D26 took the PSAT yesterday for the second time.
Obviously we won’t have her score for a while but one of the first things she said at pick up was she felt strongly that working from the Princeton study material helped her immensely.
Her first ‘for real’ test is in 6 weeks. Her plan is to take it once more in early June and then that’s ‘it’.
Took D26 to a local college fair recently. They had an admissions rep there from U of A’s College of Applied Science & Technology. We got to ask a few questions about the cyber ops major at the admissions table, got the rep’s business card. D26 liked how she got a U of A sticker out of it. 
Admissions rep was enthused that D26 was really interested in attending. (Here in the PHX metro area there’s always been a vibe of people in general looking down at Tucson like it’s a po-dunk cow town in the middle of nowhere…I’ve never quite understood that but whatever, different strokes for different folks).
Learned that for the major’s classes, average class size is 15-17 students to 1 professor and classes/sections aren’t taught by grad students. So that’s a nice plus.
D26 has a job interview online tomorrow w/Walmart. She’s been sick lately with a sinus infection. Allergist heavily recommending to proceed with allergy shots so we will probably start that in a few weeks.
Trimester 1 ends at the end of this week. I’m a dork and thought it ended a week or 2 ago. 
Our college freshman provided signs of life today by asking for money.
So in a HIGHLY annoying turn of events, it seems CU Boulder isn’t offering tours the Monday or Friday of C26’s spring break week 
(they seem to randomly leave some Mondays and Fridays out of their schedule). They have general tours the tue/wed/thur, but the environmental design school only does tours M and F. So after discussing it a little, we’re going to keep them out of school the Monday after spring break to do the tours. We thought about delaying till summer but it’s not going to be the same visiting outside of term time, and anyway this could end up being a pretty busy summer for C26.
We’ll fly in on the Thursday night to make a long weekend of it, spend some time in Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs (also have a couple friends around there), then do both the school tours Monday and fly back Monday evening. Unfortunately it’s a busy time at work for both my husband and I which precludes taking the whole week off.
We have now officially run into a snag for this Saturday’s SAT. A few snags, actually.
Unlike other schools, ours doesn’t give out free laptops for students to use, so that’s not an option.
Looks like we will have to shell out the $39 fee to cancel. I am really frustrated with all of this.
Our local library does lap top loaners. We also have places where laptops can be rented. Another option would be a power bank. Hope you can find a good solution!
Oh no! Hope you can find a solution - maybe a loan or rental?
This is crazy!~
Oh no so sorry to hear my kids have used a power bank to power their lap top in the past they are pretty small and are no longer super pricey. Amazon should have some good ones that can ship same day!
To be fair, this is standard wording on all the sat/psat info. I’m not sure the practicalities of meeting them were completely taken into account with the move to digital, though.
It’s super annoying more than anything. It’s not the end of the world. But really really irritating? Yeah, absolutely.
Can you borrow a Chromebook or laptop from someone? Or buy a power bank for the laptop?
Bluebook only works on school issued Chromebooks.
That’s right. I forgot that. Darn.
Just a thought, that line about not being guaranteed a power outlet is standard. Is there any way you can contact the testing center and find out their particular situation?
Not certain about the validity of this statement, My daughter tested the new digital PSAT for College Board before it came out last year and was able to have blue book on a non school computer
If that was the case, then the info on the College Board website wouldn’t say that it’s ok to use it on an ipad.
No, I meant, if it’s on a Chromebook it has to be a school issued Chromebook. Of course you can use other devices. I was responding to the suggestion to borrow a Chromebook.
Here is their site for reference:
Approved Testing Devices - Bluebook for Students | College Board.
oops, sorry!
Just a thought- we did a big college visit trip and UMD-College Park didn’t have any tours on the day we went. We ended up wandering through the student activities fair, the CS building and around campus. It was enough to get the feel for the school and my kid loved it & applied. It was probably one of the top schools on his list, despite not being able to do an official tour. We hovered around doorways of academic buildings and then went in with a group of students to see some indoor spaces- you can at least walk around, look at bulletin boards, eat a meal in the cafeteria & visit the student center.
I did briefly consider that, but when I did tours with D19 we definitely saw a difference just doing it ourselves and going on the tour. Especially, for this program, we want to see the studio space etc. so taking an extra day to do both the general and department tour seems worthwhile. I’ve seen the virtual tour of the department (I think the video was from Covid days) and it looks amazing but we want to see it for real. The plan is for C26 to do a summer arch program (here in CA) next year and that will also give a base for some comparison on studio facilities. We will definitely spend time just wandering around campus too to get a feel for how the students are - this is also why we don’t want to wait for summer.