@dadof4kids I was thinking this morning that a way to level the playing field (and prevent that situation you’re suggesting) would have been for them to give everyone two prompts to choose from. I’m sure there’s a reason not to do this, though I haven’t figured out yet what it would be. But with the regular APUSH test, a kid’s score isn’t based on the all-or-nothing single prompt…they get to show their understanding of the entire APUSH course by answering questions about a lot of different things - some they’ll know more about/be more comfortable with and some they’ll know less about/be less comfortable with. But with this one essay question, a kid could know a lot about a lot of things and just happen to get a prompt that occupies one of the few things they don’t remember well. Or a kid could not know about most things in the curriculum but know a lot about a few concepts and luck out in getting a prompt that matches the knowledge. It seems they maybe could have provided two prompts and let the student choose…I guess they would have had to provide a few extra minutes for that reading/decision making. Hmmm.
APUSH done here. She said she had trouble opening up the response box on the College Board website to type in her answer. So she had to “type the whole thing in 45 seconds”. She had a question on the Revolutionary War. She was in a good mood when I got home, so hopefully a good sign!
Hope all our 21’s get some rest this weekend!
APUSH also successfully uploaded here. She had the slavery questions. She’s done with her 4 AP tests for this year.
Good luck to everyone who has more next week.
In our house, it’s now ACT prep and starting the virtual tours. Have a great weekend!
No real problems with APUSH here either. My D is feeling a little pessimistic about her potential score because she felt that 45 minutes was just not long enough to pull a lot of complex info from 4-5 documents into a coherent essay but she said at least it was a topic she knew. Whew! @nichols, she also had Manifest Destiny. She probably was Not helped by the lack of practice with DBQs but at least it wasn’t a disaster. And she often underestimates herself, so who knows? She seems happy that it’s over. Only AP Lang next week.
Today we were approved for a Fuzzball “pandemic kitten” from our shelter, that we will bring home next week, That will liven things up considerably around here ?
Successful test submission here too. All she told me was Gilded Age and that it was a great prompt for her. She really liked her documents. He friend had the same question, but different documents she did not like.
In my area the order of social studies classes is pretty rigid.
9th- AP HUG or World Civ. 1
10th AP World or Word Civ 2
11th APUSH or US History
12 AP Gov (full year) or US Gov.
AP European History is an elective taken in addition to the above, but not in place of. Same with Comparative Politics.
@inthegarden there’s a good chance that your D did well given what a strong student she is…45 minutes really isn’t a lot of time for that exercise, I agree, and I saw Trevor Packer saying that they would take the fact that the whole exam is an essay into account when scoring since they know some kids do better with other question formats…I don’t know what that means, really, in terms of the scoring, but I’m going to hope for the best.
Congrats on the pandemic kitten! That will be a nice thing to focus on as the summer potentially drags on. My D23 finished finals yesterday and was somewhat happy about it but also a bit mopey and disappointed knowing that so much has been cancelled for this summer and feeling the loss of what the last day of school USUALLY feels like.
We had flights and hotels and tours booked to see Knox this past Wednesday and Kalamazoo today. Cancelled all that a while ago, of course, but I’m just realizing that S21 should have been on a college tour today instead of crossing his fingers for his AP exam to upload correctly.
@nichols51 Have you done the virtual info sessions/tours at Knox and Kalamazoo? By no means the same as the in-person visits, but D and I were impressed with both!
@kbm770 yes! Thanks for sharing that idea.
S21 had a personal virtual tour with a tour guide at Kalamazoo, and we did a virtual Open House with them earlier this week. We also did both a virtual info session and student panel at Knox.
He’s done virtual sessions at all of his schools except Wheaton (MA) since they haven’t had any (He has done sessions at 11 schools, although for 1 of those schools he only visited in person and didn’t do virtual). Some of the sessions blend together, and some were lackluster sessions (looking at you Hendrix), but he’s definitely had several pretty good ones. I think 1 school came off the list before he did a session, and probably 2 others have come off the list in the last few weeks. So it seems he’ll head into application season with 9 schools - it’s possible he’ll only do 7 or 8, but most of his don’t have supplemental essays (as far as I know), so I think he may do all 9. Beloit, Clark, Denison, Dickinson, Kzoo, Knox, Wheaton, Wooster, Willamette. We’ve found a lot to like at all 9.
My S had Manifest Destiny too. He said two of his friends had slavery but they each had different docs. That prolly helps cut down cheating opportunities.
Computer Science he felt a little less confident about, but also expected it to be his most difficult AP. There was one part of one prompt he couldn’t figure out what they wanted him to code, but overall he wasn’t too worried.
Lang and Spanish next week!
Just catching up with things after a busy week. So far D21 has successfully uploaded her AP exams this week. Two more to go next week. No idea what her APUSH prompt was since she has no interest in discussing tests of any kind once they’re done. I was the same way, so I get it.
Her last day of classes is 5/28. Her school (private all-girls Catholic) hasn’t changed its grading policies, so she’ll be getting letter grades as usual. Her focus has been all over the place so we’ll all breathe a sigh of relief when this semester is over. She’s doing well but it’s been a struggle to stay on everything. This weekend was supposed to be prom so she’s down about missing that. The rest of us have planned a little prom night surprise for her with her favorite dinner and a family dance party (we’ll even let her force us to do tik toks, haha), so hopefully she’ll have fun. We’ve repurposed our living room into a dance studio for her during quarantine so we’ll deck it out. Trying to make the best of this all.
D21 APUSHed it out over here too with the Manifest Destiny question. Let’s just say she gave strict instructions for our small household to stay off off the wifi and no loud chewing. We collectively held our breath for 45 minutes in another room til she it she said it was over. Now she is saying she was happy with the question she got, but that she felt the pressure of administering her own test in what felt like a short amount of time. I’m looking forward to the end of these AP tests and concerned about the SAT’s…
DD21 is a very good artist (drawing and painting) but doesn’t want to study art in college (she wants to major in Biology, Biochem or Animal Science). However, she doesn’t have much in the way of ECs and she does spend a considerable amount of time outside of school on her art. She has several sketch books filled with drawings which she gets complicated on all the time. It would be great to display that side of her.
Is there a way to show her work on the Common or Coalition App, other than to say “I do art”?
@Muad_dib yes, in the common app, there is column called additional comments where we can insert google drive docs and share it. Our D19 did a coding project and had a presentation for the same at her school and she included that in the additional section of common app. Basically you’ll be inserting the link to the shared google drive.
@Muad_dib, probably not what your daughter would want to do in the future, but your description jogged a memory for me. One year I had a college roommate who was majoring in art and biology (maybe microbiology) and was hoping to get into a very specialized/niche master’s degree program in medical Illustration. TBH, I don’t know how that story ended for her. Is that even a thing anymore?
Can anyone suggest a book on what you need to do to apply to college? We are not using a college advisor, and I’d like to think that we don’t need one. But the different applications, essays, timelines, etc. are confusing, so it would helpful to have a guide in one place that lays it all out.
For those that kids took the APUSH test. Did they write their essay on something like Word or Google doc then cut and paste. D is taking Lang and Psych next week and trying to figure out the best way.
@TVBingeWatcher2 - my daughter just hand wrote it, same as Math and Science.
@TVBingeWatcher2 My S used google doc and they did a copy and paste.
Same for my D., Google doc, copy and paste.
@inthegarden Rowan has a biomedical art degree which is geared for those wanting to do medical illustration