My DS wants a theatre BA program, does not want musical theatre or a BFA. He is open to auditioning for the right program, but he wants somewhere with a good academic focus.
Our school does not send kids to prestige schools. My counselor was very proud to tell me that one kid had applied to Georgetown this year. She said that the kids who actually had a chance at the Ivies in her view generally didn’t put down the money for the applications; they go for the safe state schools because they don’t believe they can afford anything private.
I am simultaneously proud of and frustrated by DS this morning. He was up super early writing something on his computer. He had me read it - it was an essay on the importance of diversity in entertainment, ranging from discussing Shakespeare to Black Panther to All in the Family. It had a few grammar rough spots and the concluding paragraph was half-written, but was overall very good. I told him so.
He then told me that it was essentially a week late. The rough draft was due a week ago, today was the deadline for the final product. He had gone to the teacher and negotiated a deadline extension.
So on the one hand I’m proud that he is doing good work and proud that he has the initiative to negotiate deadline extensions, on the other hand I’m peeved that he didn’t let us know that he had this looming over his head so that we could have helped him find time to do it before the last second. He is usually not a last second person.
Well after having to cancel our President’s Day visit to Penn State main campus and S19 not wanting to reschedule, it looks like he is going to visit after all. One of his teachers is taking them up there on a field trip a few weeks from now. They will be participating in a themed event sponsored by one of the academic departments. It will be interesting to see what Mr. Small LAC thinks of PSU main.
And yesterday, S19 brought home the AP test payment and registration form. Wheeeeeeeeeee!!!
My kids attend a small Catholic school. Lots of top students end up attending our local private college as commuters. Lots attend Catholic colleges (there are so many in PA, scholarships are good). A few attend PSU main, Pitt, and Temple. A few attend PASSHE. A few attend small, non-Catholic LACs. Affordability is the main driver in our part of central PA. We did have a student go to Hopkins last year.
well @homerdog I’d say that Bowdoin would be a better fit than Dartmouth as long as they have enough majors he is interested in. Dartmouth is probably more jockish outdoor dudes, like ski racers, crew dudes, etc. They love sports there, Bowdoin less so.
Bowdoin is more outdoorsy like camping LL Bean guys. You can get to the water at Bowdoin and down to Portland, an actual city that is pretty cool. I don’t know what kind of chance your S has of getting in there, the only kid I know from our school was an academic all American lax player and Class Pres kind of kid. He was ejected from Cornell as a legacy, but got into Bowdoin. My son would never get in, unless they needed a track guy. Too many suburban white guys from NE applying. Your S may have a better chance there, as he from out. of the area, but that’s a total lottery application. Who knows what they are looking for?
I think if you come to New England I think he should visit Tufts, and at least drive by BU and Northeastem. BU in particular is located right off the Charles river, and the kids have access to a great running path on both sides of the river, so kids from BU/MIT/Harvard are always out running and using the parks. Most of the schools in the city have outdoors clubs where they get on the weekends to go to the beach, mountains etc. He might like it more than you think. There are so many kids in that one zone of the city it just seems exciting. We visited my son the other day and it was nice out, and tons of kids were out walking the streets, in cafes, shopping, relaxing in green areas, running, biking etc. My older son initially though he wanted small and more suburban/rural but after visiting schools junior year, by the time senior midyear came around he did a 360 and decided it might be too restrictive.
There are good and bad sides to both types of schools, so just have him explore more options. Just some advice, you know your kid better than me!!
@dfbdfb why don’t the kids in AK look at the Canadian schools? Isn’t U of British Columbia supposed to be really nice? There must be other schools around Vancouver area? I love Vancouver, I’ve stayed a few times before heading up to Whistler Mtn. It’s so nice there.
@InfiniteWaves In my past life, I visited college bookstores as part of my job and visited Penn State twice. I remember loving it even though I’m not a big school kind of girl. Since it is it’s own thing in the middle of nowhere, I thought it was pretty cool. As far as I could tell, College Station is really just Penn State!
