Not to mention that any student who can attend RSI should be capable of determining their approximate chances at elite schools.
Parents, Parent Cafe, Financial Aid. Start with those three forums, along with the forums related to potential majors, and then work up to reading some of the others.
Happykid had about a 3.5, and never took the PSAT, SAT, or ACT because she’s a truly lousy tester and found that she didn’t need a test score for the only affordable route (CC two years, then two years at a state U). Spending time here saved me a lot of grief because I learned about the money issues that would affect us. As luck would have it, Happykid landed a two year full tuition & fees scholarship at her CC. We only paid for books there. Sometimes even “ordinary” students can really rock!
I was intimidated to post here until I found the Parents of 2016 - 3.0 to 3.4 GPA thread. I have another recent graduate headed to Colorado State from VA (in 28 days!) with some merit money. She was an “average” student with a 3.4 weighted GPA, 2 APs, barely any ECs, didn’t get a guidance counselor recommendation, and only filled out five college applications. Her 30 ACT score (which would probably be a nightmare for a lot of the kids who post here) probably helped.
She was accepted at University of Minnesota (too cold), Indiana U.- Bloomington (too $$$), Eckerd College (got a weird vibe from campus/class visit but a lot of merit money), and three Cal State schools (San Diego, Cal Poly Pomona, Humboldt - one easy application, haha).
Once you find the threads you like, it’s hard to quit, haha. My younger kid is only a sophomore and has no specific thoughts about college yet and probably won’t for another year. I’ll probably present him with a list of schools 2 days minutes after he gets his PSAT scores because the research is fun.
@cycleride Nice story! Glad it worked out well. Our D16 applied to MSU and CSU though in the end, she decided she wanted a small LAC, so they weren’t really in the running. I did so love the ease of the MSU application and automatic merit aid for certain test score cut-offs plus WUE. Friend of mine’s D is going to CSU. I’m loving the pictures from their road-tripping/orientation. Fort Collins is a great area. I spent a year at the university years ago (work) and really enjoyed my time there.
We had fun touring schools in a new part of the country for us (New England) though we spent too much time doing pretty college-campus tourism, aka visiting reaches. Not sure why she didn’t want to visit more LACs in the west. WA/OR were out—too close to home—though we did visit a few during a Portland visit. She visited Colorado College while in Colorado junior year, but that was it. CA was out–too hot.
Anyhow she ended up choosing a school in Minnesoooota (yes, I can’t seem to say it w/o putting on a Fargo-esque accent). I’m looking forward to exploring a new part of the country on visits there. We are avid cross-country skiers and I’ve yet to x-c ski or race in MN or WI.
S1 was a slightly above average student in our district, 3.5 GPA buoyed by As in band and PE and a 26 on the ACT. After nearly being kicked out his freshman year for alcohol, he will be a senior at our good enough state school and is doing exceedingly well. I try to add the “hang in there” comments when I can because of him. Oddly, he is now the child we worry about least.
D was slightly higher stats but is at the same college in their Honors program. She had her own set of issues with homesickness, anxiety, not sure about her career choices … we parents worry , discuss, support. I try to add a Dad’s perspective when I think it will help though there are others more active.
S2 is one of those smart kids you read about on here and the reason I am still around - 35 ACT only because he had never taken a practice test and didn’t pace himself correctly to finish the math section. We have no idea what to do with him and he doesn’t really seem to be stressing over it. State flagship seems most likely though he will apply more broadly.
::waving::
we are here. some of us stick around for the beer runs…some of us stick around for the information. :-*
hang out. check out the class of–2017’rs are particularly cool with the Joke of the Day threads and other such randomness…its a fun group. and weirdly, there are plenty of average kids in that class.
on the surface, this place IS very intimidating, but once you sort of get the hang of it you’ll see that you are actually in good company…it just seems like every kid is beyond brilliant and changing the world (newsflash: at the moment most of those said kids are on the hunt for a jigglypuff, dont let them fool you!).
take the good and leave the bad. dont be afraid to ask what an abbreviation is, and dont be ashamed that you too have to google “where on earth is HOLYGRAIL college?!”
welcome!
Take a look at the CTCL schools, we visited many of them in the midwest, including Earlham, Kalamazoo, Wooster, Knox, Lawrence etc., and found them to be wonderful schools, with engaging faculty, interesting kids, and great opportunities. Many of these are also test optional, a plus for the kid whose scores don’t hit the stratosphere.
