Last test in Pre Calc Honors was yesterday. The chapter included true calc - was supposedly the first chapter for calc next year. Kids got them back today and the average was a 63%. S19 faired ok and kept his A by a hair, but many kids dropped a whole grade for the semester because of this test. Not a good way to end the school year. I have a feeling kids will beg after school for the teacher to curve the test. She’s never done that before but S19 just texted from school and said kids are freaking out. :((
@OrangeFish we are clearly on the same behind the wheel schedule as you. It’s the nighttime driving hours that are killing us. I did this two years ago with D16 who also took BTW the first session after school got out where I forgot about importance of the 15 nighttime hours until after daylights saving kicked in. It’s really hard to get enough hours during the school year when it gets dark so late. Only about 5 to go now. I hate teaching kids to drive in this highly congested, aggressive drivers area. D19 has done everything including several times on the DC beltway so I think she’ll be okay but I hate every minute of it.
She is doing the SAT for the first time in June. I think that is very early, but she can’t do August or any of the fall ones due to marching band. I don’t want to wait until spring because she has the potential to score high so this will either be one and done with no test prep or she will have solid results in front of her showing that if she wants to aim high she’ll need to do test prep. The irony is that D16 is currently working as a tutor and has several clients that she is preparing for the June SAT. D19 hasn’t so much as glanced at the cover of the books passed down to her by her sisters.
Seems like a great solution: Pay D16 to tutor D19, @mom23travelers! That way you keep the money in the family!!
@mom23travelers – I am not sure how we are going to get all the hours in, forget about the highway driving. I drop off D19 to school each morning and see some fine examples of Northern Virginia VIP Driving Idiots, and I talk D19 through how to deal with people like that on the road. (“Just get far away from them!”) So she is hardly raring to get on the busier roads. Rolling Thunder comes through this weekend and I do plan on showing her how to drive with motorcycles on the road. Not sure if she’ll want to get behind the wheel, though!
@OrangeFish We live a couple blocks away from a Harley dealership so I hear what you are saying about Rolling Thunder.
@Gatormama Good idea in theory. In practice…
same. my son got permission from his music theory teacher and principal to do AP after he was got 109% in regular class. Im glad he just had the 2 AP classes as a sophomore though. My S is still navigating the school is finally challenging mentality.
Busy weekend starts today. After this things start to wind down a bit. Son19 will just have to buckle down on some school stuff for the next few weeks and he’ll be done.
Today, school and then off to a club soccer game tonight an hour away- yuck.
Drive home, go to bed, wake up to catch bus at school to go to State Quals for track, 1 hour bus ride.
Sunday, another soccer match, 1 hour away. Yuck. If they win, play again Monday. I’m secretly hoping they don’t advance and he can havve Monday free to relax and get some school work in. He’s going to be tired. I wish I had his energy.
@RightCoaster that’s a lot of yucks. LOL.
S19 and I went to the college fair for “8 of the Best Colleges” last night. Schools represented:
Claremont McKenna
Grinnell
Kenyon
Macalester
Conn College
Sarah Lawrence
Colorado College
Haverford
We really went to see Grinnell and Kenyon, but all of the schools were represented well by their Deans of Admission and S19 liked all of them. On the way, I made him read the Fiske Guide entries for Grinnell and Kenyon and his main take-away was that they were in the middle of nowhere and smaller than his high school. Said he didn’t want either one of those things.
Fast forward to our ride home and he said he totally understands now why these types of colleges would be a good fit. He was swayed by the attention to undergraduates, the small class size, the beautiful campuses, the famous alumni, the focus on liberal arts and the chance to remain undecided for a while so that he could explore. Loves the idea of seminars and writing papers and the chance to do research directly with a professor. It’s so interesting how quickly a 16-year old’s mind can be changed by well-spoken adults. These deans were fabulous at selling the idea of a LAC.
