@elena13 - If your son hasn’t done study abroad or is not a native Spanish speaker, the Spanish SATII is not recommended. My son took it (without doing any research) and was in the 500s. Just for reference, he has taken Spanish since 8th grade, and since I am fluent, he and I sometimes communicate at home in Spanish.
We have a fee waiver from College of Wooster. Wondering if anyone here has visited or is familiar with the school. My ex husband’s uncle was a beloved professor there, so I have good feelings about it. Was thinking it could possible be a good safety.
Thanks @Trixy34. I’m definitely worried after reading similar comments but S tends to be a bit stubborn. He’s in higher level IB Spanish and it has typically been one of his best subjects but I don’t have a good feeling. He likes to prove me wrong so we’ll see.
@elena13 - yeah, I had no idea DS19 had signed up for Spanish and Lit without doing research on the tests. He did fine in Lit, but not really for tippy top schools. He didn’t realize that there would be poetry analysis on the test. :-S With the Spanish, my ex husband wanted him to take practice exams to see if his 500-something score was an anomaly before they decided what to do about the low score - my position was that the two of them were just out of their minds - they made a mistake picking that test, it won’t be held against him, and let’s move on. I mean, the kid is pretty good in Spanish, but he’s nowhere close to fluency. Had anyone asked my input, I would have told him not to take it. But I’m just mom - what do I know? 8-}
Last first day of school for S19 today. There might be a bit of dust in my eye…
@Trixy34 We went to the College of Wooster for an open house earlier this year. It’s a lovely, well-laid-out campus which gives the feel of a bigger school than it really is. They claim to be America’s premier college for mentored undergraduate research, and all students are required to complete a significant piece of original research, scholarship, or creative expression. Bagpipes are part of the marching band. It’s not close to a city, but Wooster has a nice downtown. It stayed on D19’s list until she learned the theatre department does not produce musicals.
S19 into his second week of school and it’s already a boat load of work. Multivariable is moving fast and AP Physics assigned ONE problem last night that the teachers said would take 45 minutes to complete. Yep. That’s how long it took. Good thing he got the right answer after all of that.
Philosophy Honors is also kicking his butt into gear with a 40-page reading assignment and questions due tomorrow. He read me two paragraphs of the reading and we just started laughing. Neither of us could wrap our brains around it. Long after we all went to bed, he stayed up reading it. He told me in the morning that he had to read each paragraph twice in order to get a grip on it. He said his XC coach will kill him if he knew he only got six hours of sleep last night. That dude likes to preach every day that the kids need eight hours for their muscles to recover. I don’t know the last time he checked his senior’s schedules, though, since the top ten runners are also strong students and have difficult class loads. S19 was happy as a clam this morning and not as tired as I expected. He was glad he got through the Philosophy and thinks he will be able to get to bed at a better time tonight.
I’m already thinking that missing any school for a college trip this fall will be impossible. The only trip I have scheduled is an overnight on Sunday/Monday of Columbus Day weekend so he won’t miss school.
The essay writing has slowed to a halt. He is so glad he got most done in the summer. He’s been working on one essay for a couple of weeks but hasn’t had time to finish it. This weekend he’s in charge of the volunteers for a 3-on-3 basketball tournament and he has his third college interview on Sunday with an admissions rep who is here this weekend meeting kids. Long 13 mile run scheduled with the team this weekend as well, but running is going well and he’s pumped for the first meet on Tuesday. (Me not so much. It’s supposed to be 90 degrees and watching those kids run in the heat bums me out.)
Busy busy but all good so far!
That sounds pretty brutal @homerdog. My S19 never gets more than 6 hours of sleep on a school night, but that’s because he’s a night owl - if he’s up until 12:30 doing homework, that usually means he started it at 11 pm.
S19 just got his schedule and is busy comparing with all of his friends. He’ll probably switch something around but keep his 4 “lite” APs (Calc AB, Gov, Music Theory and Comp. Sci. Principles). I have to say that his decision to be a music major took a lot of the pressure off. He can’t find a science class he’s happy with and continues to be annoyed that AP Physics 2 isn’t offered this year. He’s definitely not taking AP Physics C, Chem, Bio or Enviro., which leaves him with several non-weighted science options.
Yesterday, I caught him sitting in the general vicinity of the tiny college essay book that I bought for him! This is progress (not sure he opened it).
@eh1234 yeah. Par for the course here is 4-5 hours of homework. One hour per AP or honors class per night. Not a lot of downtime after he gets home from practice. It’s dinner and right to homework. But it’s like that for all of his friends, too, so it’s all he knows.
