@STEM2017 Re: Georgetown - wow! Maybe my D’s instinct about them was correct. I love that you wrote that. :))
We’re going to visit Swarthmore and Haverford on Monday 10/10. On a whim yesterday I decided to see if neighboring Bryn Mawr had anything going on that day, and lo and behold, I was able to register us for a special lunch and session which slots in perfectly between our morning visit to Swat and afternoon info session at Haverford.
Score 1 for free lunch! :D/
With my D’s current major and her AP credits it is feasible that she could graduate in under 4 years. We (D and I) chose schools that were affordable for four years if we are frugal. I am suggesting she add a minor or second major to fill up the four years. The way I look at it, 4 years of college at a school you can afford is a good investment, instead of reducing my investment my D will just increase her return (in this case Return on Investment is measured in education and enrichment, not future salary). If money was tight or I though my D would rather start her career early, then I would encourage the three year option.
I absolutely believe in pre-planning. I’ve been chatting behind the scenes with some parents of students attending schools my D is applying to and based on their experiences, I don’t trust the college advisors to get her where she wants. I see them as more of a resource than a person to sit down and plan everything out with students. That’s probably not possible due to time constraints. I don’t remember getting that kind of advising even at my small LAC. Especially with a double degree and minor, careful planning is going to be critical for my D. It also will help me plan financially since it will give me an idea about what study abroad programs and internships, etc. will cost and I can budget for those expenses ahead of time. Thankfully, D is very much like me in that she likes knowing exactly what she needs to do and when and doesn’t deviate much from the plan.
D isn’t looking at graduating early. She will use her AP credits to allow her to complete a double degree and minor in 4 years. I said 4-6 years because D will be on a 5-6 year plan to allow her to spend a year post BA abroad and get her masters. One the reasons we are chasing big MAC is so that she can take advantage of all the opportunities on campus for which there will be very little free money such as global internships, summer stay abroad programs, and break study abroad programs. I think college is the time to do all of that. It gets so much harder once you start working.
We will definitely ask if schools have a tool similar to what Bama and @MotherOfDragons uses.
@curiositycat333 We aren’t looking at spending less on UG than anticipated, but instead to add more learning into her undergrad experience somehow (major/minor/study abroad/co-op/etc). Part of this is that it will hopefully be a period in her life that is fondly remembered by D17, and part of it is that any merit she receives will be usable for 4-5 years of schooling, so we want to take advantage of that. No hurry for her to necessarily ‘get out’ of school, but instead allow her to take advantage of other things while still in school.
ETA: OK, I see @CaucAsianDad’s post. I could have just said: Ditto! 
Thanks for the validation @rtidwell 
Old programs and Old programmers never die… :))
I am not that old either. =))
QOTD: Planning
No, I have not considered any specific planning past getting D into a good fit college. I am definitely going to incorporate @dfbdfb’s spreadsheet to show hours for double majors. I’ll be on the lookout for other planning tools that might work for D.
@Dolemite, I remember hearing that during the lead-up to Y2K COBOL programmers were worth their weight in gold.
@curiositycat333, @rtidwell, @STEM2017, and @Tgirlfriend, thanks for the answers even if they weren’t what I was hoping for! D has a really special bond with this teacher who had her for sophomore and junior English. She (the teacher) has come to every one of D’s IEP meetings since she first had her in class and definitely knows her well. I’m not sure what I’d think/do if she suggested D chuck the whole essay because it doesn’t work as a college essay (or whatever). Gah, I just want this essay to be DONE! ~X(
@Tgirlfriend Its my understanding the UK NMF scholarship covers full tuition, housing in a 4 person suite (you would need to pay the difference in you wanted 2 bedroom or 4 bedroom suite) and 7 meal/week meal plan (you could upgrade that to more meals and pay the difference). They also give $2000 stipend which is paid $250/semester. You receive a check for housing allowance if you live off campus.