I have no idea why “Chance Me” threads are even allowed. They’re pretty much click bait, IMHO. Stick with the Parent, Financial Aid & Scholarship, and College Search & Selection forums and you’ll be in good shape. If it’s a bigger or (CC) popular school, you may get excellent guidance in the individual school’s forum as well.
I, too, highly recommend the Fiske Guide. I bought a lot of the popular FA books, and honestly, they weren’t NEARLY as reliable as the advice I received here in these forums.
Just one point of clarification re the University of Alabama:
Yes, they are unbelievably generous with FA, but you still need at least a 27 on the ACT to qualify for any kind of serious merit money. If you can get it up to a 32, you get full tuition for four years (as long as you have a 3.5 GPA at the end of junior year).
@poblob14 You are my new favorite person on here. I do read the chance threads - when I want a good laugh. I only have one child who could be above ordinary if she gave a crap. She doesn’t. She’s only a rising freshman, so I still have hope for her. So far, she’s a 4.0, but she “got bored” with the ACT test she took as part of the Duke TIP and did OK but not stellar (missed the state cutoff by one point). She has little desire to go to Harvard or Yale (too liberal in her opinion) but is interested in OOS flagships and other large public universities. Fortunately she has somewhat unusual academic interests not offered at any of our in-states, and we’re in the ACM, so she might turn out OK after all.
(A good point about this board - I never knew Bama offered full tuition for a 32 ACT; time for Little Miss Don’t Give A Crap to start caring.)
Lol "Little Miss Don’t Give A Crap " I had one or possibly two of those. At 26 and 31 they aren’t dead yet so it must have worked out.
OP.
What is actually your question / concern / whatever?
We all have very ordinary kids who we love with all our hearts and that is why we ALL wear very “rosy” glasses in our brains when we think about them. In our brains our very ordinary kids are extraordinary geniuses!! Don’t you feel the same?
yeah, i have an ordinary kid. good grades but had a rough time with the SAT. she just finished year 1 at community college with a 3.9 and will start in the Nursing program in August.
she may be ordinary but she is trying and succeeding to the best of her ability so i am very happy with that.
@tutumom2001, that descriptor of your daughter made me LOL.
Just a clarification on my previous “point of clarification” regarding Bama: I shouldn’t have used the abbreviation “FA” because I think most readers here consider “financial aid” to be NEED based. Bama is NOT terribly great with need-based aid, but they ARE very generous with stats-based, MERIT aid.
One other observation as a longtimer here for @poblob14 :
Many of us do have “very ordinary” kids we consider “extraordinary” in many ways. But there are some parents here who discount their extraordinary kids’ achievements by implying ANY kid could do similarly if only they study hard enough or “do their homework,” and that’s just not true IMHO. Some academic achievement is based solely in God-given talent. Yes, they all need to work hard, regardless, but most kids are NOT going to score in the 99th percentile on standardized tests and won’t be attending med school (for example) no matter HOW much they prep. Trust me, I have one of each. No way one could do what the other can do in his sleep.
We all have different strengths and weaknesses. Not all of us are gifted across disciplines academically, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a great school and a bright future out there just waiting to be discovered. Enjoy the journey and be happy when you arrive at your destination, wherever it is.
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I, too, highly recommend the Fiske Guide.
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I second (or third) that! I still have the very first edition (1982) sitting on my bookshelf - I was (and still am) such a dork. The guide was pretty handy especially for my spouse who is not very familiar with a lot of colleges. She had zero recognition of the college that our older kid eventually attended until I showed her in the guide (it is a good thing - my spouse is paying for our kid’s vertigo-inducing college tuition).
Exactly. As an example, among my relatives are those who barely made out of high school, reached MD/PhD, or nailed standard tests. They all do fine in life. The hardest thing for us parents is to recognize our kids’ strengths and weaknesses early on, which is almost impossible. Talent, grit, and luck, all are in play. CC helps.
@LucieTheLakie over on the Parents of 2017 thread we’ve been calling good merit schools “Big MACs” 
I love that, @MotherOfDragons!