We met with the new college counselor this week. It was a funny but not terrible helpful meeting, same as with the old counselor. We knew there was a lady a school who helps with the essay but also learned there is someone who just helps with the resume/ EDC section of the application. I did get a few questions answered (who writes counselor rec letters, how to order transcripts…) but same as last year some answers were definitely wrong.
For example, last year the counselor told me not to worry about us not having Naviance, that she had been there over 15 years and she knew all of that data. I asked the new CC if she could tell me approximately how many kids in the last few years had applied to schools we care considering and how many kids were accepted and with what general stats. She said she did not have that information but I could find a lot of informations on the Great Schools website - obviously that information is not on there. I heard the old CC might be doing private counseling now so maybe I can find her information and see if she could be of any help.
Next we talked about in state schools, I told her D was hoping to go out of state but that we would be applying to a few in state as well. She was worried that D’s SAT score might not be high enough for UF. I had to point out (she had all of D’s scores right on her screen) that D had a higher SAT score and also remind her that we were going to use her ACT score since it was better than her SAT. She looked at a chart they have for all of the FL public schools and said FSU takes ACT but UF only takes SAT. I knew that had to be wrong but just let it go and checked when I got home - of course UF takes both!
Another friend met with her yesterday -this girl is super smart, very advanced in math and science, got a 35 on the ACT but has had a few Bs in higher level classes so her UW GPA is below a 4.0. The CC told her she would love to see her try to get her UW GPA up to a 4.0 by the end of the semester. My friend said, “Isn’t that mathematically impossible?” CC said she has seen people do it. What?! Also told her she would love to see her go up about 40 people in the class rank - the girls is already at 7% - she would have to go from something like place 60 to 20 in one semester? I guess the CC is hoping kids number 1-60 are all going to tank this semester? :))
I did like her though - she was outgoing and pretty positive. She is form Brooklyn but I noticed she had a Patriots cup in her office. At the end of the meeting I asked her why and she said she loves Tom Brady. I am a big Patriots fan and my screen saver is a picture form when I had a chance to meet him. I showed her and she went crazy. Originally she told us to get a meeting with our dean (who we had never met in the last 3 years) so we could ask him to wrote her counselor rec letter. After seeing my picture she said that she and our dean always tease each other about football because he is a big Broncos fan. She said give me your phone, we are going to meet the dean right now! So after all those years of only talking with him through email we finally met our dean face to face. And thanks to Tom Brady hopefully both the CC and the dean will remember us. 
First day is today. She is not thrilled. Her classes should be a lot less homework and stress than last year, so I’m looking forward to that. Just hoping the social situation is better than last year too but I’m guessing it will be more of the same. There are pros and cons to being in a very small school.
@momtogkc That ranking jump is hilarious. I think we found last year that those at the top are hunkering down and fighting hard.
We are in week 3 of school, and I think it’s been helpful for D to be around more of her friends and peer college talk. She mentioned getting ahead of our schedule over Labor Day weekend. She’s only doing one day of Dragon Con, so we’ll see.
Common App Dashboard: She has four definite publics, and two definite privates, all of which have EA or early scholarship deadlines. Then she has this long list of miscellaneous RD schools. So, the common app dashboard has about 12 schools. My best guess is that she’ll hit submit on maybe 2-3 of the remaining schools based on decreasing motivation and what we know from Tier 1 by Dec 17th. That’s a long time to be sitting on the dashboard, but oh well.
Virginia Tech has now suddenly become a thing. I really thought we had a closed set that could only decrease. But even though 2 got dropped, we picked up WPI and now maybe Virginia Tech. The idea of that 6 hour ride to visit Blacksburg is not appealing. @homerdog I think all of our fall days off are spoken for. I need to find out the school rules on senior absences.
Back to the sports grind today, basically no rest until mid- June. The schedules came out and son19 seems fine with everything he got. About another week until school gets underway and I think the kids are realizing summer is winding down, so they are trying to cram as much fun into their remaining time.
School starts Monday for my D17, so these last few days she in finishing her common app and supplemental essays. JUST KIDDING!!! She is currently surfing, and later her boyfriend is coming over and they are going to make brownies.
She’s just going to have to do her college applications while she has homework and her after school stuff after all, despite all my nagging – er, gentle suggestions.
Thanks @bettzke for the info.
