@momtogkc Rollins sounds incredible! If my d19 wasn’t looking for chemical engineering, it sounds like it would be the perfect place for her.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone .
Happy Thanksgiving to all! Our family doesn’t do anything big for this holiday but we do go skiing and relax so that’s fun.
DS is off to a big soccer showcase today. He’s guesting with a team since the travel team he is on didn’t have enough players to go to this tournament. I almost died when I got the price. These showcases are seriously expensive.
Anyhow we (felt more like me actually) spent the last 7 days emailing coaches. He did email them himself, but I helped draft the emails and directed him to which coaches to email and helped with resume and highlight videos. He is targeting DIII schools and find myself rather annoyed by the whole process. The idea that you have to sell yourself to coaches and be seen at $$$ showcases to do your sport seems weird (and other adjectives). That all this takes him away from the sport that he is really good at is a whole other thing that I don’t want to think about.
I’m feeling like I failed at an important task since DS hasn’t taken the SAT or ACT yet and has to show these scores to coaches. I’ve known since middle school that spring of Jr year was too late. Yet, I just didn’t have the umph to add one more thing to his plate. It’s not that I would be involved actually, but I stress out when he stresses out. Between keeping up grades and two big ECs, there is little time or energy for anything else.
On other news, DS did his first real college tour and info session! We have done a lot of walk throughs of campuses, but this was the first real deal. He toured Univ of WA. He says he’s not so scared of big schools now. Yeah! Next up Univ of BC—when we somehow find a free day to make the trip.
Also he got his driver’s permit! He took the knowledge test over summer, and we finally got in to pick up the permit. Closest office is 1/2 hr away though murderous traffic so it’s a bit of a pain. We waited 1 1/2 hours to get to the counter…and they tell me that a passport is not good enough. He has to have his birth cert to prove I’m his mom. I almost died—had to drive home to get it and spent another hour in traffic.
We toured UVA this morning, since we are in Charlottesville anyway. Kiddo liked the buildings well enough, but said the place felt just too big for him. Fair enough, it’s off the list, would have been a stretch anyhow without aid. Still I am glad we checked it out.
Has anybody set up their summer plans yet? I want the kiddo to do something more useful than last summer, where there was a 2 week camp and a week at my sister’s house and a whole lot of hanging around the house playing Fallout. Husband is already getting separation anxiety and is balking any time I mention sending the kid off to any residential programs. Kiddo wants to hang around the house playing Fallout all summer long. Sigh.
We have a bit of money available for the right program, but it would have to be a spectacular program. Personally I’m in the ‘get a job’ camp. The HS guidance counselor mentioned the possibility of an internship with our city’s biggest theater company (Hippodrome), which I think would be great. Unfortunately, a friend had this same internship two summers ago and talked it down a bit, “It was mostly just office work”.
Maybe I’ll just offer the choice between Hippodrome or McDonalds.
Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We did several college tours over the break. Unfortunately, because of the holiday, some of them weren’t full tours, just walk around the empty campus. Just walking around an empty campus really doesn’t tell you enough to reject a school, but D19 wasn’t not impressed with the Tulane campus at all. It’s still on her list because of their good pre-med program. But the campus was ill kept and some of the buildings don’t look like they are in the best shape.
Emory is one I didn’t get to go on with D19, as I had to work. But D19 went with mom and she was very impressed. It was a full tour, but she said it wasn’t like most tours with very generic explanations. They went into detail about their pre-med programs and all the benefits of it. One thing she didn’t like were the dorms. She is really against sharing a room. The other thing she didn’t like was the cost. Very expensive, with little merit aid. She’s going to apply, but is unlikely to attend, even if accepted.
Those two complaints are directly related to the first tour we did, University of Alabama. As I’m sure most of you know, all of the UA schools are extremely generous with merit aid. While most schools make you eligible to apply for a competitive scholarship with a certain score, Bama will flat out give you a scholarship for a 27 ACT, with higher amounts at 28, 30, 33, and 36. The Honors dorm also features suites–with private bedrooms (which D19 loves). The campus is beautiful. And the tour was very helpful. While other colleges seem to give generic “come to us, we’re great” spiels, UA tried to find out what D19 was interested in first, and then tailored the visit around that. D19 was able to have extended conversations with several undergrads and an advisor about what she wants to study and how the school helps with it.
