Parents of the HS Class of 2018 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
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So I went to GMU yesterday and thought I might just describe my trip. I’ll admit that there are some parts that are pretty irrelevant, so go ahead and skim read.

Check-In and University Life/Student Service Browsing (9:30am - 10:00am)

So we start off the trip parking at the Lot K parking lot and walking through a serene, forest-like walkway that bordered Mason Pond. We walked a short distance to get to the Center of the Arts building. Both my little brother, who for most of the day was on his phone completely disinterested , and my father were there with me. So we got to the Arts Building and saw hundreds of other families upon entering chatting with current students and getting checked-in. We went ahead and got checked in by last name and got my nametag (that had my name, where I was from, what I planned to major in, which was engineering, and my group color, which was gold) and a bag full of information booklets and an itinerary of today’s events. As I was looking around, I saw one of my friends who I knew was coming. My dad, who was an alum of GMU, decided he wanted to take us to see the Johnson Center as we still had a little bit of time before the actual program started. The Johnson Center was a 2 minute walk from the Arts Building. While walking there, we saw the statue of George Mason. The same statue my brother and I took a picture in front of around 10 YEARS AGO! I was 6, he was 4. It brought back so many memories!

Anyway, walked on a forest-like path (I honestly love how the school feels like its located right in the middle of a giant forest, but still has an esteemed, urban city feel) and up a couple of steps to the Johnson Center. Believe me when I say it was HUGE! Believe me, you’ll see just how huge the place is in the YouTube video I’ll be uploading soon. The place looks like a large mini-mall! We didn’t really look at everything inside, at least not yet anyway, because we decided to head to the bookstore. The bookstore had two floors, the first floor mainly contained all the Mason Swagger (hoodies, sweaters, T-Shirts, hats, etc.) you could think of, while the second floor, which was below the first floor, had all of the textbooks and school supplies you could ever need. My father said that we would buy something after lunch, but I still went ahead and looked around. After I finished looking around the first floor, I went down the long, square-winding, staircase to the second floor. The supply store itself kind of reminded me of Walmart. I was greeted by some friendly store clerks and just browsed through the store. I specifically went to the engineering textbooks, as that’s what I planned on majoring in, and cringed when I saw how expensive those textbooks were! The most expensive price I saw was buying a new book for $230. I then quickly browsed the entire floor and asked one of the clerks how many students would usually be here on a normal day, and her response was “A lot! Especially once classes start”. After that, I went back upstairs and we all left to go back to the Center of the Arts Building. We got back just a few minutes before the first presentation, which was set in the auditorium. Before we went in, we went to go get some orange juice from the little breakfast bar. We finally went in just one minute after 10am and took our seats.

Welcome and Presentations (10:00am - 11:00am)

I didn’t really find this part all that interesting, but there were a couple of bits that were. We watch a marvelous video emphasizing GMU’s natural beauty. The first speaker, GMU’s Dean of Admissions, spoke about preparing for college and tips and tricks everyone should know. I’m not going to bore with the details as most people on CC would know about most of the things said, but I will go over one thing that was pretty interesting. GMU has what’s called: The Score Optional Method. GMU is one of few universities to have this. The Score Optional Method is for exceptional students who are really bad test takers and allows said students to NOT submit their scores and still be considered in the application review process. The exception is that students planning to apply to the GMU’s Volgenau School of Engineering cannot apply for the Score Optional Method. I wasn’t really planning on doing it anyway, but it was still a nice thing to think about. Prior to this, the speaker had also talked about her daughter, who attended school in the same county I’m in and is also a rising junior, and how she was also in the same boat as many of the parents out in the audience. In her PowerPoint, she highlighted that GMU looks at grades more than anything else. Two interesting things I found out: GMU has a campus in South Korea and you are allowed to send a video “essay” instead of a written essay. Then, the second speaker came up.

The second speaker, the financial aid counselor, explained the process getting Financial Aid. I personally felt that this part was meant more for the parents, as I had a hard time understanding a lot of the things she was saying. It kind of made me wish I was taking AP Economics next year. She presented a lot of valuable information, but again, not going to bore you with the details. The only thing I really found interesting about this was learning about FAFSA and learning that apparently, I’m not sure I heard this correctly so don’t take my word on it, the federal government is no longer using taxes of year’s past for the financial aid application, but rather of two years past as a way to make the data more accurate. I would still do my research on this though.

The third speaker, The Washington Scholars Program Director, talked about two summer programs/conferences that will take place next year: The Washington Youth Summit on the Environment (WYSE) and The Washington Journalism and Media Conference. We watched videos about these programs to see how big of an impact it had on the program participants.

