I think we have the courses figured out for next year:
AP Calc AB (he took Adv. Calc this year)
AP Physics 2
Ap Com Sci
Adv. English 12
Civics and Law (.5 year- already has 3.5 years history)
Spanish 3
Wind Ensemble
JROTC
He is applying to NHS this week, and he will be receiving an award in JROTC from the American Legion at a banquet at a museum downtown in April. Tennis is starting soon and he is hoping for varsity this year. He has improved a lot. He is very athletic but as a small child was too hard on himself and got too frustrated with all the team sports he tried so we started him in tennis. But it is expensive and we did not have $ for tennis clubs to play year round. He also never played tournaments. We finally joined a tennis club (well he has a membership not the rest of us) where he has been getting group lessons for 3 years once a week. Still hasn’t caught up with his friends who have been playing all their lives and have courts in their yard lol. He likes it but not a passion and said the other day he wished he had continued in baseball (last time he played was age 5 )…
91% of Naval Academy students played a varsity sport so he needs this. I wish Raiders counted as a sport he will be captain next fall. It is a physical competition team but not a Varsity sport.
Meanwhile D23 who is on leave from Hamilton has her list of 7 transfer schools she is applying to. We are visiting 3 next month There is only one she is applying to sight unseen. I told her that her list is very reachy again, but this time she knows and has a fall back plan that she is happy with. She has a job, her first job. They asked her how much she wanted to be paid and gave her what she asked for, found out it is $2.50 an hour more than what someone who has been there a year is making (although they are in HS). She said she feels important and really likes it. It is very customer focused and this is great for a shy introvert. So glad we let her follow her heart and come home.
D25 had a good Mock Trial competition over the weekend. She won outstanding witness AND outstanding attorney. They’re having a rebuilding year so it’s great that she’s still winning awards even though a lot of the team is brand new.
Soccer starts today so things are about to be extremely busy for the next couple of months.
SAT is less than 2 weeks away. I really hope she’s done with it after that! We need studying for that to be off her plate.
Just a quick check for those who know anything about the SUNY colleges: Thoughts on Stony Brook University? All I know about it—seriously all I know, I didn’t even realize that it’s on Long Island til I googled it yesterday—is that their linguistics faculty is really astonishingly strong on the theoretical side of the house, and one of them I would call a professional friend, and one of the (unfortunately few) professional friends I have who’s a theoretical linguist.
But outside of lx, I know absolutely nothing about it, and since C25 is showing more and more interest in studying lx (and theoretical lx specifically), I’m curious about Stony Brook.
ETA: By way of amusement, Stony Book would mean a change of colors from C25’s high school but not a change of mascot, which is kind of bizarre given how niche of a sports team name it is.
I hope someone answers with direct experience. My impression from various college groups is that campus life is lacking. Lots of commuters, etc. Academically it’s very strong.
As a NYer I can confirm this is definitely the reputation, though I don’t have any first hand experience. What I can tell you though is that given the area it’s in, I would assume that the vast majority of kids who live off campus actually live at home, i.e. not in otherwise off-campus-but-not-home housing. Don’t have the ability to check at the moment but if you find that stat it should give a pretty good indication.
ETA: ok I checked. The most recent CDS says 48% of undergrads live off campus. Assuming, as I do, that the vast majority of those live at home, that’d still leave 8000-9000 kids on campus. That’s larger than a lot of schools
Still, I’d want to do a vibe check via visit if at all possible…
Stony Brook is definitely one of the most competitive SUNYs to get into and also one of the more expensive ones. Total COA (in state) would have been $26k-ish/yr there for my 2023, where Geneseo and Cortland were $22k-ish and Oswego was $18k-ish. (Zero need based aid anywhere). We are from Central NY, so I don’t know this first hand, but Stony Brook is often thought of as a “suitcase school”. But it’s so big that I’m sure there’s still plenty to do even if many kids go home on the weekends. I believe it’s connected with a hospital too so good for science/health care majors? My daughter is an English major so I’m not sure. Lol It definitely seemed like some majors, like CS, were tougher to get into. I saw several kids with higher stats than my daughter be rejected, but I think her being an English (and Education) major(s) helped. The SUNYs are all great schools!! Good luck!!
This came about because the possibility has come up to visit a couple NYC/Long Island colleges (Fordham and Hofstra, specifically) right after the semester ends here, and we accidentally realized that Stony Brook is geographically nearby. The timing would mean it’s after the semesters of those schools end, unfortunately, but given that effectively all the tours we’ve ever been able to manage with any of our kids have been during (usually summer) breaks, it’ll basically just be comparing like with like.
