Is it the same with the ACT? My kid was scheduled to take the ACT on June 8 (to see how they would do since their SATs score is fairly low). They got very sick the night before and missed the test. No other tests within 75 miles for July and no dates added beyond that.
I have no experience with the ACT but my guess is yes.
The Steele household is pretty bummed. D got her wisdom teeth out and is pretty sore, swollen and bleeding. Plus she didn’t make drum major, one of the spots was given to the drum major from last year and the other to the student who got president over her. She’s good friends with both, very good friends with one so she’s happy for her friends but so very sad for herself. I’m nearly in tears over it. She did get the designation of field captain and thinks it’ll suit her well. She can’t play her instrument for a week either.
On a bright note her boyfriend dropped off in secret flowers he picked and arranged himself from his garden plus a few stuffed animals/dolls. He didn’t want to bother her or make her feel like she should get up so his mom texted and I met him at the road. It’s the first smile she’s had all day.
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Tough week! She must be resilient or learning to be.
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Thank you 
she’s definitely showing some admirable maturity with the marching band disappointment. She’s been through the audition process many times now for ensembles and has dealt with her fair share of not getting the chair she wanted or any chair at all. Today she’s got chipmunk cheeks and in pain but not as much as yesterday. She misses chewing food and is already planning her first real meal that’s not smooth, so far tacos are in the lead
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Final grades came in and they were pretty disappointing. Two As from last semester turned into Bs. One of them is especially galling: my kid (who got the highest score of the non-native speakers in his class on the national French exam) failed to turn in homework for the first half of the semester because he didn’t know it was mandatory and didn’t seem to notice the teacher checking it. He got As on all the other graded assignments but it wasn’t enough. This happened last spring too: same teacher, same subject. She’s very fond of him and wrote him a lovely note at the end of school BUT C’MON KID. This doesn’t bode well for his ability to navigate university bureaucracies. He needs to figure out how to assess and complete what needs to be done before it actually bites him in the %^&.
He’s nose-down right now on his summer econ course (one of three that he’s taking online through BYU this summer). So far he reports that it’s boring (so there’s another subject that doesn’t seem to catch his fancy.) We won’t know until August whether or not he wants to apply to engineering schools and I’m feeling super antsy about the decision tree.
IF he likes the robotics program at WPI, then I think we rule out schools that don’t have some sort of engineering (which wipes all those schools we looked at back in February off the map). Based on his school counselor’s advice, he’s not strong enough to get into the UCs or Cal Poly for engineering, but she’s encouraging him to look at places like Oregon State, Drexel (?), RIT, Santa Clara, etc.
If he doesn’t like engineering,
a) I guess it’s back to gaming out the odds at the liberal arts colleges that he liked (although there are a bunch that we won’t have time to visit, e.g. Whitman, Puget Sound, Lafayette, Union, Skidmore, Occidental…) but also
b) I’m going to start worrying if he will ever find any academic subject to his liking (j/k, kind of…) What do students who are good at math, decent at science but not super intellectually engaged, bored with econ, not keen on writing, and indifferent to textual analysis do when they get to college? I am so envious of all y’all out there whose kids have homed in on something (anything, really) that they’d be excited to study. I’d love it, too, if he got excited about something happening in the non-online/gaming world – politics, climate change, cooking, art, music, etc. There are flickers here and there but nothing’s caught fire yet. Ah well…surely he’s not the only kid who’s spent way too much of his adolescence online, right?
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Co-ops like Drexel or Northeastern might be a good fit for him. Doing, rather than sitting in a classroom.
I also wanted to note that online summer courses are probably not the best way to discover a subject is interesting.
Also, some kids just need to mature. A gap year is a good choice for a lot of students.
ETA - I think the kids you are talking about more often then not choose Business. Personally, I don’t think it’s a great option, but it’s a bit of a catch all.
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Fair point. He’s taking Econ/US Gov online this summer because they are graduation requirements (and the teacher who’d be teaching them next year is the same lousy guy they all had for APUSH, so a bunch of students are doing it online).
I badly wish he’d consider a gap year. I’m outvoted in my family on this topic, unfortunately.
With you on business – and I have an MBA! But I’d rather he stick to one of the disciplines for undergrad. Honestly though, if he got excited about a degree in horse betting, I’d probably shrug and write a check. Excitement about academics has been distinctly lacking in these parts. Here’s hoping WPI delivers the goods this summer!
