<p>“I have heard it argued that there are some advantages to moving mid-year.”</p>
<p>I think this is true. I moved with my husband and two kids when the kids were in the 4th and 6th grades. We moved in the middle of the school year, feeling that, since our lives largely revolve around the school and after school activities, this would allow for the smoothest transition. We thought moving during the summer would make it harder for the kids to make friends because their exposure to other kids would be limited to the neighborhood and to summer camps and activities that would be attended by kids from surrounding communities too. For high school kids, who aren’t as likely to go and play in the neighborhood or have mom set up a play date, I would think a summer move would be more difficult.</p>
<p>I would say keep everyone together.<br>
DH’s family was faced with the same thing. My FIL got a job in a town (my hometown) 300 miles away from their hometown. My SIL was a Jr. at the time so MIL and the 4 kids stayed behind so SIL could grad. from her high sch. FIL could only come back to vist once every two weeks and MIL about pulled her hair out with kids in 12th, 9th, 6th, and 3rd grades.
DH being the oldest S (14/15) had to take on a lot of the “man jobs” around the house. It was a very difficult year for all of them. </p>
<p>They moved to the new town the summer after SIL graduated. DH enrolled as a sophomore in the town high school (my school). Two years later, we started dating. Five years after that, we got married.</p>
<p>Moral to the story…Moving in high school can turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you,LOL.</p>
<p>Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. I will look into graduation requirement, AP class availability, etc, things I would have ignored. I will share your replies with D and eventually I will let her decide.</p>
<p>agree with Marite and Sunnyflorida - move at end of jr. year, not middle. Too many significant courses in jr. year with possible college impact, such as completing AP’s, or courses that will relate to SAT-2 performance.</p>
<p>Then she can decide for that final year whether to reunite with family (I’m guessing she will) but if not, one year might be arrangeable with a best friend from H.s. to stay in place. </p>
<p>Sr. year of h.s. gets hijacked, in either location, almost right away with: college lists, visits, applications, SAT sittings in the Fall. That could happen from either location. My kids didn’t feel much a part of anything except their anticipated futures by the time sr. year came around.</p>
<p>But jr. year in the middle? Lots of academic impacts, too many to justify the ingaterhing of family which sounds like is likely to happen over the summer before sr. year by her wish. Unless she thinks she’ll be miserable or depressed to stay put for the rest of this jr year, I’d encourage her to stay in place for the saek of her longer term future plans to do well on the courses and tests that so influence college opportunity.</p>
<p>A good friend of mine came to my school my senior year. His class rank took a huge hit and he still got into schools like Northwestern, WashU and Harvey Mudd.</p>
<p>I’ll be the contrarian here; we didn’t follow H’s job transfers while kids were in HS. His particular career involved moves every 20 months or so - by the time kid 1 was a freshman and had been in 7 schools, we decided that we’d pick a home and let job revolve around that. It worked, but wasn’t easy. Weekend parenting (and all the home jobs) is tiring. But the kids got to stay with a great group of friends and all got in to the schools they wanted. WOuld it have been better or worse had we moved: who can say? I do know that kids coming in to our system never benefit in terms of class rank.<br>
There is no one right answer…</p>
<p>I’ll also be a contrarian. I barely spent any time with my father growing up and we couldn’t be closer now. He would come home every weekend or every other weekend while he worked across the country and lived in corporate apartments or efficiencies. By the time I was in high school, we would have had to have moved at least 15 times if we had followed him. There’s no regrets there on either side.</p>
<p>Also, I had 2 friends in high school who had to stay in school an extra semester because of moves late in high school. One moved 2nd semester of junior year and one moved for senior year. My school district required 4 of each “core” class (math, science, social studies/history, and English), 2 foreign languages, and 2 arts which threw them off. Also, my school works on block scheduling (4 classes each semester) so my friend who moved in the middle of the year did not have any of the classes she took at her first school count. My school district did not allow either to take online courses or summer school to make them up, so it really screwed up their college careers. You have to be very careful about that sort of thing.</p>
<p>In my case, the new place I move to has a lot of jobs matching my skill. It is unlikely I will move after this.