The fourth and last speaker, Mr. Matthew Boyce, who had sent me an e-mail prior to the event about jump-starting into the college searching process, which I already have, basically just dismissed by group. There were only two large groups, and you were either in the gold or green group. I was in the gold group. The gold group was dismissed first. We were told to go eat lunch first at the Johnson Center, while the green group would be first going on a tour of campus.

I’m going to describe more, this post has just become too long!

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Lunch (11:00am - 12:00pm)

Once we got to the Johnson Center, we were told to enter a large room where we would be eating lunch. Once we got in, we saw that there weren’t that many tables left, so we had to sit with another family. We made small talk, but it was honestly really awkward. I went to the food table, got a hamburger, two snicker doodles, some shredded chicken, and some lemonade. After I finished my food, my dad let me go ahead and tour the place by myself.

So as I was walking out, I saw a guy who was a representative of GMU. I decided to talk to him and ask him a question about GMU’s Robotics Team. He was definitely really helpful and had said that GMU has a large Robotics team! I continued to look around the Johnson Center and realized that I needed to charge my phone and put all of the photos I had just taken onto Google Drive. I asked one of the guys at the information desk if there was a charging station for Android phones anywhere in there. He said they would be on the upper floors. Trying to find the charging station was an adventure, one that actually let me see how big the Johnson Center really was. It really does look like a mall, complete with its food court. I met some college students on my adventure who thought I was a senior and asked me where a certain building was and then another group of college kids thought I was a new incoming freshman.

After 10 minutes, I finally found a charging station in the east lounge on the fourth floor. The Johnson Center itself looked like a small library on the second, third floors, and fourth floors, with two lunges on each floor. The first floor looked like a mall. I uploaded my photos and videos to Google Drive and by the time I was finished, lunch was over and we were about to go on a campus tour.

GMU Campus Tour (12:00pm - 1:00pm)

Rather than telling you all about this, I’ll show you the video. I’ll upload the video to YouTube and put a private link on here for anyone who wants to see any of my pictures and videos from the trip. The tour was very interesting and so was the tour guide. For most of the tour, I just kind of talked to her and asked her questions about the university. I remember she said “Hey, Engineering kid! To the front!” because she wanted to show me where the Engineering building was. We weren’t going to tour it, so it was nice to get a glimpse of where it was. We saw some dorms and went into a dorm room, which I took some pictures of and saw the Southside dining hall and the Skyline Fitness Center, which are ironically right next to each other. We basically just walked around as she told us things about each place. your typical tour.

Academic Advising (1:00pm - 1:45pm)

After the tour, we went back to the Johnson Center for Academic Advising. This was the part of the day where we got to ask the different departments questions that we had. I didn’t really ask that many questions and was honestly more interested in charging my phone. My dad decided to take us to the bookstore to get some Mason Swagger. I got a T-Shirt and my brother got a keychain and hat. After that, I went back to the charging station and uploaded videos from the tour and charged my phone until the Academic Advising period was over.

Information Session (1:45pm - 2:30pm)

After that, we went to an information session in The Johnson Center’s very own campus movie theater. The information session was, ironically, the most informative part of the day. I learned some pretty interesting things:

  • GMU has a Non-Binding Early Action Option that states that if you apply by November 1st, you will receive an admissions decision by December 15th. However, if you are accepted, you will still be allowed to choose any other college you want. This is the part that makes the GMU's Early Action option non-binding. I think I will go ahead and do this and just might apply EA because of the non-binding option.
  • GMU's Engineering school requires a 24 Math score on the ACT. I forgot about what score was needed for the SAT.
  • GMU's Admission Profile for the Class of 2020
  • Average Weighted GPA: 3.33 - 3.9
  • Average SAT Score (1600 Scale): 1100 - 1220
  • Average Composite ACT Score: 23 - 29

They kind of kept repeating over and over how GMU was one of the top research universities in the state of Virginia. They also talked about the Honors College which definitely interested me,

Closing (2:30pm - 2:45pm)

The Director of Admissions gave closing remarks before letting us out. She told us her daughter had just received her schedule and is looking forward to her junior year.

Overall, I was very satisfied with the program and GMU as a whole. After going on the tour, GMU has officially made it back into my top 3 schools to consider! I love the campus and could honestly see myself being a student there!

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Oh yeah, one more thing I forgot to mention about GMU. They technically don’t have an Aerospace Engineering major or minor, but they said that since Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering are very closely related, those wanting to enter Aerospace Engineering should be fine learning Mechanical Engineering instead. It’s actually kind of funny too. The woman at the table said “If you want to focus on Aerospace Engineering alone, you’ll have to go somewhere else!”

