Good luck to all those students taking Ap tests this and next week!!!
My D26 has 2 next week- Physics C: Mech and Calc A/B.
She is not stressing enough about them- LOL.
I sure wish she would study/prepare more- but she feels good about them (they are doing prep during class).
One of her top choices is an international school and doesn’t take APs and the other top choice accepts a 4 for Calc (she feels she can get this) and she would need a 5 for Physics to count which according to her- ‘won’t happen regardless of how much she studies’!
That is awesome!!!
Will be very helpful to have someone else going through this. I already feel confused on so much.
We did get a chance to meet with the school’s international rep when they were in our area this last year. Very helpful!!! They seem to have great resources to help international student once they get accepted. And appear to help foster a great community set up for these students as well.
What field are they applying for? (D26 is going for Computer Science- still narrowing down which exact program)
She is going to spend a month up in Ireland this Summer at an art program. We figured it would be a good way to see if she actually will like Ireland!! Hopefully we will get a chance to go up there as a family in the Fall to visit the Limerick campus if this is still one of her top choices at that time.
Microeconomics today, Chem and Gov tomorrow, English and Spanish next week. Her scores will have no impact on grades, so I think she is stressing and studying way too much. I think my senioritis is kicking in.
Spoke with the Mississippi State rep in our area at a recent college fair a few weeks ago. It sounds like the campus environment there is very friendly & welcoming. D26 said she ideally doesn’t want to attend anywhere east of TX, so I don’t think it’s going to make the list. What did you & your son think of it there?
AP Spanish final on Thurs of next week (she’s taking the AP alternative exam, not the actual AP exam)
AP Psych exam and Honors Physics final both on Fri of next week
then last week of class is week of 5/19-5/23, where they basically do fun stuff all week. Last day of school is really only a couple of hours and students are all excused at the end of their grade’s end-of-year awards ceremony (which for D26 ends in the 9:30 am time frame).
Calculus, Physics, & Spanish remain the top focus areas so far.
Mine also has has Calc AB and Physics next week, but only Physics 1 (which is the max her school offers).
She has a 2,000-word research paper due in English between now and then, plus she has to read Brave New World. She’s a decent writer but it takes her FOREVER to get anything down on the page, so there’s definitely no other studying happening at home. (They’re reviewing in class for both Calc and Physics.)
Same, same here – she feels pretty confident in Calc that she can pull off at least a 4, if not a 5. And not many schools give credit for Physics 1 (definitely not Georgia Tech), so her plan is to just do the best she can and not stress.
MS State was the one school where we didn’t have a tour and just walked around on our own. The campus is open, spacious and extremely well maintained. It was a nice weekday evening and lots of students were out and about. The longer we stayed the more diverse students we saw. Our one staff interaction was super friendly.
Mine has APUSH this week. Next week was supposed to be AP Lang, AP Comp Sci Principles, and AP Physics 1 - but she is will take Physics on the make-up test day instead because her sibling’s graduation from Tulane is on the same day (Yay!!).
We still have 6 weeks left of school to go… It’s a marathon, not a sprint over here.
My D22 will graduate from college next year – thankfully it’s a couple weeks before D26’s high school graduation, but it’s smack in the middle of AP exams. And S25 will be in finals week of his freshman year of college.
DH and I don’t want to miss any of the receptions for D22’s residential college, the school of social sciences, the school of humanities (she’s double majoring) – so chances are the four of us will fly out and fly back on different flights.
It’s going to require a master class in logistics management, LOL.
(But let me just get through the next three weeks, and that is a later me problem, as my kids like to say!)
You just made me look up graduation dates for next year I also have D22 and S26 graduating in 2026. As it stands now the graduations are exactly one week apart! Let’s hope it doesn’t change, because the last high school in our district has graduation the same night as D22’s college.
It has required quite a bit of juggling. My husband is flying in on a Wednesday (with grandparents arriving that day too) but I am staying back w/ D26 bc of AP exams on that Wednesday and Thursday (and originally Friday — but that’s the exam we moved). Taking a late flight to NOLA with D26 on Thursday night (lands at midnight) so that I can catch Science & Engineering ceremony on Friday. The unified ceremony is Saturday.
Next year I get to do it again because I have another graduating from college!
This has been so helpful!!! Thank you for posting this. Really appreciate it.
Makes it so much easier to help my daughter plan out what is needed over the Summer.
She can see everything that the school are requiring!!
She will be spending ~4 weeks at an art program in Ireland this Summer. Just looked at the calendar and she really only has about 3 weeks after finals before she leaves and then only about 2 weeks after she gets back before school starts. So not much time at all considering we are hoping to squeeze in some family fun at some point, and she wants to squeeze in some teenager type of fun also😜.
She really wants the main parts of her applications finished prior to start of school (essays, personal statements…). That way she only has to worry about the smaller things that are less time consuming.
She did just ask her teachers for her needed recommendation letters so that they can hopefully have those done around the start of the school year. (the teachers she asked are more than willing to work on these over the Summer for her, so they are available at the start of the school year- that is supper nice and awesome of them!!)
None of the schools she has looked at so far ask for a school counselor’s req, so she going to hold off asking for that- don’t want to waste their time if it is not needed.
Tulane is a bit different. They are very focused on Yield rate and not offering spots to students that are not truly focused on Tulane. And thus they try to find students that want to go to Tulane not just students that want Tulane as a nice backup. That being said they are proudly test optional and in my opinion are less focused on academic stats and have other priorities on how they build their student body. Their student population is also heavily skewed with too many females vs males so theoretically its harder for a female vs male to get in (google NYT article from 2023 on Tulane). As almost all competitive universities go back to test required (Ivy league, Stanford, Georgia Tech, Cal Tech, U of Miami) - I think Tulane will stay test optional so that tells you their priority. Also ED is the best way to get in to Tulane but that requires paying full price.
That was so nice you got to meet with a rep! I’m hoping to set up a zoom - or something similar - this summer. The school seems VERY welcoming to international students based on their website. And I got feedback from a parent here whose child is starting UL this fall.
My daughter plans to apply to the Biology/Chemistry common entry program.
Honestly - if she ends up deciding to go there - we will literally be seeing the university when she actually starts. A little scary but UL gets consistently good reviews on multiple platforms.
Most of your points are spot on - and why a school like Tulane is tough to “chance” with something like CollegeVine or some other algorithm. The one thing you note that’s not proven out is the M/F ratio. I haven’t looked at the most recent CDS with this in mind but I did some review of the previous few years and the acceptance rate and yield isn’t substantially different M/F. The don’t seem to give any preference to gender in the admissions process.
I don’t think this is accurate - you don’t get to compare financial offers but you still qualify for aid. And while not as beneficial as ED, you can also do EA. Our counselor said that Tulane fills something like 70% of its class between ED and EA.
Absolutely does not require to pay full price. The NPC on their website should give a pretty accurate estimate. There are ED students that get merit as part of their package but that merit does not stack with any need based grants so may or may not help the financial picture. Last cycle they filled 63% of their class through ED (which is also going to include recruited athletes). They don’t break out the EA/RD numbers on the CDS so it’s tough to estimate which round might fill out the other 37% of the class except that Tulane really wants to love the kids that love them first and applying RD suggests that the applicant may not love them that much.
I also have D22 and S26 graduating in 2026. As it stands now the graduations are exactly one week apart! Let’s hope it doesn’t change, because the last high school in our district has graduation the same night as D22’s college.
