S19 tried to take the PSAT today, but his blood sugar shot up. He had to go to the nurse and it took more than an hr to get back to normal. The testing coordinator called me and said they will not be turning his test in and it cannot be made up. He will receive accommodations for his next SAT though based on his 504. My S was so apologetic to my husband and I. We were more concerned about his health and weren’t even thinking about the test. He such a good kid, and I am so blessed to have him. I just wish things were easier for him.
@Corinthian I just read what happened to your daughter today. Just awful and inexcusable. I hope you plan to let the principal and district test & spec ed coordinators know. Unfortunately it won’t help your daughter, but it could help other students in the future. What a horrible test experience.
@4MyKidz so sorry to hear that. Best wishes for your son on the SAT!
Oh wow @Corinthian I hope your daughter gets lots of apologies. That’s horrible! I would definitely want assurance things will be handled correctly for the SAT. Probably the silver lining is that if your d can make it through that experience, a correctly administered SAT
should feel easy!
And @4MyKidz I’m glad your son is feeling better. If you noticed, the person who commented in Corinthian’s above linked post mentioned a procedure forbid someone is ill or has an emergency and how they still could try to be in the competition. This sure seems like it would qualify, it might be worth a shot. You would think the testing coordinator would have mentioned it.
@mom2twogirls Thank you, yes, the testing coordinator said she will be sending a form home for how to submit an SAT score for NMS. NMS is definitely a long shot for us but it doesn’t hurt to have things in place just in case.
@Corinthian and @4MyKidz So sorry to hear about the PSAT issues. Its hard enough to be a teenager these days without all sorts of extra junk piling on.
@RightCoaster wondering about your avatar picture. Is that a MA based ski area? If so I think its the one my kids frequent.
This morning I emailed a letter to the assistant principal in charge of testing supervision, and copied D’s guidance counselor and the principal. I detailed all the problems in the PSAT proctoring, but emphasized that the two most serious problems occurred at the start, and involved not giving her the answer sheet instructions and not giving her the test booklet at the start of the test. I emailed the letter about 7:15 am and the assistant principal called me at about 8:45 am. The AP apologized right off the bat and took responsibility, and didn’t make excuses. (I can think of some people in our government who could learn from this approach.) He also promised it wouldn’t happen again and that everything would go smoothly on November 4 for the SAT. He said that D’s test would be sent to the College Board with an “irregularity report.” I’m not sure what that means for her eventual score. I’m sure she doesn’t want to re- take it unless it somehow turned out she was close to the NMSF cutoff, which seems unlikely. She said that even with all the issues, having the mp3 audio was a huge help compared to the last time she took the PSAT.
wow with all these issues. We just put in for the college board to allow my son keyboarding accommodations for essay portions of the SAT and AP tests. I hope that they dont screw it up. He is taking SAT, but without essay in Dec. Might have him take again early next year with the essay to how they handle before the AP tests in May.
Bummer about the psat issues @Corinthian and @4MyKidz, that stinks. Hope it gets sorted.
@zipstermom ski area in Maine, not MA.
Looks like I’m joining in the thread fun with you all! We are starting the process with my S19. He wants to do English/Creative Writing. He’s high achieving (AP History, Honors English as no AP offered) with no interest in prestige when it comes to schools. ECs are marching band, regular band, and stage crew. And lots of community service. He will have his first job this year as well.
We are in PA. Because we have an S21 as well, the “affordable” options are our state schools. He wants to stay within two hours of home which leaves out Pitt. West Chester and Bloomsburg both offer specific creative writing concentrations within the English major. He can commute to Millersville and do an English major with writing studies focus. He also really likes York College and can attend as a commuter. So those four are academically and financially feasible.
We have two PSU branches within driving distance and he wants to visit main campus. We could do those as well from a financial standpoint. I’m still getting used to the reality of in-state tuition at PSU being the same as OOS tuition at the Maryland and Virginia state schools.
If private schools offer merit that gets the cost down to around the same, then those could be options as well. We are looking at Susquehanna, Ursinus, Juniata, Saint Joseph’s, Goucher, Washington College, and Loyola Maryland (my husband and I went there). S19 also wants to visit George Mason because there is a minor in Game Design. And we’ll consider Villanova as the competitive option. Might throw GW in there too.
How long until my head explodes from all of this? LOL!
welcome @InfiniteWaves, good luck with your son. Your head exploding will probably ease up June 2019 after graduation.
If you are lucky your son might find a school he really likes and applies for early admission and he gets a decision before Christmas time next year. Then you can just relax. It doesn’t seem to work out that way for most people though, and so most are sort of stressed out through regular decision time( spring senior year).
