I learned last week that our district is also administering the PSAT on Oct 19! This is the real deal!
Isn’t every high school doing the test on that date ?
@svcamom Yup its the official PSAT date
It’s the primary date. My DS takes it on 10/15. The alternate date is 11/02. All info can be found on College Board.
Trying not to put on too much pressure, but hoping for a good result. NMF status does open possibilities that might otherwise not be there. S’18 took the PSAT in 9th and 10th grade, so familiarity won’t be an issue.
Anyone else’s kiddo experiencing an unusually heavy workload so far? D18 is really overwhelmed. Her weekends have been entirely consumed by homework. This is not our first “rodeo”, D16 took the identical junior year course load with many of the same teachers and IMO the course work has increased substantially. APUSH, AP Physics I, AP English III, Honors Pre-Cal, Pre-AP Psych (will be AP Psych at the semester), Honors Latin III. I helicopter parented last week after some dismal quiz grades and was told across the board “Don’t worry about it, She is doing just fine.” Really? Failing quizzes is not “fine” in my book. I am not expecting A’s, I am happy with a mid B and she is barely hitting that mark.
We have had all three of our curriculum nights (three kids in three different schools), but still have two more required nights coming up - one for how the International Baccalaureate tests work and one for our middle schooler who is doing health and PE outside of school to get all the info about how to complete the requirements.
@labegg - yup. Definitely a tough year. He has heard it will be the toughest year of his academic career from teammates and friends so he was expecting it to be hard, but it’s a lot of work already and it’s a big jump after the summer!
He’s taking
IB Math
IB Spanish
IB Physics
IB Chemistry
IB American History
IB English Language and Literature
DS18 has a similar courses: Comp Sci independent study 3, AP English Comp, AP CAL BC, AP Physics C, AP Psychology, Pre AP Chemistry, Pre AP Chinese 3, DE American History.
AP Psychology is by far the biggest time suck. The teacher insists that all students copy HANDWRITTEN all the questions and answers. This ends up being 8 to 10 pages a day. DS has horrible hand writing he was even in OT for his handwriting when he was younger. This is just torture for him, the teacher insists that kids learn better when they hand write all the information. Sorry, this is not how my son learns, he just needs to read the information and he remembers it.
He chose to take American History as DE because he saw the crazy amount of work his sister had in APUSH. He’s doing it online through our local CC, it’s two 8 week classes the first class starts Oct 24th after the PSAT;-) and the second class ends March 12th before AP and finals. I think he’s going to find it’s still a lot of work but not as bad as APUSH!
@labegg - what’s with junior year and all the crazy class workloads? D18 has AP Calc BC, AP Research, APUSH, AP Physics, AP Eng Lang/Comp, & Spanish III Honors. It looks like a bunch of us are in for a large AP testing bill this school year!
@dadotwoboys - D18 put in some good PSAT study hours this summer: khan academy online stuff, SAT practice tests, etc. Good luck to your son!
My D also takes the PSAT on 10/15. Does anyone know if the test administered that day is the same as the one administered on 10/19? Just curious.
They are different versions of the PSAT not the exact same test.
Thanks for the good wishes @LMHS73. It’s become more meaningful in the past three years because NMF status carries scholarship money now for instate students attending one of the major instate public universities. It didn’t in the past.
Though I’m sure we will chat about this again before 10/19, good luck to all of your children (and to you for those students playing along).
Yes, definitely a tough workload this year. We were expecting that, and we are expecting it to be even tougher in the 1st semester of senior year as well due to some IB requirements. She definitely spends most of her weekend working on homework, but she was doing that at the end of last year as well and it was mostly due to math. Now it’s all her classes (or most of them). I do think some of it is just her not being great at time-management yet, and if I give her a warning ahead like, “Remember we have Grandma’s party this weekend” or something she can plan and still get what she needs to get done. So I have my fingers crossed that this year is going to help her learn some of those skills!
I will agree workload increased this year, but he always gets by with the minimum effort necessary. His sister drove me nuts the other way (ridiculous perfectionism). Can’t win.
Looks like we have a lot of bright kids among us! go2boy is at a small independent school that is college-prep, but without the AP/IB desingation. Very rigorous but I have to admit, I am grateful that I don’t have to factor those tests into an already stressful classload. Tonight is College Night for Juniors so I will take notes! Having been through this with go2girl (now a junior), I am much less stressed about the process. I remember being so twisted about her doing well on the PSAT. And while, she was Commended, she still got a full-tuition merit scholarship. Go2boy will have a different journey and I’m confident that we will find an affordable option. I wish I hadn’t been so obsessive with her college admissions process. There’s still nagging about SAT prep and doing well in school but there are also a ton of options and a kid who is motivated to do well, will do well. And even for the less motivated kid, there will be options or huge learning experiences.
I had a mini panic attack today. I got an email from ds school telling me to register him for the PSAT and that it was $40. I know I registered him already but did not remember it being $40! I looked through my old emails and could not find a copy of the registration, I usually print things like this out and could not find it in the pile of misc paper where I would have stuck it. After going through school’s on line registration system I was able to see that yes I really did register him and yes I only paid $30.
It turns out that they just sent the email to all juniors regardless if they had registered already and tacked on another $10 as a late fee but didn’t call it take in the email.
@3scoutsmom Wow, our school only charges $15 for 9th and 11th graders, $5 for student eligible for free or reduced lunch. All 10th graders take it for free.
Our school over charges for everything! This year they are paying for the sophomores to take the test for free and the 11th graders pay $30 if they registered on time, so basically the 11th graders are paying for the test fees for the 10th graders. Last year they did not ALLOW 10th graders to take the Oct PSAT and I had to pulling ds out of school have have him test in another district and they gave him an unexcused absence for the classes he missed well testing!
I’m still not over that one. I asked the GC why the change this year and they couldn’t/wouldn’t tell me. I told them that this year’s way was better than last year’s and was told, “there you go, we only celebrate our victories” really?
BTW, I should mention this school is in a very affluent area, we could never afford to live there and are blessed to be able to attend as out of district transfers. I believe the school has the lowest percentage of free or reduced lunch in the the state for public schools at 3.2% The PTO and Education Foundation auction off student parking spots each year and the going rate this year is over $5K for premium student parking and they are snapped up.
The PSAT is free for all sophomores in our school district and $17 for juniors. All AP and IB exams are also free, thank goodness.
Oh how I wish AP’s were free here! We pay $93 each (I think there might be a small processing fee too - know there was for the PSAT) so between two kids that’s 7 AP’s $651 but in the long run it’s still a good deal compared to the cost of a college class!
@2014novamom any idea why the PSAT is free for sophomores but juniors pay?