Thanks for the perspective @LMHS73. You are absolutely right, there’s plenty of time for S to get unblocked on his McDermott application and submit by the early-read deadline (Nov 2 sounds right to me). Or the regular deadline if he regains enthusiasm a bit later. I’m just so used to him getting things done early that I’m probably reading way too much into this pause. I think he’s arranged for a friend to help him with the video; she was his partner for multiple video projects at the end of junior year and together they created some witty and funny videos even on very dry topics.
@suzy100 I don’t deserve a cabana boy as much as other parents on the thread with many applications still to face, but if there’s one swinging through the Houston area he could bring me a fruity umbrella drink and I’d be happy to get it :))
“Using a five-point scale, where 5 means strongly agree and 1 means strongly disagree, please indicate your level of agreement with:
U.S. colleges have become too dependent on international students
from a few countries, such as China and India.
My college has become too dependent on international students
from a few countries, such as China and India.”
I loved the graph @labegg mentions where although over 45% of respondents agreed (scored 4 or 5) that colleges have become too dependent on those international students only about 15% agreed that their own institutions were too dependent. “It’s totally not a problem at MY school, but THOSE OTHER schools are really taking too many international students!”
So sorry to hear about all of the athletic injuries. My DS decided a couple weeks into school to quit the sport he has played for 6 years. He has a rigorous academic course load and wants to keep the job he started this summer to earn money… He told me that he doesn’t want the enormous time commitment and wants to focus on school and his other ECs. While I respect his decision, my mama heart is so sad that I won’t get to watch him play his senior season.
Congrats to those who are seeing progress on apps/essays and empathy to those who are feeling burned out. We are on both ends here. DS has stalled on his last few honors essays, but he does have some admissions under his belt. Alabama came in the mail this week. Big red envelope with ADMITTED stamped across the front. No suspense there :))
Boy you people have been busy today LOL! Scrolling quickly through…
My heart goes out to the kiddos missing their senior year of sports due to injury. They sacrifice so much to earn the perks of senior status, it’s tough to not get to reap the reward. And to the parents who will miss the joy of cheering their kid on from on the sidelines and socializing with the other parents, I feel for you too. Such a let down.
Fatigue, yes! Feeling it here too…on my part not D’s! I nagged so much that I burned myself out. But miraculously she cracked open her laptop tonight and managed to get her Common App essay done. She really just needed to finesse the ending but she hadn’t looked at it for a few weeks. Tonight I guess she had enough time and space to gain clarity and whipped out the ending pretty quickly. It’s good - not great - but she’s agonized over it so long and is finally to a point that she’s happy with it exhale.
Its clearly a big weight off her because she just planned an essay writing date this weekend with a handful of friends to get cracking on her supplementals. Hurray for that! Can’t wait for essays to be over. The agony can not be overstated.
@1822mom - hang in there, you will get there! Lots of time still on the clock…
Something not so academic but cool for DS this week. He was selected to be a part of the football homecoming court. It was obvious it meant a lot to him, and so I was really happy for him. We went tonight to shop for a coat and tie. Kind of a neat break from discussing essays and college. Good reminder that this is his senior year of HS and to enjoy that for what it is. That is really the season of life this is and I hope he looks back and remembers weeks like this one rather than just college applications. Live life in the moment as much as possible.
Here’s a blast from the past: I got out my old ACT score during a conversation with my daughter. Without prep, and without a fancy calculator, I got a 31 composite in one sitting.
But one of the subsections was “social studies.” It was a very different test back in the old days. =))
I like that game @bearcatfan! I never took the ACT but got a 1440 on my first-try SAT in fall 1992, after a prep class that was actually offered as a regular class during the school day. It was anomalously high for my school, although my school was a poorly-performing rural one so that’s not saying much. According to CB’s site that would be a 1520 in the “recentered” post-1995 score range, though I’m not sure if that means it’s the same as a 1520 today. I only applied to two schools, Cornell and Penn State, and got into both including the honors program at PSU with a full-tuition scholarship (the rebranding to Schreyer Honors College happened in 1997 so when I was there it wasn’t as prestigious as it is today). I have no idea how I would have fared with admissions at the super-elites like MIT or Harvard, but I do know that PSU engineering was a very rude awakening for me after high school so MIT would probably have been a nightmare if I’d applied there and gotten in. Or who knows, maybe MIT would have a great support system that would have quickly helped me develop the time management and study skills I never learned in high school? Either way, although I think S’s high school is too much of a pressure cooker I can see that he is far far better at time management and study skills than I was at his age.
