@eb23282 Yes, please. We need afternoon entertainment!!!
@homerdog and @momtogkc in that boat with you. Would like to get another test score. Going to talk with our college counselor about ED and other issues this week.
D21s summer internship/leadership position was just cancelled. Sigh. I donât know how much more of this we can take. Poor kid needs some social interaction to look forward to.
@mm5678 Iâm sorry and I hear you. D just keeps asking if âphase twoâ (when the state has had downward curve for 14 days and enough testing) begins, if that means she can see friends. I honestly donât even know the answer to that. She wants to go to her best friendâs house and make dinner together and watch a movie. That family has been really good about staying in place like we have. Itâs such a simple request and I really hope thatâs the kind of thing that will be âallowedâ.
@socaldad2002 Per Cal Poly, although the scores arenât required, they are strongly encouraging kids who have the scores to submit them for âdiagnostic placement purposes.â So, Iâm guessing if a kid submits a high score, itâs still used in decisions, but maybe Iâm just being cynical!
@homerdog We are not full pay, although we arenât full need either and I am self employed. Which puts us in a bit of a sticky situation for ED. I wasnât really wanting her to do it partially for that reason, and also because she doesnât really have a first choice right now. However, the more I think about it the more I think she may need to use her ED shot. We may have a better feel for what is happening in the fall, but right now Iâm pretty concerned that it is going to be a difficult year to apply.
Plus she is in a similar situation to your D for testing. 32 ACT one try minimal studying with a botched math section. I honestly donât know if I should be trying to have her try to bring it up or just rely on the test optional policies. I think she could get to a 34 without too much struggle, but Iâm questioning if it is worth it at this point.
@momtogkc having the same problem about D being too stressed out to talk about colleges. I think her issue is that she wants all of them and is afraid she wonât get into any of them. I could actually get her to go on visits if they were available. Sigh.
@dadof4kids try to get your D to sign up for some virtual info sessions and tours. Some of them are really good and it doesnât take that much motivation to sign up and sit on the couch and watch some!
Itâs funny, since this whole thing has started, all D21 wants to do is talk about colleges! This is the week we would have been doing our VA/NC/MD tours. Weâre hoping maybe late August might be open for us to go see a couple, even if there are some closer to home options at that point.
Iâm definitely stressing about lost merit given the current financial climate. Then reading that Harvard with their $41b endowment got more taxpayer money than the state schools just really makes me shake my head.
Although it may be merit money is cut back, it could the other way for OOS students at some state schools. In many of these big state universities they get a great deal of income from OOS tuition. So if they donât try to lure the OSS kids this could result in bigger income losses. Also as you all know merit money is not something they have take out of their pockets and pay as opposed to capital project, athletics etc.
Let me give you an example of two schools that I am familiar with Clemson and Delaware.
Clemson has about 1/3 of it students from out of state. In state tuition for this year is 15.5K. OOS tuition is 38.5K. Doesnât cost the school anymore to have OOS matriculate but they make 23K more per year in tuition. Even if they reduce the amount of tuition for top stat OOS kids by 10-15K they are still ahead of the game.
Delaware has about 2/3 of its students from out of state. Instate tuition at Delaware 14.2K and OOS is 35.7K⊠Again a difference of paver 20k. Some there would seem to be some incentive to award decreases in tuition to top stat OOS kids. If they lose a bunch of OSS kids to their own in state schools then they may be in more trouble than if they still award OSS decreases.
You all could be right that merit is going to take a big hit but this is another that schools might look at it. I can only hopeâŠ
@burghdad I hope youâre right - and I hope we can get enough to make it affordable! D has been attracted to OOS publics - Delaware (which I discouraged for price but her counselor then recommended!), JMU, Townson, URI. I was pushing WVU but the WV part scares her - lol! Guess weâll have to wait and see!
Feeling so sorry for this yearâs seniors today. Just thinking about all the fun activities in the Spring to celebrate the end of their high school career that are not happening.
One silver lining: because they canât create the school newspaper edition listing everyoneâs post high school plans, the newspaper kids created an insta account and are doing posts for each senior with all the details and a pic of them in school gear. Love seeing the joy and excitement in all their smiling faces and reading all the congratulatory comments from friends/classmates for each picture. Itâs so much more fun to look at than the newspaper listings which were just School Name and kidsâ names underneath.
I hope this becomes a new tradition for the school.
I am recovering from a head injury so apologies if my writing is a bit disjointed.
D21 and D23 have their AP Calculus finals on Thursday (BC and AB respectively). The teacher will count whichever they do better on â the class final or the actual AP exam - as their grade for the final exam. Then in two weeks the college courses have their finals and then itâs AP exam time, and then D21 will have finished out her academic year. I worry about one of her college classes in which the final grade consists of just four grades (two papers, a midterm, and a final) and also a bit about calculus - she has an A right now but it is close to an A-, and the teacher gives crazy difficult finals (she had her for AB last year) which could bring down her grade to a B. D21 can afford one B this year but not two, not for the schools she is shooting for. So hopefully a B will happen in either Am Govt (that college course Iâm worried about) or calculus, but not B (and hopefully neither).
I have read on quite a few forums a worry about cheating with online exams. As a parent with two kids who have taken years of online courses before moving toward in-person dual credit for most of their high school years, I can tell you that as a parent it is easy to proctor an exam. I donât think most parents are motivated to allow their kids to cheat - at least, no homeschooling parents who have sacrificed their own careers and extensive amount of daily time trying to make sure their kids have a good education. For example, I didnât sacrifice 20 years of my life just to allow my kids to cheat on exams. I gave up things for the betterment of their education, so they damn well better try their hardest (which does not include cheating!) or there will be hell to pay, from me personally.
