We have a white board. D used it during some essay writing sessions. Would jot down a word bank, phrases, anecdotes etc. that could work for the prompt.
For keeping track of deadlines, we use excel spreadsheets and then my D says the common app has deadlines in there too.
@wisteria100 I definitely have an excel spreadsheet. I like it. S19 hasnāt looked at it in a while. I just like the feeling of putting check marks in the boxes.Transcripts sent - x! School report sent - x! Essay completed - x! Love it.
@parent2one Hmm thatās interesting. Estimates, eh? Good to know. I think Iāll feel better once I get a block of time to sit down with it and check it all out so I know what Iām up against.
@homerdog Oh I hear you on lack of uniformity in arts supplements/Slideroom portfolios. Why canāt this just be a standard thing, like the CA itself? D19ās requirements for vocal music run the gamut from no guidelines at all to 3-5 minutes with no further specifications to a jaw-dropping 10-20 minutes with very specific, limited selections (which thankfully correspond to D19ās preferred genres, but stillā¦). Iāve got to outsource something so this oneās going to the prosā¦D and her voice teacher are making all the song selections and Iām hiring a videographer to produce the videos. May be overkill for one small-ish piece of the applications pie, but itās helping with my sanity to outsource the management of this one to the teacher and the videographer.
I think Iām going to get the whiteboard. Iām a very visual person myself so Iām convinced everyone else needs to SEE the workload for it to get done. Somethingās gotta giveā¦
@parent2one We need a new roof too! And several other upgrades before selling. We live in a pretty hot housing area, so those square tiles are not going to cut it in our bathrooms! Thanks for the tip about deducting from profit.
@SDCounty3Mom Iām curious about the interviews. Itās not something on our radar. Are these private schools? Are they with alum or adcoms?
Questions about perceived ārobustnessā of your kids schools. DD has great gradesāone B+ in 2nd year math, and about a 60/40 breakdown between A+ and Aās. These are in mostly AP/IB l classes. Even with these grades, she ranks 44/370. She has chosen to take Engineering and Band classes, so Iām guessing that her lower rank is bc her classmates have more APs than she does.This makes me wonder if our school gives out high grades too easily, and universities see thisā¦ Iām always mystified when I see kidsā stats in these threads with lower GPAs and they are ranked 1-10% in their class.
Iām just curious to see what your kidsā gpas and ranks are. Anyone here have class ranks not consecutive but by gpa (eg 4.0 is 1, 3.99 2, no matter how many kids have these gpas)?
@ilovebillyjoel S19 (1540 SAT and NMSF, 5s on his APs so far BC Calc, APUSH, and AP Lang) has a 3.84/4.0 unweighted GPA. Heās received six Bs. Heās taken almost entirely honors and AP classes, though, and will have the most rigorous checked on his transcript. He will have taken up to the AP level in all five core subjects including foreign language. The school has some kids who have gotten all As but maybe only 2 or 3 who have done it with S19ās classes. Weāve got 750 kids in the grade. He will be in top five percent (we donāt rank) with that GPA. Pretty sure our school does not have grade inflation. In most of his classes, half of the kids get Bs.
I think colleges look at the student within their school. They look at rank or percentage and at their rigor. Inpossible to compare school to school.
@ilovebillyjoel At our high school, an A+ is a rare occurrence. There definitely wouldnāt be kids achieving 60% A+ grades. Nothing even remotely close to that.
Colleges can assess your school through the school profile and would make their determination about grade inflation/deflation from that.
I have heard anecdotes from families at different schools, saying that when an admissions person at a college heard what high school they attended, they said something to the effect of , we know an A from xxx school means an A. So from that I would deduce that colleges are making clear distinctions between high schools.
I donāt even think we have an A+! How on earth could someone get every single point correct on all tests and projects? Even the brightest of the bright here (who end up at Ivies and the like) would max out at a 95 percent or so in any given class. Tests arenāt generally the kind of tests where a student is expected to get all of the answers correct.
