@ninakatarina Hello and Welcome! :-h :-h
You’ve found the right place.
If you have a specific issue or questions, feel free to make another thread on each topic. Otherwise we are here for the long haul, sharing, commiserating and cheering every child and parent. :x
@ninakatarina: Introductions here are quite in order, I’d say.
This thread, by its nature, has a lot of thread drift—as topics come up we chat about them and then eventually move on to other stuff. So feel free to ask questions here or elsewhere, either way—you get a slightly different audience depending where you ask.
Thank you for your kind welcome! I have a lot to unburden about.
My kid was born my darling daughter but identifies as male. I’m adjusting, my husband is in denial. But forgive me if I use gender pronouns interchangeably, it’s all talking about the same child.
We live in a slightly depressed blue collar section of Baltimore. My kid is in the public magnet arts school. He started off in the arts magnet but decided his true calling is theater, auditioned and was accepted in theater last year. We are all very involved in the theater program and the honor society. He’s got a minor part in a professional production this fall.
Because kiddo was trying to do both graphic art and theater magnet programs last year, his schedule wasn’t very rigorous. This year is making up for that with a couple of AP classes, the rest GT.
The kid writes very well but struggles a bit in math. Straight A’s 9th grade, all A’s except a B in math last year. This year he got put into AP calculus and is terrified. I’m pushing to keep him in calculus and I’ve lined up a tutor in case he falls behind.
Most of my kid’s schoolmates are either going to community college, getting a job out of high school, or going into the military. There are not a lot of parents with resources in the area. We have a decent sized college fund thanks to my father.
We have done some college visits because I wanted to start early. We’ve been to Franklin & Marshall, Swarthmore, and St. Mary’s of Maryland. Kid is madly in love with Swarthmore, also would settle for going to Yale. Yeah. Got to work on those expectations.
PSAT last year, he got 700 verbal 580 math. Hoping the calculus and a summer spent with Khan will help with that before October. I’m not entirely sure how to tell how rigorous his Khan sessions have been.
@homerdog That’s good advice for the math section/grid-ins! I really need to get S19 to take a paper practice test some time in the next four weeks before the real thing (he’s only done two online tests on Khan).
Welcome @ninakatarina. He sounds like a talented, passionate kid. Is he looking to pursue theater in college? I know there is a pretty active sub-forum on theatre majors in the College Majors forum if so. (There are also quite a few parents in this thread with kids who are involved in theatre).
He wants to pursue a theater major, with a minor in psychology, or maybe writing. Or perhaps French. He gets good grades at STEM subjects, but I’m fairly sure that whatever he ends up in will be in the humanities.
I hadn’t read through the majors forum, thanks for the pointer. My main worry at this point is that the kid likes a lot of very hard to get in to schools but is unenthusiastic or actively hostile about all of the safeties I’ve tried to tell him about.
Welcome @ninakatarina ! I hope you find just as much support and knowledge on these threads as I have.
Welcome, @ninakatarina!
I agree with @eh1234’s suggestion of visiting the college majors forum for Theatre and also for Musical Theatre.
My D19 is interested in theatre tech (she says “nothing on stage, thank you very much”) and some sort of second major/minor/concentration in digital media. We have built a college list both from our in-state options (we’re in Virginia) and nearby close-to-in-state-cost options (including UMBC near you, which does offer some in-state tuition for OOS students), and then found additional interesting colleges thanks to those posts in those college majors forums.
We have affordability as one of the major criteria for colleges, and therefore the list does not contain expensive/little-to-no merit schools like NYU, BU, Emerson, etc.
Decorative prep books - we have those too! 
I tried to have D prep on her own with books and Khan - she pretty much did nothing all summer. Then I saw her school was doing a class so I signed her up for that. Of course it was supposed to start tonight and now everything is cancelled due to the hurricane! Maybe this is a sign that she is not meant to take the SAT 
I set the kid up on Khan for SAT practice but it was quite frustrating. I would get reports on “your child has 7 minutes of activity today” but he’d swear he was on it for an hour. I want to trust him, and I know that reporting activity can be tricky, but…
Third day of school today, the kid is begging me to let him drop out of AP calculus. Says since he got bumped up from GT to AP he doesn’t know a lot of stuff that the teacher is giving a very fast review on.
@ninakatarina Welcome!!! A close friend’s son just completed her transformation. Thank you for being supportive of your daughter. The pronoun thing gets better once you wrap your head around the situation. Your husband may or may not come around, but family counseling may help the process for all of you.
