Parents of the HS Class of 2026

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
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Zero plans right now other than joining us on our family vacation in July. D26 has been socked with repeat sinus infections over the past few months so we are just in the mode right now of “let’s get through the rest of the school year” mode. Am taking D26 for allergy testing in June in an attempt to figure out what the problem is. Pediatrician’s office has been less than helpful. When the dust settles, am going to find a new pediatrician’s office because I’m frustrated with their nonsense and “oh well” attitude.

I’ll be taking D26 out a lot this summer for driving practice. Other than that, no plans!

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My S26 is headed to a summer art program for 6 weeks. That’s most of the summer so he’ll just chill at home the rest of the time. My D22 is going to be at home this summer, so we are sending one off and receiving another.

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Hopefully the allergist gets to the bottom of it. Curious if she has seen ENT- might be a consideration depending what the allergist says. Chronic sinusitis sucks.

D26 gets her driver’s license on May 25 :scream: You may recall my post many months ago about her crashing into our garage…she has thankfully gotten better, LOL. It has been a lot for me to push that incident aside and take her driving. We enrolled her in a crash prevention class that we did for S24 which was fantastic. They give you a nice discount on your insurance for taking the class and they learn a lot. She did that a couple weekends ago and we are trying to have her drive anytime she is in the car to continue practicing. Once she gets her license I don’t think she will be one of those kids who drives everywhere and is constantly in the car (like her brother). She will likely drive to and from school, to and from cheer practice and that is pretty much it. She also can’t have anyone else in the car for the first 6 months so that helps. Anyway, good luck with the appointment and with driving!

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S26 loves to drive. He got his license on his 16th birthday and ditched the school bus the next morning. He says that also helps with his summer plans, as now he can get places and meet friends on his own.

He applied to a finance/investing summer camp but was not selected. Too bad, because attending summer camps to test out occupational interests worked well for D22. He thinks he might be interested in business but has really had not exposure to the business world so far.
Other summer plans for him are still a bit up in the air as they will largely depend on his sport. His team is really good this year and has already qualified for some post season tournaments, so we will travel for that.

His Sophomore year is almost in the books, two more weeks to go but he already had most finals and his AP seminar test two days ago. To celebrate the end of AP Seminar he and some friends from that class went to Waffle House this morning for breakfast, they met there at 6am :open_mouth:

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She saw an ENT for quite awhile when she was much younger. She had her tonsils & adenoids taken out in 2nd grade. And had ear tubes for awhile before that when she was younger, but 1 of them never fell out on its own, so she had a hole in her ear drum which never closed up on its own, so a year after the tonsils got removed, she had another surgery to repair the ear drum thing. It seemed like we were always going to the doctor back then!

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D26 said that she thinks she did ok on her chem final exam retake. Her teacher offered her the opportunity to retake it since she missed 3 days of school last week from being out sick, so she missed a lot of review. Today, she’s taking the AP European History exam…that’s done at noon today. AP Precalculus exam is on Monday, then AP English Language on Tuesday. And then spanish final + AP Bio exam on Thursday…same day as D24’s graduation! That’s going to be a crazy day.

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AP Euro test is done! D26 thinks she did pretty well on it and said, “I’m pretty sure I got a 3, maybe a 4 based on how much I knew about the 2 essay topics.” She was pretty happy to turn in her history textbook today at the start of the exam. :slight_smile: I picked her up early today with the excuse of a dr appointment so she could take the afternoon off and veg out. :slight_smile: They aren’t doing regular classes the rest of the school year anyway right now.

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D26 has a pretty busy summer. She’ll continue with her sport (equestrian) and compete in a couple shows, she’s going to France for 3 weeks through Global Works, taking drivers ed, taking SAT tutoring classes and then taking the SAT at the end of August. Will also do some volunteering at a local farm and lots of hiking!

It’s going to fly by!!

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S26 has a pretty busy summer planned too. He’ll swim on and coach the summer swim team, and also give swim lessons at our neighborhood pool. He will do a bunch of music, and volunteer for a few weeks at an OT camp. We’ll also visit a few schools, and go to the beach.

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Is she looking to ride in college?

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She would like to keep riding, yes. Most likely through a school that has an IHSA team. We don’t own a horse and she doesn’t do a ton of rated shows, mainly just IEA or schooling shows, so she’s not looking to be recruited or ride on an NCEA team.
If we can find a school that checks all the other boxes and she can also ride there, that would be ideal! We visited Clemson last month because we were in the area for IEA nationals - they have an IHSA team and we were able to stop by their barn for a tour. She loved it:)

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D26 texted a little while ago, said that the AP Precalculus exam is 3 hr long, not 4. She’ll be relieved when that test is all over and done with.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned here on this thread before or not, but in case anybody’s kids are interested in testing out of some college classes, you should consider checking out https://modernstates.org/.

