@parent2one Congrats to your son! It is always great to see it in writing . DS16 already had provisonal acceptance to one school in his Jr year and had been recognized as a " scholar" at two of his schools, but it’s not the same as seeing it as an official acceptance.
@MAandMEmom thanks for posting about the Act maintenance. I had just talked to S19 about ordering scores for his top 2 choices to show serious interest.
This might seem like a silly question but for those parents who seem to know the ins and outs of the Common App- are you logging in with your kids credentials to figure things out? I would liked to explore it more to do my mom “over-think” thing but I do not want to use my D19’s credentials. I don’t want to accidentally mess anything up plus it really is her account so I don’t want to overstep. Don’t get me wrong - I have sat with her this month when she’s working on it and she usually likes to bounce ideas off me - so I’ve seen it and I know we’ll work on it together again soon - she’s just too busy right now with her job wrapping up and other various school obligations - I’m just eager to keep exploring app.
@Stuffedquahog I just have an account with my name and email so I can play around. It is pretty funny, though, because now I’m getting emails and snail mail with my name on it. I just chose S19’s schools and put them on my dashboard. I won’t enter anything on my account since I’m not sure how much schools can see before that send button is hit. I understand they CAN see if a student puts the name of the school on their dashboard
No problem @drewsmom17!
@Stuffedquahog There is an option to create the account as a test account. Select the Parent option.
S must have been in one of the test centers with a closer to 9 start time since he got out just after noon and took three subject tests. He quickly headed to his water polo tournament where he and has team had some great games. Long day and back at it tomorrow morning! He didn’t really study for U.S. History but just took it to see what would happen, especially since I was worried about the Spanish. Surprisingly he found the history test the easiest and said he knew “everything” :). I guess that IB History class did prepare him well. He also felt Spanish went really well and Lit was good but a bit tricky and more subjective than the others. We’ll see! Hopefully two of the three will be good since this is his only shot.
Congrats @parent2one! That’s wonderful news!
@peachActuary73 Thanks!
@homerdog Thanks! Just saw your response too.
We are moving S16 back into Bentley today - his junior year. Wow - the college years seriously fly by fast!
Congrats @parent2one! It must be a relief to have that acceptance taken care of!
We go back to school tomorrow, so the usual squandering of time mixed with remembering we have to do something is going on here. I feel like I’m almost done with this parenting of kids thing. Even though my youngest D22 is just starting HS tomorrow. In less than four years I’ll be an empty-nester. Crazy!
I’ve been keeping a document of all the supplemental essay prompts for S’s possible schools. I knew that we would have to check after August 1st to confirm that I had listed them correctly and I’ve been surprised to see how many of them did change after August 1st and even later (as a few schools on the Common App said their questions weren’t ready on Aug. 1st). I checked back to an e-mail response from admissions for one of S’s reach schools that was from mid-July saying “our essay prompts can be found on our website” and gave a link to the page. The person (likely a student in the office) never said oh but our prompts will be changing in a few weeks. Good thing S19 is not on the ball with essay writing and is still working on revisions to his main essay!
Okay, talk me down. Until this summer, I had not concerned myself at all with the SAT since I took them myself 30 years ago. And I was not a fan of it back then. Does every SAT sitting result in some sort of uproar? Or just the two sittings my kid attended? We have the June curve thing and now the August test that was used in Asia less than a year ago which was shared online.
Given the uproar about the June test, you would think that the CB would make sure that the August one would be without drama.
I recall reading somewhere that College Board management had changed and perhaps that is the reason for the shoddy performance as of late.
@InfiniteWaves I think the College Board controversies have become more frequent since David Coleman took over.
Wow, hadn’t heard about that. My kid just took the subject tests this weekend but other than that, he has only done the ACT and I’m glad about that. Sorry that is happening. There are so many things to deal with and stress over related to the application process. It would be nice to feel like the testing companies are doing what they are supposed to, especially given how much money they are charging for every little thing.
The amount of money the test companies make pales in comparison to the amount of money in the test prep industry. With that sort of disparity it’s tough to keep corruption at bay.
I agree that it is tough to keep all corruption at bay. That being said, I don’t think it is too much to expect that the testing companies administer an original standardized test at each sitting. The practice of recycling tests needs to end, but I am not holding my breathe.
The test prep industry is a market response to the importance of test scores in admissions. It seems to me that the very tightness of the reported score ranges speaks for itself. At the top end, questions can be worth 10 pts apiece (or sometimes more, as in the case of June), and it seems not unusual for a reported middle 50 composite range to be around 100 pts, a difference of a mere 10 questions.
Wow, I hadn’t heard about the issues with the SAT of late. I agree with @shuttlebus that it is not at all too much to expect them to use an original test for each sitting, especially in these days of easy internet sharing of anything that leaks.
It’s my impression that most schools are putting less emphasis on test scores today than 10 years ago, but given that there are still schools that put a high emphasis on scores for admissions and/or scholarship funds, I do think the prep industry is inevitable. But I’d have thought it might be toning down a bit.
As someone who writes exams as part of my job, this is certainly correct (pace a few repeated bits for norming purposes that might not factor into the overall score), but devilishly difficult to put into practice.
It turns out that it’s actually quite easy (with practice and training) to write a good exam, but it’s painfully difficult to write several good exams that cover the same topics and issues. Thus, reuse.