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Yep, this is my kid. Likes school and learning in general but isn’t really engrossed in one subject area. He has a lot of hobbies. I always thought he’d be an engineer but he’s decided to do business.
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You end up having to write to do pretty much anything (yes, including fields like nursing and engineering), but that comes with practice.
Speaking about what I know best, linguistics ends up pulling in a bunch of kids who are good at science but don’t want to do the sorts of things that generally get labeled as ‘science’. (And there are plenty of other fields that bring in that same population, they’re just generally not subjects that aere regularly taught in high school.)
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It doesn’t sound like he’s had the most inspiring teachers. I am so grateful for the excellent and passionate teachers we’ve had over the years. My kid’s engagement is 
due to them. Any subject can be interesting with the right teacher.
Ha! He’d have a very high paying job on the other side. Maybe he will find game theory quite engaging.
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True confession: he enjoyed AP physics this year and is doubling down on another physics course next year – but his physics teacher (whom my kid finds inspiring) has privately expressed skepticism about his potential in this field. He actually suggested that S25 get tutoring from one of the more physics-geeky kids in his grade. Did I mention this? It was a painful conversation. So I guess it’s not quite fair to say he’s not interested in science. But he doesn’t seem spend a lot of time thinking about it outside of whatever is required for class (as compared to the kids in the physics club who hang out in teacher’s room at lunchtime trying to teach each other Maxwell’s equations). Silicon Valley is such a weird little bubble.
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One of my coolest friends from college was a psych major who ended up specializing in linguistics and now teaches at Vanderbilt. It’s one of those fields (another being philosophy) that seems way more diverse/cross-disciplinary than the average person would suspect. (those are probably the wrong words to use but you get my gist?)
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People often suggest accounting for people who like math, although the math isn’t all that difficult (adding machine, anyone?). But it’s figuring out which numbers to use and also potentially looking at tax code for examples of alternative, defensible readings.
I’m not an expert on the differences between engineering and engineering technology, but my understanding is that the latter is a less rigorous degree (if physics is a stumbling block) but still has very good outcomes and works well for people who prefer a more hands-on experience.
And although they may not be disciplines that are frequently found at the liberal arts colleges you were visiting, there are a lot of possibilities in the health professions that aren’t becoming a doctor or a nurse. This site might be helpful in brainstorming ideas:
But there is no need to think about a major towards a vocational track, whether horse betting or something else. It’s just fine to go in undecided and to see what distribution requirements spark his fancy and make him really interested. One suggestion is to talk to experienced students/faculty members for who the best profs are. I recall freshman orientation planning to take a certain section of a class because it worked nicely in my schedule and my faculty adviser recommended I switch to a different professor. That other professor was one of the best I had in college. And perhaps having engaging and inspiring professors will make a subject jump out at him.
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Does he maybe want to study programing? Maybe he’d love to design games.
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I have one of those. I also have one with no math intuition who took AP Physics C simply because she loved AP Physics 1. It was HARD but she lived to tell the tale.
Give it time. He will figure it out. I will say this - the kid who finished Jr year and the one who just graduated are completely different. It was like Sr year, all of a sudden, he hit a maturity growth spurt.
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This is great insight.
When I was advising MBA students this was actually a key piece of advice for choosing electives: pick faculty, not subjects. A good teacher will make the most mundane subject captivating. (the converse is certainly also true.) And in my experience at research universities, there’s no guarantee that a tenure-line faculty member will have the classroom experience dialed in. (we seemed to have better luck with non-tenure-line faculty, which makes sense, considering that they had one job: teaching.)
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D25 got a disappointing (to her, it’s a fabulous score) SAT score this morning. It did go up 30 points, but she really thought she got all of the math correct this time. Her English score went down a bit. If you super score she’s up 70 points total. One of her colleges doesn’t super score so hopefully her latest score is good enough.
I know with the old paper tests they did curve it a bit but I really don’t think they curve this new test.
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There’s no curve. I’m sorry about that though. My score was also disappointing. On to August I guess.
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She’s done. Her score is plenty good to get into anywhere she wants to go and should be good enough to get some competitive scholarships. I don’t think she was expecting her English to go down and really thought she scored a perfect 800 on math. Oh well, better than her overall score going down!
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