I can not wait for this year to end! We are down to the last two days and my son is still stressed. He has his Math IA due on Friday and is having problems with the calculations. He was frustrated last night because his denominator was a zero and he can’t have a zero. I made the huge mistake of asking - Why? He looks at me and says - Mom what happens when you divide by zero you get zero… I can’t have zero! He went in today and showed his teacher the math and he told him not to worry about it but to address the zero in the paper. He is doing something with integration and calculus and Kingda Ka ride at Great Adventure. But now he was told he has to add another ride and make a personal connection between both rides. He chose Splash Mountain, which seems like a weird choice but he won’t listen to us. He is now researching the dimensions and the building of Splash Mountain.
My son showed me some correspondence from one of the service academies and I never realized what a pretty good deal that is for some kids ( political, moral, ethical objections aside). I didn’t realize they get full tuition, room and board and a stipend of 1,000 per month for the 47 months that they are there. I didn’t read much further into it, like how long the kids have to enroll for after, but that situation must be appealing to a lot of kids.
Growing up I ended becoming friends with one of the poorer kids in town. He had a disastrous family situation. He was smart and hard working though. He ended up getting into the naval academy and became a nuclear engineer. It was an amazing turn around for him. He went from living a pretty grim life, to studying and traveling around the world and getting a solid education. We reconnected a few years ago for a bit and I was really happy to see he has had a decent life.
@RightCoaster we have two women in the latest 2018 class from our high school going to Westpoint. They are both athletes and their parents could easily have paid full tuition anywhere. The girls just felt like the fit was right and I believe they both want to go to med school so maybe getttimg free undergrad will allow their parents to pay for that. Westpoint is something like 13 percent women. I can take wait to hear how they do.
Westpoint is a pretty difficult road for anyone who really wants medical school. Very few kids are allowed to go to medical school directly after college. The rest have to serve a few years first and they apply the regular route. A better deal is to sign up after being accepted into medical school. Then the military will pay the full cost of med school and you enter the armed forces as a doctor.
@gallentjill I only know one of the familiea personally and the plan Is to serve after undergrad and then go to med school. I think she expects to get some medical experience during the time she’s serving. I don’t know any more details than that. She is very bright and a national championship swimmer.
@homerdog. I think my son19 would like certain aspects of a service academy, but maybe not the strictness of it 24/7.
My dad was an AF fighter jet pilot for a bit, and my son thinks it would be cool to do something like that, however he’s not a big fan of actual war and all that, lol. He’s a pretty tough kid, physically and mentally though , so I think he could actually handle the whole thing. But I just don’t see it being an ideal fit. We had a nice chat about it. He had never really even considered that, or even knew that was an option. We talked about the difficulty to get admitted, and why certain kids would be thrilled to get in. This particular academy said admit rates were hovering around 10%, another factoid I was surprised to learn. Obviously they can be pretty selective in their candidates.
Though signing up for the military after med school acceptance also means you have no choice of specialization—if the military decides it needs more orthopedists, that’s what you go into, even if you had the skills for and wanted to do neurology.
(Of course, if somebody else is paying the bills, naturally enough they get an outsized say in what you do.)
@dfbdfb I think there is some wiggle room for students to express a preference, but ultimately you are right. My daughter has considered the idea, not as a way to pay for medical school but because she thinks she would really love to serve. I think thats the best way to go into it. Of course that decision is many years from now so we’ll see.
I dated a guy in college who had signed up for the navy to pay for med school. He ended up working as an anesthesiologist, at Bethesda Naval on the president’s team of physicians, before retiring to private practice. It was a very good deal for him.
My DS16 received a letter from USMA his junior year, actually 3 and my husband and I also received one to encourage him to consider applying . We all knew that it was not a good fit for him and that the likelihood of acceptance was slim. The stipend was also attractive, but we were surprised to find out that a portion of that went to uniforms. It is a huge commitment , but a great opportunity for the right student.
https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/ACT-SAT-Concordance-Tables.pdf
New concordance table our for SAT/ACT. This is the one that AOs will be using for our kids. Quite different than the original.
this makes me pretty happy since my kid is an SAT taking one and did not want to take the ACT. Might open doors for more merit aide.
@sdl0625 It really will be interesting to see if schools with rigid stat requirements adjust their merit aid cuttoffs
University of Alabama’s current policy
If they adjust for the new concordance, the SAT threshold should be lowered.
^I think they have to, and it’s about time. I feel bad for all those class of 2021/22 who missed out on merit aid. (But, if the schools can’t afford it, perhaps they’ll reduce the amounts.)
@gallentjill I think they will. That’s he whole point of a concordance table. The first one was based off of 5000 kids’ PSAT scores. This one is based on 600,000 real SAT takers. That being said, if we were looking at automatic merit schools, I would be calling them today. I think those financial aid offices are going to be flooded with calls.
Only a 1600 was a 36 on the old chart yet a 35.5 was rounded to a 36 for ACT scorers. Now, a 1570 is concorded to a 36. A score of 1570 usually means two or three wrong on the whole test and that makes more sense. That drop in ranges was seen down the chart.
@homerdog It certainly does make more sense and comports with what we have been seeing in our school. But I’m not going to show this table to my daughter because it will depress her. 
@evergreen5 I doubt that there that many more 1570s verses 1600s so Alabama wouldn’t have to come up with more money. You and I have been hearing over and over on the other thread that we all know a good number of kids with 36s but we have yet to meet one with a 1600.
@homerdog There are more levels of OOS scholarships at Bama than that. https://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out-of-state.php But, it depends on how the levels are adjusted, whether the ACT required score goes up for each level or the SAT required score goes down.
@evergreen5 now this part will be hard for some families. I’m guessing most schools are not going to turn on a dime and set up new cut offs in the next few weeks for scholarships. Even if they change them for the class of 2019, who knows when families will get that new info so they can plan where to apply.
@homerdog Thanks so much! You are on top of it. I’ll have to keep an eye on this as it may impact two of our schools and would make a significant difference.