We have a close friend (of D14’s) playing men’s soccer at an Ivy and another playing women’s at a little ivy. Twins lol. Both were top of their class, top gpa, rigor, test scores EC’s and leadership especially the boy who was one of the Val’s. At their HS all perfect gpa kids were Val, I think there was 11 but definite rigor variances in that 11!
A friend of D16 had interest from an Ivy as a potential athletic recruit. Sweet girl, bright enough, amazing at her sport, but no one would have pegged her for this Ivy league school (her parents were shocked at the interest lol). She definitely was not on the top of the heap when it came to course rigor.
S19 just groans at me if I ask him about next year’s courses at this point, so I’m hoping that he sits down with his GC this week and picks something! He can always do the mad scramble to change classes in August.
I’m thinking of registering him for the August SAT but it’s the last weekend of summer vacation! D16 did two SATs and two ACTs in the spring of junior year and it was a bit much. Hoping S will be limited to just one or two test sittings.
Hi all - it’s tech week for D19 at the school musical, and lax practice starts the day after the last performance, so the next three months are a mad scramble. It’s also crunch time for our decision on next year, and we just learned today that her current school wants to keep her and has made a financial aid offer that brings the difference down to $1k a year.
This after charging us essentially double that amount for the last five years. 
While it’s nice to know they want to keep her, it’s frustrating to think that the cost is what drove us into this position in the first place, and they could’ve helped more in previous years and we wouldn’t be in the position we’re now in.
We are scrambling to make sure we know all pieces of the cost puzzle - transportation, dining, etc., from both schools - and then we have a March 1 deadline to commit. No pressure. Ha hah.
@Gatormama oh how frustrating! And an emotional roller coaster. Good luck deciding what to do. Nice to have options but march 1??? Yikes!
@eh1234 S19 is definitely doing SAT in August. I’ve already made a study plan for him for the summer and talked to a few tutors. One tutor in particular was very helpful. I shared S19’s practice SAT score that he got last summer. (Took test at a Princeton Review for free.) This tutor said she thinks he can get the scores he wants without a tutor and then helped me come up with a study plan. If he’s not hitting the scores by end of July, we will hire her to just do a few sessions with him on his weaknesses.
Drivers Ed this summer too…he wasn’t interested last summer and we couldn’t fit it in his school schedule during the year. Between SAT studying, drivers ed, summer XC, a few photography classes at Art Institute, and reffing some soccer games, he will be busy. He’s been warned!!
@RightCoaster I would be very very leery of 4 APs for a sports kid. The risk of burnout or tanking a GPA is too high. There just aren’t enough hours in the day unless you have the kind of kid who can whip through tough material.
I just signed S19 up for the June SAT. We can’t really do August or fall due to marching band. Now feels really, really early but he will have just finished PreCalc so the math shouldn’t be too hard. Also, he got good scores on the PSAT despite making a mistake in the math section where for 5 answers in a row he wrote the answer on the wrong number. In other words, he has the potential to score really high but also the tendency to make stupid mistakes. We figure leaving plenty of times for retakes is a good strategy.
We are also doing some college visits during spring break. Again, this feels ridiculously early to me but there are a couple of reasons I am not free to disclose at this time that mean we want to get a jump on this.
@mom23travelers I agree 4 is crazy and he probably won’t be able to handle it. It just might eliminate some school choices if he doesn’t take them, that’s all. I’m fine with that.
I don’t think early college visits are a bad thing, even if they are just walking around on your time without an official tour. You can get an early assessment done and add or subtract from their list of possibles. Son19 is going to go to a few camps at various colleges this summer, and it should help.
We’ll probably do a Fall SAT and ACT, need to look at the schedule and figure it out. Son is taking an SAT prep class at school in August I believe, and I hope he self studies a bit.
@mom23travelers and @RightCoaster – we are doing some college visits (but no official tours!) over spring break. D19 will take the ACT in September and the PSAT (at school) in October.
D19 is unsure of college majors right now, but seems to be gravitating towards majors requiring a portfolio review. She is on the design team for the spring show so theatre madness starts in two weeks, with the show the first week of May. I hope her grades survive!
Speaking of early college tours, because of our schedules and location (Alaska), we had to plan our college visits well in advance and carefully, so D17 went on visits the summer between her sophomore and junior years, and D19 (them between middle school and high school) came along on all of them, as well. It wasn’t just helpful for D17, though—D19 learned both that she absolutely loves a very different kind of college than D17, and that she’s not nearly as picky.
So yeah, depending on the child, early visits can be very useful.