I would love it if my kid found his ideal school and applied ED and we would just be done with it. I tried to convince son17 to go this route, and he almost did. However, he did not apply ED and so we had to wait until late April before he made up his mind.
“2 hours of home” is such an east coast luxury. Out here in Houston, D19 is only even considering a single school within 2 hours of home.
Welcome @infitinitewaves. A two-hour radius actually sounds like a pretty good limiting factor (although there are a LOT of schools in PA and within a couple hours of south central PA). I grew up in the same general area of PA and I’ve never been to Pittsburgh so I understand about it being “too far” haha. (I’m finally going soon to visit Pitt with S19, but not sure I like the OOS tuition).
@RightCoaster - I can definitely see my son filling out one rolling admission application, getting accepted before he gets around to doing any more apps, and just going to that school whether it’s his “favorite” or not. I should probably steer him away from rolling admission. (Hmm, maybe, I shouldn’t visit Pitt with this one).
We’re looking in the misshapen donut of between 1.5 and 6 hours distance. Or we were, until the kid decided he also wanted to look at west coast schools we can’t afford to go visit.
I told him I had no problem with applying to something near LA, but he had to show me due diligence in investigating the school as closely as possible online. So far he hasn’t taken the time to do that with any of the candidate schools we identified. But then he’s in 2 plays at once right now so time is a luxury he just doesn’t have.
Almost back to back tech weeks. Oy. What were we thinking?
2-3 years ago, d19 thought going to a college a flight away would be fine. Now that it’s a little closer to reality, she wants a reasonable car ride. I think we are looking at a 6 hour drive limit but she would prefer under 2 hours as well.
She will apply as soon as she can, I think, and at least one is rolling admission. It’s her most likely place to end up anyway, the rest are going to depend on financial aid.
@gusmahler we live just outside of Boston and we are so lucky to have about 1 bazillion schools within an hours drive.
Also lucky that there is a wide variety of schools to choose from too. The hard part is that some of the schools try to limit the amount of local kids they accept, so it can be quite cutthroat. We have a decent state flagship, but that has become more competitive lately and is harder for the average to get accepted into certain majors.
My son19 is interested in multiple schools in the MA area, a few in NY and would love to go out to one school in CA, but I doubt he’d even be really considered there. I think he’ll end up going to school within a 1/2 hour drive.
@mom2twogirls Our GC told us that so many kids talk big about going far away for school but the vast majority can’t pull the trigger in the end and go to school within a three hour drive from home. It makes sense. These kids are just 18.
I feel like going to college is a chance to go somewhere different and it’s not that risky. You’re on a campus and you go to school. There are professors there and tons of other kids. It’s one thing to take a job in a city far from home when you’re 21 and not know anyone where you’re going. I sort of feel like I want the kids to branch out for undergrad. They can always come back to find jobs since we are in a major metropolitan area. This being said, I would never try to influence our kids on the geographic front. If they are not comfortable leaving the Midwest, then they should stay here. S19 has not gone away to “camp” for more than three days and those camps have been XC camps and he goes with his team. Going away to school, even if it’s only a 2-3 hour drive away from home, will be a big step for him. I think fit is more important that actual geography and he very well may feel like he fits best in a school in our neck of the woods.
Within a 6-hour drive of my house, we have the following 4-year choices:
[ol][]A very small (<1,000 students) minimally selective (despite the wrong numbers I’ve seen on a couple websites) LAC
[]A nonselective regional public with, by some measures, the lowest 4-year graduation rate in the country[/ol]
The end.
But the draw of staying close to home (in some cases by choice, in many cases because there are family responsibilities that require it) kind of explains why the regional public has an Ivy-level yield rate. (I can’t find a yield rate for the other one.)
(Also probably factoring in: Driving time to the nearest non-nonselective US college is [dfbdfb plays with Google Maps for a bit] 42 hours.)
We have 6 solid options with 2 hours, double that if you go up to 4 hours. At times I feel we know a disproportionate number of kids that go further, including 2 out of our 4.
S19 wants away. I’m less convinced it’s the right thing for him but we will see.
The kid who doesn’t want to go to College does want to go to the NAFAC College fair this weekend, should be interesting.
There are a number of schools that would be very good choices within a half hour drive (hour in rush hour traffic), but I know my husband. He would forever be ‘dropping in’ on the kid if the kid was close. He keeps threatening to retire and move to wherever the kid goes to college, but I know that’s just talk. I think that’s just talk. I hope that’s just talk. I don’t want to move. No wonder the kid wants to move away.