I have to stick up a little bit for UVA here. My son does not go there, but many of his friends do, and they are some of the nicest, down to earth kids that I know. Hard working and smart, and not at all elitist. Both VA Tech and UVA are excellent schools with large student populations and you will find all types. VA Tech, as a pure engineering school, is higher in rankings. But the kids I know who chose UVA engineering over VA Tech did it for reasons other than pure academics and it was the right choice for them.
@2014novamom - Thanks for the insight! My comment was just my son’s opinion of the school from his one visit, but since we live on the other side of the country, it was his only chance to visit. My husband actually thought it would be his top choice before they went, but he really just didn’t feel at home there.
I do appreciate your comments because his impression, for better or worse, was formed by his tour wherein the current student tour guide spent a lot of time talking about how UVA has the second most secret societies after Yale and things like that. The tour guide was definitely pushing that angle of secret societies/Greek life/etc and it was not his cup of tea.
@2014novamom I also agree that they’re many good students there. Some of the more elitist students are just giving the school a bad name.
@RoonilWazlib99 … one thing to check at GT (and other schools too) is the Freshman retention rate. I have a friend whose son went to GT and left after one year and they were wishing they had checked that for all the schools. Also, I have a S15 at Michigan… not engineering, but several of his friends are. Jeff Gordon recently visited the engineering students and I think they are partnering with his racing company on a project? Don’t know much about it as I don’t have an engineering student. But Ann Arbor is awesome! You need to carefully plan lots of food into your time there, as the restaurants are amazing! I also have an S18 and and S23… so that is why I am on this board 
Well, I just came back from my second track meet. My first meet was pretty good. I threw 69.9 feet for discus. I set a new PR (personal record) today at our second track meet, which was throwing a 12-pound shotput ball 30.5 feet. 40 feet is usually the longest distance most people throw. My dad saw me throw for the first time and he was impressed.
@wrights1994 - why did he drop out? Any particular reason?
@Pri930, it was not a good fit. Good program for whichever kind of engineering he wanted, but not the atmosphere he expected I think. So it has just been something I have paid attention to in our searches.
Thanks @wrights1994 …Food for thought
I would definitely encourage kids to do an overnight visit either if it’s offered to prospectives, or after they’ve been accepted. See what the dorm atmosphere is like, eat in the dining hall, go to classes, walk around and soak in the atmosphere. Many times what looks good on paper or on the website just doesn’t feel right in real life. Yes, they can always transfer but transfer slots are limited and merit aid (not to be confused with financial aid) at many schools is very limited for transfers.
Got the results of the PSAT10 today, ds missed one more than on the Oct PSAT but is still in good shape for next year.
We’ve been moving along at a nice slow pace for D. During spring break we did “drive-by” tours, where we just drove through campus but never got out of the car for 2 schools, and 1 self-guided walking tour of another. All of which were just in the vicinity of where we happened to be anyway, and none of which took much time. She was happy with that level of engagement and liked what she saw at the 2 drive-bys, hated the walk through. I couldn’t convince her to get out of the car at the drive-bys so the jury is out on whether just being in the car influenced how much she liked them 8-|
But this week a big college fair came to town and she was excited to go! I had absolutely zero expectations for the event, was just happy to have her get whatever she wanted to out of it because I knew it would be extremely crowded, and not a great place to get in-depth info (not that she’s ready for that anyway). We went in prepared with the list of colleges printed out, and I had worked with her to mark a few I thought she would especially like, including one of our spring break drive-bys that she liked the look of. And off we went!
The verdict is: she dipped her toe in and she felt really good about it! She wasn’t great at engaging the reps with questions, but she went out, and let them give her their elevator pitches and collected their info. She targeted mostly LACs and small schools and with each one she visited her smile got bigger. It was like they were speaking her language. She is set on aiming for small schools now. Even better, I think she is starting to feel comfortable with the idea that she has options and there are some good ones out there for her. =D>
@1822mom - sounds exactly like my DD sophomore in '09! She is graduating from a LAC in a month. Best of luck to you!
Anyone’s DC stressed about upcoming AP exam? My DD’18 will have AP World History exam soon, she tried really hard to bring her AP WH class grade to an A-, but when they were doing an overview comprehensive exam, she scored around 60%!! So she is very worried about the real AP test… I was wondering does she need to report her AP exam grade to college? Does reporting cost money? She doesn’t have a complete college list yet, but since we are in California, we will definitely tried UCs… Same question for SAT II Subject test, if she takes the exam, should she report to colleges? Thanks!
@jjkmom This is the approach we took. We did not report any scores to colleges before we knew what they were. This costs more money because you give up the free score reports that can be sent the day the test is taken. Because there are so many combinations of test reporting (send your best, send all, superscoring, some require SAT II, some don’t, etc.) we felt like we wanted to know all scores before anything was sent anywhere.
With regard to AP tests, specifically, don’t send those at all…they cost something like $16 each to send. When the kids fill out their Common App, they self report AP scores. Once your kid decides which school they are going to, send the AP score reports to that one school so they can receive whatever credit they have earned.
None of the schools my D15 applied to required SAT IIs because she took the ACT only (done in one sitting), so we didn’t bother sending them since they would not have added to her application.
Also, here’s another tip for fellow Californian’s: we did actually send one of the free ACT score reports to a CSU because we knew her first official test would be high enough given her grades and practice tests. The way the CSU system works is that once you send a score report to one you can share it among any of the others through CSU Mentor. I don’t know if the UCs work the same way since D15 didn’t apply to any.
We will follow this same strategy for S18.
I just looked up the UC score reporting requirments. Looks like they follow the CSU model: send scores to one, and then share with the others.
Regarding AP scores, if you have scores that are good but some that aren’t and you’re worried the lower scores will hurt, you can have them removed from your profile. This is something we did with my older child so we only sent the good scores to schools that actually required them to be reported as part of the admission application.
We used the same strategy for my older child that @1518mom did. Cost us a little more in the end but gave us more control over who saw what scores.
I think we did the same as mentioned above with older son, but he was class of 2013 and I, frankly, don’t remember all the details (getting old I guess).
AP scores seem most helpful for getting credit, somewhat less for getting in. The grade in the class (not the score on the test) seemed more valuable in terms of demonstrating level of effort and rigor.
Thank you all for sharing! I feel much better now as I can encourage her to take the test and if not doing well, we just won’t report!
My D16 has 11 APs and did not send or self-report a single score to any of the schools she applied to…Of course we are not talking about HYPS or the like schools…but honestly for schools ranked around 50 I don’t think the AP scores really matters as (I believe) they are really looking to see if the student challenged themselves and took the most difficult courseload available from their high school.
D18 send her AP Human Geo score to NYU last year (this was before I thought to tell her to NEVER send your score to a school before you know what it is…). Luckily she scored a 4. She may decided to send her WHAP score to NYU this year simply because NYU is a pipedream. Apparently NYU has an admissions avenue that lets you send 4 AP test scores instead of SAT or ACT scores.