Our seniors have the same schedule as everyone else and do finals with everyone else. No AP classes but most take some AP exams for the possibility of credit in college. S19 did AP Spanish yesterday. He did not study so does not have high hopes for a 4 or 5 (only score that will get him placed out of Spanish I). His college requires 1 year of foreign language so getting a 4 or 5 would get him out of a quarter or two. He takes the physics exam next week and his physics teacher has been prepping them for that all semester. He did the Calc AB and BC exams in previous years for placement purposes.
Prom is $65 for S19. S still needs to get a tux for that. Ca-ching. They have an all-night graduation party with lots of events. Cost is $350 (ack!!) but itās a lot of fun. The kids sign up for it without knowing the cost and can attend whether or not their parents pay. They donāt want kids to not go because of cost.
The last 2 weeks, the seniors do an 2-week internship that they set up earlier in the year. S is worried and shy about his, but itāll be a great networking opportunity for him and I am hopeful that it will set him up for an internship next summer or in winter.
@momzilla2D sorry to hear that your daughter had a rough go of things this year. Our daughter did as well. The year started rocky and went downhill from there, but sheās been able to recover pretty successfully. Sheās ready for it all to be over and get on with the next phase of life.
@Trixy34 , same, in fact one of D19ās AP classes has a big project due last week of school thatās worth a chunk of their final gradeā¦ I guess to keep them focused and working.
Our Prom is long past now ā a distant memory of life before college selection was over.
Most sports end this week, teams are getting eliminated from playoffs every day. My daughterās LAX team fell out last night.
Seniors are still learning new material ā even in AP classes. AP Econ test is next week and her Econ class is still doing new things. Finals for non-AP classes are still a few weeks away (first week in June). For AP classes things will settle down after the test, but even AP classes still have final exams/projects due.
I guess itās time to drop off CC now. We have a year or so of no college application thinking until we have to start talking to our now-Freshman about it! Iām grateful for that!
S19 has 6 AP exams. I have no idea how he is doing on them. Today he went to the pool with friends after his morning AP exam, so heās clearly not worried about the remaining 4. Heās basically done. No exams outside of the remaining AP exams. Grad parties start this weekend. He has to go to school 1-2 days next week and thatās it.
Itās weird because he is hanging out with friends every day and D20 is studying like crazy for her AP exams. It really feels like they are in two very different places in life even though they are both still in HS.
@bjscheel I love that your school gives free prom tickets to volunteers! Iām going to mull this over for my volunteer groups I am on, especially the ones (band) that require SO MUCH help and we are always asking, and itās always the same 20 parents.
Anywayā¦I would love to get some opinions on graduation gifts. Not what to get, but if and who to get them for. Are you parents getting grad gifts for your kidsā friends? Where are you drawing the line (especially in a small community like mine where everyone goes to everyoneās party?) My sonās friend group changed in high school, so I donāt have close, long standing connections with any of his current friends. Would love to know how others decide this.
My D decided not to take any of the AP exams this year (she has 2 APs this year). They cannot be used for credit at the college, and the only intro courses that she wanted to skip were covered by last yearās APs. Even though she does well on standardized tests, she hates them with a passion, and saw no reason to subject herself to any more than she absolutely needs to.
Finals are before the AP exams, so that, once sheās done the exams, she is left twiddling her thumbs in class.
The date fell through, so she will be going to prom with a friend. Sheās absolutely OK with that. She looks absolutely stunning in her prom dress, so I expect that some boys and girls will be having regrets that eveningā¦
Wowāthis board is still quite busy! Nice to see so many hanging around after decision day
We are in the middle of AP tests here as well. My D elected to take 4 this yearāand after today will only have one left. AP classes here generally do their finals ahead of the AP test, with some sort of final project to take up the last two weeks (our last day of classes is 5/24). Non-AP classes (my D has 2 honors level ones) have their finals the last week of May. So at this point it looks like my D is all done as of 5/29.