Kids looked happy. I just thought there must be so much school spirit around a place so big and secluded. This was back in my early 30s and I hated flying on small planes so I would fly into Pittsburgh and do the long drive. No way I was getting on a 8-seater plane to fly into College Station. I hear Penn State’s honors program is amazing.
Just paid for three APs here. BC Calc, AP Lang, and APUSH. $100 each but that goes up to $145 in March sometime. That’s a huge difference so I paid that bill right away! Looks like APUSH is first for S19 and he will take the SAT US History test the weekend prior. AP Lang and BC Calc are a week after APUSH.
@dfbdfb I have a good friend in Oregon whose daughter will go to Western Washington this fall. She’s posted pictures and it looks absolutely gorgeous. I wish I could convince S19 to look in the PNW as I think it fits his personality. He’s just feeling like it’s too far. Seems to me that NC and Maine are just as far but there’s something about the two hour time change to the west coast that makes him feel like it’s farther away.
As for Bowdoin, two kids got in from our school last year with similar stats to S19. They were the only two who applied. Our GC said it’s important for the AO to get to know him so we will do what we can about that. I think we would see Colby too if we see Bowdoin.
One of my best friends here has a daughter going to Tufts in the fall. I agree that it’s worth a visit and it would be easy for S19 to hang with her as they’ve known each other since they were little. She was also planning on applying to BU but got into Tufts ED.
I don’t know how we will fit in a fall trip to the NE but I think I’m going to have to work it out somehow. I feel like we either need a solid week to see everything he should see and we can’t do that in the fall. We could do it in the summer but I tend to think it’s not the same without the kids there and I don’t know if it would be worth it.
My kids are at a small public HS in the middle of PA–we mostly have kids going in state (PSU, PASSHE schools, small local privates, 3-5 to Bucknell. A few go the military route, and every year there’s at least one outlier kid who gets into Yale, Brown, NYU, Stanford).
Do any of you have a kid who appears to have “locked in” to a school at this point? We took S19 on one college visit and now he is saying okay, good, that’s where he wants to go. I brought him to this school because it was small, close to family, had decent programs in his intended major, and I thought would be a good safety.
Now he is saying he just wants to apply there, probably ED or EA, and be done! Part of me sees nothing wrong with this as I think he could do very well there, but another part thinks maybe he is selling himself short by not exploring other options that might also be a good match.
He has not taken much of a lead in the process at this point and I am trying not to push or bring it up too much as it is early still. He takes the SAT in 2 weeks and perhaps he will reevaluate after he gets his scores (for better or for worse!).
@bearpanther We know a lot of kids who know where they want to go. Most of those kids have “chosen” schools that are very likely admits for them and they are done looking. Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana are all schools that kids here choose early (in their heads) and then don’t want to look anymore. Those parents are just fine with that. As a family whose student wants something different than Big 10 and who will be full pay if there’s no merit, our search is more complicated for S19.
As for taking a lead, S19 is definitely not doing that. I expect he will start to take more interest this summer when he has more time and he needs to start writing his essays.
We know one boy in S19’s grade who is going to Dartmouth for lacrosse (lacrosse players are recruited earlier than senior year) and one boy who is far along the path to be recruited at another school and is very likely to go there…so those types of kids are also feeling “done”.
Kiddo is taking 2 APs, Psychology and Language. He didn’t want to do Language but I pushed because I think he could do well at it. He forgot the paperwork at school yesterday.
My kid tried to ‘lock in’ to the first college we visited (Franklin and Marshall, almost a year ago now) but I held out and dragged him to more places until he got a better feel for the range of colleges that exist. Now he has a list of 6 definites, with a rotating list of 20 maybes.
We’re in western PA so most kids go to PSU, Pitt, the local state schools or Seton Hill and St. Vincent. We have a couple kids get into an ivy every year and a number of D3 athletes. I went to Dickinson so I’m partial to those central PA LAC!
