Our school added a History of Rock and Roll music elective this year, sounds like a fun class to me 
OMG, @MotherOfDragons - Binder of Destiny. I love it! We have a three ring binder going of college information - testing, essay ideas, application information, individual college information, all separated by tabs. Then a binder for financial and scholarship information, which so far is mostly for me.
@RyanG1207 Nutrition is an excellent idea! I seem to remember seeing something like that in the course catalog. It’s more a “here’s how to cook” class but that’s okay … she needs that. 
Only 4 counselors for the entire school of over 3K kids? That’s nuts. Both my kids schools had 8 counselors for fewer than 2000 kids and I think they’re overburdened! Particularly at my DS’s school where 100% of kids go on to 4 year colleges (some with a gap year, but all with an acceptance in hand) and the average kid applies to 9 schools.
@bearcatfan, my current and previous seniors did not have full schedules senior year. With oldest D I had pretty much no idea what I was doing since the GC was truly awful and I didn’t find CC in time. I think she took something like three classes. Looking back with what I know now I don’t think it hurt her. The most selective schools she got into (not super selective, but that’s due to her grades!) were kind of hippy dippy so might not care as much as more serious colleges.
My senior is taking AP Calc BC, AP Physics 1, and engineering teacher’s aide at school, along with two DE classes. She’d wanted to take another engineering class rather than being an aide, but nothing fit into her schedule. Her DE classes are about 25 minutes from her hs, so it makes things sort of challenging. I hope she won’t get dinged for her schedule.
S18 and I haven’t done any schedule planning because he’s hoping to be accepted to the Bundestag Congress and do his senior year in Germany. He’s got everything worked out with his hs, so if he’s lucky enough to get in he’ll get a diploma from his hs here as well as a German diploma. I have no idea what classes he’d take in Germany, but hopefully doing that program would be impressive enough on its own.
My D18’s “fun” class (Engineering) this year may turn out to be her profession or at least college major she likes it so much. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
And to complicate matters, it turns out she has maxed out her social studies credits so she doesn’t need a social studies class next year. We went through the course catalog for a few minutes last night … she hates art, she says. She wouldn’t mind chorus, but they are required to participate in state adjudication contests and they are the same month as her big ballet performance.
She did find one class she’s actually excited about: A half-year child development class where they play with the kids once a week. She might be a freshman mentor, which is an actual class, but she needs to find out more about it.
So, we have a call in to the counselor. As I said, I’m perfectly happy for her to have a lighter year since she’s front loaded everything for three years. She’s not applying Ivy League but rather good state schools and a few middling privates due to her major - the most selective college she’s eyeing is Case Western Reserve, and she might change her mind about that one.
DD is not going to have any flexibility with her schedule next year because of IB diploma requirements plus journalism. In one sense it’s good because there aren’t really any decisions to be made, and in another it’s bad because there isn’t very much choice!
@bearcatfan, it seems just fine to me.
My D took AP Calc, AP econ, H Spanish 4, DE English Comp (AP lang not offered at hs), H chem.
She got done at 1 pm and worked parttime in a pharmacy in the afternoons.
She was able to use AP calc, English comp, AP econ credit for her prepharmacy prerequisites, freeing up her schedule to take ASL and other classes that interest her.
@MotherOfDragons and anyone else who’s got a Binder of Destiny (BoD) or other system of organizing all this stuff:
What do you do with the materials you get from the colleges? The stuff they send, stuff you get when you visit, etc. I’m just talking about the “keeper” schools not the stalkers that just head over to the bin. I have a big spreadsheet (BS :)) ) with lots of info I’ve mined from common data sets and websites, etc, and I have all this other stuff that’s more physical, but I feel like maybe should be kept for reference, maybe I’m wrong about that? I started working on a binder, and got page dividers with pockets to put the ephemera in, but quickly realized there was too much for the wimpy little pockets to hold!
So now I’m back to square one, trying to figure out how organize this stuff in a way that makes sense.
