The silent treatment: It just doesn’t happen at our house of four girls—they’re all way too competitive, and the game is getting the most attention. Not saying anything just means that everyone else gets to ignore you!
With school starting to wind down we don’t have any sort of concrete plan in place to apply to colleges.
We were hoping son might get named a recipient of a nice scholastic award to a school he sort of likes, as that would probably be the only “merit” type of award he will get. But it doesn’t seem like he will get the award or we would’ve found out by now Tthat school probably won’t offer him any merit money at all now. He can still apply and should get in, but at full pay there are other schools he might like better.
July 1st is the official date of recruiting to start for son’s sport, and we have no idea how that will go. We are not even talking to him about college at all right now, just letting him finish out the school year and see what happens this summer I guess. I’m not sure he has a clear front runner, at least he hasn’t told us, so he could literally end up anywhere.
@mathmomvt, @carolinamom2boys has it correct.
It is a geographic requirement not a state school requirement. Why? Because things change and a kid who thinks they might want to go away, and be ready to do so, may not be.
In S17’s case he had one school that covered all the requirements. Unfortunately he only had one. So while the requirement was met it didn’t give him much flexibility on the financial side. Still, it worked for him.
S19 meets this requirement with 3 schools. Technically 2 fit the bill but I do also ask that one of the financial safeties be in state so in his case it’s really 3.
I do also want them to have enough safeties that they have a choice. Not a hard number rule but more if a common sense gut check.
@eandsmom So smart. Need a safety close to home. Our counselors warn that lots of kids have big ideas about going far away to school but then cannot pull the trigger when it comes time to deposit. I like the option of having more than one safety as well. That way, the student still gets to feel like he still has some control and can have a choice.
S19 will have a LAC safety close enough to home as well as a bigger school safety close to home just in case something bizarre happens and S19 isn’t fixated on just LACs come May 2019.
This happened to a boy in our family. He had big plans to go to school far away and then at the end of May realized that he couldn’t handle it. So then ended up rushing in an application to a local college with rolling admissions. It worked out fine but caused a great deal of anxiety.
I got that @eandesmom had a geographic requirement – just wondering why given that it was not “all schools within a certain range” which a lot of families do. And why “in state” versus a certain distance from home. But I do get the point about being able to stay relatively close to home if they so choose. And I knew that the in-state school wouldn’t necessarily be an admission or financial safety. My point was that the school that was both an admission and a financial safety, would by definition also satisfy the “1 admission safety” as well as the “1 financial safety”.
By the way, this is in no way a criticism of those requirements, just curious about them.
We “encouraged” all schools to be within “driving distance” for our two older boys. We are considering relaxing that for the third since we now have a (grown) kid living full-time on the west coast. (We’re in VT.) Our evolved guideline with respect to safeties is to have something that is “almost surely an admit with good merit that the student likes” (i.e. affordability and admission very likely) where the student can get EA or rolling admission, to get something in pocket early. That way if the “almost surely” turns out to be wrong for any reason, there is time to add more safeties. That seemed a better fit for us than looking for “guarantees”.
S19’s grades came out. He is happy with 4 A’s and 3 A-'s, much improvement over last two years.
He only took one AP class (BC Calc) this year. In hindsight, it was a much better decision resulting in better grades, manageable workload, and confidence compared to 4 AP classes (USH, BC Calc, Chem, Lang) for S17’s junior year.
Now about SAT Chemistry exam this Saturday … Well, there is always August and October. 
@mathmomvt. Yes. However in the case of my mid stats kids, “safety” is always a bit tenuous and I prefer to hedge bets and frankly I don’t love the out of state admissions and financial safety he’s chosen. Driving distance is relative, for us a 2 hour radius is in state only, we’d have to go 4-5 hours to get out of the state and that’s a bit far for a regular come home on the weekend need, if there is such a need. For S19 we actually required at least one within commuting distance so it was modified for his needs/our concerns. The “both” can be tricky to find once you layer on the fact that it has to be a school they would be willing and happy to attend.
With S17 having only one that hit the “both” category was a bit stressful to all (despite the fact he loved it, in a way he didn’t feel like he had a fair choice as it wasn’t an apples to apples comparison at the end) so while it’s not a requirement that S19 have more than one, it’s been strongly encouraged and luckily has worked out.