@homerdog Some schools have lots of extra credit, bonus points on tests, policies where you can throw out or minimize your lowest text/quiz score of the semester, generous curves etc. Our school has none of that.
Are you guys talking A+ after the weight? That wouldnāt shock me, but perhaps we are inflated.
@homerdog @ilovebillyjoel Does your transcript show grades by semester or just for full year?
@peachActuary73 Itās technically possible to get an UW A+, but it is Very difficult to acheive and doesnāt happen much. And we weight very lightly. Like getting an A- in honors is a hit to the gpa vs getting an A in standard, meanwhile the honors class is much more difficult.
@SDCounty3Mom - We havenāt used a white board, but I did make a document where I copied and pasted all S19ās supplemental essay prompts. It went on for many pages. :(( It was helpful for him to see it all there in one place and heās finally making progress on them. I also made a separate document with all the deadlines and I put them in order (application deadlines as well as scholarships) so he could just work his way down the list. Iām glad we donāt have to do arts supplements (did those for my D) and I donāt think there will be many interviews. This is a lot! And I havenāt even thought about starting the Fafsa and CSS yet.
@ilovebillyjoel We are still waiting on DDā19ās senior class rank.
Rank is based on the weighted GPA. My oldest graduated in 2013. Then all the kids in the top 10 were 1/100 of a point apart. DDā13 was #8. Our school has the IB program which is given equal weight to AP classes. Every year the IB kids take more and more APs to get a higher GPA and compete for valedictorian. My son (non IB) graduated in 2016 at #25. At a neighboring high school he would have been in the top 10.
DDā19ās weighted GPA is about .1 lower then DSās was.
Graduating class is usually between 400-500.
Iām glad that our schools donāt rank. They do recognize two kids at the end of senior year who are probably the actual valedictorian and salutatorian, but they donāt speak at graduation or get those distinctions. Everyone who graduates with a weighted GPA over 4.0 gets a cord and some recognition in the graduation program - itās usually around 20% of the class of 500-550. S19 should just make it (heās currently .006 short).
Our school doesnāt rank and wonāt even release decile information to colleges. They most they will do is indicate whether the students took a rigorous curriculum. Its a pretty high acheiving district and the kids are all within 100ths of points of each other at the top. They donāt want the kids comparing themselves to each other that way or playing games with course selection. Iām very pleased.
@wisteria100 extra credit not a thing. Retaking tests not a thing. Curves are a thing in some AP science classes like they would be in college. Otherwise, everyone would have a C or lower. Lol.
Grades are reported every semester. So there will be six semesters of grades reported on S19ās report card through junior year. Honors and AP are weighted as a 5 for an A. Regular classes would be a 4. So weighting is heavy. Iāve been told that many colleges strip out the high school weighting, take the unweighted GPA, and then apply their own score for rigor.
@peachActuary73 Hah, straight A+ before weight, although +/- donāt factor in weights.
Ok, I think our school definitely inflates grades. Currently the top 4 duking it out for valedictorian have A+ straight across their transcripts.
Our school only does whole grades, no pluses or minuses. Kiddo is 5/399. We know the top 4 and theyāre not getting displaced. We only do whole grades, no + or -. We never gamed the AP game and his schedule worked out so that he could only take honors for a couple of courses this year that should have been AP, so I suspect his current rank is the one that will stay.
I could wish that he put the same effort into learning to drive as he does in his schoolwork. On Saturday we got a third car - my father finally admitted that he shouldnāt be driving so we took his car off of his hands. Kiddo finished the driving class with 100% but heās still terrified behind the wheel. I pried him out for driving practice in the ānewā car yesterday and he still canāt handle anything but an empty parking lot without panic attacks. Iām torn between wanting to push him harder and not wanting to add yet more stress at a stressful time.
Anyone else having trouble with the fafsa website? It just says loadingā¦
In case others are frustrated with the FAFSA site being down since midnight, use the app. Youāll get in immediately and be able to start the application. @4MyKidz