In terms of AP tests, here the kids are required to take them in order to have the AP designation on their transcript. If they donāt sit for the test, the transcript is changed to make the class an honors level one. This is in direct response to a student from a couple years back who took 6 APs senior year and then did not sit for any of the exams (as she was going to a service academy where the credits would not be accepted). I can see both sides of this issueābut generally think that the kids should sit for the tests, provided that the cost is not a limiting factor.
Prom for us (like @RightCoaster) is a junior event. However as my D dating a junior, they will be going together again this year. Our prom is next weekend (5/18) at a restored theater in a nearby city. Its such a beautiful venue and the pictures are always breathtaking (my DS16 had his prom there as well). Prom tickets are $80 each, and the parents do put on an after prom party till 3:30am back at the school which is free.
We also have a senior banquet which is $25 (reduced from fundraising) and semi formal at a local club (this is only for seniors though so Dās boyfriend can not attend), a senior day to an amusement park ($15 tickets reduced from fundraising), a senior awards night (which is by invite only), a senior breakfast, and a senior graduation rehearsal morning. Its a really fun week for the kidsācapped by graduation on June 9. One month to goāI can hardly believe it!
@TS0104 Weāre also a small community (52 in the class) and weāve known most of the kids through K-12. DD is going to a few dozen receptions so I bought about 30 cards at Dollar Tree. I donāt feel like she needs to put money in the cards, nor buy a gift for even her closer friends. It would be expensive and the seniors donāt feel like they need to just trade money around. For about 8 friends, she ordered a picture of her with that friend, printed Polaroid-style, on which she is going to write a memory and enclose in their card.
Now, DH and I are planning on going to approximately 10 and Iām thinking we should put money in those cards. Weāre pretty close with them but also I feel like if itās adults going to receptions they should give something. Sort of a cover your plate mentality even though thatās not a thing here for weddings or anything. Weāll probably do $10-$20, depending.
Heās DONE!!!
Sās final grades are in, AP tests were finished yesterday, and his graduation ceremony was the evening before. He ended up graduating w/ Highest Honors which we didnāt even know was a āthingā so we were very surprised and super proud for him that he received that recognition at graduation.
Our house sold in 9 hours and we are just a few weeks away from closing. Onward to Chapel Hill and Gambier, Ohio!!
Congrats @ChaosParent23!! D just has a few more tests to go. She went in for a one hour test this morning and is now home waiting for her next one that doesnāt start until noon (AP Psych I think.) She got lucky yesterday. She was supposed to take the final for AP Stats because she had missed too many classes. She went in right after the AP English exam to ask if she could just take it early so she could go home and the teacher let her just sit in on an Honors Algebra 2 class and counted just sitting there as her final.
Glad you guys asked about presents for friends because I am trying to figure that out too. Let me know if you have any ideas of things for us as parents to get for her 3 closest friends. I was thinking of monogramed towels for school but another mom took that idea already. I like a simple silver frame with the graduation date engraved but D thought the girls might not like it. I have one that was given to me back in middle school and I still sue it so I amy still go that way.
We are still in the middle of our house renovation. Kitchen is now complete ripped out so we have boxes in every possible empty space in the house as well as having no sink, stove or oven. The kids want to kill me for having all of this done during exams - oops! I didnāt really plan it this way, itās just when everything fell into place.
No prom at D19ās international school here in Geneva, but thereās a big and apparently very fancy graduation party on June 22 (graduation is June 21) at a five-star hotel on the lakefront. A Graduation Committee spends all school year holding various events to raise money for the party, which costs $40,000. Not sure if thereās a per-ticket cost on top of the fundraising. A GradCo update email some months ago cited a range of contributions from $100 to $5,000 as illustrating that no donation is too small (making the unspoken point that anything under $100 is, in fact, too small).
