Interesting I had vaguely heard of NHS but didn’t know much about it, looks like S26s school doesn’t have that. At least one less application he needs to worry about.
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I don’t think that NHS really gives students a huge leg up or anything on college admissions, so if it’s not offered at your kid’s HS, don’t sweat it.
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Agree with others, NHS is so common nationally that IMO it’s essentially meaningless for college apps. Our school has an NHS chapter, but there are no meetings or activities - it’s treated more as an honor to put on your resume rather than an active club. D22 went through the induction process and later wondered why she even bothered. D26 is eligible but has no interest.
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Report cards came out yesterday for trimester 1. A week ago, our HS sent out what looked like a report card (but it was weird because it looked like it was printed using a different app/software than before) and then later that same day, the school sent out a “Oops! Those all went out by mistake and are incorrect!” email.
So after that correction, it looks like D26’s grade in Psychology went up from a C to a C+. The AP Psych teacher said that this year’s class is doing better at this point in the school year than prior years’ classes, so I thought that was good news. Should find out in a couple of days how D26 did on yesterday’s big test in that class.
Our HS’s grading policy is kind of different. On the official transcript, your grades for the school year only appear as 1 grade for the entire year for each course…so no Trimester 1/2/3 separate grades. AND if the class is an AP course AND if you take the AP exam in May, then the score you get on that AP exam can increase or decrease your overall grade for the course.
Since D26 has changed her study habits up a bit for Psychology, I think that she’ll be able to bring that grade up to a B in Trimester 2 & 3. And if she gets a 3 on the AP exam, then that’ll bring her grade in the class up to an A at the end of the year.
D26 also has a C in Honors Physics. If she ends the school year with a B or B- in that class, I’ll consider that a success.
AP Calc AB - she has a B- right now. I’m pretty happy about that. It’s been a tough course for her.
She got A’s and A-'s in APUSH, AP English Lit, AP Human Geography, AP Spanish, & APUSH. The Spanish teacher isn’t very good this year…is brand new to teaching, is green around the edges, and they haven’t been taught anything new at all this year. Taking the AP Spanish exam is optional, so we’re going to have our kid opt out of that one.
Even if D26 ends up with a C in Physics at the end of the school year, I’m not worried about college admissions because:
- D24 had a lower GPA and more C’s on her transcript than D26 does at the moment (D26 has 0 from 9th-10th grade)
- D24 got accepted everywhere she applied, including U of A
- U of A, like ASU, has guaranteed admission if you graduate HS from a regionally accredited HS and rank in the top 25% of your graduating class OR have a 3.0 UW GPA in your 9th-11th grade HS transcript for ‘core competency’ classes (i.e., stuff like english, math, history, science, foreign language).
- D26 really likes U of A and it has majors she’s really interested in.
- Even if D26 eats it and gets 2 C’s this year, she’ll still get accepted to U of A (we’re in state). It could put her out of the running for getting into the honors college.
Anyway, just wanted to share my thought process with you all in case anybody finds it useful or helpful.
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We have a horrible APUSH teacher, apparently he makes fun of the kids for asking questions just openly mocks them in class so no one asks questions anymore. He also gave zeros to S26 on a major assignment because he wasn’t in class even though S26 had to participate in a school band activity and is supposed to be excused. He asked the teacher and was told it would be fixed at the end of the semester, I am worried he’ll just ignore it and tell him next semester it’s too late to change it. S26 said the teacher was already angry at him for bringing it up. Kind of feel helpless here what do you do with a bad teacher ?
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Ugh sorry to hear this teacher sounds like a gem 
. unfortunately I don’t have any good advice, but if the teacher doesn’t correct the grade by the end of the semester, that would definitely be the time to reach out to the school. Good Luck!!
A you bring these concerns to the administration? This seems really unfair.
D26 had an issue like this with one of her teachers in the past. After talking to the teacher several times without progress, she wrote a detailed email to her academic counselor explaining the situation and asking for help working with the teacher. The counselor then wrote to the teacher. The grade got fixed. The teacher was better the next semester.
Our high school is a large public school and some of our teachers are not the best. D has had a couple of teachers that are burned out and grouchy and just want to sit in the corner on their phones while kids work on homework. My understanding is that the administration can’t do a whole lot, because of the teachers’ union. But the counselors seem to be willing to help mediate in certain cases. I think it helped that D was the one to contact the counselor herself, rather than her parent getting involved (although I encouraged her).
