@flsoccermom22 my niece went to Lyndon State in northern Vermont for meteorology. She said their meteorology department has a slightly different focus than other schools, so you might want to check it out. This would be a safety school for your daughter, but this could be a free ride for her with merit money, and in any event I think it might be interesting to you to look at their program.
@melvin123 Thanks so much. I’ll take a look and check out their focus. Some of the schools we met with had unique things they focused on…for example Kansas was specifically studying the clouds that are closer to the ground. Very interesting things you learn when you start delving into the details.
Welcome to all the new members!
Yay!!! I’m so happy for my daughter who just got back terrific SAT2s. It is so very nice when you see your kid’s hard work pay off.
@CuriousInCincy : Can your S18 come over for a play date? I’d like to see some of that initiative and organizational skill rub off on our D18!
My DD upped her Math score to 700 on the SAT. I’m thrilled, she always wants more.
So Superscore 730v/700m. Still waiting on darn June ACT!
Hopefully this will be good for her schools (mostly University of Maryland, UMBC, and other schools within a few hours of here).
SAT II arrival was a surprising event here. Not as expected. Decision time on a few things …
SAT IIs went well S’18. No more testing. Apps not being worked on while summer program is going on. But he has a good draft of the common app essay completed and knows he’ll need to focus when he gets home in August.
@ChattaChia I will echo what a few others said about turning a basic college tour into something more specific by meeting with a professor, going on a major specific tour, visiting a special program (like honors etc) or even seeing if you can arrange for some one on one time with the tour guide or another student to get a real perspective. Some colleges offer special panels (say for STEM) that are student led, William & Mary comes to mind. Pitt offered us a chance to meet with two different departments within the university (we ultimately met with a professor in the Chemistry Dept and it was a WOW moment for my daughter, as he was very engaging). For Rutgers we are visiting the Honors College and getting a tour since I think the smaller scale at that large university will engage her a bit more. At Delaware we’re doing the regular tour (I’ve not heard great things about their tours unfortunately, but as alum we can fill in the blanks a bit) but we also got a meeting with the head of the World Scholars Program so hopefully that will help. It feels a bit daunting but the personal touch goes a LONG way towards getting a more realistic feeling for the college rather than being simply herded around on the same old tour (afte a while most Libraries, Student Centers, Dorms look the same). Good luck to you :).
@glido You are so correct in your perspective relating to staying calm, it’s early in July :). My concern is that once her fall sports season is in full swing mid August her time will be greatly diminished and she has soooo much stinkin summer work this year. I feel for these kids…they should really get to enjoy their summer as well. I’ve let her chill the past few weeks with only a minor “reminder” to do some rough drafts, or pick up her required reading and make a dent in it. I hate to push…they work SO hard during the school year and they all deserve some time to decompress and be “kids” for a bit. It wasn’t at all like this when I was in HS…it had stressful moments but the college process feels so overwhelming and competitive these days. Again…thanks for the gentle reminder :).
I don’t know how it happened but for some reason S has very little summer homework. Last year he had packets for calc AB, physics 1, chemistry, possibly APES, and of course summer reading for English. This summer all he has to do is read one book for English and write a half-page summary for each chapter. His course load is a little easier senior year than junior but he’s still taking lots of APs…it’s funny that there’s so much less summer work this year.
@AmyBeth68 - I completely agree. Our DD’18 is a fall sport kid. For fall-sport kids, getting essays completed, or almost completed, over the summer is a very good idea (if not a necessity). Filling out the Common App basic info is not hard - I strongly encourage that too.
(Also for fall sport kids: there is a new SAT test date (August 26, I think. The deadline to register is July 28.) For rising seniors that need one more at the SAT, this new August date can be a good option since so many September, October and November Saturdays are competition days.)
Agree about utitlizing the August SAT date, but if you are thinking about it, book it soon! There is only one testing site in our area open for that date, when typically there are around 5. They will fill up!
Wow, @Astro77, you are still waiting on the June ACT? It was bad waiting an extra week in our case … your poor DD!
We have a wisdom teeth removal date! The day Christmas vacation starts, lol. We’ve decided to have our Christmas dinner the weekend before, so she can have a nice dinner. This oral surgeon did my younger daughter’s (non wisdom teeth) surgery so I know she is in good hands. The timing is good - after semester exams, away from Nutcracker, and avoids any kind of interviews/scholarship days she might be invited to.
@traveler98 so yes, he has TN Tech, which will be less than 10k a year, guaranteed acceptance and actually has a place called the iCube where he could work on things like virtual reality for public companies. It’s one of the things he’s been most excited about so far. He has UA which will cost room and board, loved the campus and had some good hon So we’re pretty good on safeties.
He has put up some auto reject criteria, as in won’t look: hurricanes, tornados, so Florida, gulf coast and tornado alley. I haven’t told him those things can occur in other places, he may rule out the entire country.
@bearcatfan so we’ve seen 6 schools, but our big trip is coming up. A week long tour starting in Boston with Northeastern and MIT, then Troy for RPI, then Rochester for URochester and RIT, then Cleveland for Case. I scheduled all of the tours. Some seem better than others. I’ve suggested he reach out to get department specific visits. I’ll continue to nag. Aside from MIT, we are seeking merit.
@AmyBeth68 thanks. So I think I mentioned my son was introverted, at least until he warms up. So funny story. We were meeting yesterday with a professor at UA. This guy was great. Gave excellent advice, so he talked for quite awhile, then he asked what questions my son had…DS looked strained and said, “I really don’t like to talk much” to which the professor replied, “that will change” and went into another relevant story. He couldn’t have given advice any better if I’d scripted it for him. DS did finally muster up the courage to ask about co-op and by the end, he conversed some. It’s painful to watch. Interestingly, his HS teachers love him and he is anything but introverted there. I guess he has to size up a situation before he’s willing to put himself out there.