At one point they also included an I-pad and a stipend for summer study abroad. No more I-pad and supposedly there are scholarships available for study abroad program but I am not sure if they have need based component to them.
Welcome @Momtaro and anyone else who is new.
DS sees a lot of Python in the physics department these days. DH used Fortran for similar things back in the day.
QoTD: I plan to tell DS to make really good us of whatever advising is available to him, though not to count on it if he ends up at a public university. Professors should know their program better than someone looking at a website that may be out of date. I will tell him that the degree plan when he declares his major is what he needs to live by, and he needs to know what semesters classes are offered. For physics, there is usually a 4-semester or 6-quarter sequence that starts freshman fall. He needs to stay on that path and then figure out when he can take the in-major and out-of-major classes he wants most.
For high school, there were fewer choices available to him, so it was easier to make a plan. However, even that plan had him running out of math after 10th and and science after 11th, so we knew we were going to have to figure things out when we got there.
If he changes his major, I’m OK with that, so long as he has a plan. There’s a reasonable chance he’ll change to CS. And, you never know. I changed my major from STEM to journalism (and still finished in 4 years). I understand that these things happen, and it’s his life. We don’t have money for law school, and I really can’t see him interested in medicine. Grad school in physics or CS will be funded by the program.
Taking classes at our local UC has been training for him at the sort of self-advocacy he’ll need. I’ve shown him how to get info out of the online course catalog and the class schedule (including going back to previous years to see what might be offered in winter and spring). Looking at prerequisites has been key.
For one class he had to get several math department signatures, so he found out how important and powerful the departmental secretaries (or whatever their title these days) can be. For the other class, he had to email the professor for an appointment and at the appointment took a short quiz on the whiteboard to verify that he was ready for the class. Since he’s registered under a weird program, he’s also had to email both of his professors and one of his grad students to get the registration finalized and be added to the online tools. All that stuff was automatic in HS.
I’m pretty sure a physics major with significant research and CS class on the side will be impossible in less than 4 years. I’d want him to take the full 4 years so that he has the best shot at a good grad school program.
@saillakeerie We were told by the study abroad dept that they can use the $$ of amt of their scholarship per semester directly toward study abroad.
Slang for the newcomers: Someone new to us asked upthread whether D17 is the way to refer to their daughter. The quick answer: If you’re here on this thread, then almost certainly yes. The longer answer: The shorthand is gendermarker+gradyear, where gendermarker is S (son), D (daughter), or occasionally C (for child, not disclosing gender); and gradyear is the two-digit graduation year of the child. The confusing part for those of us with seniors (or juniors) right now is that many of them are 17 years old, but the last two characters are not age markers. So, for one concrete example, I have four daughters, who are D17/D19/D23/D25 because they’re in grades 12/10/6/4, respectively.
Turning off thread notifications: Mentioned already, but if you click on the gear icon and select preferences, you can turn on and off notifications. The way I use it: I finally got tired of thread notifications on painfully long threads I’d posted in once and then got tired of, and so I turned off all notifications except for private messages, and now simply bookmark threads I participate in.
Programming languages: I cut my teeth on BASIC back in the day, then took a couple courses in Pascal (including one in which the Apple Macintosh 512K with no hard drive I was programming on corrupted the floppy disk I was using in the last seconds of my final exam, which meant I got to simply stare as my grade in the class went from a B to a D), and I learned a little LISP in grad school. I really need to learn Python now, but I’ve been resisting.
Less than 4 years: There are a couple places on her list our daughter could graduate from in 3½ years. The difference of a semester, though, probably isn’t worth it, though if it’s still an option at that point it’ll be interesting to see what she goes with. (Also, she’s planning on a masters, and so loading up on disciplinary electives if she can her senior year probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.)
4–6-year plan: Rigorously yes. We’re a family of planners. It’s what we do. (Cue regular dinner-table “family planning” joke here.)
@MotherOfDragons - Two things.
First - It will not be that hard to keep the Zell Miller at GT starting next year. Because they are changing the way they calculate the college HOPE GPA. All engineering/CS/Stem classes will get a .5 boost.