He still had Madison on the brain, though, and I told him that big schools definitely have things that small schools don’t and vice versa. Always going to be a trade off. So…we will visit UW as well. I’ve searched for other honors programs at big state schools and I think Maryland and Vermont could also be options and he might even get some merit at those schools as well. Richmond, Davidson, Wake Forest, Lafayette still on the radar too.
Maryland, Vermont, Richmond, Davidson, and Wake all require apps in by 11/1 if you want to be considered for merit. That’s a lot of apps to be done early, but I think he may have to do that.
My husband is completely verklempt at paying full price though. I think we will have to completely rule out places where there’s no chance of merit. Might be saying goodbye to Carleton and others as options. And we still need some LAC safeties that we like. Denison is the only one I have right now.
Sounds like a productive event @homerdog. I would have loved to go to one of those schools. By contrast, seminars and writing papers sounds like my S19s worst nightmare! Sometimes I wonder if there was a switch at the hospital, but he has my eyes.
So I’ve been casually mentioning VA Tech as S19s best in-state option for his interests without eliciting any sort of response from him until the other day when he pipes up with “Mr. [Bass Teacher] said they don’t even have many opportunities for strings players” So he’ll talk to the bass teacher about college but not me? lol. Also, thanks a lot, Mr. Bass Teacher.
S definitely thinks he’ll want to continue to play in college. I wonder if I should be prepared for the possibility that he’ll end up wanting to be a music major (since his interests are pretty limited and music is one of them). However, I guess I have the understanding that potential music majors play multiple instruments, are winning awards and performing at the Kennedy Center and at least in the State-level orchestra. S is quite good and getting better all the time, but not exactly a prodigy type.
Big sigh of relief here that D19 survived sophomore year. Got A’s in all classes this semester except English where she got a B. D19 had a very difficult freshman year with a combination of ADHD, anxiety, depression, school refusal,and other mental health issues. She lost credit for most of her second semester classes during freshman year and spent months in intensive outpatient therapy etc. We dreaded the approach of sophomore year last August, not sure what would happen especially with her history of school refusal. But after a rocky start, D19 survived and even thrived in some classes (best exampe was World History which she dreaded but turned out to like, especially since the teacher was lax about the required reading). Her UW GPA is 3.5. In about a week she’s getting her wisdom teeth out, then in mid-June she’s going to take the second semester of Latin 2 through our district’s online summer school program. I hate our online summer school (I think I’ll do a separate thread ranting about this.) Then she’s doing a 2 week residential speech & debate camp (signed up for speech events, not debate).
@Corinthian I’m so happy for you and your daughter that she had a much better year all around this year! I feel like 9th grade is one of the toughest socially/emotionally/mentally.
@eh1234 I hear you on the difference between parent and kids! My college was a small, liberal arts and perfect for me. I live the writing and small classroom discussions, etc. my major was psych and my minor was English. Both of my girls greatly prefer science and math and the majors they are most interested in are most likely best at larger type colleges. My younger d (7th grade) absolutely insists she wants a huge public university in a big city. Pretty much the exact opposite of the very small, catholic, in the middle of nowhere university I went to!
@Corinthian glad to see your D had a better sophomore year and things are looking up. I’m sure that was stressful to go thru.
@homerdog we have a neighborhood friend who will be attending Kenyon in the fall. He loved his visits there, he is coming from a small well respected suburban private school, and he said he likes Kenyon as some of the buildings remind him of the architecture featured in Harry Potter.
My son17 ended up not wanting to go to any school that was too far removed from city life. If he couldn’t live in the city or hop on a bus/subway to get in to a city then he was not interested.
My son19 has no idea where he will settle, big, small, city, burbs,rural it does not seem to matter. The school has to have a good engineering program, have a soccer/track team, and he’s all set. He doesn’t really care about prestige, in fact I don’t think he could name 2 schools from the top 25 rankings. That being said, he liked a recent to MIT and said he could see himself fitting in there and enjoying it. Realistic chance of getting in, sub 1%, lol. Certainly not counting on that.
