Parents of the HS Class of 2019 (Part 1)

We are set for Sewanee next week - a regular tour, then a behind the scenes drama tour, dinner, watch the dress rehearsal of the play they’re doing, then talk to cast & faculty - SEVEN HOURS’ WORTH. We are staying the night nearby and she goes to an env. sci. class early the next morning & then has an athletic meet-up with the lax coach while we wander the grounds (Hogwarts, in real life, from all the pix I’ve seen). Then while we are at my family’s in Florida, we’ll mosey over to G’ville for the standard two-hour UF tour. It seemed silly not to fit something in while we’re out of our normal area, but yeah, it also seems a bit early to me.

After S17, I’m already getting tired just thinking of planning college visits. :open_mouth: Maybe he will just attend accepted student days :smiley: S19 tagged along last spring break when we toured Amherst (both boys hated it), UMass Amherst (okay to both.) This spring break we did not visit any. He went to gym almost every day and played video games.
I did take S19 to tour MIT, Olin, and Northeastern last fall. Looks like @RightCoaster and I will be making donation of application fees to MIT :smiley: I’ll have to plan a few school tours in the fall long weekend and then next spring break. Not looking forward to them.
S19 will apply to School of Mines as his dream was to become a miner at 4 years old. :)) We taught him the word geologist then.

Awesome plans @Gatormama! I am looking forward to your trip report.

We have finally got our plans set for spring break week – all Virginia public schools. We have a theatre tour (including set visit and performance) at Old Dominion U, a tour of Christopher Newport, a tour of Virginia Tech with a meetup with School of Performing Arts faculty members and students, a short tour of Radford (as we’re in the area so why not?), and open house at University of Mary Washington. D19 has a workshop at VCUArts later in the month so we took that off the spring break list.

Just returned from spring break in AZ. No college tours. Just sun, hiking, and swimming. Already told the kids to appreciate this break because next year we will be driving around the Carolinas/Virginia looking at schools.

Hoping we will be able to fit American, Richmond, Davidson, and Wake into one trip next year. Anyone live down that way and have advice as to manage a trip to see those schools in one week? No rush…have a year to plan. :wink:

@homerdog we did a similar trip a couple years ago with D16. We started in Washington with American, then next day did Richmond, then Elon, then College of Charleston. It toured each school in the morning, had lunch, then drove to our next destination in the afternoon. We also did a drop in at University of a South Carolina after CofC but didn’t get the official tour. It was a very nice trip and not too taxing.

@me29034 Thanks!! did your D16 end up at any of these schools?

@homerdog – we’re just outside of DC in northern VA and would definitely recommend separate days for American and Richmond simply due to the traffic on I-95. (Plus American’s campus is spread out – my spouse is an alum and knows the park-there-and-now-walk approach to American’s campus.)

@OrangeFish Thanks. Definitely separate days! Are there any other schools around American (other than GW and Georgetown) that might be interesting to visit on the same day as American? Or maybe it’s just best to spend the whole day there. I guess my only thought is that, if our S19 doesn’t love American then maybe we would have time to scoot over to somewhere fairly close that same day. I know I’m asking this question without giving any specifics about S19…mostly because he’s completely undecided about everything regarding college at this point!

@homerdog – I would probably throw in a quick stop over at Catholic University. Also, since you’ll have a car, you might want to think about driving by either (not both) U Maryland College Park or George Mason University. Both schools have strong computer science/tech programs.

Thanks! @OrangeFish I don’t know how I forgot about U Maryland. Again, not sure about big versus small (although I’m voting for small LAC). Might be good for S19 to see some larger school options in case he’s drawn to those. I did some research on Maryland a while back and it’s not quite as expensive as other OOS public options. A good friend of mine’s daughter is there as well so I can check in on her…and get her to show us around!

@homerdog - if there is interest in small LAC, I’ll put a plug in for University of Mary Washington (UMW) In Fredericksburg. It’s a in-state public and (in my opinion) a strong liberal arts school. The only caution I would throw in is that it’s about 2/3 women and 1/3 men. (D19 has no issue with that, but other people sometimes seem to be fixated on the ratio.)

I know several members of the faculty there, and D19 had a great conversation with the admissions rep at the college fair we recently visited. I have two friends at work whose kids have selected UMW over some other highly ranked schools.

UMW has a great First-Year Seminar program: http://academics.umw.edu/fsem/

Might be something to think about as you plan your visit.

@homerdog. No she didn’t go to any of these schools. She did apply to CofC and was accepted but eventually decided to go to Pitt. This trip did solidify her desire to be in a city though. Elon is in a tiny town, and Richmond is tucked away in a suburban area with nothing in walking distance. She didn’t care for either. She was planning to apply to American RD but at that point she had do many EA acceptances in that she couldn’t get motivated to finish the application.

