Oh man. DS17 is recycling supplementary essays so much that I worry the same paragraphs end up in multiple essays for the same school. :-&
No progress on the LORs but the teachers have 10/24 deadlines from GC departement, so hopefully they will be done tomorrow! :!!
S17 has two missing recording assignments from orchestra and stinking F on orchestra grades :(( (what a weird assignment, can they do at school/class?) That is what I am nagging today rather than finalizing EA apps. [-X
Apps are ready though. We will hit submit probably tomorrow after a read-over. :!! ~O)
@eandesmom – where I find the discrepancy at our HS is that almost all electives are not weighted, but of course, there are exceptions. AP Art + two other honors art classes and AP Computer Science are the exceptions, in addition to four music courses, three of which are multi-year. All the rest of the electives are unweighted. (PE is mandatory and grades are issued, but the grades are not included in GPA calculation.) So the student who takes Journalism b/c he wants to write for the school newspaper will be at a disadvantage compared to the student who takes honors music.
I agree that it is very regrettable if the outcome of weighting vs non-weighting results in students not taking fun & enriching electives, or avoiding Journalism and the school newspaper in the race for Val. My son would never dream of giving up his independent science research course, even though taking that class brings down his GPA every year.
@payn4ward – congrats on finishing! I am still hopeful that one will be ready by the end of today. I want the second one finished also, but it involves a reworking on of the CA as he is now going to use the Additional Info section. I hope that does not backfire as I always viewed that section as one to explain how a concussion impacted grades or explain a suspension…
These essays are bad enough but the schools not on the CA create additional work. Looking at you, UMD-CP!
Re: recycling essays. We need a program that would skim the essays and identify dupes. Isn’t there something like that for college papers to search for papers previously written and posted on the web? Name escaping me right now
I feel so stupid, I have just now realized, thanks to S17…that the “enrolled” students showing in naviance for certain schools (which is in advance of notification of all normal dates for ED/SCEA/EA or RD) but not showing as “admitted” are recruited athletes. I was very confused!
I know this GPA gaming is bad. Thankfully not many at DD school seem to do that. The ones that do are apparently well known. I don’t see a solution for this. Since standardized tests may leave some people at a disadvantage, the GPA at schools has to be added. And schools are fiercely independent so goodluck with using the same formula. I just hope the standardized score+GPA gives a good indication of the students
We submitted 3 non-CA ones and are trying to submit 3 simpler CA ones first including Case :x , and then 3 more CA.
More supplements and honors/scholarship essays are looming. 11 or so I am not telling DS that, but it will be epic combinatorial recycling. 8-} @-)
@payn4ward – love this: “epic combinatorial recycling”. I don’t even know what combinatorics is exactly, but the word appears on son’s resume and I have purchased books from Amazon with that in the title. His Christmas list is not very exciting!
And Case is winning as the new total stalker college. They send these long narrow mailers every other day, and two appear each day. One from Engineering and one from something else. (You think I would know by now.) Aggressive marketing these past two weeks, but son still is not applying.
I don’t know if my son knows how many essays he will have to write, and the RD list will change after SCEA results, so no point in actually counting now. It continues to be a long slog…
Our kids HS does not rank, but does publish the percentage who have certain ranges of weighted GPA. The kids there do very well in admissions even without the rankings. We have seen some kids skip band classes so that they can take another AP, which we think is too bad. We won’t play that game. The main thing we’ve seen to boost GPA is kids taking a bunch during sophomore year when in general they are told they should only take AP World History. It’s a big school, so the only GPAs we know about are the ones published in the paper for seasonal scholar athletes. Not our business anyway.
Wow, I’m shocked hearing that students/families try to “game the system” regarding GPA. Never occurred to me. Well, our HS does not report class rank but it does report GPA - only weighted - on a 100 point scale. There is so much pressure on these kids… Happy to announce D got her state school app in early. She has one more EA to go and then on to the next batch… oh my…
@Fishnlines29 …I blame our state system for the rank problem. The beginnings of the system had good intentions to require that our state schools admit mostly in-state students. But it quickly grew to parents and kids figuring out how to game the system to achieve top rank.
S17’s school “does not rank” and “does not weight gpas”, but the school doesn’t somewhat slyly identify the top 10% (10 students) by early CumLaude Honor Society selection (limited to top 10%), which is then incorporated into the GC summary letter. So if it’s there it means something, and if it’s not there it also means something.
Also noted on Naviance today that son is the only applicant so far for his ED school (yay!), while there are 5 applicants to Harvard, presumably all SCEA (no way that’s happenin’). Despite the very devoted college counseling staff, they do not “steer” students away from certain schools to protect the interests of other students. They just give counsel as to whether it’s a reach…or a far reach (not likely at all to happen); kids/families are free to accept or ignore the counsel.
Our HS ranks and there is plenty of gaming the system. I found this out last year, along with a lesson in how students and their parents do it. I hadn’t given much thought to it, but I can see how gaming the system can benefit the student in terms of class rank, but on the other hand hurting kids who choose to not take certain classes they might want to.
Class Rank, our school ranks and for my son17 it hurts him. He is one of those kids that entered high school and was probably not placed right initially. He probably could have taken a full honors schedule but did not his freshman year. He did well academically getting all A and A-, but his Gpa for the year was something like 3.7. Kids in all honors had higher GPAs and he has never been able to catch up. He also chose to wait until this year to take AP classes. He waited until now to take the because he had to take other classes in his junior year to be eligible. So, my son17 who has mostly A’s and A-, maybe a B+ in 1 or 2 classes, ends up only being ranked at around the the top 1/3.
Will it hurt him? I don’t know. I am hoping the schools sees he has an upward trend in rigor through the years and that he can handle it.
Big hooray today! Checked son’s Naviance today and everything has been sent out from our guidance department as far as I can tell.
@vandyeyes - just checked naviance, I can only see how many applied from class of 2016, not class of 2017; I’m assuming schools can choose to show what they want unless I’m missing something…
I think all the ranking/GPA stuff is most important for large state schools. Smaller schools who employee more peopel per applicant take a bigger view of the application. When we were at Reed during her junior year my daughter had a chance to chat a bit with the director of admissions and she talked about how she was taking 6 IB/AP classes and working very hard to only get 3 B’s/3 A’s and the DoA said she loved that.
@Fishnlines29 I guess, it just depends on how the particular school employs its Naviance…tbh, really surprised it’s showing up…they too hide scattergrams if there are only a few kids in the history
Is there was way to see only 2017 applications in Naviance. I have to click on each school to check the admissions. I checked UAlabama (2-0) and Pitt (35-11). Those are the only rolling admission colleges DD is interested in. For Alabama, the transcripts haven’t been sent. As Naviance doesnt show rejected, there is no way of knowing if the rest are not admitted or pending completion
I am not telling DS that, but it will be epic combinatorial recycling. 8-} @-)