@eh1234 my S19 also has unweighted B’s . Drives me crazy because he will not turn in work or follow Rubrics. Unweighted GPA is around a 90. Only thing going for him is that most of these classes are honors classes so his weighted GPA is ok. With barely any EC’s we know what to expect in his search. Smart enough that his SAT scores should be fine though. Another issue with him is that he is considered “on the spectrum” . At least i think he realizes now that he is not MIT material.
@sdl0625 your son will have plenty of good schools to choose from when he starts his college search. Some B’s in Honors classes will not hold him back from some decent choices.
The good thing about knowing where your kid “slots” into the admissions cycle is a good thing. You might end up having a much less stressed out time in senior year. I know kids that knew they weren’t 'MIT or Yale". material but good B students, and just picked a handful of schools they liked and got in. No stress, no fuss. These kids had fun their senior year and seem happy with the places they are going.
The kids with A- average sometimes get stressed out because they think they can get into some more selective colleges and have to worry about every grade, every EC, every SAT etc. Then they get waitlisted/deferred/rejected more in the admissions process.
son19 is in the last week of real classes. He has some tests and a few projects due. Next week is review week, and Finals start on Friday.
So far I think he’s doing well this term, even though he has been extra ordinarily busy. We are struggling with the concept of adding another AP to his schedule for next year. He doesn’t have to take it, but it may help. It could also hurt if the workload is too much. Trying to find a balance between rigor and EC’s. it’s tough because he is involved in a few ECs that take up a lot of time and he has to stay up late to study. It’s not ideal.
We went to an awards night at school the other night for rising students. It was good for my son and the other kids to see some of the current juniors getting some prestige-type awards. Some of the kids are very dedicated students and have awesome EC’s. Inspiring to some of the younger kids.
My son was the recipient of some sort of Excellence in Language award for Spanish, his most hated class, ha! He takes a cp level Spanish class because he has to, and has about a 99.9 GPA in it. He helps all of the other kids out in class that struggle with it. He thought for sure he would get some sort of math award, or science award, or student athlete award and never expected a Spanish award, lol. It was hilarious.
Ah yes, I’m generally a pretty laid back parent, but I do have the occasional freakout. Thanks for talking me down everyone, haha. Yes, I realize my A- student will go to college. (Although I have to say it gives me pause when I see CC posters telling a person with a 32 ACT and 4.5 WGPA that schools like Pitt are a match - 90% of the kids at my son’s HS get in there with an average of a 28 ACT and 3.7 WGPA!) I need to remember that not everyone knows what they are talking about.
So, S registered for the October SAT without the essay - am I right in believing that relatively few school are requiring or recommending it? I just checked the Virginia publics and none of them seem to care about it. If he ends up needing an essay, the ACT writing looks like it would be more his speed so maybe he’ll end up taking the ACT after all.
I think it’s more really highly selective colleges/universities that either require or recommend it.
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/register/college-essay-policies
I signed D up for the essay - writing is her forte so it can’t hurt, is my reasoning.
I looked at every school that S19 would conceivably apply to and none wanted the writing portion of the SAT. And some of them are pretty selective. He’s definitely skipping it!
To me, it doesn’t even make sense to grade someone on an essay that you have to write so quickly. Writing takes time. I feel like these are graded on a rubric that kids just learn ahead of time. It doesn’t really show if they are good writers.
son19 will take the SAT and ACT with essays.
I don’t think the essay score really matters, unless they get a zero or 100%. Anywhere in the middle is acceptable and I don’t think most schools look at the scores or use them to accept or deny kids. It’s just easier to take the essay and have it ready if certain schools require them.
I don’t think you can just sign up for the essay on it’s own, so if schools require it and your kid didn’t; take it, then the kid will have to take the whole test all over again.
That’s what I thought - it should be easy enough to avoid schools that require the SAT essay. I know that it doesn’t matter that much, but I would hate to see him get score around 1450 (probably his target score based on PSAT) and then get some pathetic score on the essay. For schools that don’t require it, he would be better off not submitting it.
It’s also an area where S19 could benefit from an extra year of school so if he ultimately needs to take an ACT or SAT with essay, he would be better off doing it in the spring.
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@eh1234 I am so with you on this! You see people saying things like, ‘you only have a 3.75 GPA? Kiss Syracuse goodbye," whereas I know that my cousins’ kids all either went or were accepted there with 3.6ish GPAs. You’d think every school was as hard to get into as Harvard if you learned everything only from this website’s forums.