So I’ve been thinking and researching about GMU’s Honors Program and it seems really great! The program allows you to take all of your General Education (GE) classes (such as Freshmen English or Freshmen Chemistry) in half the time. By that I mean that GMU requires 26 GE credits, however, through the Honors Program, you’ll only have to complete 13.

My plan at this point, if I go to GMU at least, is to either graduate in three years, or double major in both Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science for four years. The first option would allow me to have enough money saved up to go to grad school.

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Last Minute Question:

I’m going to Virginia Tech tomorrow and have a few options.

First Option: Go to 11:15am College of Engineering Information Session, which ends around 12pm, go to a general information session at 1:30pm and go on a 2:30pm tour.

This option would give us an hour and half of free time, but I don’t know what to do with said free time. Any ideas? My parents aren’t exactly ecstatic about going to VT, especially with us going to GMU first and seeing how good and inexpensive it would be. My father also doesn’t really like that I’m focusing too much on Engineering and wants me to also look at the medical field. I’ve explained and hinted multiple times that it’s unlikely I’ll go into the medical field, but he wants me to be opened minded about it. I don’t know how he’ll feel about going to an Engineering information session.

Second Option: Go to 10:30am general information session and go on 11:30am tour.

This option wouldn’t allow us to go to an Engineering information session. We wouldn’t be able to schedule the tour later as my parents stated that we’ll have to leave by 3pm as it’ll be a 3-4 hour ride home. We’d also leave in about two hours which I feel is kind of short.

Then there’s the whole “tour” situation. Since I could not register in time to go on a tour and information session, Virginia Tech said that it would be fine if I go to the information session, as space can be made there, but I might not be able to go on a student-led tour. They said that I would have to wait until the day I visited, tomorrow, to see if there would be any space available, meaning someone cancelled last minute. I don’t know how likely that’ll be as we are going in a group of three, no more than four, so it’s more likely we’ll have to go on a self-guided tour, which I feel will likely be rushed.

My main question is do you think going to the engineering info session is worth it? I mean, I found the presentation online and since it’ll likely be the same presentation that’ll be presented at the info session, I’ll just call if I have any questions.

I’m going to talk with my parents about this ASAP, but I just wanted to get another opinion.

So, which do you think you will be the better option?

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@ak2018, I would highly recommend attending the engineering info session if you can. My D17 is going into engineering and we’ve visited about 10 colleges over the last year. I think 4 or 5 had engineering sessions. We both felt they were informative (over and above what we’d gleaned from the school websites) and definitely worth it. Probably the best thing to do with your extra time would be to just walk around and get a feel for the campus, maybe eat in a dining hall. I have found that looking at flyers and posters in the engineering department give a feel for what a particular school emphasizes. The same for general flyers, etc. in the student center – those can help you think about how you’d fit in at a school. I’ve also heard that Blacksburg is just beautiful. If your parents get sick of VT they might like to explore the town.

Whatever you do, I look forward to hearing about your visit. My D17 is applying, but I don’t think we’ll visit.

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@snoozn I had actually talked with my parents and I have some good news and bad news.

My dad has a shift tomorrow that just came up, so we won’t be able to go tomorrow.

We had actually had a good discussion about the whole thing. My dad said that he’d be willing to cancel his shift tomorrow as I’ve been waiting for this visit all summer, but I decided that we could just go tour the school on a Saturday in September, an option he had prosposed.

Based on VT’s schedule, the next best day for us would be September 10th.

What made the discussion really good was that I felt like he was really listening to what I had to say, with little GMU bias. The only thing he said about GMU during the discussion was that it’s highly unlikely a visit to VT will be like that one we had experienced at GMU. I had agreed with this, but only because the GMU visit day was specifically for rising Juniors. He told me that we’ll definitely go on the tour and that we’ll even try to go to UVA as well.

Overall, I’m personally okay with waiting another three weeks. At this point, I’ve waited all summer, I can wait a little longer. With school starting next Monday for me. I’ll be kept very busy. We would’ve gone on September 3rd, but VT is having one of their infamous home football games that day and this Saturday, my father is working again.

At least now, my fear that the self-guided tour would be rushed are diminished. My father said he really wants me to see the school, but with him just back now, waking up at 6am would be a little tiring for him. We both want the tour not be rushed, so we both decided an open Saturday should be best.

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Just registered DS18 for the Oct 19th PSAT! Today is his first day back at school. He got all the classes he wanted but all his difficult classes are in back to back in the afternoon and easy ones are all in the morning. He wants to try to rearrange this if possible.

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Random Question: How early will your DCs be waking up for school?

I just received my bus schedule and I’m not looking forward to it.