Yes, the summer days are waning. We don’t go back until the day after Labor Day this year, but the trade-off seems to be less days off during the school year. I was looking at the school calendar last night and there really aren’t any four-day weekends this Fall, and we only get 3 days for Thanksgiving (usually we have the whole week off). Since we always travel to upstate NY for Thanksgiving, I was kind of counting on that time either for interviews, follow-up visits, visiting more schools, etc. Not sure what the plan is now. I’m kind of sweating things. I think S19 is starting to realize all the complexities of the college application process, and why his Dad and I have been pushing him a bit when he feels like he’s no further behind than his friends. So, that’s a relief. Meanwhile, I’m figuring I should just get him in the car and take him SOMEWHERE to tour this weekend. He would love to be doing something fun with his friends this weekend, but they are all taking the SAT. He’s pretty annoyed about that. But the trade-off really should be that he spent last Fall studying for SAT, got it done in one shot, now he should be looking at schools because he wasn’t last year - right? RIGHT? He’ll be visiting Boston schools Labor Day weekend with his Dad and his aunt and uncle (who are flying out from LA), so that’s something anyway.
I believe our school district does allow 5 days off for school visits, but the kid will be taking 5 AP classes this year. I really would like to get him to take a look at Case Western, and they really seem to place a lot of importance on the visit because of yield protection, but I don’t know when we’ll be able to fit that in. I need another week or two of summer!
Sigh. I log into CC, see there are 4 pages of posts, don’t have time to read, log out. Log into CC next day, see there are 8 pages of posts. [Repeat ad nauseam.]
So anyway, D19 is in her second week of school, and as best I can tell nothing too stressful yet. Her only AP is Government, and the only other AP she could have taken was Stats, which she chose to forgo so should could take Calc BC (with 4 other people). Frankly, I was most excited to find out her choir would be singing Toto’s “Africa” at their first concert.
She has been diligent about studying for the SAT this Saturday. I think she’s probably studied more than she did for last December (or for the PSAT), so I’m hopeful that it generates a non-trivial increase in her score. As her current score is fairly decent, it’s definitely her last test, though – no October or later test regardless of the score from this weekend.
She has done some work on the CA essay, and I’m guessing that she’ll turn her attention back to it after Saturday’s SAT. I’ve read it, and it’s… fine? We checked out Rachel Toor’s “Write Your Way In” from the library, and, having read it myself, I’m hopeful she’ll read it, too and consider its points accordingly. (We’re not going to share the essay with outside readers, so the family review is as good – or bad – as it’s going to get.) She’s got her recommenders lined up; not sure yet if the GC has sent the seniors the questionnaire yet. No work on the supplemental essays, though.
I think we only received one or at most two fee waivers, both at schools D19’s not interested in. But only 4 of her 8 schools have an application fee, and a fifth will waive it with an early submission. I’ve also noticed a number of schools – 5 or 6? – permit self-reporting of SAT scores, etc. All in all, the cost of applying will end up being a lot less than I’d expected.
Oh, and she got her drivers’ license last Monday before school started and has not driven by herself once since then. Probably need to push her to do that just to get used to it.
Related to my previous post – do any of you see any reason to send official score reports to schools that only require official score reports once the student decides to accept an offer of admission? I can’t think of a good reason, but just want to make sure I’m not missing something stupid.
@BorgityBorg we sent score reports to schools that don’t require them. S19 had two of those. One of the schools emailed him and said thank you for sending the score and that they see a high correlation between people who send the report and those who actually end up sending an app. That school tracks demonstrated interest so I think it was a good move. I had heard anecdotally that it is a good move to send score reports to show interest. It’s a school we will not be able to visit unless he’s accepted.
@homerdog – that’s interesting. We know where D19’s applying, so I’m not sure that helps the school (because it’d be a 1:1 correlation for us), but the demonstrated interest component is a different issue. Part of me thinks, “we’ve visited every school (save one, a low-match/high safety) from out-of-state, isn’t that enough to demonstrate interest?”
So much opaqueness!!!
@BorgityBorg I can’t think of a good reason other than showing interest, which it sounds like you already did.
I sort of blithely sent out a bunch of score reports before looking into individual school requirements. (S19 also self-reported all of his grades and scores in the Common and Coalition app before it rolled over on August 1 - he hasn’t looked at it since then and I really have no idea if any of his schools look at self-reported grades or scores). For me, it was worth the $13/per to feel like something in the college application process had been “accomplished.” So far, out of 8 score reports sent, S received a single - “Hey, you sent us a score report” email.
Goal for this week is to get S to actually add something to the “Schools I’m applying to” tab in Naviance and figure out which schools need teacher recommendations, and how (and when). Some of his schools only require them for the music application, which can’t be submitted until after the regular application goes in which can’t be done until he produces an essay. S19 seems to think he just asks two people for a letter and the rest magically takes care of itself.