Dear LSU,
60% of my son’s high school class will attend your fine university next fall. It’s really ok if my son is not one of them. Really. You will be fine. The 3 times a day emails, and daily postcards, letters and brochures by snail mail, can stop.
Regards,
VistaJay
@odannyboySF I’m so sorry for your D. 'I’m sure she’s trying her best. That’s all anyone can do.
My D also asked for a new computer. I told her no way until we know what school she’s going to. Years ago you used to be able to get a discount through your school because they’d have an agreement with a particular company. Do they still do this? Regardless, I don’t want to spend the money until we have a better ide of her needs, and frankly it seems like technology changes so often, I don’t want to buy it 6 months before we have to. I only want to buy 1 for her college career. Another question, how do the kids secure their laptops against theft? Seems like it would be very easy to leave your door unlocked while you run down the hall to go to the bathroom, and come back to a stolen laptop. My D is, happily, very naive about crime. Maybe the less expensive chrome book and a full on desk top is the better combo for a lot of kids.
You can buy a cable laptop lock which allows you to chain your computer to something else (like a desk in a dorm room). Most laptops at this point have a security port which accepts industry standard locks.
Oh, that’s ingenious. Now to see whether my D, who has been extraordinarily lucky to be in a school where no one steals anything, will actually us such a thing.
Use, not us.
@odannyboySF I’m sorry - that’s tough.
On the laptops. My son has used a Surface for years at school with no problem. He has special accommodations so he is alloed to use it in every class. It goes in and out of the overstuffed backpack all day, every day. He has the snap on keyboard but no other protection. My daughter has a Lenovo laptop and she loves it. She has used it for 3 years. Dh bought one for work last year and lives it as well.
Be cateful with buying the laptop thru the school. We looked for my niece and with the discount the Lenovo was twice as expensive as Best Buy.
The boys, ds18, ds20 and dh are doing a “build your own computer” for their Christmas present. So far they have agreed of on the video card and CPU but the CPU hasn’t been released yet. Silly me asked what the were looking at for a cd/dvr reader writer drive and they looked at me like I was from the stone age!
I’m 100% sure that you can buy a computer cheaper than you can build one but then you’d get to miss out on the bickering about what kind of memory to use, liquid or air cooled power supply… it will totally shock me if the three of them can agree on all the components by Christmas and DH is the worst of the three. (and yes the rule was they had to build identical systems;-) )
@odannyboySF I totally understand. D had one and only B and it was like a never ending complaining crying episode. However, now she is moved passed it for the most part. It is hard when they work for something and then the dream crashes down. I get it. D made a 92 and 93 is an A. Oh well, I said at least you have an awesome essay for college applications. So, hugs to your D. Hopefully, she will be able to pull it up before final grades.
Our experience with D15 was the school computer/laptop discount was about what you could get online via sale. But more convenient for her to get it from the school bookstore.
Are those schools going to care about one B at the halfway point of senior year?
@amominaz, school by school to find out if they require CSS is all I did, admission programs usually brought it up if you attend them. But I’m a newbie, someone else might know better.
@kayak24 I submitted two schools on CSS. One told me to fax the other told me to submit via IDOC
@ShrimpBurrito To clarify…All SS, Science, Eng, Math, and Foreign Lang classes are calculated for class rank, weighted or not. Any other courses are not weighted and do not figure into ranking, though they average into your unweighted GPA. I guess it could be an advantage or a disadvantage depending how you look at it.
One thing is for sure, colleges comparing weighted GPAs and rankings between students from different high schools is comparing apples to oranges.
I definitely am not a fan of calling every 4.0 kid a valedictorian. The 4.0 kid with rigor is not equal to the 4.0 kid with all core level classes. I think we will someday see val/sal go away all together. I heard that Plano ISD in Texas has moved away from ranking to telling students only what percentage they are in (top 10%, top quarter, top half, etc) for the purpose of college applications.
@S18D20mom Oh okay, I get it. I think I like that system.
A lot of interesting conversation re: rank on this board today.
D’s school doesn’t publish rank but does calculate the students’ rank for Val/Sal and other reporting reasons. I just found out that their “rank” can be different than their “shared GPA” number. I don’t know what that means bc I thought rank was strictly based on GPA. :-??
D’s school doesn’t do ranking, either. They are a small, boutique school, and since most of the students are high achieving it would be hard to say only these 7 kids are in the top 10%. They do, however, have Val/Sal.
Kind of a funny aside; all the kids say the Valedictorian speech is usually really boring because they are the ultra go getter without much personality and the Salutatorian speech is usually a lot more interesting. Funny considering the difference is usually .005%.
@DavidPuddy - exactly one of the reasons our S didn’t even apply. Too time consuming and he just didn’t want to deal with it! I think the only time he regretted not joining was when filling out college apps. Would have been nice to have another honor/accolade to list.
Rank released yesterday here and I tried desperately to prevent D21 from seeing and obsessing…that’s right rank and GPA are released real time each quarter and the kids all nose around to see who is at the top. It doesn’t seem valuable as rank #150 out of 600 had a 95% last year. So you could have an A average but have a relatively low rank. Percentile seems to be a better comparison. The rank has actually kept some kids out of certain schools or scholarship opportunities, even kids with good scores and GPA. Does anyone who uses Naviance know of a way to block the rank page? Thanks
@3scoutsmom, yep the foreign language was big miss step on my part. I did not know to start FL in 6th grade as the other parents did…