Parents of the HS Class of 2026

As of now, I’m looking forward to the waiting season as the coaxing her to get all her stuff done season we are in is no fun. And, it will likely be another month and a half at least before she’s actually done with all her many supplemental questions. I may be wrong about the reality of it, but in my mind’s eye when she is finally done applying we can all just relax and enjoy each other until the bulk of the decisions start rolling in in late March. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I’m holding onto it to get us through this grind of a time of essay mania.

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This is what we’re hoping for here too. Just get the apps done and then next semester is nice and easy, right! Right?!

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Exactly!

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Who wants to share what your kids have going on besides college apps and essays? :grin:

Marching band season is winding down here – competitions are over, and there are a handful of post-season games left. Rehearsal has dropped down to only Thursday afternoons.

D26 is auditioning in the next couple weeks for both the winter musical and spring play. If she gets both, rehearsals will be non-stop through the end of March.

Jazz band is ongoing – kid plays clarinet, but she’s teaching herself soprano sax and is hoping to get good enough to play it in concert. It’s still a little rough at this point. :joy:

District band auditions are coming up, so she has to work on perfecting the etude and scales. Veteran’s Day assembly happening soon, with band playing the military anthems and some other stuff. Symphonic band Christmas concert will be fun with some good pieces. She gets to play the clarinet 1 part of Sleigh Ride, which is always a fan favorite.

STEM senior seminar continues to be challenging. Giant project proposal successfully submitted. The next part of the project is to propose several different solutions, and then finally build the thing.

Tomorrow the younger grades are taking the PSAT, so there are no classes for seniors – but they have a day of service, where they’re doing several different service projects, plus they will attend an alum panel and talk about career paths or something. They’re released after lunch. Friday after school is a workshop to learn the audition dance for the musical.

That’s the biggest stuff right now. What are your kids up to?

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I am tired reading all that your kid is doing/planning to do :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Haha yes me too.

It’s homecoming week here - C26’s small chamber singers group is singing the anthem at the game on Friday night and then it’s the dance on Saturday. Apart from that nothing other than the usual stuff this week.

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Dang, your kid is BUSY! :slight_smile:

Mine continues to work 16 hr/week on weekends at Walmart. She fills the online grocery orders. Also TA’s 3 days/week after school for one of the middle school teachers for 8th grade English classes. Does volunteer work for NHS service hours.

lately since her college app essays are done, she’s started doing research for her senior project, which will occur in trimester 3 (starts early Feb). Students have to find their own site placements for this, so she has a deadline of end of this week to turn in the names & contact info of 5 potential off-site mentors for her project. Then next week, she has to reach out to all of them to start inquiries.

What’s her senior research project topic? Something about how history influences current pop culture…that’s all I know at the moment. LOL.

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It will be interesting to see how colleges’ use of the essay evolves in the coming years as AI becomes more ubiquitous. I suspect it will quickly get to the point where colleges feel less confident that the essays are the students own work, and will use them more purely to get insights about the student as opposed to whatever weight they now ascribe to them as an indicator of a kid’s ability to write or tell a story.

Duke has started doing this, now on admissions cycle 3. They are no longer “grading” essays for grammar or stylistic quality but more using them to glean information about the student applying. I can see others doing this as well in the future.

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ha! Wee have PSAT also. Most seniors staying home to “sleep in and catch up!”

I WISH they would just let the seniors do this. But I think they impose some kind of penalty if seniors don’t show up for the service day tomorrow. Bah. :neutral_face:

i’m behind but as it relates to Georgia Tech and AI, they were pretty clear at preview day that kids should not use AI to write the essay - grammar checks, brainstorming ok - but not the whole essay.

I think we are at the start of figuring out where this technology fits in higher education. It may lookk different at each school and even within. That’s a whole separate thread, lol!

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well my D accidentally “leaked” senior skip date around math teacher- she assigned a test that day. so… yeah. I’ll let her stay home tomorrow. Public school perk.

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Given how many applicants to this tier of colleges probably use essay coaches, this approach is likely overdue anyway?

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D26 has submitted all but UC. And she is so done with essays! She received first admit -to Auburn - and now doing the honors application, which is due before she hears from GT and her ED school.

Senior night for cheer is Friday so we are looking forward to that. Hard to believe there is only 3 or 4 more weeks of school cheer. Then her competitive season kicks off. No time to rest! at least the waiting will go quickly.

She’s also getting super crafty with Halloween costumes. I love that teenaagers can still get super excited about Halloween.

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What am I missing - why does PSAT give seniors the day off?

Because seniors don’t take the PSAT – juniors and sophomores take it. And they’re busy all morning with it, and they want to have quiet hallways during testing – plus there are plenty of classes that have both juniors and seniors in them, so it makes sense to not hold classes for just the seniors.

At our school, the freshmen take some other standardized test – CogAT or something? So the whole high school will be in testing except seniors.

Juniors are busy with PSAT so some of the classes are already half empty, seniors at our school would take a senior class picture on the field then have the day off to meet with counselors or go work on their essays.

Interesting. At our school the school day PSAT and SAT are done in the gym (no hallways near it, it’s a separate building) and everyone else is supposed to be at school. For the classes that have a lot of people out doing the tests the teachers might just show a related video or something, but students are expected to be in class.

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Yay, she finally heard from Auburn – congrats! Such a relief to get the first one!

My older one got into UGA early, but she didn’t get the auto admit to honors. She was so very peeved at me that I made her apply to honors – because yeah, it was due before she was going to hear back from her preferred choices, and we just had no idea what would happen.

Going from sideline cheer to competitive cheer with no break sounds exhausting! More so than marching band to play rehearsal, lol.

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Only the juniors take the PSAT at our suburban public school. This year, we had 14 commended and 8 national merit semi finalists. 22 out of 210 graduating seniors of class of 2026 got commended or is a semi finalist.

Not sure if this year’s class in general is just off the charts competitive.