics, depending on what they have left. i think it was all 50% off.
i was in line with an XL gel infused egg crate mattress topper. i read the package while waiting, and was astounded to see it was flammable. maybe thats a huge derp being that it was foam, but i wrongly assumed that all bedding had to be treated for fire retardency.
i quickly put it back. i’m really not down with having a bed go up in flames.
this could be common knowledge, but it wasnt to me–so i’m just putting it out there.
Thanks everyone for the sweet thoughts and prayers. I spent several hours with his mom last night. Not good!!
On a positive note…glad to see all the wonderful ACT scores coming in. Congratulations to everyone on a fantastic job!! We are sticking with our 34 and moving forward. lol
Quick questions about Counselor ‘Most Rigorous’ designation. We have college night tomorrow night and I want to be somewhat less ignorant about this.
So it’s my understanding that the Counselor can check some box regarding the students schedule that ranges from something like ‘most demanding’ to ‘less demanding’. I assume this is in the Common App? It may be school policy that they don’t check any box? The student has no way of actually knowing which one was checked if one was checked?
TIA
@Dolemite - Yes, it’s part of the counselor’s recommendation on the Common App, and together with the school profile, helps schools identify how rigorous a schedule a student has undertaken based on the opportunities available to that student.
So, taking all APs/honors classes (when such classes are available) in all subjects qualifies as “most rigorous” and selecting all regular classes (despite the availability of APs and honors classes) would be “least rigorous.” If a school doesn’t offer honors or AP, a student is not penalized for it, however, it is expected that the schedule include a significant number of core subjects, rather than an over-abundance of non-academic electives.
Generally, you can ask the counselor what they will put, but I’m pretty sure they all put something. Unlike class rank (which many schools don’t report), counselors do need to rate the students’ course loads in the context of the school and probably their peers.
Congratulations to all the great ACT scores! I am glad he can now be done with testing though we already signed up for the sat subject test. I am guessing there isn’t much point in that. It is exciting to finally send the scores out ot all the schools now if only the applications will get done.
I would not be surprised at my D’s school if they do not check anything. It’s an inner-city public with limited resources, no APs due to the type of curriculum with really only 1 main opportunity to differentiate from their peers and that’s math. Either by placing into Algebra 2 as a 9th grader or taking it in the summer after having Geometry 9th grade can you go pre-calc then Calc in 11th. I think there were 6 of my D’s peers that did this out of 125 total students.
@Dolemite then your kid should get most rigorous. I would email the counselor and ask what they check.
I’ve been told IB always gets most rigorous but never really verified. Now wondering if I should.
QOTD: Let’s talk sleep. How many hours a night of sleep is your student getting? What time are they going to bed usually and getting up in the morning?
D is driving me a little nuts. One of our goals this year was breaking her bad sleeping habits. She was off to a pretty good start, but is now back to her old habits, largely because she was sick last week, had to take a couple of days off, and is still catching up on missed work. The habit: whenever she gets home (varies each day), she has dinner, has social media time, and then takes a nap and sets her alarm for an ungodly hour. This morning it was 4 am. That’s when she did her school work. This was a habit I developed in grad school out of necessity so I know from experience how hard it is to break it. Our goal is for her to get caught up again by the end of the week and get back to trying to develop better sleep habits in preparation for college, i.e., eat, social media, do school work, sleep, get up and get ready for school.
Also, her 2 online classes are a beating. I would not recommend this path. She has calc III and microeconomics online through the local CC because no one else signed up for the in-class sections that fit into her schedule. She’s doing well, but she’s finding both harder than her live classes and a lot more work seems to be required.
@itsgettingreal17, My S is NOT a morning person, so waking at 4am would never happen unless he was catching a plane. S gets about 7 hours of sleep per night because I make him go to bed by ~10:30, which means closer to 11pm. His friend tend to stay up later than he does so this irks him somewhat. He is the type of person who will fall asleep within minutes of being horizontal. That is a skill/gift. If I left him on his own, he would go to bed at ~2am. He get a lot of his school work done during his study hall and while waiting for ECs. His Calc class is flipped again this year (his calc classes last year were also flipped), so he watches videos at home and they work on problem sets in the class. He likes this style of teaching.
Ideally:
She gets home from school about 2. Has a snack and does about 2 hours of homework. Leaves for swim at 4:30, gets home around 7:30, has dinner, does about 2.5 more hours of work, goes to bed around 10:30, gets up around 6:30.
The bed time is tough to stick to with homework, but she is truly miserable without it. Especially after a hard 2.5 hour swim workout. Does she want to be healthy or get perfect grades?
We’re sleep fanatics in the house. The cable modem shuts down at 10:10 pm, and usually they’ve used up all their data on their phones so nothing to watch there. Older D has a thing on her phone where it turns reddish around 7 pm so the blue light doesn’t mess with her circadian rhythm. Which she knows about because I go on endlessly about circadian rhythms. No screens in anyone’s bedrooms. I think both girls get about 8 hours. I typically get between 7 and 8. H is a “chunky” sleeper and goes about 4 hours at a clip, needs a loss less than we do.
@itsgettingreal17 If she wants to get up at 4 am and she’s gotten 8 hours in, I’d have no problem with that. H will fall asleep at 11, wake up at 3 or 4, go putter around in the house until 5, then fall back asleep until 7. It works for him, and I can sleep through him waking up. I have a theory that not everybody has the same sleep cycle. We’re big nappers on the weekend, too. You’d think we’re all hybernating.
Online classes-yeah man, they are a drag. And every semester I sign up for one because they’re so convenient, and every semester I hate on myself for doing it and swear never again.
Last year D17’s GC sat with her for a few minutes (did this with all the kids) and gave her some paperwork. The classes she was taking that were considered “most rigorous” had a star next to them. Some of it made no sense whatsoever (like the accelerated precalc class in 9th grade wasn’t considered “most” because they have a prodigy in her year taking calculus classes GTech through the live broadcast thingie), so I just didn’t sweat it. She wasn’t going to change classes, and the ones taken are the ones taken.
D doesn’t have to be at her uni for class until 11 am this semester. She’s rocking a homeschooler schedule this year—up for breakfast at 9, starts school at 10, we take an hour for lunch/email/chores/life at 1, then she continues working (this includes meeting w an Arabic tutor and meeting w her Chinese language partner) until dinner at 7ish. She and H practice Chinese after dinner some evenings. We do college stuff some evenings. She has extracurricular soother evenings. And then D stays up until 1 am or so, on skype or texting w friends or her siblings.
I’d be worried about her ability to get up at a more reasonable time, but she managed to deal w a daily 8am-noon class all summer 