@RightCoaster @OrangeFish Be sure to post updates of your college visits. I love reading those! S19 will probably be at UW-Madison again for a XC camp and perhaps this time we will take a real tour. Our niece just moved to St. Paul so we may go visit her this summer and check out Macalester and Carleton. I know it’s best to visit when there are kids there but, if we make summer visits and he likes enough about the campuses, we can of course return in the fall/winter.
@OrangeFish I’d also love to know where your D19 is considering using her portfolio. S19 will have a portfolio of drawings, paintings, and photos as part of AP Studio Art and I would expect he will use it for college admissions. Not sure art will be part of his degree (perhaps a minor) but I think it makes sense for him to use his portfolio to his advantage for admissions purposes at least. He has a friend from his art class who had interviews at Brown and Georgetown and all the interviewer wanted to talk about was the student’s portfolio even though she was not going to be an art major. Definitely helped her stand out.
@dfbdfb Do you guys ever just Google Earth different schools of interest?
I do this with my kids once in a while. It’s quite fun. You kind of get to know the place before you even visit. Sometimes you can’t “google drive” through the campus, but it is helpful; to drive around the perimeter of the campus to see the different surroundings and what amenities are nearby.
Question for you people with kids that have done portfolios for schools? My son is on his HS robotics team and is in charge of all of the CAD work and the team ended up using a lot of his ideas and plans to create the finished robot.
Do you think he should save the CAD files and pictures of the robot for some sort of supplement he can use in his application? He will probably do the same thing Junior year, he likes the design aspect of robotics more than programming or actual building.
@homerdog D19 is also taking AP Studio Art in junior year, specifically to get ready for assembling a portfolio. The challenging part is she doesn’t know what to focus on quite yet. 
She has interests in the “tech” side of things and she wants to do something on the creative side, but right now her interests are pretty broad.
And this What Is In The Portfolio question is completely separate from possible college majors! At least it will not be boring. B-)
@homerdog – one suggestion: ask the Studio Art teacher for a portfolio review before taking the class. D19 did this at curriculum night, and she was fortunate to have both the 2D and 3D art teachers there discussing her work. From there she was able to better fine-tune or portfolio presentation, and she updated her digital portfolio as well.
This summer she will be attending a four-week arts camp, and she intends to use the time to refine what she is most interested in.
@OrangeFish Thanks! His current Drawing Honors teacher is the department head so I’m sure she’ll be able to help him figure out what will eventually go into the portfolio. I’ve heard it’s good to show as wide a variety of work as you can. His will all be 2D. I’ve also heard there’s a portfolio review in downtown Chicago some time during the year that is attended by colleges…need to find out more about that. Apparently, they look at the student’s work and suggest pieces to keep in the portfolio and identify what kind of work needs to still be added.
Yes, @homerdog – National Portfolio Day (http://portfolioday.net/) dates for next school year will be announced in March. (We went to the one at GWU in November.)
D19 is considering a double major with theatre tech so she included her sketches, plus her CAD drawings, plus photos of her models, and then photos of the stage work. She is taking all this to better refine, and will add it to her digital portfolio. Each school seems to have their own way of processing portfolios.
We also learned that some schools (but not all) doing portfolio reviews expect students to have already applied to the school prior to the portfolio review appointment. So she is planning on pretty much early action applications to many of her schools.
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@homerdog If I told S19 that he had a study plan for the August SAT that he currently doesn’t know exists, he would probably flip. The study plan is to get him to use Khan Academy a bit and even that might require bribery. I’ll probably spring it on him in July.
His tendency to get all A-/B+ grades sort of takes the pressure off for him to try to get a super high score, but his PSAT showed enough promise that I think he should be able to get a “high enough for merit aid at certain less competitive OOS colleges like Pitt” type of score. I need to do some research to see if his expected target score would be worth anything these days.
We might do a couple of college tours over the summer but will probably be better served by waiting until summer '18… I’m hopeful that junior year classes will help him narrow down his interests and potential majors.
@eh1234 my son17 is an A-/B+ kid who ended up doing pretty well on his ACT, low 30’s and he has received several decent merit award offers. I would say shoot for 31 and up and your kid may get some $$ if they apply to the right types of schools.
If he gets into a few more schools on his list it is because of his ACT score, nothing else. A lot of schools really do care that the kids they are bringing can help their stats.
I’m hoping son19 can manage to do well on the SAT or ACT with some studying and review work.
@RightCoaster, smart kid! FWIW, one of our friend’s S was really good at robot design. He made the portfolio. He got into his second choice school (a renowned public U) but not the desired major. He doesn’t know if the portfolio made a significant contribution. I guess there is no harm in putting the portfolio across.
D19 is planning to take ACT after the summer break. She is adamant to try it without tutoring based on her decent PSAT scores.