Parents of the HS Class of 2019 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
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@mom2twogirls You might be right that boys tend to claim their space and recognition more than girls, although I’m sure there are lots of exceptions to any trend there. My D is willfully not into competition. This week she enjoyed handing out roses to students selected for the two auditioned choirs. Since she’s in the top choir as a junior, she didn’t have to re-audition. She loved surprising her peers with these roses, but she had so many concerns too. She was even talking about how to make the organization of the choirs less competitive. I told her that some things – many things, actually – in life are just competitive and that’s how the world works. It’s just not her thing. Thankfully with this college process she’s mostly riding in her own lane and not in direct competition with anyone she’s aware of.

I have mixed feelings about the SAT. I think repeated sittings need to be accompanied by some sort of change in the student’s life – completion of a class, SAT-specific prep, a longer period of time passing – in order to really produce a change in score outside the error. My D19’s friend took the regular SAT four times, one after the other, and kept getting basically the same score. She’s now finally figured out that she needs to undertake a program of focused study if she wants a jump in her score.

I have a close friend whose son is also a class of '19 kid. He’s a devoted athlete. He went into the SAT cold. His score was modest. So on the one hand, you could say, well that’s him. He’s just not a great test taker, or whatever. But he would never go into a game without having worked out, run drills, played scrimmages, studied a game plan. So why just walk into the SAT with no preparation at all? My D19 is not a natural whiz at tests herself, especially math assessments. Her PSAT score was nothing to get excited about. She took a proctored practice SAT in November and the math score was really not great. Some of this was because she hadn’t been in a math class for five months at that point. But it’s also because she clearly needed some exposure to the test to do her best work on it. So thus ensued a hardworking four months of preparation before her real test in March. Many, many hours of work. Many additional practice tests. A combination of tutoring time, workbook-based homework, and online drills. That was basically her winter break – SAT work. Her March SAT was over 200 points better than that first practice test. If she had just gone in cold, her entire college list would’ve been different, her outlook for merit awards would’ve disappeared, and potentially the whole direction of her late teens and early adulthood would’ve been different. You can argue that one test shouldn’t be this influential. But I do think it exists as both a measure of natural aptitude and as a measure of effort. I feel like my D19 earned her good score. Yes, she benefited from my awareness of the looming test, my driving her to a proctored practice test in November, and my making formal preparation available to her. So I guess it’s a measure of resources too. But honestly so is everything, including GPA. And I could’ve thrown money after it all day long but if my child wasn’t on board with the effort, it wouldn’t have mattered. I’m proud of her. I hope her June sitting produced the additional rise in her score that she’d love to see, but even if it didn’t, she already achieved her mission and opened doors for herself.

That was a bit of a random monologue! :slight_smile:

This school year is like a cough that lingers on for weeks…! D19 is in the midst of a two-day math final, she has three classmates coming over after school to film a project (sigh…I hate/love these time-consuming creative group projects), and we have one more end-of-year banquet to attend tonight. Yesterday she was scrambling to get her volunteer tutoring hours for National Honor Society documented and turned in. Then still FOUR days of school next week, including graduation which D19 has to attend both as a vocalist and as a junior attendant. Ah! Then she’s got one week to take it easy and she’s off to Washington DC for her institute.

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So we’re finally done with school as of yesterday. Whew. My D22 “graduated” from middle school, and now I have a high school freshman and senior. I had to skim a lot of pages here to try and catch up.

We did a college tour of University of Houston a few weeks ago. I wasn’t thrilled with the amount of traffic I had to get through to get to that school. I think the traffic there was worse than Los Angeles traffic! My D is a decent driver, but I would be terrified to have her drive there.

D gets her “temporary” class ranking on 6/20/18 for purposes of applying to college with. Once the fall rankings are published, the ranking from 6/20 is no longer valid. So now we’re waiting to see if her ranking improves or got worse.

D asked her English teacher for a letter of rec because this teacher gave the kids a list of information she requires if the kid wants her to write a LOR. Fair enough. It is a good way for D and the other kids to get their act together as things are getting real, fast!

At D’s high school, there are about 3,600 kids. 8 GCs. That’s about 450 kids per GC, divided up by last name. I think D is now on the third GC since she started there. Not that she ever talks to this person. I told her “did you know a lot of kids go and talk to their GC all the time, asking questions?:” D said “what for.” She is so annoying!

