(Thinking out loud about your situation & question):
S26 is still young, inexperienced, and might be a little naive. Most kids are at this age.
that’s probably why he assumes that he can just wing it.
it’s also his inexperience coming through when he says something arrogant like “they’re probably not as smart” as he is.
you’ve made a very logical and valid case to him. I’d bet that you’ve probably tried to talk some sense into him a couple of times already on the topic.
D24 has gone through many iterations of this in what I like to call “My Parents Are Dumb.” Tried to warn her repeatedly about stuff. She made stupid choices. And won some stupid prizes from that.
Now at the end of freshman year, she’s finally starting to come out of the “My Parents Are Dumb” phase. But oh boy it’s been a long road of it since middle school.
Your son can choose to gamble. He’s choosing to mess around and find out. You’ve made a very valid argument with him. And he just won’t listen.
if it means that due to low(er) AP test scores, he doesn’t get into some of the colleges he really really likes, then that’s a lesson he will need to learn the hard way.
sometimes what can also happen at college for students like him is they assume that college classes will be just as easy as they found them to be in high school. And then they encounter that one or two classes that totally kicks their butt. And they’re not the super star student anymore. And sometimes, that can be a very stressful and humbling experience.
Sometimes a humbling experience can be a real opportunity for personal growth. Learning how to fail, how to make mistakes. And how to get back on the horse after you fall off.
Meanwhile, it drives us parents bananas because it’s like watching it all in slow motion and you can see what’s going to happen just a little down the road.
So for example, D26 right now has a D in honors physics. She’s had a C in trimester 1 and 2. Avoided going to student hours each week ALL YEAR LONG. Pushed back at my other suggestions on how to use other supplementary material online to better understand the subject.
Graduation at her HS requires physics.
It’s now at the end of the year. Can’t do anything about the situation now really other than she has to cram and study a heck of a lot extra for that test, which thankfully is on the last day of final exams.
In her other classes, she has all A’s and B’s. It’s just physics that is a big struggle.
(This is why in the college search we are specifically looking through major and general ed requirements at each college. Anywhere that is going to require a physics class goes in the “heck no” category)
In Calculus, she’s been getting C on the tests but has a B overall because of other assignments bringing her grade up. And all she has to do is get a 3 on the AP exam in order for B to become an A- for the entire year because of how the final grading works at her school for AP classes.
If she ends up with a D in Physics for the year, it might put a school like Tulsa out of the running, but she will still get into U of A…but that grade but rule out getting into the honors college. So we will have to see.
There’s not much I can do about it at this point. So I’m choosing to not get upset about it. It will all be decided in 3 weeks anyway once the final exam is done.
S26 has AP Psych, AP Lang and AP Bio. He did some review but not as much as he should have. It will be great if he can do good in the AP exams because his grades are not the best and a good score can help show the mastery of the subject. At least that’s what we are hoping for.
D26 is back from her whirlwind trip to VA and TX. In the end, she is not applying to any of the colleges she toured (JMU, UVA, UT Austin or TCU). She liked both Texas schools but knows admission to UT Austin is near impossible and she does not like it enough to spend time on the supplementals, pay the application fee, etc. She also liked TCU quite a bit but did not like Fort Worth as a place to hang out for four years, so TCU is off as well. I still think it was beneficial since she was able to cross those four off her longer list. She now has 9 schools remaining on the list and I am still trying to talk her into adding a couple more direct admit and more local schools. We shall see. On another note, another benefit of the trip is that D26 will need a car by her junior year of college and has had her eye on a Jeep Grand Cherokee. They rented one and really liked it. I am a little worried about the reliability of a Jeep (I have heard horror stories) but I also know so many people who have them and have zero issues. But it was nice to also have them check out the potential ride she may eventually be getting so that was helpful.
I can understand how somebody can logic it out that way.
My daughter was told by advisors essentially she was wasting value time/resources in applying to UMich and UTexasAustin because of such low chance of admissions when should could be using that time to apply for even more target schools than she already was…
She’s finishing her third year at UTexasAustin currently, may end up finishing a semester early next fall and going on to a MS-JD joint program after that. I’m glad she decided it wouldn’t be a waste of time to shoot her shot.
D26 is pretty happy today…got results of last Friday’s math test. Teacher “curved it AP-style” and she ended up with a 95% on it. What does “curving it AP-style” mean? I don’t know exactly.
She also spoke to a student who had this teacher for Calculus AB last year and that kid told her that in the review packets & tests that this teacher gives out all year, the problems are a little harder than the actual problems on the AP exam.
Been a while since I’ve participated so I thought I’d post something…
D26 has 6 weeks left to Junior year then a few days to show up afterwards for 4 final exams. She’s actually taking Part 1 of an IB Exam today with Part 2 concluding tomorrow. This year she will have a total of 3 IB / AP exams.
Her Common App essay has been reviewed by the School’s College Counselor and an ELA teacher. Feedback was provided and she’s prepared to complete them once testing’s done.
For those who may be unfamiliar with the Common App and would like to get some exposure to it, an option exists to set up a ‘practice account’, which we did and was very helpful. Our ‘challenge’ was the Activities and Awards sections. Glad we did it for those sections alone.
Also helpful were a few data elements we wouldn’t have given thought to so it was helpful to gather that data now. Also helpful was seeing the questions each University under consideration put out there at application time.
eta: Stating the obvious… questions could potentially change by August. The Common App site also put out the upcoming changes to anticipate in August.
Can I ask what email address you used for the practice account? I was going to talk to D26 about setting up an account soon so she can see the questions, but I didn’t want to have an issue where we had to create a “dummy” account with a different email address or something weird like that.
Wow, she’s really ahead of the game with her essay! That’s great. My D26 has a couple of solid ideas, but she hasn’t written anything yet. Unfortunately they don’t do it as part of English class at her school. (We’re just limping to the finish line of this school year!)
Her class did create practice accounts on the Common App, though. If you’re not already familiar with College Essay Guy, check out his tips for how to word the activities list, including good action verbs to use (and which to avoid that sound too corporate or cheesy). Really useful stuff.
I seem to recall they already said the questions would be the same. I posted a link for this (I think it said that) somewhere up thread, but I have no idea how to go back and find it without a laborious search.
"Students will see two changes to the optional “Additional information” questions as of August 1, 2025.
The current “Community disruption” question will be updated to a “Challenges and circumstances” question. The new question language will expand to capture a broader range of impacts students may experience. The word/character limit will remain the same (first-year app 250 words max, transfer app 1250 characters max).
The “Additional information” question word/character limit will be reduced. The first-year app limit will be reduced from 650 to 300 words max. The transfer app limit will be reduced from 3500 to 1500 characters max."
I think it’s the college-specific supplemental essay questions that haven’t been released yet and could change. I don’t know if those are released sometime over the summer, or not until August 1 when Common App officially opens.
Hmm so… C26 received some mail from the program that the physics teacher nominated them for, and they actually seem quite keen to do it. Objectively, even though the focus is engineering which is not (currently) their intention, there are some wider applications and it does look really interesting. Moreover, they get college credit for it which means we can use the 529 to pay for it. It’s the week right after the architecture workshop ends, so I’ve told them to think about it a bit to decide if they really want to go non-stop (they’re doing the camp intern the two weeks before that too). The deadline to apply is later in May. It will be held at Cal, which means they’d commute rather than do the residential option. That will also mean that if we decide we do want to do any college tours in summer, we will have one week right at the beginning of summer or one week at the end to do that.