Regarding Khan and determining rigor…The easiest way is to log in as the student and click on
Review. That will show you the completed lessons and the day completed. To the left of each lesson is an arch of bars, 1 bar being easiest, 4 bars means you are on the highest level…going from light blue (math), light purple (rdg/writing) to dark blue/dark purple. Also on the dashboard it shows where your daughter is at in math averaging all of the topics and the same for reading. The questions were written in collaboration with the College Board so are pretty accurate to the rigor of actual SAT questions. The 8 practice tests are the actual College Board practice tests. If she takes a practice test, you can scan & score using college board’s app. The results will appear in Khan Academy and your daughter’s study plan will be adjusted within minutes! You could create a coach/parent acct, create an sat class, then add your daughter as a student. But I’ve found that simply logging in as my kid gives me the info I need. Hope this helps and WELCOME again!
Welcome @ninakatarina
PSA- when looking at schools that are in a coastal area that requires periodic evacuations , you either need to feel comfortable with allowing the school to manage the evacuations or plan for additional funds for evacuation. DS16 will be evacuating Charleston tomorrow . Many parents are panicking unnecessarily , refusing to use the evacuation sites available , but complaining about the costs involved . Just something to consider .
Is there a thread somewhere on the site that lists colleges that offer overnight visits? I remember going on one of those when I was looking at colleges (back in the dark ages) and it sealed my decision of where to attend. I’d love to send kiddo on one of those.
Most schools will accommodate overnights if you contact them @ninakatarina
I posted earlier about my daughter not taking ACT prep seriously. I was wrong. She really studied hard this week and just got a 34 on her practice ACT (36, 28, 36, 36).
The bad news is that the test is cancelled. Looks like every ACT test center in the Houston area has decided to postpone the ACT from this weekend. We are supposed to get an email with a new date, but we haven’t yet. Oh well, at least DD won’t miss the XC meet this weekend.
Welcome, @ninakatarina! I loved hearing about your interesting son.
Good luck to all the 19ers taking the ACT this weekend! Hugs and concern to all those dealing with floods and hurricanes.
welcome, @ninakatarina! My D is into theater tech; not sure it’ll be her major, but it’s a large part of every school we research or visit. Money is our #1 criterion - if we can’t afford it, it doesn’t matter how well it fits her. But we have no college fund, so you’re already well ahead of us! Yay you!
We’ve talked theater on this thread several times; might want to search to see what colleges have piqued our interest in the past … and yeah, the theater/musical theater section is quite active, with lots of excellent info.
My D told me tonight that a classmate in her Chinese 4 class - a senior - is sending an email to the school headmaster asking that the substitute teacher be kept on somehow. All the kids in the class are signing it. They realize that the school can’t just fire the regular teacher when she comes back from maternity leave, so they’re trying to find some other solution.
We met the sub tonight at the parent-teacher night and she was a delight.
Fingers crossed …
But the geometry teacher – another sub for another teacher on maternity leave - what luck! – is another story. He is literally straight out of college - is going back for his Ph.d after this. He spoke at warp speed and was pretty difficult to understand (and I also speak fast). Just 10 minutes and DH and I were quite nervous about his ability to impart much of anything. Other parents also seemed unnerved. My D is already signing up for tutoring there as she’s not confident that he can explain anything clearly. This is after less than two weeks of class. Sigh.
@gusmahler - congrats on your D’s practice ACT score! D took a practice ACT and got a 27 composite - 32 reading but everything else dragged her down. That translates to a 1290 SAT, I was told. We are definitely gonna be charter members of the 3.0-3.4 thread!!
@ninakatarina welcome. If your son is truly interested in theatre I wouldn’t get to wrapped up in visiting schools. Most theatre parents will tell you because admission is audition based your student needs to come up with a list of 10 schools or more to apply to. They could be super talented with lots of experience and not get in. (Most theatre programs only admit 12 to 20 students out of hundreds that apply)
So most would say save the visits until you have acceptances and then visit those schools.
Definetly research the theatre and/or musical theatre threads on here.
Another thing about theatre programs. You said he may want to minor in something else. Especially in musical theatre a lot of programs will not let you minor. Important to research the ones that will before applying.
Applying to theatre programs is not the same as just applying to college. So if you don’t know anyone who has gone through it definitely read up. Lots of good info on the threads. There is also a good (and short) book called I Got In! By Mary Ann Dennard
We are having a squabble about AP calculus. The first day, it was easy, the teacher was nice, this will be great. Wednesday, the worksheet was really hard, kid didn’t know what was going on and got everything wrong. Yesterday, kid starts begging me to let him drop out before it’s too late, switch to AP Statistics.
I told him that he had to have a one-on-one with the teacher before I’d let him drop the class. He’s going to try to arrange that after school today. If the teacher is down on him, then I’ll contact the guidance counselor and see if it’s logistically possible to make that switch.
If there isn’t another reasonably challenging class available in that time slot I don’t know what to do. I offered to get him extra tutoring, but he was in panic mode.
Sometimes it’s hard having a drama queen kid.