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I’d request an in person meeting w/the teacher and bring a copy, if possible, of whatever your kid has re: being excused because of the band thing. And follow up with an email to said teacher, cc’ing the school administration, telling teacher you’re looking forward to meeting with them at XYZ Date & Time. 
FWIW, this exact thing happened to D22 in her freshman year at our large public HS. Teacher was well-meaning but very absent-minded, promised multiple times that the actual project grade of 100 would be entered to replace the 0 that had been mistakenly entered. You can probably guess what happened - the change was never made, and by the time we questioned the grade on the mid-year report card, we were told by admin that it was too late and no changes could be made. Fortunately, even with the error, D22’s final grade for the year in that class was a 93, so it didn’t hurt her GPA as badly as it might have in another situation. But I would definitely stay on top of this and get involved before the semester ends.
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That is a great idea, S26 is on his 3rd counselor now, every year they hire a new person and at the end of the year that person leaves for the private sector but at least this is something he can try and yes I feel if I was to write to the teacher it wouldn’t help.
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S26 has C’s last year in both semesters of one of the honors science class. We have two honors teachers, but the teacher he got is horrendous and doesn’t give A’s. So my kid who most probably would have ended with a B with other teacher, ended up with a C. Thankfully he still loves the subject. That’s important to us as he is a purely science kid to the core. But I have no idea how this would impact his admission chances next year, as he intends to apply as some STEM major, not engg though.
Ah we’ll deal with it next year. I am sure he’ll be ok in the end.
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I hear ya!
On the way home from school today, D26 said she compared notes today w/students who had this teacher last year for honors physics and they all had the same challenges with understanding the material. D26 has decided to go seek out some lectures and other materials on Khan Academy to see if that helps at all.
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Chiming in on teacher issues. We had a long discussion on math last night. S26 hates math anyway (because he doesn’t see its applicability to his life, he will not be an engineer!) but it has never been an issue. Now he says his teacher just can’t explain the concepts (trig). According to him out of 30 kids in the class 2 are understanding what the teacher talks about, 28 do not. They are speaking up and asking him to explain it better/differently/more slowly but to no avail. S26 is holding on to a B but is turning to YouTube to actually understand the concepts. Our mantra is “four more weeks” 
Due to block schedule he will be done with his four years of HS math in December 
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So I brought up with S26 that I was going to reach out to his counselor or teacher to talk about the grade issue. Turns out he met with the teacher again and this time the teacher told him the next test was going to count twice as much and after the test he needs to meet with the teacher and remind him of this. Also this teacher is the head of the department.
S26’s words “so you stay in your lane ok, don’t need you to mess this up for me like the other parents.”
“What did the other parents do ?”
“oh the teacher says parents keep coming to him and complaining, he said we have too many helicopter parents”
me trying to hold it in " yeah I wonder why that is"
Yeah why do so many parents have issues with this one particular teacher. We’ll never know. 
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November SAT Score Release today. With the score inflation over the last few years with test optional policies, everything is skewed higher. If schools reinstate standardized testing requirements for our 2026 kids, what will the landscape look like?
D26 did not score nearly as well as she had hoped, thinking a few schools that were already reaches are now super reaches.
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D26’s 11/2 SAT score is lower than her PSAT. Boo. Might have her take it again in the spring, but not going to really think much about it for now.
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depending on location I would say register now and cancel later, at least by us spots close up months in advance.
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It seems to me there is a trend towards more schools requiring testing and I am sure more will by the time our students apply. (Though not the California publics who seem like they will never go back to that.) From other discussions it definitely seems like middle 50s have trended higher during the test-optional phase as people just don’t submit if they think it won’t help, so I would expect we would see some downward move again in the average for those schools who move back to test required. How much, I don’t know, but someone suggested looking at cds to see what the ranges were before they moved TO which may be a good guide for a particular school.
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Mine got her November SAT score today too. She did slightly better than both her PSAT and August SAT, and is getting very near her (realistic) target score. The good news is that she actually wants to take it one more time and readily agreed to “a little” prep this time. (If you recall, she was previously refusing test prep). I just signed her up for the March test – and then we are done. (Except that she is required to take the ACT this spring as the state-mandated test.)
I am really hoping we can submit test scores with most (if not all) of her applications. D26’s grades are decent, but probably not good enough to stand on their own. And I would not be surprised to see more schools moving towards test-required for fall 2026 enrollment. At one info session we attended, the AO hinted at it.
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