They have this “Freshman Year For Free” program where you can take, for free, up to the equivalent of a freshman year’s worth of college courses online through their organization. All of the lectures & practice questions & practice tests are online and you go through them at your own pace. At the end of taking & passing a practice CLEP exam for that subject, they give you a voucher code which you then use to register through College Board to take the CLEP exam for that subject for free.

Honestly, it’s an awesome program and not many people are aware of it. Nor are they aware that a heck of a lot of public universities and colleges (and even some private ones) do accept CLEP for you to test out of classes and get college credit for them. There is some variation from 1 school to another in terms of what classes the college will and will not accept, just like there’s variation on that same thing for AP exams.

D26’s high school requires students to take the AP Calculus AB exam. Math is not D26’s strongest subject. So D26 is going use Modern States’ Calculus course, like D24 did, as an additional way of reinforcing stuff she’ll learn in person at high school during the school year when she takes Calculus AB. Then at the end of the school year, she’ll take the Calc AB AP exam and she’ll separately take the CLEP exam for Calculus through a local testing center (most of the testing centers are at community colleges or public universities, but there is an option to take CLEP online at home). Probably going to have her take the CLEP exam for Psychology, too.

anyway, there’s no gimmick to it. No strings attached. They talked about it last year on one of the “Your College Bound Kid” podcast episodes. Thought I’d pass the info along in case some of you, like us, are not made of money and you have a budget you’d like to stick to for college. :slight_smile:

One should NOT expect any elite college/university to give you course credit for passing CLEP exams, but for any college regardless of its ranking, you should go on the individual college’s website and do a search for “CLEP” and then read up on its policies to find out what your kid would and would not get credit for.

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Purdue has a partnership with Modern States for this, which they call Fast Start: Purdue Fast Start Program - Undergraduate Admissions - Purdue University

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D26 said that the Precalc exam proctor messed up a little bit and skipped over 1 set of instructions, so their test overall took longer than expected because of that. She’s relieved to be done with that class.

This morning is the AP English Language exam, which she thinks she’ll do ok on. The AP English Language teacher is a fantastic instructor and does an awesome job prepping her students for the test.

No finals tomorrow, then 2 on Thursday (same day as graduation for D24!). The kid is really looking forward to final exams being done this week. :slight_smile:

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I’m having my S26 take the chemistry exam this summer. I finally have a kid with a full year of 10th grade and chemistry! S22 took it but needed some studying since he had it cut short and took it 2 years later. D24 will have to study more too since she’s in that same situation of missing a lot and having it 2 years ago but it will be worth it.

What’s also great is you walk out with the result. No waiting 2 months like IB and AP exams.

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Here in CA, the UC system doesn’t accept CLEP at all. The CSU system accepts CLEP, but CSUs vary in how many exams they accept; for example Cal Poly SLO only accepts four CLEP exams (three of the math exams and chemistry).

We know a lot of students who take AP / IB exams for credit, and a fair number who take DE or other college courses for transfer (there is a well developed transfer pathway from CA CCs to UCs), but I haven’t heard of any students taking CLEP exams, probably because they aren’t widely accepted here.

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Oh, I forgot about that part! That’s pretty darn great, isn’t it? :slight_smile:

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Picked up D26 early from school after her AP exam was done today. She said the AP English Language test was fairly easy. Kid is glad to have another test over and out of the way. 2 more to go!

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D26 is already STRESSED about the ECs she will put on her future college applications :frowning:

Apparently it’s the season for 10th graders to campaign for a few select “leadership positions” that become bigger positions in senior year. For example VP of x in jr year → President of x in sr year, where x is a fairly substantial student organization that D is involved with. They have to apply and run for these positions now.

D started thinking about these positions and how it would look to have one on her college applications, and she has suddenly become really stressed out about the whole process.

“I am not sure if I even want one of these positions, but I feel like I need a leadership EC or I will be at a disadvantage!”

She feels like she has to either run for some position(s), or start a club or something (right now)!

I do not know how to dispel this concern / reduce her stress. I’ve tried to suggest articles like MIT “applying sideways” to emphasize that she should follow her own path rather than trying to check some “leadership” box. I’ve tried talking to her about how there are lots of other ways to “demonstrate leadership” on a college app, and you don’t have to be president or founder of some organization…

Any other parents have stressed-out kids desperately worrying that their ECs aren’t good enough? :frowning:

S23 wasn’t even thinking about college at this stage, so I didn’t have this problem with him.

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Yes. D26 has very little ECs even though her grades are excellent and she’ll probably score well on standardized tests.

She’ll probably major in CS which makes it double tough. We’re just going to roll with it and see what happens.

At our school, none of the class officers attended a T20 school and all the kids who got in to T20 schools did not hold any officer positions.