This is exactly where we are, too. And why I feel like my son doesn’t have a solid list yet. The places he favors should be matches, based on numbers and blessings of geography. But I would hate to have him wind up with a single acceptance at a school that he’s just “meh” about.
Still, I know that he’ll figure out how to deal with a single “meh” acceptance. Learning how to deal with disappointment is part of life, even though it stinks.
Ugh. This kid…
Last night S25 casually mentioned that he sort of thought his college preferences were just “California.” And then preemptively said “and don’t ask me what about California, or why California. It should just be valid to want to stay in California.” And then, when I asked “which schools?” he listed…with some difficulty…“Occidental.” and then “that one in Pomona?”
“No one from your school gets into Pomona, honey.” “No – Cal Poly Pomona?”
If I were to follow the recommended policy of benign neglect/don’t over-parent – Hi Thumper! 
– I’d have dropped it right there. His life! (Spoiler alert: I didn’t drop it until a door was slammed.)
Seriously though – why California? What aspect of California? It’s a big place with a bunch of cultures and climates. Parts of Northern California have a lot in common with Oregon. Parts of SoCal have a lot in common with Arizona.
To be honest, it feels less like an informed choice than a weird factory default mindset – almost an “I’m scared to make this big decision coming up and I’m going to introduce an artificial constraint to narrow it down.”
If the issue is not wanting to be far away from us, I can work with that (although I would have some concerns). But he’s talking about places that are actually kind of far away (6+ hours by car). And those two schools, the only ones he could name, are culturally both different from each other and from the life here that he’s known. Is the issue weather? Find, let’s work with that one. But I’m skeptical.
He’s only been to southern California a handful of times, on trips to Disneyland, the most recent being well before the pandemic. He’s never been to the inland areas of SoCal. We’ve gone to Tahoe a few times. He’s not spent any time in the Central Valley…etc. (Honestly, this is, upon reflection, problematic. I plead pandemic + other kinds of vacations. We used to drive all over this freaking state before we had a kid, mostly for bike racing.)
I mean, there’s nothing wrong with Cal Poly Pomona, and it’s certainly cheaper than many other places he might want to go. But I’m not clear on why this has more appeal than, say, Oregon State or CU Boulder. And aside from weather, I’m not sure what edge Oxy has over Oberlin or Whitman or Lafayette.
His friends are either applying to esoteric programs for highly specific interests (wine-making, film) or shooting for the moon with the more rejective UCs and MIT/Stanford/Harvey Mudd types of places. I don’t think he’s actually looked at a map to see how far Pomona is from, say, Loyola Marymount.
I’d try to revisit the discussion with more patience, curiosity, and grace, but I can’t distract him from these BYU online courses that he’s trying hard to finish before the end of next week.
Praying that some sort of miracle occurs at WPI and he discovers a thing that he enjoys and is good at, and maybe also realizes how much fun college might be, even in another state. I’m okay with him going to a school in California if it’s a good match and he has a sense of direction. What I don’t want is for this to be the anti-choice that it sort of feels like right now.
(For what it’s worth, after being fairly hands-off for a lot of the application process, my mother pulled rank on me and forbade me from applying to a LAC in the middle of nowhere just because my first boyfriend was also going there. I’d already gotten into Yale. She wanted me to stretch myself. “I will not allow you to choose a college from below the waist”, she said sternly. And honestly, that was solid parenting. How I wish I could ask her about this…)
Uh huh. This is my house. My c25 has no interest in the schools that, on paper, should be targets & reaches. I hope the schools they do apply to take them seriously
Thanks. D25 has no interest in going there, thankfully.
Well, D25 finished her first draft of her essay today. It’s over the word count but she’ll fix that later. She also has some short answer questions to answer for Hillsdale. She’s going to ask her English teacher to look it over for her at some point.