@homerdog . maybe Goucher? Last spring break we did most of our tours. We live in GA and started with Elon, o monday, spent monday afternoon/tues morning in Raleigh, but decided not visit, nc state, or any others. then drove to DC, and did maryland in the am wed, GW in the afternoon, and American the next day. i could not get american and GW on the same day, which is why we did the way we did. We then drove down to SC, and went to College of Charleston for friday.

Turns out my D17 applied to 4 of those 5 schools and got accepted at all of them!!! She really dislike Univ of maryland, and absolutely fell totally in love with GW. the other 3 were all schools she could attend and would be happy. Elon came very close to being her top choice if GW/American rejected her. (we also saw indiana at a later time).

At the start of the trip, all i hoped for is that she would get excited about college. She was struggling in school with motivation . It did more than that!! she came back determined to get all her grades up, and she is going attend GW next fall!!!

hope to do something similar with my S19.

We didn’t travel for spring break because one of my D17’s best friends (from summer camp) lives in NY and she had HER spring break in Los Angeles, with us. However I did go up to Santa Barbara for an overnight with D19 and a friend of hers – we were going to learn how to parasail but it got canceled due to the prevailing winds, we’ll try again in June – and since we were up there anyway, we signed up for a tour of UCSB.

Big mistake. My daughter loved it. Santa Barbara (town) of course is amazing, and the pre-tour video showed students surfing, the campus is gorgeous and protean. The beach and mountains and all that. Campus was on its own spring break but still somehow felt vibrant, happy and buzzy with the people that were still there. My daughter is now ALL IN but, at this point, she doesn’t have what it takes to get into UCSB.

Maybe next time we have the time and wherewithal I’ll take ehr to UCSC. I think kids can still surf there.

@OrangeFish We are also doing an all Virginia public schools spring break. The list is JMU, UVA and William & Mary. Since a large part of this is motivation to kick it into higher gear homework wise we are aiming for the stars at this point :).

Nice plan, @mom23travelers! :slight_smile: You have selected three beautiful campuses to help motivate highly impressionable minds.

I totally agree - if I could swing a visit to Princeton, I would, for motivation purposes only. It’s a freaking beautiful campus at springtime, too!

My D19 is just starting to think about colleges (by these posts I feel a bit inadequate and behind the ball). She has a good GPA but her PSAT scores were lousy sophomore year. So, in complete crazy mom style, I casually bought 5 prep books with tests. I was thinking of having her take a practice test like once or twice a month? Is that a reasonable plan? She will never be a 1500 SAT kid so if I could get 1200 - that would be a success to me. She is my oldest so I have never gone through this process before and have to admit, it is much more competitive than I remember from my days. Her state school, MD, has crazy high average enroll stats (at least to me) and she isn’t a fan of it anyway.

She doesn’t have any burning interests (no to engineering, maybe yes to business) but does have good ECs. We are really floundering a bit over here and I don’t know if I am supposed to be getting her more involved or waiting till junior year. It’s all crazy making to me and YES - I have created a spreadsheet because apparently I think better in excel. :slight_smile:

I have been told by friends who run a test prep company that they are seeing SUPER inconsistent results with the PSAT in it’s new format.

We shall see how S’s PSAT results match up or do not with a practice SAT in the next few weeks. He will do ACT one weekend and SAT another and then we will decide which one is the summer prep class. Assuming the schedule works to fit it in, yikes the kid looks busy!

@Cotton2017 5 might be overkill lol. Seriously though, it may really stress her out. A practice test once or twice a month without studying in between will just be super frustrating and not improve results. For a self motivated kid it might work but for most, not. All of our kids did some kind of prep class to help keep them on track (and not have us nagging) but it was a different one for each based on what worked best for them.

You aren’t remotely behind at all. It’s super early still.

@ eandesmom It was definitely overkill :slight_smile: and I think reading the ‘Chance me’ threads had me in panic mode a bit. My D doesn’t have stats anywhere near these kids and they were panicking about a 32 on an ACT? We would be celebrating at Golden Corral with those numbers. I am looking for a prep class but we live in the country (seriously, we have a cow pasture by our kids high school baseball field so you can catch a fly ball and pet the cow in one motion). We did recently wander through a college fair and she seemed to enjoy it but said she felt kind of stupid because they kept asking her desired major and she was ‘idk’. What surprised me the most was her interest in an all women’s college which is a table I would have never stopped at. The Admissions representative really interacted with her and they hit it off immediately. She wanted me to add the school to the list…go figure.