At our high school, if you do not take the exam, they do not give you credit for having taken the class. It is absurd.
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Thatās the rule at our school too ā to get the weighted AP grade you have to take the AP test
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Thatās pretty organized re tours etc!! We have one trip planned for spring break (but only one maybe 2 colleges as itās a busy week at work for me), planning on visiting another (a likely/almost safety) when weāre next in SoCal, and will probably only visit the others if they donāt get into their first choice. Or if what is now first choice disappoints when we visit.
Itās hard to judge targets with the GPA situation in freshman year having an impact, though 1st choice explicitly says they look at trends so that helps. And hopefully will get a SAT score thatās high for the target schools. At the moment there are no reaches on the list ā¦ 2 -3 targets, 2-3 likelies/safeties ā¦
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Thereās so much variation on this from 1 high school to another!
For example, at our high school, on something like an AP foreign language, youāre not required to take the exam. But in D24ās graduating class, you DID have to take the AP exam for a foreign language class. BUT D24 is required to take the AP exam for Calculus AB, has to take the AP exam for either English Language or English Literature, has to attempt 6 exams and has to pass 3 of them.
AND your final grade in the class for the year is, in part, based on your score on the AP exam. They have a chart for it that tells you what your final grade will be based on whether you get a 1,2,3,4, or 5 on the test along with what your grade is going into the exam. So if you donāt get a passing score on the AP test, then your grade on the transcript will go down. However, if you do get a passing score on the test, then your final grade goes up.
ā¦but at other high schools, youāre required to take the exam no matter what.
ā¦at yet other schools, taking the AP exam is entirely optional.
ā¦and at some schools, the teacher/administration decides on a case by case basis.
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Ok I took 2 whiteboards and we went over what he needs to do, SAT,PSAT, recommendation letters, music rehearsals, all with deadlines. And guess what despite me harping on him for 3 weeks that his internship application is due Nov 1st he hasnāt done anything about it. Well he asked one teacher and the teacher said you should ask the previous years teacher and he stopped there.
Based on everything he needs to do he gave up on trying out for the YoungArts jazz competition, we found out about it too late and he doesnāt have enough time to practice the requirements. Maybe next year.
Now letās see if this makes a difference.
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Same.
S26 seems more organized this year with nothing missing or lateā¦yet! He no longer has Chinese, which he hated, so that might have been a big part of the solution. He was often behind in that class.
No tours set up here. Iām working on a reasonable list for him and hoping weāll get a tour in this spring.
We are talking about which AP tests to take. He has music, statistics, and chemistry. Weāre thinking either just chemistry or none. The average for chemistry is 2-3 or so and getting higher will require a fair amount of out-of-school work. I donāt know that heāll do that. He will take the CLEP chemistry test in the summer.
But, his first choice is Alabama and course scheduling is by credit, so having credit in statistics and music would bump him up. I donāt know that itās worth $110/test though.
Hi Fellow Tulane parent 
How is your oldest liking it there? My daughter is loving her experience but S26 is a totally different kid.
He is very happy there. His path has not been a totally straight one, but I have been exceedingly pleased with Tulane throughout everything. Everyone seems to be very student focused there, which is refreshing!
Tulane is not on the list for D26. I personally think she might be overwhelmed by the vibe at Tulane ā especially as a female student ā but mostly we havenāt looked at Tulane for her because it does not have a 4-year BSN (nursing) program. (Although they have an accelerated BSN program and someone in the nursing group mentioned there might be a traditional program in the works??)
S26 gets prickly when I point out missed homework assignments or suggest more studying for exams or standardized tests (we have a wonderful relationship but those reminders donāt go over well 
). So no PSAT for him, it wasnāt worth the hassle of making him study when it is unlikely he would reach NMSF. Iām already dreading ACT prep, which he will have to start before too long for the in school spring testing date.
He is not very organized but has a busy schedule with ECs, definitely something we need to work on.
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I thought Tulane just started a regular BSN program? But I might heave read that wrongly, since none of my kids will go into nursing.
Weāre really struggling to figure out what DS26 is looking for in a college. He is a quirky stem kid who isnāt into sports or frat life. I know he wants relatively small (so not a big state school but it doesnāt need to be a 2000 kid LAC either). He is also not into big cities, though would probably be okay with a school on the outskirts of a smaller city. He is leaning more towards schools with a stem focus, but mainly I think he doesnāt want to ever have to take another English class again.
Weāve visited around a dozen schools already and he didnāt really like most of them. I canāt really figure out what the common denominator is to schools he likes or dislikes. Anyone have suggestions for a way to figure this out? This isnāt my first rodeo, but somehow that one was much easierā¦
What worked for my older kid was after each tour, Iād ask her to name 3 things she liked and 3 things she didnāt like as much at that school. Then Iād make note of it (in a note on my phone or whatever) and store it away for later.
You could start out by going through this exercise w/him for the most recent 1 or 2 schools that you visited. Eventually, a pattern might start to emerge.
Maybe put each of those schools in a head to head, especially the ones he didnāt really like. If you had to pick between School A and School B, which would you pick? Why?
Getting the responses to the āWhyā question might help to figure out the preferences (with that being why one school was better than another or why one was worse than the other).
Were there many commonalities between the dozen schools already visited? How were they selected?
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Were they very different from each other? If not maybe try for something much bigger/smaller/more rural/more urban etc.
With D19 we tried to visit a range of different types and the ones she liked most had a lot in common with each other (though there was also one she really liked that āon paperā did not fit with her others).
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My D made a pros/cons list after every school visit and then ranked the schools against each other.
You can also start a match me thread with the schools he did like and the collective hive here can give you some similar schools to consider.
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I think that you should take this alphabetical list of 27 factors (which I borrowed from āYour College Bound Kidā podcast), prioritize that list for yourself, and then have your kid rank the list. And then you talk about it for a few minutes.
- area surrounding the college
- campus beauty
- campus setting: urban, suburban, rural, remote, college town
- career outcomes
- class size
- college rankings
- commuter vs residential
- cost/affordability
- distance from home
- diversity
- experiential learning
- facilities
- food
- friendliness
- graduation rates
- name recognition
- nature & green spaces
- overall academic excellence
- political climate
- religious environment/affiliation
- safety
- single gender vs coed
- school size
- sports/school spirit
- strength in your major
- student support
- weather
AND/OR take the wants/must-haveās that your kid told you about already and ask them to give each college a score.
for example, letās say you have your kid rank that list of 27 factors. Ask the kid to explain why each of the top 5-10 items are in that top 5-10 rank. Your child may say āWhat I really liked about College X was ABC, but I really didnāt like XYZ about that school, so thatās why Iām not sure about that college.ā Itāll help shed some light on where your kidās head is. AND students change their mind as they go through the process. 
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For S26 he wanted a beach or a big city. He loved UCSB because how pretty the campus was, heās also interested in NYU but I told him straight up we wonāt qualify for aid and I am not paying their prices for NYU if he really wants to be in the city he can work and see if he gets into Columbia. Overall he think heāll be happy with one of the UCs but wants to be in a city so Cal, UCLA or UC San Diego not sure he will get into any of them though. They are all very competitive. But at least he has an idea of what he wants.
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If he would potentially be competitive for Columbia and is interested in NYC, he may also want to think about Fordham - they were pretty generous with merit during D19ās application round. What major is he interested in?
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right now itās environmental engineering. He likes bio and science in general. But like most 16 year olds his real interest is YouTube and video games so I hesitate to say anything with confidence.
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