In the honors section I would think @xxiinn
@LoveTheBard I hear you. The CalPoly app was awesome. Grades. Test scores. Hours of work. Hours of EC’S. Done. And it is her first choice in state. If she gets in and goes there I will not know whether to laugh or cry at the effort we put in on everything else.
Thanks. But Common App does not have honors section. Should I put it on the resume?
@xxiinn on the left click on Education, The eight section in that section is called Honors.
“If you have received any honors related to your academic achievements beginning with the ninth grade or international equivalent, please indicate number of honors. If you received more than five, please add the five most important to you.”
Cal Poly was a finalist for our child last time and we too thought it ironic given all the sweat and stress over essays to the other places. The school has a nice comfortable feeling and is especially good for engineering. It’s on the list this time too.
Cal poly is on our list too,the app was so easy… I wish they were all like that!
S is on the home stretch – I need to proofread one essay and then he’ll copy it over and submit his last college application. (Although the comments about the CalPoly app make me think we should go ahead and fill that one out too – it was on the list but S cut it and I haven’t asked why. I don’t think he’ll mind one more. :)) )
Then it’s just a couple more scholarship apps, the November SAt and the waiting. :-w
I guess we’ll still have some honors apps, but a break is in order first. The holiday break seems like a good time to weed through those.
Congrats to all of you in the Submit bubble! Hitting a bit of a wall here on a big supplement. 11th hour doubts, I think. And this is just the first app. Breathe…
Submitting to Case Western today. First CA school with the CA essay! More to follow. I can see the end of the college app tunnel, with the scholarship app locomotive barreling down at us. Yea!?
We are having a bad week here. D’s car died yesterday. I had to rush from work to pick her up and take her to work. Today, she drove my car to school while I wait for AAA to come tow hers to the garage. But this car has been a money pit and she needs something reliable to get her through the rest of school year, so looks like we’re going car shopping tomorrow. 
Very poor timing as she is unlikely to take a car with her to college.
@itsgettingreal17 if you’re looking at a new car I can help-I love doing research for car shopping =). What are you looking for?
@itsgettingreal17 Sorry about the car. I hate car shopping, so next time around I’m looking at you @MotherOfDragons
NMF/NMSF - I don’t remember a thing about this from the early 80s. To be honest, I don’t even remember taking the PSAT. I remember taking the SAT and at some point, I got a call to the principal’s office. My HS offered various trades, secretarial, and cosmetology certification, as well as “college track.” I had no idea what NMF was and I wasn’t the only one.
@itsgettingreal17 That stinks
I give my 14 yo minivan a side-eye when it makes a weird noise or a silly notification light comes on–that baby needs to last through dd’s college years!
@itsgettingreal17 – you have my sympathy, as I despise car shopping. When I finally decided that I should hand my 13+ year old car down to my then HS senior, I spent 18 months half-heartedly shopping for a new one. I ended up buying the same car I had already. The old one is now more than 16 years old, and just starting to require repairs, so I fear I will be in your situation soon.
Am not sure this is any consolation, but they are home from college more than you realize, at least if college is close enough to return for Fall Break, Thanksgiving, etc. I counted up the weeks off when my older son left: 21 weeks out of 52 back at home, so at least the car will see some use.
@DMV301 — hopefully the 11th hour doubts only accompany the first submission.
@MotherOfDragons --OK, have to ask: what is it about car shopping that you like? I admit to liking the gadgets in the 2013 that I happily but blissfully lived without in the 2000. I am now far too reliant on the back-up camera and random full and side beeping. I really struggle in rental cars now.
We might be looking for @MotherOfDragons. Our car has 300,000 miles on it.
Thanks a lot. I found it.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek – 300K miles? Lots of highway driving?
My 16+ year old car is under 140K still, but vast majority of it is local or bad highway driving (stop and go traffic & short hops on I-95). The roads in the NYC metro area are not in great condition.
@ct1417 I love research and spreadsheets. For the girls’ car I did all sort of hunting about what the statistically least likely car was to die in, and we bought that one :).
That’s why MIL is currently mad at me, btw. She asked me to do some best price research because her brother’s daughter (same age as my D17) was getting a new Camaro. I sent back a bunch of statistics, none good, the main one being Camaros are the MOST likely car you’ll die in in the US over the last 20 years, followed closely by the Corvette. She got mad because she just wanted me to find the best price, but I did not feel comfortable doing research on a car that I feel is dangerous for a teenage girl.
The local library has tons and tons of online access to data, journals, etc. that isn’t available on the open internet. I definitely get my taxpayer money’s worth there.