D19 has her IB exams starting next week. Classes ended April 12, with all of the remaining time since spent on ārevision,ā or studying. Thereās essentially no way her college acceptance will be affected if she scores below her projections, but sheās been doing a pretty good job of pacing herself in studying and Iām sure sheāll do well. Sheās taking a trip to London to see friends (we used to live there) in mid-June after exams are over. S22, meanwhile, is in classes until right before graduation day and then has a four-day work experience the next week, before a final half-day at school on June 28. Weāre wheels-up for Boston the next day, bringing our expat years to a close.
If youāre thinking of cash around $20, itās fun to give the amount of the graduation year. A check for $20.19. I got a stash of graduation cards from Current.
Cute, $20.19. I actually think one person did that for my DD in 2017, now that you mention it!
I was thinking too, that any party that we the parents are going to, we should probably bring a gift. Although these arenāt āreceptionsā, they are yard parties, drop in and out, they will all have food.
Other gift ideas I have heard of and liked are cash of course, one friend of mine is ordering collegiate Tervis tumblers, another one is personalized laundry bags/hampers.
I may do this, itās a bedside organizer that I think would come in handy, but I would need to figure out if people can make returns to Amazon and get a credit?
I was just about to pose a grad gift etiquette question in the Cafe, but since gifts are being mentioned here, Iāll ask here.
If your kid is invited to a big graduation party by a classmate, but you are not invited and are not close to the classmate, is it expected for your kid to bring a gift? For example, S19 was invited to a grad party next week. Itās not a good friend of S19, but they are friendly as theyāve gone to school together for 12 years. Theyāve just not ever hung out in same social circle. However, Dh and I do know the parents (the mom and I are part of a larger social circle together). Dh and I were not invited. If this was one of S19ās good friends, Iād probably send a gift regardless of whether we were invited/going, however, I think itās just a party where the majority of the class, which is a relatively small private school, was invited. I was not planning to have S19 bring a gift but is that tacky?
We have been invited to a couple of other parties, along with S19, and I do plan to give a cash gift at those, but just wondering about the ākidā parties.
@4kids4us There are so many grad parties around here with such a big class. It just seems odd for S19 to keep bringing gifts for all of the kids. Last year, he was invited to a few grad parties and we decided on a big jar full of candy that matched the colors of the studentās college. At least that way he doesnāt come empty handed. I bought a bunch of big mason jars and S19 will run into the local candy store and find candy to fill one up each time. We cannot be spending a lot on each of these kids! Let their families give them cash.
@homerdog The candy is a cute idea. @TS0104 I already bought the girls the Tervis cups for their birthdays - I should have planned ahead and saved those! I mentioned the water bottles to D but she says she doesnāt think they would want plastic water bottles. Also thought about laundry bag, do kids still use those or do they use baskets? Iām guessing bags because they donāt have enough space for baskets but not sure.
@momtogkc Iām pretty sure D17 has a collapsible laundry basket - either a plastic one or those kind that are mesh material. I donāt recall which, but I know for sure she doesnāt use a laundry bag. S19 had his prom last Friday. After the prom, which is at a nice hotel walking distance to their school, the kids walk back up to school for an After Prom party. The kids change out of their fancy clothes into casual stuff for the after party. The prom committee gave out laundry bags with their name and school on them for them to put all their tuxes/dresses/etc in so they could keep all of their belongings together. The bag is really nice - S19 will take it to school with him for sure.
I do think around here the consensus is that the kids donāt really give each other gifts. In such a small and close school, it would get ridiculous and the same $20 would just be passing around and around and around!
Most parties we/son19 have been invited to stateā Please no giftsā. I like this. Most of the kids we know donāt need us to give them $$. I know I wouldnāt feel comfortable if friends of ours gave son19 $20, $50, $100 whatever. He doesnāt need it.
That said I like the idea of bringing some treats, or bringing a book or something like a Starbucks gift card. Something small. I have gone to parties and shown up with an instant camera and film and told the kids to take pictures with their friends. They all loved that. In fact we are giving son19 an instant camera for a gift so he can take it around to various parties and to college. Itās a fun way to meet and interact with people.