She finished one of her summer dual enrollment classes, except for one test and the final because the teacher hasn’t released those yet. She is still working through her summer gym class but that doesn’t take much time. She is now on her 2nd book for summer reading. She finished How to Read Books Like a Professor, is working on My Name is Asher Lev, and then will read Their Eyes Were Watching God. Curious what everyone else’s kids have to read for AP Lit.
“As I Lay Dying” (Faulkner) and “Book of Delights” (Ross Gay).
There are also hefty pre-assignments for AP Photo and AP Bio. On the one hand, cool. On the other hand…when?! (see aforementioned three online courses + in-person summer robotics program and I guess maybe at some point he should look at his college essays?) School starts back up in five weeks.
A Lesson Before Dying
Hamlet
The Awakening
Frankenstein
The Catcher in the Rye
How to Read Literature Like a Professor
Choose one:
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
(edited to add, I hope he picks Dickens!)
All those this summer?!
Just “How to Read..” and one of the “choose one books”
And no, he has not started…
The list was the full reading list for the course…
Agreed - one in-person university course, 2 jobs, college applications and a house full of guests for a month…and trying to have some summer fun (!) in between…
Oh yeah, and AP summer work for 5 courses - all due in 4 weeks… 
Thankfully D25 didn’t have to read the entire How to read book just select chapters. The assignment that goes with Asher Lev is pretty big too. Not sure what she hast to do with the 3rd book yet. I hope they get to read more interesting books during the school year. We’re trying to decide if she is going to take the AP Lit test or not since she already got a 5 on Lang. It doesn’t appear she’ll get credit for both of the classes at the places she’s applying.
Here’s S25’s AP Lit summer reading list:
Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Odyssey
As I Lay Dying
I think he might have read As I Lay Dying. Or skimmed it, at least. And schools starts August 5th. It’s going to be an interesting few weeks as he races to finish these. His principal teaches the course, so I encouraged him not to embarrass himself by not getting the reading done.
Some disappointment in the house today for him. He asked his counselor if he could swap Spanish II for Japanese DE. After going back and forth for a few weeks, she told him he has to take the Spanish II to be on the safe(r) side with admissions. She said he could do the Japanese DE on top of Spanish, but he seems hesitant. So he’s bummed, and I am quietly relieved that he won’t be painting himself into even more of a corner.
I insisted that he add at least three schools to his list in addition to Rose-Hulman. He half-heartedly agreed to St. Olaf, Ole Miss, and Alabama. What a random group of schools. The only common denominator is that they all have math majors and the opportunity to take Japanese. (and they were ones I suggested, since he can likely go for free or close to free at Alabama and Ole Miss) This was not what I anticipated the college application process to look like when I neurotically began my research the day he started high school. Last night I told him that most kids are applying to 6 or 8 or 10 or more schools. To which he replied, “Well, you always tell me I’m not like other kids.” Touché. He has always marched to the beat of his own drummer, and I’m sure it will work out for him.
There’s never a dull moment when parenting a teen, right folks?
Slaughterhouse Five for AP Lit
It’s interesting that one hasn’t come up on anyone else’s list.
I’m grateful that is it. The other three APs don’t have summer assignments. My kid is also super busy from here until the first day of school. Then music pre screen/auditions/ and essays, yikes!
C25 hasn’t told me what their summer hw is for AP Lit & I can almost guarantee they haven’t started:/
That’s a great list.
My kids loved Frankenstein, and it’s really a novella, so not very long at all.
Also great.
My kids have read many of the books mentioned throughout their HS years.
Our English classes, even AP, have different themes, with different books, that students can choose from. It really helps everyone find something that is interesting to them.
The Atonement, Ian McEwan
The Dead, James Joyce
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
I find summer reading lists to be simply wrong.
If you can’t fit it into the academic year, it shouldn’t be part of the class.
AP Lit summer reading: All the Light We Cannot See
D25’s school did away with summer reading lists a few years ago. AP Lit. pass rates remain high.
I think my C25 is reading Life of Pi