Curious about how your old SAT score converts to the 1995 recentered scores? Here’s a link to check it out:
No one took the SAT in my part of the world back then; it was all ACT. I got a 30. My prep consisted of taking a practice test the night before. Not the day before, the night before. No one told me I needed to stress about it. :-??
My parents told me I could choose any school within a 500 mile radius of home. I’d picked one, then in Feb I got a letter from an out-of-state directional saying I was eligible for an automatic full ride because of my ACT score. It was 510 miles away. My parents still let me go.
Edit: and you know what? I had a great time at that little directional school. I feel like I got a great education, and it did not hinder me from getting into a highly-ranked graduate program. Our kids will be FINE, no matter where they go.
I have absolutely no idea what I got on the SAT. I can’t even remember my LSAT scores. My brain is crammed with so much junk that I had to jettison that info long ago. I’m impressed with those of you who can remember them!
I was better at the PSAT and SAT than ACT, and scored high enough for NMF from my “second to last” in education ranking southern state. But I never would have made NMF now. Boy, did I have a lot of Cs on my HS transcript! It is kind of cool that both me and my first two kids are NMSF. My spouse did much better on the SAT than me and would have surely been NMF if she had not gone out to a party until 2am the night before. Still, we like to lord it over her.
I had a pretty much full ride NMF scholarship to UT-Austin, back when they gave those out. But the size of the place scared me away, and I ended up going to a small LAS without any significant NM scholarship. Still amazes me my parents did not even blink at that.
I remember a lot of jaws dropping in my hs Calculus class bc I had the highest math score, I beat the smart kid by 10 points. I was nearly flunking the class btw, but the SAT had all my favorite math: algebra and geometry. I remember flying through that section on test day and resting my head to take a nap (those were the days my hs friends and I would sneak into the nearby campus bars on Friday nights, the bars served draft beer in buckets and had disposable cups with one floating on top as the ladle, seriously where were parents in the 80’s?). My gym teacher who was proctoring freaked out and told me that I should really be using the time to review my answers. He walked over to give a pep talk/intervention for teen apathy - nowadays wouldn’t that dq the score? My verbal was awful though, so no great composite to brag about.
I’m not sure I ever took the SAT or the ACT, when I was in high school (early 80’s) in California, everyone went to either the local state schools or the CC’s, only the “athletes” went somewhere fancy. I just don’t even remember it being a blip on the radar. The majority went to San Jose State or UC Santa Cruz, a few to UC Berkeley/Davis and everyone else went to the CC’s. The demographic of my high school was low, no ones parents were footing the bill, if you wanted to go to college you figured out how to pay for it on your own. This was back in the day when it was actually possible to work ones way thru college.
The DMV, amirite? Kid had an appt to take his written test today. We had a confirmation email sent by the DMV’s automated system, and we had to wait three weeks to get an appointment because written driver’s tests cannot be done on a walk-in basis.
I sent the kid with a printout of the confirmation, a printout of his completion of a driver’s ed class, his passport and his father.
A US passport is not sufficient to apply for a driver’s license in CA. The official address on the passport notwithstanding, the applicant must supply two proofs of residency in CA. The father’s driver’s license with local address of record is not acceptable. The father’s vehicle registration with address of record is not acceptable. Note that both of the previous are official DMV documents.
Nooooo, the child has to supply something on the order of a lease (which won’t be in the child’s name), mortgage statement (which also won’t be in the child’s name), utility bill (which won’t be…), birth certificate (from another county, no less), or report card.
And NONE OF THIS was spelled out in the freaking confirmation email.
No, the kid could not start the test while I drove the missing documents to the location.
So now… Now guess what? We have to wait ANOTHER three weeks to get a new appointment.