My experience (n=1) was a family friend graduated from there and went on to grad school at Northwestern.
Is your C25 considering any UCs or Cal state schools? I know there are many with Linguistics departments, and some of the Cal states have big residential populations (SDSU for instance). I know OOS is expensive though, but so would SUNY, right?
I’m double posting because D25 told me about her science teacher who made a joke yesterday before class. The joke was, “You know, there are a lot of dress code violations in here. [Laughs.] I tell that joke and all the girls get scared.”
So funny, ha ha. To make girls scared right before science class, or even reference girls being scared before science class. Ha ha, so funny. I’m not overthinking this, right? Kid is struggling in science and is someone who takes what people say very close to heart. And yes, she wears crop tops but is so sensitive.
The UCs and CSUs have merit aid, but not high enough to bring it down to where we’re comfortable. (It’s effectively always a flat amount applied to either IS or OOS tuition, and since OOS tuition is so high to begin with…) I don’t begrudge it of them, though—the first priority for a public college really ought to be to the households of the state that’s funding it.
The SUNYs are much more variable in terms of merit aid. Their OOS sticker prices start out lower (especially compared to the UCs), and so they don’t need as much merit aid to bring it down to the arbitrary threshold for staying on the mediumlist.
Popping in to share a PSA/warning for Senior Year:
No one can see the future.
Recommend to NOT get a group Senior Yearbook Ad with friend(s).
My DD2024’s friend group imploded around Thankgivings, and we’re still dealing with the aftermath.
We got a 1page ad in the yearbook with these girls and it would cost us $5000 to get the books reprinted w/out this ad. So we have to live with it.
I’m hoping that over time, the hurt will subside enough where they can tolerate each other.
We got a full page ad for DS2022 and his friend group and it went great.
So I didn’t see this coming for DD2024.
You might consider visiting Lebanon Valley College. Same area as Elizabethtown (20 minutes away) but solid music and music ed program. If D thought Muhlenberg was too preppy, Lebanon Valley has more of Elizabethtown’s vibe.
If you’re looking for geographically nearby places, have you looked at Montclair State or Rutgers - New Brunswick? I yield to you on the strength of their linguistics departments, but they seem like promising possibilities.
The whole route from Stony Brook to Hofstra to Fordham to Montclair State to Rutgers is 2h43m, so they seem geographically close enough for consideration. I’m assuming that Binghamton is too far for this trip (2h35m NW from Montclair State)? If not, I’d consider investigating that one, too.
Rutgers has a very strong lx program, particularly in the theoretical stuff C25 is attracted to way more than I ever could be (the birthplace of optimality theory!), and Montclair State’s lx curriculum is the kind that would appeal to the child, but the OOS merit aid at New Jersey’s public universities leads to nongreat net costs under the best of cases.
Which is a serious shame, since we have family (on my spouse’s side) in North Jersey, and our oldest child is likely to stay somewhere within Philadelphia’s gravitational field for the foreseeable future.
The colleges remaining on the mediumlist that I’d call NYC area-ish after applying coarse filters (lx offered as at least a minor, endowment ≥$100M, best-case net cost ≤$30k) are
University of Connecticut
Fordham University
Hofstra University
Stony Brook University
So maybe add UConn? It’s going to have to be a quick trip if we do it in May, though, so timing and logistics start to be an issue.
(There are also a handful in Central and Western Pennsylvania and Upstate New York: Syracuse University, the University at Buffalo, the University of Rochester, the University of Pittsburgh, Juniata College—and yes, that last one surprised me too. We pretty certainly wouldn’t have the time for any of those on this one, though.)
Kind of like… don’t get too many pictures of your wedding party’s partners!
I’m really sorry. S24 just had a fallout too and he doesn’t quite understand what hit him (neither do I for that matter!) and its very heartbreaking. I told him that once he figures out his next move (all RD decisions here, sigh! don’t recommend that either!) it will be easier for him to focus ahead.
D22 had a great Sr year. In truth, partly bc of covid, she didn’t find her group until senior year. Even so, once she new where she was going HS became the past and excitement for the future took over.
Maybe at 3:00 AM that trip takes under 3 hours. Long Island basically has one way in and out and it’s often jammed, NYC is, well, NYC, and NJ has plenty of traffic of its own. No way that’s not the drive from hell (admittedly I’m old and crotchety and haven’t lived in a major metro area in years).
That’s rough. I feel like a of the girl groups in D25’s class imploded this year. I hope the don’t implode again next year. Luckily, at our school, the ads are usually just put in by the parents for just their kid.
)…