I was worried that D19 would think the campus is too big (it’s by far the biggest campus we’ve visited), but it actually doesn’t seem as spread out as University of Maryland, and it would seem easy to get around. It’s probably at the top of her list right now.
We’ll visit one more school during winter break (only because we’ll be visiting family out of town), Possibly two (Vanderbilt and Belmont) in February. But that’s probably it for the rest of junior year. And we may even wait until senior year to visit those two.
We were able to get D19’s PSAT score from the leak yesterday (College Board accidentally put scores on their site. But it’s patched, so don’t bother asking).
Extremely surprised by it. Not National Merit, but by far the best she’s ever done on math. In fact, it’s not even close. She’s never gotten above 90th percentile on math, but got 98th percentile math on the PSAT. Actually makes me regret not taking her National Merit chances too seriously, because she actually had a chance. Oh well, too late now.
Too bad no one ever sees that score, because it was really good. It’s giving her a lot of confidence going in to her Dec 9 re-take of the ACT.
Speaking of the leak, if they (as is pretty obvious) have the scores already, why don’t they just go ahead and release them? Why the requirement to wait for the Big Day™?
@dfbdfb I was thinking the same thing! Or maybe they aren’t all available for some reason so they aren’t releasing them? Some of S19’s friends were able to get their scores yesterday, but not all. We could not.
Aw, man, wish I had known. Darn, now I still have to wait. I suppose they don’t release the scores because they wait until everything is graded and the high scores are verified.
@ninakatarina Are you in Baltimore?
Yep! Well, close to Baltimore. You too?
Nope, but I grew up in Overlea and went to Western High School and Towson University. @ninakatarina
Not Towson has been my kiddo’s number one college choice for a while - everyone at our school seems to end up there. Which probably tells you some things about my child.
@Parentof2014grad Thank you for your words of wisdom. I hope my Daughter has a similar experience because I am about to kill her…She lacks motivation in every avenue. Over break we looked at LSU,UA,FSU and UF. LSU was her favorite.
Anyone get email from College Board asking you to register for Webinar: Understanding PSAT/NMSQT scores?
@ninakatarina Towson was the only school in the state with my major, Occupational Therapy
Aw, man, … I cannot believe I missed it.
That is interesting. For S17, I saw the scores early but that was only one day earlier. His scores were not great.
Now I have to wait two more weeks. 
As S19 is my second child, I am not hyper vigilant. 
I hope he does better on the SAT this Saturday, but it is after 10 days of video gaming so I am not sure that would be helpful. @-)
Well, it looks like Jesuit schools are out of the running over here. Took S19 to visit St. Joe’s in Philly. He liked the location but was meh about the school. We also visited Loyola U Maryland. Mr. InfiniteWaves and I are both LUM alums. As expected because of the St. Joe’s visit, S19 was meh on LUM as well. The schools are really similar.
The presentations at both schools were very much focused on business, engineering, science, and pre-professional. My S19 is a quirky band kid who plays D&D and wants to major in English. He kinda wondered “what about the humantities?” at both schools. And as much as I loved my humanities major LUM experience, I had to agree with him.
We visited Goucher College on the same day as LUM. He absolutely loved everything about Goucher. Which didn’t surprise me at all. It’s small and the humanities are emphasized. We were the only ones on the tour which my son really liked. The guide was a trumpet playing Peace Studies major wearing Doc boots. We happened upon the head of the music/dance program and she spent a bit of time talking with S19 which he really liked. The guide referred to the college president and head of the music/dance program by their first names. S19 found it to be much more “casual.”
It’s definitely interesting going through this visit/tour process with S19. He is learning a lot about himself and what he wants to do.
The PSAT sneak peak window was really really short. I came home from dinner around 7:30, saw a flurry of activity on the PSAT thread by happen chance and was able to get in. By 9:00 PM or so, they patched the opening.
There was word of another opening this morning it appears, with some successful access (others not successful it appears), but all venues seemed to have been patched by 11 this morning EST.