So if your DD gets a B in a college class it will be a 3.5 for the Hope GPA. This is going to make a huge difference in how many kids keep Zell.
Second - There is a CC banned poster. His kid went to UA in CS. Was in the CBH. Graduated and is back for 1 semester to finish his masters. He did research, got published and did good internships. One of them was with Amazon. He has a job offer with Amazon along with some other companies. I would really try and talk to some other people in CS at UA.
QOTD- My kids have 4 years. No negotiation.
I am a tad bit jealous of all you planners with course guides and spreadsheets. I would love to do that for my D but remember she is the kid who crossed off every single major and minor subject when I printed them out and asked her to cross off the ones “she had no interest in taking classes about”…Right now I am crossing my fingers and hoping she has some sort of plan by yr 3
Am I wrong in thinking that a smaller LAC will be more helpful (than a bigger university) in guiding her to figure out what she loves and how to turn that into a marketable degree?
@Ynotgo I’d venture your son has more experience dealing directly with professors and administration than most of the students there. I’d probably crack open a bottle of champagne if I could get mine to actually go to a professor’s office hours.
There is no plan beyond getting into College. There was no plan for High School as there wasn’t much of a choice other than accelerated math tract and a few electives. I will not be surprised if my D changes majors in colleges. Depending on what school she goes to we’ll talk/help with planning. If it’s like Pitt more scheduling planning needed - if it’s one of the more selective schools she’s applying to then I won’t worry too much as there will be lots of advising and those schools will still hold a class with only a couple of students.
Are they still called ‘norts’ if they don’t have a swoosh on them?
@stlarenas You already know they answer to your question: “Maybe. Depends.” And, of course you have to hope that any newfound ‘love’ is offered at said LAC.
@motherofdragons - I asked the banned poster. He said that they learn Fortran first semester of CBH he said he isn’t sure why. But the punch card part is BS… So I think the guy must have been making a joke.
QOTD–no four year plan for either son, but older one’s college within the university is quite structured the first two years, so I have faith it will work out. I suggest he speak with Student Services when planning courses, in case a class is offered fall only or spring only.
Younger son plans to double major so I assume it will take four years. He sees himself in grad school already, which I do not plan to pay for, so once he is enrolled somewhere, I will have the conversation about taking classes that can count toward the grad degree. I assume this is only possible if one pursues the grad degree at the U/G school.
@dfbdfb — oh…your mention of the Apple 512K computer. I am as far from a computer/tech person as you can imagine, but I do recall my amazement at the first Apple 128K and then the HUGE leap when the 512K was released. Those early Apple computers were glitchy. I recall sitting around the Mac lab and many people had problems getting their discs out, getting anything to print, etc.
My father purchased an Apple IIe, thinking along the lines of ‘if he bought it, we would use it’. No one ever touched it, and my boys were so bummed to hear that he discarded it after it lingered for more than a decade unused.
Re: Python. I don’t think it is all that difficult to learn (says the non-techie layperson). My son teaches a programming class at our local library to middle & HS students and Python is the one he thinks is easiest for the students to learn. For variety, he will offer a C class during the summer and Python during the winter. Of course, me thinking that 8th & 9th graders can learn it easily does not mean that it is easy!
@Ynotgo – is this fairly universal? “Grad school in physics or CS will be funded by the program.” As in, fully funded? Or just tuition?
If so, then I will stop worrying and just make sure he understands that a CS grad degree will be a much better plan than a Math grad degree.
I was wondering what the term “norts” was. I figured it was a typo. Is that a regional thing? Because our kids have never requested Nike shorts and I haven’t noticed other kids wearing a particular brand. Or maybe I’m inattentive.
I had to use one of those late 80s Macs for an Ada course and it was excruciatingly slow for that task. Literally 25-30 minutes to compile a simple program. Fortunately I never had to actually use that language, although we did have to get a waiver once to avoid it.