I would like to think that parents who do not homeschool also donât want their kids to cheat. I would like to think that parents donât want the money theyâve spent on private schools or the time theyâve spent at their public schools volunteering etc to go to waste - and cheating puts all that to waste. So I would think the instance of parents allowing their kids to cheat (by not proctoring exams or by even encouraging their kid to cheat) is a tiny minority. Yes, there are the Varsity Blues parents out there but one would hope thatâs a minorityâŠand that the lack of character from such cheaters is evident elsewhere on the application (cookie cutter ECs with no evidence of real grit or unique work). Yes Varsity Blues parents faked ECs too (and test scores), but I donât think such tactics will be possible anymore thank goodness.
@JanieWalker I will I agreed with you! Dâs big lament with this whole thing has been sheâs so annoyed because everyone is cheating! She feels like ( and sheâs right) sheâs at a disadvantage by not cheating. Her Latin quiz was online, kids were trusted to do it on their own without using books. D did and said everyone of her friends used books.
Iâve posted this before, though. Cheating is rampant at Dâs school. The top kids have a system. Itâs well known. I canât imagine their parents donât know, because it involves rotating who takes the test when itâs planned and who goes home early that day so they can take the test as a make up a day or two later after they know from kid 1 what was on the test. I think the admin puts their heads in the sand because the kids are top ranked, wealthy families who would sue the district in a heart beat if they accused Johnny of cheating and ruined his shot at a top college. Itâs discouraging. But itâs a part of life!
Doesnât the school make a parent sign a statement or acknowledge via email that they will proctor? And I wonder if college admissions officers know? Where do these kids get into college? And if they are used to cheating and then get into college, doesnât the college notice when the kid canât keep up with their college classes because they can no longer cheat?
I just donât get why a parent would allow their kid to cheat after spending so much money/time on the kid. What is the point? How do they think their kid is going to do once they get into college? Doesnât help to get them in if they canât succeed on their own two feet once they are there.
I guess this is on the schools. Some of my kidsâ classes just make the exam insanely difficult and then allow open notes/books with no parent proctoring. If you donât already know your stuff before the timed test begins then no amount of searching through books at the last minute is going to help. There isnât enough time to look many things upâŠyou are sunk if you canât spend every second working the problems.
As a former auditor, I will say that unfortunately, given the opportunity most people cheat if the reward is there for doing so. Not saying everyone cheats but I stopped being shocked at the companies and individuals behaviors after a very short time.
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Well heck. I will go back to living in my idealistic bubble now. I think too many parents didnât raise their kids right then. 
My two know that if they cheat I will give them hell for it. That goes for now and for when they are adults. If I ever find out they cheated on a graduate school exam, for example, I will show up wherever they are and publicly holler at them nice and loud for the world to see. If they canât not cheat for not cheatingâs sake then they will not cheat for fear of their motherâs reaction.
OopsâŠI meant to say I âwishâ i could agree with you!
We donât sign anything at Dâs school regarding proctoring. Her school is highly ranked. In an average class of 450, about 50 or so get into the Ivies in any given year. Another 50-100 into the U Mich/UVA/UCLAâs of the world. The profile says around 50% each year go to schools listed as Most or highly competitive. Most are full pay and easily can do so (which helps admissions, Iâm sure). They are bright kids, but itâs super competitive and pushed on the kids by the parents.
Gah. A Harvard degree does not an automatically happy and fulfilled person make. I write that as a Harvard U grad with both Ivy friends and non-Ivy friends, and the happy-and-fulfilled people (in both categories) are that way because of how they approach the world and because of living in a way they feel is true and honestâŠnot because of whatever college is named on their CV. Wish these super-competitive parents would teach THAT lesson to their pushed-to-âsucceedâ kids.
We see a lot of this ârotationâ too at our pricey private high school. We also see paid tutors âgoing the extra mileâ with papers and sometimes even ordinary homework, and direct pressure from influential parents to have grades changed. Most distressingly, there is rampant use of test accommodations for kids who clearly do not really need them from all indications (going rate historically for an ADHD diagnosis has been around $5K locally).
There is not much you can do about all this. Fortunately, our 2021 kid never gets discouraged about it, probably because they find school relatively easy. I could imagine that for kids who are working honestly and diligently to get to or stay near the top, this dishonest landscape must be a disheartening vista.
@3kids2dogs Our high school seniors are doing the same thing - announcing their college choice on a new Instagram site just for that purpose. Itâs terrific! I just hope they all get to actually GO to their schools in the fall.
Illinois governor just said he thinks we wonât peak until mid JUNE now. Like what?? That information has completely changed all of us in this house. We were hoping to get a little more freedom at the end of April but now we need to wrap our brains around the possibility of ten more weeks of this. The kids have been doing ok but mostly because (1) they have school work to do and (2) this was supposed to lift in less than a month enough to at least see a couple of friends. Mid-June for peak means end of June for the possibility of a phase two. How are we supposed to keep our kids from being sloth like? So far so good here - homework and tests, working out, FaceTiming friends, dog walks have kept them busy but how long can they keep up that momentum?
Ending with good news - U Richmond is now test optional. So D21âs list is now almost completely TO.