We were supposed to drive up to north of Dallas to Denton on Sunday for a tour of University of North Texas on Monday, but she decided she doesn’t want to go there. No reason why. I set up the trip because she said she wanted to see it, but she now says she never said that and that it was my idea. See what I’m up against?!

Then I decided to look and see when the June 2nd SAT scores would be out. College Board says they won’t be out until July 11th. That is a a long time after the test. I really hope it’s worth the wait. Even a 20 point improvement would be considered a victory. I don’t see her jumping much, but going on the plus side would be great.

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My kids never spoke to the guidance counselor unless they needed to change a class or it was a scheduled conferance. I don’t think it crossed anyone’s mind to just go in and chat. Everything at school was going well. What was there to talk about?

At our college meeting, he said that he likes it when the kids update him on their college search and how its going, so we are making sure that D does that. He is never free for her to just drop in, but at least she shoots him emails about her impressions. I’m sure he isn’t using these for anything, but if he wants them, it doesn’t hurt to send them.

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One piece of advice form a parent who went through this process…
The questionnaire that your child’s school asks you to fill out about them, take it seriously and give lots of good and braggy info. If they don’t know your child well they have been known to take info you wrote and use It in their LOR to colleges.

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Still trying to catch up on everyone’s posts. With regards to GC’s - we are small school of around 1000 and we have 3 GCs. We are somewhat lucky in that S19 and S20 share the same counselor and she happens to have/had an S20 and S18 at the same school that overlap with my kids in EC’s and/or classes. So she has a little more insight into who they are as students and people. Otherwise, our GC’s are overwhelmed and I would not expect them to be able to keep track of my boys’ specifics much less give us personalized college advice - just too much on her plate as it is. Hence, my never ending research!

Just toured Pitt with S19 - general tour and engineering tour. S19 absolutely loved Pitt and has decided to apply at the end of the summer. We all loved the city itself and enjoyed the urban campus vibe. I find it funny that UA still remains high on his list (great when they love their safety!) I guess I feel like if he likes UA, he should find Pitt unappealing and vice versa but nope, he likes them both. We are now on the East coast for the summer and he will tour UMD and UDel while we are here. He will be attending the UMD engineering camp at the end of the summer.

I am amazed at how many of you tour so many schools - I am not sure how we will fit in the last couple and we have limited our number quite a bit.

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@gallentjill S19 had the same reaction about the GC. He never had a reason to go and talk to her. He’s met with her each year to choose classes and we had our 90 minute junior conference meeting with her but I don’t see him dropping in just to tell her something new about himself. @lbf S19 (and I) took those brag sheets very seriously as I assume that they could be word for word what the GC will write! @mountainmomof3 Only two more visits for S19 until he applies. We are hitting one more school in August in conjunction with a family trip and we will head back to a school he visited last summer to interview and see kids on campus in October. Then, that’s it until acceptances come in! He’s applying to seven schools that we’ve visited and five that we have not. All of those five are not super easy for us to get to so they are at a disadvantage from the get-go but they check many of his other boxes.

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There is a growing number of schools where guidance counselors do not submit letters of recommendation due to case load. If your school is one of them, take extra time to consider who your student will ask to write their letters.

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I agree with @lbf , it is important to fill out the parent survey. There is also an opportunity to fill in a student survey. I really believe the GCs use them to help when writing their recommendations. We totally lucked out with our GC (at a large public HS). He got to know our D17 and is now working with S19. He’s quite approachable and both of my kids really like him.

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Can someone explain to me the percentile rank for the SAT subject tests. I am looking at the statistics for the class of 2017 on The College Board and a score of 800 for Math 1 is 99th percentile whereas Math 2 it’s 79th percentile. I’m sorry but I don’t get that! If you get a 700 on Math 2 it’s the 45th percentile… :open_mouth: Biology E and M seem to be more consistent. My son asked if he could just take both Biology tests! Lol

@mountainmomof3 Welcome to the east coast! Let us know what you think of UMD! It is only 30 minutes from us and my son is not applying! He wants to go out of state.
Last week of school coming up! Yay!!
Husband threw me a surprise 50th birthday party last night, so most of today has been spent recovering on the couch with my laptop!