I currently go to my school for a specialty program, however, this school isn’t my neighborhood school. In fact, the school is about 17 miles away from my house! For specialty program students at my school, there are specialty bus stops for students who do not live within school boundaries. Students who are planning to take a specialty bus stop must fill out a form that asks which stop they’d prefer. However, the rule is, due to budget constraints, that if less than 6 students sign up for a certain stop, that stop will not be included the following year. Apparently, that happened in my case. Now, I will be walking a full mile to my bus stop this year instead of six-tenths of a mile like last year. Even worse, my bus will come to the stop at 6:04am, a full half hour earlier than last year. This will mean I need to be out the door by 5:40am, and wake up at 4am, or 5am at the latest. It’s a really good thing my current school is the highest-ranked school in our county, or I honestly not made this kind of commitment. I guess if anything, this is going to be a big motivator to sleep on time.

My parents are okay with driving me to my bus stop if it becomes too dark to walk out. We could only do this on days where at least one of my parents are off. Both work the night shift, so it can be hard to do this.

Walking out in the dark was a slight issue last year, but became a huge issue after Daylight Savings Time ended. I remember having to use my phone’s flashlight to see more clearly. I also remember all the times I would literally be on this and seeing the sun JUST starting to rise.

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Bus for high schoolers arrives at our neighborhood around 6:45am. School starts around 7:25, so even if driving himself this year, he would still have to leave at 7 at the latest.

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DD will drive herself and leave around 730 for 810 start.

My older child was in a situation similar to yours @ak2018. Our school system used a depot system since his school started about an hour later than all others. So if he wanted to take the bus he would have had to catch the neighborhood bus to our base school around 610, then wait for about 30 minutes for the bus that would take him to his magnet school.

Thankfully we had many people around us whose kids also attended the magnet school so were able to organize a carpool with 4 other families and each family took one morning a week. This allowed the kids an extra 90 minutes of sleep! We carpooled for 3 years then he and a friend carpooled and drove themselves senior year.

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High school starts at 8:40 for us. Allows kids to sleep later or to have before school activities.

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Wow - S’18 would love an 8:40 start. HS starts at 7:30ish (I forget exact time). Fortunately, it’s only a 5 minute drive from home and he is driving himself this year. So, he leaves at 7:15 or so and has plenty of time.

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DD is also driving to school, what a freedom! but I miss her fights though! she leaves at 7:05 takes 30 minutes with rush hour traffic.
@3scoutsmom, DD is also taking PSAT on the Oct 19th, followed by SAT in November

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Very envious of that 8:40 start time! D’s school starts at 7:30, and we live about a 20-30 minute commute away so we usually leave the house before 7 so she has time to stop at her locker and get to class. I drive, she just started driver’s ed this week so it will be a while before I let her have the wheel for that drive. Our route has some very tricky freeway on ramps I would not want a new driver navigating ( I find them hair raising some days!!)

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Our school district switched from 730 to the 810 start time last year after a long hard fight. The only exception to the early start time was my son’s school, which started at 840 4 days a week, and 910 one day. All the kids (except second semester seniors) got to school at the early time on the late start day anyway as it was the perfect time to collaborate or work on projects in the special labs.

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For those who don’t already know, Kahn Academy has released two new practice tests.

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8:40 start time is great for kids who can drive, kids whose parents work from home or those with older siblings who can drive them. It is tough for kids who are not driving yet and have working parents.

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We had a school bus so despite the later start time and inconvenient depot system, transportation was available. Lots of kids rode the bus. And lots also work out carpool either with parents driving or an older student.

We had friends whose son attended a private school about 45 minutes away and parents pooled together to hire a car service for the morning commute. The original members of this arrangement have all graduated but younger siblings and other students are still using it.

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School started this week! Now it’s off to the races with ACT, PSAT, SAT, five AP classes, varsity sport, club sport, and school clubs. I don’t remember high school being this high-pressure.

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Okay, so I basically made a study plan for the year, at least for the fall.

My plan is that everyday after school, I’ll go to the library. One of the bus stops my bus will go to is a fitness center that’s literally right next to my neighborhood library. I’ll be able to go to the library everyday around 3pm, do homework, and even do ACT prep and get home by 8pm. I’ll be able to do this probably for the first two weeks, then, once after school clubs start, I’ll do it Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Hopefully, this plan will allow for much more sleep.

A strategy that I’ll be implementing during the school year to lessen my homework load is to do homework whenever I have free time. To and from school, I will have a 45 minute to 1-hour bus ride, so I can use this time. I can also start homework during lunch when I’m finished eating, I usually will either wait in library for about 10 minutes until the lines get shorter or get my lunch as soon as possible and likely finish it in about 10 minutes. I’m a pretty fast eater.