@RightCoaster I am sorry about the named award. Are you really sure it means no merit though? I suppose it depends on the school but I wouldn’t take it that way. In general named awards seem to go to only one boy/girl from each HS, that doesn’t mean other kids won’t recieve merit awards. I’m not sure how valuable the named awards are. S19 did recieve one but I suspect in his case, he was lucky. It’s an OOS spot that doesn’t get a ton of applicants from our school and I suspect he was the only one to inquire about it. I don’t know that it gives him any kind of admissions advantage (suspect not) and while it is nice to “know” that would be the minimum merit he’d recieve, for us it needs to be a larger award so I hope receiving it doesn’t limit him to the lower amount.
Good luck with recruiting, that will make for an interesting summer to be sure!
@RightCoaster I hope he does still get merit at that school.
Our awards ceremony is next week. I think think my d19 is hoping for an award with a gift card instead of a merit medal though!
@homerdog The Claremont schools would be a good place for your LAC-loving son if he is interested in cross-disciplinary work and in a geology track. Pomona has a great geology department these days and they’ve always been really devoted to field work. Of course it’s a high reach for everyone but check out the scene there if you haven’t already.
@Kona2012 You sound just like us with greeting the whole SAT subject test with a big tired sigh, and being SO DONE with the SAT process. Saturday is the end for us regardless of D’s result. She’s got one good-enough result from March and is taking another shot at it but then that’s it.
Back on the resumes question, for those who have generated one, how long was it? My understanding is it’s a bit different than a professional resume where really only work experience is included and the document is 1-2 pages long. The one D and I have put together for her is 4 1/2 pages (oops), so we should pare down some of the details and maybe bail on one section entirely but it’ll still take up a solid 3 pages if not a bit more. Is that overkill? Right now, for example, there’s an entire page listing her choral music experience, honors, workshops, and notable performances.
Thinking about the question of going away or staying close to home. D19’s favorite two schools are within a reasonable 90 minute drive from home and I know she wants one of those to work for her. Historically she has been agreeable to the idea of going away, but we all prefer if she’s at least near family or near our close friends. Only two schools on her list are truly not within a couple of hours’ drive of any family member or friend she could reasonably visit/have Thanksgiving with, so I think both of those may get dropped. I guess it’ll depend on her reaction to our college visits trip to the midwest and how the general “feel” of flying and traveling to school sits with her.
Anyone have a kid with Colorado College on the list? I keep wanting to like this school because Denver is my hometown and I know many people in that metro area, and Denver is an easy flight for us, but I didn’t consider it myself as a teenager and D19 won’t entertain it either with that darn block schedule they have. She just doesn’t see how she could, say, really advance in her Spanish language skills in a 3 1/2 week class. I see advantages (off-site field work or immersive experiences, classes at weird times, focus) but ugh…it’s such a hard sell for a skeptical teenager. Curious if anyone has any knowledge of it.
Learned today that one of her likely-admit schools is 40% Greek…just really not super duper likely to be something D would get into, unless they have a much different flavor than the stereotype. It’s a small midwestern Jesuit school so I wasn’t really expecting that. There are too many pieces of information to gather about all these schools, I swear! We’re actually visiting this school in July too…oh well I guess it’s not a total deal-breaker. We’re visiting my 89-year-old aunt and my cousins in town too, so it’s worth it in its own right, but I do feel dumb for having not discovered this before now.
When you’re building a list of 10-20 schools, looking at schools off the beaten path, trying to find a niche for a kid with specific interests and a quiet old-soul personality, juggling outdated family opinions and lack of creativity from family members, the process represents a tremendous amount of work. Sigh.
@SDCounty3Mom - My S’s resume is one page but we left off a number of details. I think D’s was 1 1/2 pages. I probably wouldn’t go over 2. I guess it depends on what it is being used for. I’m assuming if it was for a music scholarship, you would want more details about her choral involvement. Otherwise, I would start cutting!
@SDCounty3Mom The one page resume rule still applies as far as I know. I’ll be curious to see responses but that seems like overkill. Which is a (huge) challenge but it is doable.