@JenJenJenJen and @eh1234 Word of caution . As students start applying to schools in the double digits , and the popularity of schools like Pitt,Clemson, Colorado Bolder increases they have become increasingly more selective, so basing whether or not a school is a safety, match or reach based on data that is several years old or family and friends that were admitted even 2 years ago is not an adequate predictor. I’ll use Clemson as an example . My DS19 was given provisional acceptance as a junior with a 32 ACT, 4.6 WGPA , ranked in the top 1% of his class. He was instructed to apply in Aug and he would be accepted if his stats remained stable .There were approx 22,000 applicants that year. He was accepted and also accepted into Honors. Last year, Clemson had approx 28,000 applicants. Students with similar or higher GPAs, number of AP classes, test scores , but ranked below too 10% were waitlisted, deferred , rejected or offered the bridge program. Schools that could once be considered a safety, have now become matches and even reaches in some cases. We are instate for Clemson. Many of DS16’s friends were quite surprised this year when they weren’t directly admitted . DS19 will have similar GPA, not as many AP classes, will be ranked in the top 10% and have test scores in the 50% if things remain the same. We have already discussed that there is a very high chance that he will be bridged, and even then it will be questionable in two years when he’s applying.
@carolinamom2boys, I don’t think that students who are in the middle of the mid-50% range for test scores should never consider a school a safety. With our twin DD’s, we used the following assumptions and it worked out as expected:
If well above the top-25% it had a high probability (we never used the word “safety” as I don’t think it’s a relevant term), if slightly above the top-25% it had a good probability, and if at the top-25% it had a low probability. These probabilities also took into consideration not having any hooks, being female applicants and coming from the Mid-Atlantic.
@Chembiodad My remarks regarding 50% in test scores was in reference to the Clemson example I have with all of the other factors I listed . I never said any general statement regarding students in the 50% percentile of test scores not considering a school a safety. I do believe too often students and their parents consider schools safeties without looking at statistics regarding the acceptances of individual schools. I told my DS16 not to assume anything until he gets that acceptance letter, including his acceptance to Clemson despite having provisional acceptance already .
My family tends to be very pessimistic / realistic regarding college applications. Expect the worst , so that you’ll be pleasantly surprised with an acceptance
@carolinamom2boys, agree that’s why we used the metrics I outlined in #2831.
With twin DD’s that both scored 34 /35 ACT, they achieved the results we expected at top-30 Universities/LACs: 1 acceptance, 1 WL, 4 Denials at #1-10 schools, 2 WL, 3 acceptances at #10-20 schools, 3 acceptances at #/20-30 schools.
@carolinamom2boys I’m definitely pessimistic about most schools and expect that S19 will only apply to schools where his scores are in the top 25% - there won’t be any far reaches. S probably has no clue what the Top 30 schools are and isn’t worried about prestige. He’ll likely be applying to schools in the 50-125 range.
I used Pitt as an example because there are a lot of applicants from his HS and in the last three years 83% of applicants (and there are 30 or so every year) have been accepted with average WGPAs of 3.7, 1370 SAT and ACT scores of 28. Maybe the Pitt admission counselor likes this particular HS, who knows. (It’s always highly ranked in VA). Unless he hates the campus when he visits, he’ll likely apply to Pitt and consider it a match (if he gets a 1400+ SAT). It also has rolling admissions and an easy application, which is a bonus.
By comparison, S will need over a 4.0 to have any chance at getting into the similarly ranked Virginia Tech from in-state and that will be his reach school. He was probably out of the running for William & Mary and UVA when he got Bs in his 8th grade HS classes.
Are there any parents with average students still on this thread or have they jumped ship ?
@carolinamom2boys I’m still here at least occasionally. I can’t relate to most of what is posted here but I still like reading what others are doing. I am spending more time looking at the 3-3.4 GPA threads. Those are much more relevant to me, even though they also seem to trend to the high end. It’s hard for people whose kids really have a 3.0 uw gpa to find kindred spirits on cc. What’s interesting though, is that even though he looks like a slacker compared to others here he is still in the top half of his class.
Not sure of the answer to your question, @carolinamom2boys, but I consider myself an average parent. So there are still average parents on this thread. 
I thought this thread had parents of more average kids than not (I guess depending on how average is defined). I think a few parents might be busy with their graduating seniors and then I figured they would be back.