Our district pays for all AP tests so I assume they do the registrations as well. Or else the information is at the bottom of DS’ backpack. They took the trial AP Calc yesterday and he said it was “dreadful.”
@ninakatarina I’m with you with the rotating list of 20 maybes! Just put Tufts and Vassar back on the list…and taking a little time to look at BU this morning thanks to @RightCoaster. I’m really feeling like S19 will need different types of choices within his list since I keep hearing stories about how kids thought they wanted one thing but, come spring senior year, their preferences shift.
@mindatwork Dickinson on our list! S19 follows them on Instagram and likes everything he’s seen. The college even has a house where kids live to train service dogs. I thought S19’s head was going to explode when he saw that. He met with the AO when he visited our high school last fall and they hit it off. I hope they won’t hold it against him if we can’t make a visit before application.
At son’s school ranked in the top 5 in VA, 20% of the 2017 class (100+ kids) went to UVA, William & Mary or VA Tech, another 80 went to other in-state publics and 40+ to the local community college. There are usually 8-10 or so who get into an Ivy. The rest are scattered pretty far and wide in a big range of OOS publics, LACs and private universities. Popular OOS public options seem to be Pitt, Penn State, Indiana, CU Boulder. The party kids go to WVU. I think we would see more top kids with lists full of the usual top 20 schools if we didn’t have UVA & W&M.
@bearpanther I don’t think I would mind having my son being locked into a safety school at this point if it’s a good fit. However, I think it is entirely dependent on your kid. I basically have an indifferent B+/A- student with the test scores of an A student and the attitude of a C student when it comes to academics. He’s probably better off in a safety school!
Quick question for all you supermoms! My son is really, really not wanting to take Calculus BC next year AT ALL. He plans to be a IR/Diplomacy major with an Arabic minor. He already plans to take AP French, AP Envir Science and an AP History class Senior year. He would prefer to take AP Macroecon over Calculus next year because (a) he is more interested in Econ and (b) at every single school we have looked at, Econ is required as an undergrad. At all but a few, Calculus is not. I want to get some feedback to see f him skipping Calculus as a Senior and taking AP Macro instead will hurt his chances at the more elite, top 25 schools. Is AP Calc pretty much a requirement for schools like UPenn, Princeton and Georgetown, or would he be ok with Macro? He currently has a 94 UW GPA and is taking 2 AP classes (APUSH and English) and 2 honors classes (Precalc and French 4) as a Junior…
@Samsmom2019 AP Calc would be a pre-req if he was going into engineering, but with a humanities focus he is safe in taking another equally rigorous class that matches his interest. I think he will be better off with macro and it is a much wiser choice.
Taking and excelling in courses that have more to do with his preferred future career path help you paint a better picture of who he is for the college admissions people. This is a great opportunity.
Colleges want to see kids who take on intellectual challenges and do well at them. Let him take the macroeconomics. I wish my kid had the option to take macroeconomics, but his school doesn’t offer it so he’s stuck with AP physics, literature, and statistics to round out his senior year.
@Samsmom2019 My understanding is that four years of math culminating in Calc (either AB or BC) is expected at places like the Ivies or Georgetown. Those schools look for the hardest curriculum taken by the student for every subject. Your S needs to take a math class senior year. Three years of math won’t cut it at those level of schools.
The humanities type kids at our high school always take four years of math and the top 10% always take AB or BC Calc. They may have all of their ECs at the school newspaper or something like Model UN, but they take honors or AP in all subjects through senior year.
Our S19 will take AP Macro and AP Micro next year but those are his social studies classes. He’s taking BC Calc now so he will take Honors Multivariable Calc next year.
His counselor would know better than we do, she knows your particular school. I had forgotten about that ‘4 years of math’ thing, thanks for correcting me @homerdog My kid is not taking AP Calc BC but substituting with AP Statistics so it is still a math class. Economics could be math-heavy in some areas, but I think it usually counts as a social studies class.
If AP stats exists at your school you might look into that?
