I’m a little concerned that a home-based SAT would impact the credibility of scores more generally. I also have serious reservations about College Board’s ability to pull off a successful at-home product that is rushed to market; they’ve been working on a test-center-based computerized SAT for four years and couldn’t manage that yet.
I got a text from a local test prep company today. I replied back D has a 1590 SAT in the bag, no thanks. They said they will remove her from the list.
I agree. This is the company that can’t make any type of SAT (written, online) work in Mainland China because of rampant cheating.
All in all I have low expectations based on their low historical performance.
@homerdog and @Momof3B Oh, so sorry! Didn’t mean to do that to you 
I watched it as I was falling asleep and I wondered if anyone thought it sounded like an at home SAT was a possibility and if I recall, David Coleman of College Board doesn’t rule it out? I need to rewatch it when I am more awake. It is on Kahn’s you tube channel on Tuesday April 7th. I didn’t think it would link, so if you google it comes up right up.
We got clarification on grading yesterday. Grades count until March 13 then they can only help. No clarification on class rank calculation though.
The guidelines for schoolwork are 2 hours/class/week. D21s classes are going far beyond that. She has “lives” via Microsoft Teams from 10-4 most days including lunch and then homework after that. Even with that it’s less than a regular school year but barely. And tough to get some outside time and exercise in since we’ve started the late afternoon/evening storm pattern that our region has every year at this time.
She did her first mock APUSH question yesterday, thought she would be able to write and then send in a photo of her answer but had to type it. Didn’t go as well as she thought but there is plenty of time to practice. And bring up her 89… kid wants an A so badly!
@mm5678 we got a survey from AP yesterday (I’m guessing others on this thread did as well) asking preferences about things like - type and then copy paste into website vs type and save and upload vs. handwrite and take a picture and upload…they also asked about what devices we had, what operating systems they were running, etc. Did your daughter do her mock APUSH question in the AP classroom ? Or somewhere else ?
Yes in the AP classroom. Interesting to hear about the survey, I didn’t get one as the parent email but I’m not sure if my daughter did.
@mm5678 the survey only went to my son, not to my parent email, but he and I looked it over together…I got the impression that it was being sent to a random sample and not to everyone, but I’m not sure.
D did awful on her first FRQ for AP Gov. She’s so stressed over it - she has always hated the FRQ so the fact that the entire test is going to be that isn’t good for her.
I’ve been away from CC for a few days, but just jumping in to say the district finally announced its grading policy for the 3rd and 4th quarters. Both will be Pass / Incomplete for all classes and all students.
They are still waiting on guidance from the state on final year grades – normally there’s a state final that accounts from 20% of the final year’s grade, but since they’ve already canceled those tests, I’m not sure what they’ll do. AP courses don’t have a state final, of course, so traditionally teachers have created their own final project for the course that counts for 20% of the year end grade. Am thinking that just goes away this year and the year grade will be the 1st semester’s grade? Who knows…
My S is personally relieved b/c a couple of his 3rd Q grades had dropped due to a teacher transition in math and a very busy extracurricular. He was banking on bringing math and Spanish up after robotics season (not the best approach but he’s done it b4) so he would have been bummed if his 3rd quarter grade ended up being what he had the last day that school met. Seems to me that’s like ending the game with time still on the clock…
Anyway, this is in line with what many/most colleges have done and recognizes both the stress of the time for everyone and the particular challenges that some families are facing.
@AlmostThere2018 It’s interesting since we are in the same state the difference between how things are handled. We still have no idea how our grades will be handled. The county says 3rd Q may count up until the last day. D21 school’s is one of the few that has year long classes- so there are very few grades and for her- some are not great. The county claims that they are waiting for guidance from the state…
In a normal year if you take the AP/IB exams you have no final. There are no projects or other tests.
Starting on Monday classes will meet one day a week for an hour. Most of her teachers have said nothing about what they are actually doing- are they meeting or just assigning work- who knows???
Still no results for the February 25th state ACT. D says she put in her email and she has taken the ACT before- it’s frustrating.
@jeneric – wow, that is a lot of differences! We mostly have year-long courses too, but some math classes are block.
My S is finishing his second week of remote/online school. It’s def. less work than regular school. It seems like there’s an assignment or two every week per class. Some teachers are recording lectures that students can access whenever they want and then they complete the assignment associated with it. Some are having Zoom meetings during the period they would normally meet – but not everyday. Maybe once or twice a week? I’d say overall, however, his workload has decreased by at least a third compared to ‘real’ school.
I think they can cover the content okay. What he’s really missing is discussion-based learning since many of his classes were using the ‘flipped’ classroom model.
To give him credit, while yes, he’s watching more movies and playing more video games with the extra time, he and his friends are doing some cool things too. They recently found some hard code puzzles that Harvard put out in a competition and tried to do them together. They got some and had fun trying.
S21’s (small, Catholic) school released report cards. They cut off the third quarter a bit early to coincide with the last day students were physically in school.
Our governor just announced that schools across the state will remain closed for the rest of the year. S21’s school is the only one in our area that has been requiring work since 3/20. It’s been asynchronous. They are moving to synchronous next week after the Easter break.
I don’t see how they are going to do grades for this last part of year other than pass/fail or something similar though. With some schools providing required instruction and others not, who knows.
He was supposed to take the SAT for the first time in March, but it was canceled. He’s registered for June. But who knows about that. His top choice, Mr. InfiniteWaves and my alma mater, has been test optional for a long time. As have two of the other schools on his list. The only schools that aren’t are the in-state ones.
I’m wondering if colleges and universities are waiting to see about the June tests to make decisions regarding testing for the 21ers.
S21 signed up for virtual admissions sessions, department sessions and virtual campus tours for UT Austin, UTSA and Texas Tech.
That should keep him busy for this month lol.
Does anyone know if a kid can ask their teacher/professor to upload their LOC to the Common App yet? I know the Common App is not open for the next application season until August 1, but I also know that some things roll over if a student begins the process early. Two of D21’s teachers/professors have her LOC ready now, and if they can upload it now then that takes care of that…but I would hate for D21 to create an account now, have them upload it now, and then have that all erased on August 1. (I asked this question elsewhere but have not yet had a response, so I thought I’d try here).
@JanieWalker Our teachers upload their recs to Naviance and they are sent then by our counselors. Once they are downloaded to the school, we can see they’ve been downloaded via the Common App. Is that what you mean? Or your teachers download right onto the CA itself?
@JanieWalker Each high school handles recs differently, so check with the high school counseling dept. I’m skeptical that recs would be among the things that roll over on Aug 1.
Saw in Reddit
NYC June exam
The DOE announced today that NYC public school buildings will close until September. Will that affect the June exam from taking place?
Your suggestions pls…
^That’s up to NYC schools. Aside from the virus, a lot of districts seem to resist opening up school buildings for the SAT when school is not in session. (For example, this seems to happen in the Northeast, with fewer August test centers available.) If the school is willing to host, I’m betting that College Board would go forward with June. Maybe it’ll vary by test center. If there are stay-at-home orders in a particular state/city, the SAT is not happening, though I suspect most will lift them by then.
Thanks (and to @homerdog too). D21 is homeschooled and these LORs come from professors she has had in-person dual credit classes with all this year. So we have no Naviance. D21 has not yet opened a Common App account, figured she’d do that in June or July. She would open one this month if it meant she could have her LORs uploaded to it and be done…don’t know if that LORs will disappear on August 1 and need to be reloaded. Since she hasn’t opened a Common App account yet I wasn’t sure how it worked.
(Don’t know why I wrote LOC instead of LOR before – too many quarantinis perhaps).