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@Kona2012 The different subject tests draw different pools of test takers and have different curves. The Math 2 test draws a pool of test takers who have had more advanced math and probably also more confident in their math abilities, so 800’s are more common on that test.

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My D19 took the June 2 Spanish subject test. We don’t know the score yet but heard it’s very difficult to earn anything near an 800 if not a native Spanish speaker. She loves the language and found the test manageable. We’ll see if the score makes us regret picking this SAT 2 subject.

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Here is another SAT math question - has anyone’s kid here downloaded programs on their graphing calculator for the test? I just read an article about the programs that most kids put on their calculators to help with the test…

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No but I wish my d19 had downloaded stuff. She would have considered it cheating, because it would be for in class tests. If we knew it is apparently allowed, she could have done so.

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S19 definitely didn’t download any apps to his calculator. I don’t think he knows they exist. He missed maybe 3 math questions on the SAT and I doubt that having an app would have gotten him a higher score. Or maybe you are talking about the Math 2 test?

No subjects tests needed here. Considering S19 was finished testing in December, it seems like he should be further along in making a college list! At this point, he might as well wait another week for final grades (finals are Monday-Thursday) and his new cumulative GPA.

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My daughter recently learned all of the things available to put on a calculator to prepare for the ACT. She is now considering retaking it, although I have misgivings. Honestly, I think its unfair to allow all of these different devices. It really disadvantages kids who don’t have access to them. Why not just allow a simple 4 function calculator and just give a formula list if they want the kids not to have to memorize.

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@nextone1 - Would love to have you report back when your D receives her Spanish SAT score. My S is considering taking it in August, but now that I have been hearing about how difficult it is, I’m not so sure. I think he’s a very strong Spanish student but I’m a bit worried about how much he might need to prepare. He’s not big on test prep. I think he didn’t even have a calculator for the first ACT and I’m pretty sure he didn’t know to program anything in. However, he may go for one more ACT sitting in July to see if he can get a straight 35 so the programming could help.
Happy Birthday @Kona2012 !
After several tries, husband, son and I finally won first place at trivia tonight! We tried to convince S to stay close for college so we can go into town occasionally and play trivia with he and his friends. He wasn’t really fond of that idea. :slight_smile:

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@elena13 Thank you! How am I 50?! Ugh! My husband and I leave for Amsterdam next week as my birthday present.
I asked my son about the programs and he yelled at me and said that was cheating. I said apparently it isn’t because they allow the calculator and know they can be programmed and don’t tell you to clear all programming. He then looked st me side eyed and said don’t even tell me you want me to take the whole SAT AGAIN. I just smiled. He got a 700 so yeah he’s done. But he’s going to look into the programming for SAT 2. The one thing the articles I read said was you need to download the programs and practice with the programs or it won’t matter.
When our 8th graders took PARCC Algebra we had to go through each graphing calculator and clear the programming. My school is a low income school and we provide every 8th grader a graphing calculato for use in school. The high school has a rental program if you can’t afford to buy one. So clearly they don’t want anyone using programs on PARCC. So if clearing the programs at the beginning of the SAT isn’t part of the test then it must be allowed.

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Regarding programming – asked my S19 (he scored a 790 on math) and he said he doesn’t think it would be very helpful. Basically, if you need to program your calculator than you don’t know the math well enough and time would be better spent prepping and practicing those types of problems. But that is he 2 cents and to each his own.

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@kona2012 Happy Birthday!! Your husband is a gem for throwing a surprise party AND a trip! I think I got a card and maybe a box of chocolates. I want a do-over!

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Just a comment on the SAT 2 Spanish. I definitely think it’s very hard to get a good score unless you are a native speaker or have spent time abroad. My S18 and D18 were two of the strongest non-native Spanish students in their HS (they were two of the three nonnative speakers who took AP Spanish Lit this year, both got 5s in AP Spanish Lang last year) and they got 710 and 670 respectively (in May/Jun just after completing AP Spanish Lang).

For them it was hard to find something other than Spanish as a third SAT 2 (Math 2 and USH were easy enough) when they didn’t do English Lit until senior year and hadn’t done AP Bio/Chem/Physics. But if you need three SAT 2s and have already done an AP Science, I would tend to pick that over a language.