Second, related question, I’m pondering creating quick reference guides for my daughter to put in the binder for her to access to get a quick look at each school, from the angle of the stuff that matters to her most. My only issue, again, I think I may be overthinking it, is am I going to be constantly reinventing the wheel on these things and having to reprint them as she comes up with new criteria? 8-}
Sometimes I think I spend too much time trying to figure out how to organize stuff and not enough time trying to figure out what the “stuff” actually is… :-<
@1822mom Ours (mine?) is a three inch binder. I have tabs that are separated into general subjects such as essay ideas/prompts, questions to ask, her stats, etc. Then I have tabs for each college. I decided to use a plastic sheet protector to put the glossy stuff in for each college tab, and then I hole punched anything I printed off the Internet. Some colleges have everything you could ever ask for on their website, others were more stingy with actual details and I had to email the admissions department.
I personally focused on admission requirements (including her major, which is different for most of them), program curriculum, where practicals are, how many kids went, the minority factor (she is one). Some schools dropped off the list after asking pointed admission questions - sometimes information on the college’s own web site is misleading when it comes to really specific info on her intended major. I also finally realized, though, that I couldn’t include everything since there is so much out there. And I have always told her sometimes it just comes down to whether you can see yourself as a student there - the “it” factor, so to speak.
The binder is more a quick reference for the 10 schools, and a way to keep them in mind. The decisions are made easier based on the limiting factors of my daughter’s search: In state, within a couple hours of home, direct admit BSN. Some of the top 10 are really not in play; they are more there as really safe safeties just because they are direct admit.
Her top pick is the one that has the most information out there on its website. I haven’t come up with a question yet that I haven’t found there, which is saying something. I have a feeling if she gets into her top pick with rolling admissions she is done - hey, it might be a short admission season here!
An ACT registration question: We went to register and it asks what colleges to send the results to. As a junior, do you fill this out even if you haven’t applied yet? Can you go back and ask them to send it later (assuming that’s the test you want sent)?
@1822mom wrote
For the 7 colleges that D17 has applied to, the promo material goes in the same huge bucket that the unsolicited stuff goes in, and it’s going to be turned into a giant collage for my senior art show next semester (I should graduate with a BA in studio art as a returning student next semester).
For the actual valuable communications that the 7 colleges send D17, those get three hole punched and behind their own tab in the BoD (which is a 3 inch binder).
I would recommend you just keep all the flyers in one big box until you know which ones your kid is actually going to apply to-they will change a LOT over the next year and you can dig through the bin to look for a flyer from a school that wasn’t on their radar 6 months ago but is of interest now.
Anything that can’t be 3 hole punched goes in the bucket, which is now fairly covered with the random stickers that a lot of schools send, lol.
@bearcatfan I’d wait to see the scores before you send. We totally got bit in the behind sending a SAT 2 grade before we knew what the results were (it was bad, and we should have had her retake and switch one application to RD, probably tanked her chance at MIT by sending before knowing). You can send them later, no problem, to as many schools as you want.
@bearcatfan, when I went through this with my older D, we did not select any colleges to receive scores when we registered. We wanted to see them first. The scores can be sent later when your child applies.
Is the score sending free if you do it with registration? Then you could send it to a few safeties, or schools that superscore, since you can always send higher scores of a retake later if needed.
You can send 4 free score reports up to a few days (cant remember exact date) after the test. What I did was take the test, decide I felt good about how I did, then used the free score reports on safeties and schools that required all testing history that I had in mind. It wasn’t too much of a gamble though because I was consistently scoreing where I wanted to be on practice tests.
wow great job on organizing the binders. We haven’t started one yet. Everything just gets dumped in a bin for now.
Thanks for the ACT advice. So if she takes the test three times, we can decide on the score to send and then go back and ask them to send it for free? Or are the free ones only free within a certain time frame?
You must select the free schools within a couple days of taking the test. You will not know the results. After that you need to pay to have them sent to schools.
Thanks. They get you coming and going, lol.