S19 had a one page version that showed everything. He then had a one page theater only version and a one page music only version for specific scholarships.
@JenJenJenJen has a D at Colorado College.
So ticked off at S19 right now. I am not a mom who puts pressure on her kid, but I just looked at his Calc grade. He was straight As and A+ all year in every subject. And he blew off an assignment worth 10% of his AP calc grade so he could study more for the exam. Got a 3 out of 10. I could throttle him. It’s a good thing he’s on a field trip.
I hear you, @Trixy34—my D19 had an A in what was supposed to be a blow-off schedule-filler (digital composition) up until about midway through the fourth quarter, then her annoyance (partially but not completely merited) at the teacher and especially her classmates kicked in, and she did very few of her assignments the rest of the way (and not a very good job on the ones she did do), lying to us about how and what she was doing, and ended up with a C in the class. ~X(
Oh, wait, I guess he still ended up with an A for the year. Phew. I guess I’m feeling really high-strung about this whole college thing. So much on the line for him this year. I remember the conversation - “Mom, I told my teacher that those review assignments really don’t help me, and I wasn’t going to put much effort into it, and I think it’s OK. She said it was OK. She’s not looking for a lot from it.” Oh, OK, I said, that’s great, so you can focus on studying for the exam. Apparently, he thought it only counted as another homework assignment, but turns out it was worth twice his homework grade. Ugh. These kids
Oh man, @dfbdfb - that would aggravate me too, but I can relate. My kids are so stubborn. The time my son spends complaining about assignments when he could just be doing them …
Our school stopped factoring electives into the gpa 2 years ago, so for good or bad, they basically don’t count.
Resume: 1 page for son19. Name, address, school name, gpa, ap classes, extra curricular section, and then a sports section with some details and awards. He has only interviewed with coaches so far and they really don’t have an interest in anything other than sports info and grades/test scores for the most part.
I think a 1 page resume works better, because then the interviewer can ask for more details regarding the info they read on the resume.
Safeties- planning on an instate safety in case he wants to go to school sort of nearby, and then he’ll apply to 1 fun safety.
DD’s grades are out and I requested a transcript for college app purposes. Her ranking as of end of junior year is 1 of 57 so…hopefully she can hold on to that! We don’t think the likely #2 is taking an AP next year (APs are rarely done here) so if DD can keep up all A’s she should stay put.
DD was all about going far away, until she decided she wasn’t, but now apparently distance is okay if there are mountains at college. I told her 15 hours drive was too far to move her in though, and I don’t want to move her via airplane, which she accepted pretty easily so we’ll see if it comes up again. I think she’s just bored with school out and trying to see if she can find some place more glamorous than Iowa/Missouri but she has to remember her desire to come home on random weekends.
@SDCounty3Mom your visit to further away schools is a good idea, DD really got a feel for the travel hassle when we visited one two flights away.
@Trixy34 @dfbdfb Sounds like my son with his one easy course. He takes Digital Photography as his only elective and the rest are his IB DP classes. Last marking period he had an 80 going into the end of the marking period because he didn’t like the directions for a few of the assignments. He had to redo assignments the correct way in order to get his grade to a 90. And again this marking period he has missed three assignments because he’s still perfecting them. I’m glad that next year he doesn’t have an "easy’ class for his one elective. He is taking Honors Zoology and it’s with his IB Bio teacher so he won’t be able to slack off. He currently has an 85 in IB HL Math and an 89 in IB HL Bio. The Bio grade I’m not concerned about because she drops the lowest grade and rounds 89 to a 90. But the math he has stayed after for extra help and redid an assessment yesterday after school so hopefully that grade will come up. I would hate to see him earn A’s for three marking periods and then end with a B average. Thankfully though he has decided to do SL2 Math next year instead of HL2! Now he just has to remember to write the IB coordinator and make sure she knows of the schedule change.
@bjscheel #1 is great!
This is the first semester I’ve ever not looked at grades for either of my kids. I’ve come to grips with it is what it is.
It’s sort of refreshing. They both know it’s up to them to perform and what’s at stake if they don’t put in the effort.