My default recommendation car for teen drivers right now if you buy new is the Mazda CX-3. Cute, safe, reasonably priced, lots of gadgets, a little higher off the ground so they can see better, but not so high they’ll roll them (like a jeep).
If you want a tank, get a 2008-2010 Mercedes ML class, for about the same price as the new Mazda CX-3. That’s the “hard to die” in car I got my kids. It does have a backup camera, but doesn’t have blind spot, mostly because I wanted them to not learn to rely on it (my car has it but I still check anyway). Find a good one, though, the repair costs can be ugly on the beat up ones. Although I will say our experience has been that any car now out of warranty has somewhat ugly repair costs!
I just requested a transcript for UMDCP from D’s school, and now I’m like, oh, man, did I make a note of all the ones I’ve requested? Sometimes I have too many spreadsheets and too many notes. @-)
@MotherOfDragons I hate car shopping. We’re looking for something safe and reliable, new or under 20,000 miles, max $17,500, and D prefers a small SUV or hatchback with USB ports. She’ll live with a sedan. She’s none too happy with the budget, but oh well. I’ll gladly take any suggestions. 
Maryland Marquee Day Visit
So S17 and I went to the Maryland Marquee Day visit last Saturday. It was the first visit to the campus for both of us, and it moved Maryland way up my son’s list. The day was fairly well organized, although the engineering school activities went most of the day, which meant my S and I split up so I could attend the Honors College stuff. Towards the end I heard other families complaining that they had missed everything but engineering.
Engineering School
This was the first really large engineering department S has visited. He went into it thinking that was a disadvantage, but came out much more enthusiastic about a large school. It was very obvious how much bigger and more well equipped the labs were. The first semester engineering design lab was working on Mars rover prototypes, a more exciting project than most first semester projects he has heard about. The school made it clear they want to retain kids in engineering, and emphasized multiple times that they give the first and second year students the best professors. S stayed for a more in depth engineering tour, and I went to the Honors College presentation.
Honors College
I feel like they didn’t do a great job at explaining the Honors College, but here is what I got out of it. There are 6 specialized programs within the Honors College, along with general Honors. All of them are living learning communities, although some don’t require you live in the community to be a part. Some programs are 2 year and some are 4 year. If you are invited to the honors college you get to do a weighted ranking of which program you would like. For this you are given a certain number of points, and allocated them in any way you’d like to the programs you want. So you can put all your points on one program or spread them out. They said most students spread them out among 2-3 programs. Then the staff picks students based on who they think will be a good fit for each program.
They emphasized that they want to have a variety of majors in each program. So they do not want all the computer science kids in the cyber security program, they want psychology and humanities majors in there too. For example they mentioned there are engineering majors in every one of the 6 specialized programs, including honors humanities. Reading between the lines I would guess major balancing is a significant factor in who gets in which program.
They said selection is holistic, and there are no score or grade cutoffs. However they did tout the high SAT scores and weighted GPA of students who are invited. My S is homeschooled, and I have been resistant to weighting his classes because it can be so subjective. But after this weekend I have decided Maryland is getting a transcript with a weighted GPA, because I saw weighted GPAs touted multiple times in multiple presentations. I didn’t write down the exact stats they gave, but it was around 1450 SAT (old SAT) and 4.4 weighted GPA for the honors college.
Last year about 1140 students accepted honors college enrollment. They are shooting for about 1000, so they over enrolled last year. Also most students are not in one of the 6 specialized programs, they are in general University Honors. They also said the November 1 deadline is a hard and fast deadline for Honors College consideration.
Merit Scholarships
Then I went to the merit scholarship presentation. I left after they talked about the Banneker Key, because as an out of state student it would take one of those to make it affordable for S. They said the students offered the Banneker Key invitation are pulled from the students invited to the Honors College. So I take this to mean a student who is invited to University Scholars instead of Honors College will not receive a BK. Notification of BK status will come in early February, with the interview weekends at the end of Feb/early March. They invite 400 students, and offer 250 full ride scholarships to those who attend the weekends.
They said students selected for the BK have “something special”. As an example of that they mentioned a student from last year who founded a non-profit foundation for something or other. Another presenter in a different session also cited a student founding a non-profit as an example of an impressive accomplishment. I thought non-profits were the latest rich kid cliche extracurricular, but apparently not.
Overall
S liked the school. The engineering department was impressive, and he could see himself going there. And while the BK scholarships are obviously very competitive they offer a large number of them, which makes it worth the application.
@ct1417 Welcome to suburbia/rural America where almost everything is at least 30 mins away (hwy driving). The car is only 10 yrs old, too! We have also moved across the country 3 times since we bought it.