If the graduation requirements are very different between two schools, isn’t it better to move D right away than to move at the end of junior year(since she will have more time to fill the gap)?</p>
<p>It’s now nearly half of the first semester. So that semester will be wasted. It is difficult to see how she could catch up on that first semester’s worth of classes. It has nothing to do with how good a school or even a teacher is. It’s about choices and sequences of topics and readings and approaches to the materials.</p>
<p>For example, both my Ss took AP-USH, but with different teachers. Each had her own way of dealing with the curriculum (one was more focused on social and cultural history, the other on political history). The texts, I believe, were different. The approach to preparing the students for the exam was also different, with one teacher giving frequent quizzes and the other far less often.</p>
<p>It also has to do with the course grade. How would the new grade incorporate the work already done?<br>
I personally think that junior year is the most important year. Not senior year. It is the year that colleges focus most on because it is the last year for which grades are available that reflect a whole year’s worth of courses, whereas what is submitted to colleges for senior year reflects either the first quarter or the first semester. I also think that while students should try to take the most challenging curriculum available in their senior year, colleges will understand if, because of moving, a student is not able to take APs. But they won’t be able to get over bad or incomplete grades.</p>
<p>I would have had a very different opinion if your move had happened before the start of classes.</p>
<p>Contrarian point of view: suggest to your D that she apply to college immediately and skip her senior year entirely–finishing out her junior year at the currrent location.</p>
<p>Yes, it is possible to skip the senior year. My D changed schools for junior year (not in the middle of it) and the new school was an okay but not great fit. Due to the huge number of credits coming from her way intense prior school, with some creative class scheduling, D was able to become a senior 2nd semestre and get the specific classes she needed to graduate early.</p>
<p>Due to her age she is doing CC classes and will go away to university at the normal age, but it’s working.</p>
<p>It is indeed possible to skip senior year. Usually, however, the student has built a very strong record. One student who graduated early because her family was moving had scored 1550 on the SAT in 7th grade, begun to take AP classes in 9th grade, and so on. Not every early graduate has the same profile, but in general, they are only short of one requirement to graduate or have doubled up on courses in order to fulfill the graduation requirements.</p>
<p>I’d be leery of asking the D to apply to colleges if she has not yet made up a list, lined up recs, drafted essays, etc…</p>
<p>One possibility for the OP’s D is to finish junior year in her present school, move to the new location and take classes at the community college in her new location. Some colleges will require a high school diploma but many won’t. </p>
<p>I could see the OP’s D moving at the end of first semester if both the current school and the new school are on the block schedule. If not, integration would be very iffy.</p>
<p>I grew up with this exact scenario 31 years ago. My dad took a job across the country and my mom and I stayed behind until I graduated. I know this sounds bad, but my Dad was just not a dominant part of my life at that time - my friends and high school activities were everything to me then! I cannot imagine having to give all that up to start somewhere new in the middle of junior year. But if your D wants to do it, maybe she isn’t very happy where she is anyway.</p>
<p>I think its a tad late in the scheme of things to graduate at the end of Junior Year. It would be ideal though. Usually kids who do that plan well ahead, as they need to let their Guidance office know of their plans, just to make sure that all requirements are met. </p>
<p>If your D has great organizational skills, has some ideas of where she wants to apply/attend, it is not impossible to put together essays and applications even now. I’m sure most Seniors are barely warming up.</p>
<p>She would need to let her Guidance office know Monday, get teachers to agree to do recommendation letters. The deadline for most schools is Dec.31, some have Jan.1, Jan 15 and so on. Why not investigat the possibilities.</p>
<p>It’s only mid October. You can’t apply early decision if you go to college after your junior year, so apps aren’t due in for months yet. I realize many CC kids have been working on their apps for months (if not years) BUT that’s not necessarily the case. December SATs would be fine–and registration doesn’t close until 10/30. </p>
<p>The OP states that her daughter excels academically. She is moving from “one midwest city to another” so her D could look for a college near the new location… </p>
<p>I agree that recommendations might be an issue, but I’m sure teachers would take into account the unusual circumstances.</p>
<p>This link gives official “early entrance” programs: <a href=“http://www.earlyentrance.org/[/url]”>http://www.earlyentrance.org/</a>
Many more colleges will accept students at the end of their junior year, if they’ve fulfilled the bulk of their HS program (MIT and CalTech, for example).</p>
<p>My concern would be about not just SAT but also SATIIs. Months and months, actually means Thanksgiving, at least at our school, for getting recs from teachers. And Thanksgiving is only one month away. But more importantly, I wonder if the student has considered which school to apply to. Most students do not begin to really think about it until the spring of their junior year.</p>
<p>Another approach would be to home school. Subject Tests can easily be self-studied with library resources in any decent sized community. If your student feels like she needs help in some area you feel you can not help her with, take selected community college courses. State laws about home schooling vary and so do college requirements. Many colleges, particularly the “better” ones, don’t care about a high school diploma. She could also get involved with interesting work, paid or volunteer, that would be impossible to do with a standard school schedule.
Conforming to institutional schedules just seems too high a price to pay when you and your family have lives to live.
I know this approach is not within everyone’s comfort level, and may not even appeal to many. But it is more than doable.</p>