@ChattaChia
“then he asked what questions my son had…DS looked strained and said, “I really don’t like to talk much” to which the professor replied, “that will change” and went into another relevant story. He couldn’t have given advice any better if I’d scripted it for him.”
I love that!
@bearcatfan I know, the lack of ACT result is very frustrating! We signed her up today for the next ACT even though we wanted to see how she did on the first one before we signed up. She has a nice SAT in the bag so we might not have paid for another ACT if she got a bad result the first time. So, we had to make an uninformed decision because our particular kid’s result is slow in coming. I prefer the SAT results rollout, all on one day.
@DavidPuddy I’m sorry your son’s SAT2 wasn’t as desired. But, there are a lot of great schools that don’t require this. I’ve also been told that a lot of the schools that do look at this view this in the context of the HS attended and other factors. Some high schools pride themselves as “not teaching to the test” and the kids don’t do well on these exams. I don’t know how big of a school your son goes to and how academic the students are, but it might possibly help to look at your School Profile to see SAT 2 results at your school and then look at the schools kids get into. You might also want to email your GC to see if you need to re-evaluate the level of schools your son is applying to, but I really don’t think you need to re-evaluate if you are doing that only because of the SAT2s.
@DavidPuddy - Our S18’s SAT 2 scores were not as expected either. He will most likely just submit them to the schools that require them and not even bother (except maybe Math 2) for the schools that recommend. He’s a bit bummed.
On the positive side, he finally logged in to see his IB scores and he got a 7/7 on Spanish SL and a 5/7 on Chem SL, so he was very happy with those! He just needs to average a 4 on all his IBs to get the diploma, so he is doing great!
Ugh, not happy to hear about SAT IIs. My S crushed his regular SAT (yay!), and now we have to decide about SAT IIs. Good problem to have I guess.
Back from our trip out west. Lots of catching up:
CalTech:
Did a self guided tour of CalTech, which they had available on their site. Parking was more difficult than it should have been for visitors, even in summer. Be prepared to park (and likely pay for parking) on the street “off campus”. Also, if you aren’t from the area, there’s a good (but busy) In n’ Out Burger just up the street! Huzzah!
Smallish but pretty campus where every building is a “lab”. Well, except for the student center and parking facility (which was fully and, IMO, poorly designed). And it seemed like the further through campus we went, the more esoteric the labs became… like the lab for artificial photosynthesis or the lab for chemical biology. It was like those word games you play where you pick two random words and put them together and make a lab out of them. It’s a science nerd’s heaven. But beyond all the labs, S18 really liked the “charm”… from the Gene Pool, which was a long fountain/pool with a double helix design in it, to the apparent organic chemistry figures in the wrought iron fence.
What he didn’t like was LA, or Pasadena (despite the burgers). There weren’t a lot of specifics, but the sprawl was real. He also didn’t find the “walk around space” that he really thinks he wants. Our trip included seeing snow for only the second time for him (that he remembers), so he now is thinking a little snow would go a long way. Which brings us to…
UChicago:
Didn’t have the best approach vector via Google maps into the area (“Uh, this feels a little bit more like Temple than I remember!”), but once we got closer, it got much nicer. I’ve only ever been to the campus once before on a self tour at night. The gothic buildings during that trip had a very different feel than they do during the day, but still impressive. It was summer, during the day, and there was lots of construction, but it is still one of the most impressive quad areas of any school I’ve been to. And food trucks. I love food trucks.
Anyway, we had an official tour, complete with decent presentation, but nothing really unusual. It’s funny, they gave a lot of advise about dealing with selective admissions, including really making sure that the essays about Why UChicago or any school shouldn’t just be able to have the name of UChicago replaced with another school’s name and still work… and I just thought “They probably should have used the same advice for this presentation”. It was good, but it didn’t connect with me, personally. Wife and child seemed more receptive. But the student giving the tour was really pretty perfect. Quirky, lame humor that she totally owned, talented backwards walker and gave a lot of unique character to the university, its inhabitants and her own experiences. 10/10 for Brian… err… Sophie. 
S18 has really connected to UChicago throughout the process. The tour cemented it at the top of his list and only the possible full ride via NMF at Florida rivals it. Oh, and apparently they occasionally have snow.
SAT:
1550. Woot! He’s more than met his qualifying score, and with his 35 ACT, he seems very content to be one and done with the SAT. I’ve given him space to fail at being prepared and he’s used all the space I’ve given… and still somehow manages to do amazingly well (well, at least at taking tests). It’s really frustrating!
Final Anecdote:
(quick background: He only got I think a 740 or 750 on the first math II subject test his 10th grade year. He was kinda frustrated so he took it again this May along with Chem and got an 800… How? I don’t know. He literally did like a dozen practice problems … and Calc BC… in between). So I’ve talked to him about how he should really own this process and so he’s done all the registering and sending scores and all that. I asked who he sent his subject test scores from the good May exam and he wasn’t sure but said “It’s ok, I sent both math subject test scores to all the schools that needed them, so they could see I improved”.
I’m like…“Uh… son, you only needed to send the 800. None of the schools you are applying to require all scores.” I asked why he sent them both scores and he said:
“In case I sent them the first score last year. I didn’t want to check who I sent them to, so I just sent both to all of them.”
sigh So now I’ve revised the policy to “Please be sure to just double check with me before clicking send.” I won’t say he has to listen to what I have to say, but it might be good to have the conversation.