He’s going to a few soccer camps this summer at some local schools and we will tie in a campus visit while we are there. I don’t want to start worrying about schools yet until he gets some test scores back and we can make a more “informed” list from there.
Been on the site awhile but first time on 20XX page. Have a S19 and S21 so time to get in the pool so to speak. We are in Central Florida at a large public high school. Two very different kids so the college search experience should be interesting to say the least. School finished today so it’s on with the summer!
Welcome, @moscott!
S19 took driver’s ed the summer before he turned 16 and got his license on his birthday. He has been driving for quite a while and is a great driver. My philosophy is that I’d like them to have as much experience during high school as possible so they are really solid, because they don’t drive much in college (at least this is true for my older two). Our city is not hard to drive in, however.
Thanks @EastGrad S19 is a TERRIBLE driver lol. Luckily the HS is maybe 100 yards away from his house and he most likely won’t be driving in college. His brother21 is a fantastic driver. I agree with your philosophy with MOST kids lol.
@homerdog I’m a HUGE fan of small LACs and loved that list of “some of hte best” that you and your son attended. (I know I’m a couple of days behind but my D17 graduated Friday and it’s been all-grandparents-all-the-time this weekend. Still is, in fact, but I’m hiding.) I saw that Colorado College was on that list – that’s where my senior will be going! So, I can tell you that so far we are big fans. 
@Corinthian I’m so glad your daughter is doing better. It must have been so frightening for her, and for you. Not a fan of online classes either, but, it is what it is.
I’m kind of hoping my d19 can try an online class senior just to see if she likes them or not and to get the hang of how they generally work, just in case she has any in college. I think there is one online option for a class she may take senior year.
So my D19 is, as I’ve mentioned before, rather a hyperdriven sort, to the extent that she sometimes overreaches. So here’s her latest idea, which I’m trying to figure out if it’s an overreach or not: Since she’ll be done with all of her graduation requirements by the end of her junior year, she realized that she could take a minimal high-school courseload her senior and last half of junior years while taking courses at the local open-admissions college (where I work, so there’s partial tuition remission) during that time, and get an undergraduate certificate in entrepreneurship.
This sounds good, and would presumably look good for college applications (assuming, of course, she doesn’t biff it, but I don’t think she will), except: We’re going to be on the search for merit money, and merit money is much, much more available to first-time freshman than transfer applicants. Would getting an undergraduate certificate while in high school push her into the transfer category? A certificate isn’t a degree by most definitions, but it is something official, and these wouldn’t be dual-enrollment credits.
I’ve tried poking around a few colleges’ websites, and the status of an earned certificate is nearly never mentioned. Some colleges set their limit at a certain number of credits, some as low as 15, but dual-enrollment credits don’t generally count—she’d have 18 to 21 if she goes this route, but only 12 credits would be the certificate and the rest would be dual-enrollment, so she’s fine there, but an earned degree automatically pushes an applicant into the transfer category at many places.
Anyway: Anyone have any insights? I’m embedded enough in higher education that I thought it would be an easy thing to figure out, but it turns out not to be, so here’s hoping somebody out there has some experience they could weigh in with.
@dfbdfb If you have a list of possible colleges, perhaps you should just call their admissions office with your question. I doubt you’ll find any answer to your questions on the websites since there just won’t be many kids who have gone that route in high school. Kudos to your D19 for being such a go-getter! Sounds like an interesting certificate program.
From my reading here on CC, as long as she didn’t take classes after high school graduation (i.e. The certificate is earned before high school graduation) then she is still considered a freshman for merit. I know I’ve read that some kids have earned associate degrees along with their high scho degree and still been considered freshmen for merit when applying. Additionally, I’ve seen examples of homeschooled kids who were taking courses and had enough for associates degrees before they graduated from their homeschool high school program as well.