@cshell2
I just bought two tickets, one from coast to coast, another an hour’s flight, the shorter flight is almost twice as expensive as the cross country one’s. Does not make sense to me at all. Neither is from discounted airlines.
@am9799 or anyone else, does winning a book award from a college that you are not applying mean anything? DS has a book award from a school that he is not applying.
@bgbg4us
I think the essays could be reviewed and critiqued by others, but the ideas, content, and changes should all come from the students. But, I bet lots of people don’t follow this and most of the time, AOs won’t be able to tell the difference.
@makemesmart I doubt book awards count for anything in admissions. I mean good to have them but I do not see moving the needle one way or another. My kid listed some of the “school level” academic awards in the honors section of the common app. I can see a student with lots of awards from competitions etc not to list them at all.
Congratulations to everyone who got an admit already.
DS20 is working on commonapp essay - sloooow progress 
- but its ok, he is also doing a research internship which is taking much more time than expected. He is looking into the common app activities and honors sections - one question is how to distinguish these two categories. If one of the honors is related to an activity - entering them in both sections does not seem appropriate (say he is in science club and through that he participated in an academic competition and won state level prize - is it better to add this info as an honor/award or as an activity?) In DS20’s case the highest state level individual honors are related to a school club - he is thinking of listing his individual awards as honors and team participation as an activity. Any thoughts on this?
@chb088 - it may differ from school to school but in DS20’s school Stats is an easy class (to do well). Heard the same about AP test as well. Heard that most STEM oriented majors don’t accept the AP credit and students may have to repeat it in college - in our school students take it to boost GPA (and also since its a STEM-elective, students with no other or fewer science/math AP’s prefer to take this)
@hs2020dad when my older kids applied, any individual school/state/national awards were put in the awards section. If they were for a club, the activity section only talked about what they did in the club. No repeat info.
Best of luck!
Now that kids are working on their Common Apps, will those to whom it applies list their Nat’l Merit Commended and Semifinalist designations as a ‘national’ or ‘state’ award? After all, these are based on state cutoffs. My D17 listed hers as State-level, as directed.
How about National Honor Society? Is it just an Activity? At my D20’s school I would say it barely qualifies as even an activity.
@bigmacbeth My D used one of the activity slots to consolidate participation/volunteering to a few high school clubs and that’s where National Honor Society ended up. One by one the involvement at those clubs is not significant but together she spends quiet a few hours a week especially if you add the mandatory meetings (plus required volunteering). I personally think is worth listing if there is still space in the app. They are considered “insignificant” but kids still put effort and work there. There is a value. Anyway, just my opinion and obviously it will depend on what else the student has done and has room for.
National Merit Commended and AP awards she ended up not listing though as she had a few academic awards that took up the five slots. However, she would if she had space.
I DO NOT want this to be political, so please keep political opinions off the soap box. But, I wanted to let my fellow 2020 parents know that on September 1st, the Chinese tariffs will take effect. This will increase the prices of many of the items we’ll be purchasing for our kids over the course of the year. If you can find some great sales these last few weeks of August, you might want to take advantage and go ahead and get those cute sunglasses, the desired mattress topper, and/or that up-to-date iPhone, just to name a few.
When do the NM cutoffs officially come out? I’m sure my D20 will be commended, but we’re a high cut-off state so doubt she’ll hit the cutoff for semi-finalist.
Is commended 212? DS apparently didn’t do well on the PSAT. It said he was in the 97th percentile, but his NMSC score was 192.
I would say that if your child joined and did nothing with it that it means nothing. But if your child was vice-president and oversaw 100 members volunteering for a community service project that raised thousands of dollars for an elementary school to purchase library books that it would mean more.
What I have heard from different schools is that they understand the limits of the application (character/word limits, number of activities/honors/community service) so aren’t going to ding you if you list something in a category that is iffy. It would be different if you listed NHS under “work experience” but listing it in honors vs activity vs community service is all okay. Just don’t list it in more than one category.
Our school has honor societies in different subject areas so we combine all of them into one listing. We also combine awards won in the same activity over multiple years into one category. If you don’t have enough awards, you can separate them into different listings and I don’t think a college will care. Regarding listing an award under award vs activity, it could go either way. The question is, do you want to use your character limit to describe the award or the activity?
Finally, Commended was released in the Spring. It is 212 nationwide. From the Compass Prep blog,
From the NMSQT site:
and
@bigmacbeth where did you find the direction to list NM as a State award?
Has anyone heard about the AP awards going away next year? Skieurope posted in another thread that Trevor Packer announced it.
On July 1, he tweeted
Thanks @lkg4answers - I hadn’t seen an official announcement on 212 and it still isn’t on the National Merit website. I just see that they will notify students of commended or semi-finalist in September. She’s quite a bit above that, so should be fine.
I think it was @janiemiranda who called about it. She posted about it here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/2113859-class-of-2020-national-merit-discussion.html#latest
She wrote
Our school announced it in the school newsletter in April so, even though it isn’t on the website, it must be public.
@lkg4answers We had this discussion about the level of an award in 2017, and I remember that’s where it came down at that time. So, I just Googled quick to confirm. Here is the first result that popped up:
I found on Elite Prep website.
Hello fellow 2020 parents. Hope everyone is having a great summer.
D20 senior schedule was just released and she’s having 2nd thoughts about AP French. She loves the language and is committed to becoming fluent but does not like the class culture or teacher (same as French 3). She’s thinking about dropping it and adding on AP Comp Sci or AP Art History and has heard good things from schoolmates about these courses. I assured her she can pick up French again in college.
So what does the collective think about the potential drop of the language and pick up either of the other two classes?
@fencingmom I would look through the CDS of the colleges she’s applying to and see what they require and recommend for foreign language.
DD is class of 2020. Dad isn’t ready yet. I’m having anxiety over letting go, college choice, college cost, you name it.