Yup, @poblob14, I have one of both. One kid was the reason I participated in the the “Colleges for the Jewish B Student” thread, although her grades went up as she went through high school. She is reasonably bright but in a concrete way and graduated just before she turned 23 with an MSN and will be a nurse practitioner when she gets back from a three month backpacking trip in SE Asia. She was a good but not great student in HS and started college in Canada because the idea of the competition for slots in the holistic admissions setup in the US was too stressful for her in her Ivy/NESCAC-oriented private HS. Once she found a field that matched her interests and her kind of intelligence, she put the pedal to the medal and really did well: she had a 3.95 GPA and graduated summa cum laude. But, that wouldn’t have been the obvious prediction from her performance in HS. She now has much more confidence in her skills, intelligence and judgment.
The other one was ridiculously bright and ambitious but severely dyslexic. Getting to/through HS was a bumpy ride from a health standpoint, but he did quite well. He said at the time that if he didn’t have learning disabilities, he would have had time for another serious extracurricular activity. But he applied to a few Ivies and NESCAC schools, got into several, did exceedingly well in college, started a company, and is in the best graduate programs in the world in the fields he wants to study. As a hobby, he has made over a 500% return betting in political prediction markets. To do this all given his dyslexia, he had to learn to play to his strengths and to set up situations that would enable him to succeed.
Both are great kids. With luck, both will have good lives. We’ve tried to teach them both to play to their strengths, to work hard to achieve whatever objectives they set for themselves, that pursuing those objectives can lead to a satisfying work life, that having a great partner enriches life, and that money is a constraint, not a goal. They will have very different lives, I suspect, but I think there is a reasonable prospect that they will both have fulfilling adult lives, which has been my goal from the beginning.
I have a child who’s in the solid, practical smarts category. This child studies and does pretty well. Child self-schedules SAT studying but maybe not enough hours, but clearly this child is rising well at own pace.
My other child spiraled down starting at middle school. (Kindergarten . . .?)
For me reading this forum is a way to figure out a path for the spiral-down child when the child is ready for school again, if ever. At this point we are officially “unschooling” this child and waiting to see what will happen when child is healed a little from previous school experience.
If I was reading this thread 8 years ago, I would be crying because my middle son was not even average. He did everything wrong - he was a horrible high school student barely passing. I have no idea what his SAT score was (no one really took the ACT back then, at least where we lived) and dropped out of the Corp at our regional college after 6 weeks disappearing from his family and friends. We knew he was alive only because we kept paying for his phone.
He called late one night after 3 years away and asked his Dad and I to come pick him up, he didn’t want to live like that any more and wanted to be an adult he said. He wanted to re-enroll in college and start over. He spent some time in another county’s jail while “away” so he had to convince his school to allow him to return - they said no, he had to go to a community college for a while. He didn’t like that so he didn’t go anywhere and went to work at Starbucks. Early morning opening up and light night closing down got old fast. He picked up a computer book and decided he wanted to learn about them (his dad is in IT but he rejected every discussion about learning this field). He got a job as a customer support person in some local company (he types very fast and very accurate) and continued to learn by reading and watching videos in our basement with a laptop. He took his A+ certification test and passed (we didn’t know he was studying for it and that’s probably the 1st time we’ve seen a report card from him since middle school) and that certificate was the catalyst to get him to enroll in community college and finally get the CS degree he earned from our regional college.
Less than 1 week after college graduation Google flew him to California and paid for 2 days in Mountain View (with a car no less so he toured) and after a full day of interviews told him they were recommending him to the executive group for hiring (or something to that effect). He didn’t get hired but they left him with the impression he might be called back - it didn’t matter, he really thought he aced the interviews and he now knew he was good enough. In the meantime he was hired in Atlanta for just slightly less than what Google often pays new hire developers in California. 1 year later his company in Atlanta was bought by a California company retaining only my son, one other developer, and the president - keeping what they said was the talent and giving him a raise to exceed what he would have been making at Google in Calif and letting him stay in Atlanta.
My prodigal son says if you are creative and contribute ideas and are not just a programmer/coder/technical clerk you will have no trouble finding a job. But there is a big difference between those who can program well when told what to do and those that can study a problem, define it, strategize a solution, and know how to effectively and efficiently code it.
TLDR: As it turns out he was not really average after all - just his grades were. He took the long way around, but he finally found his passion - no one could tell him, he had to do it on his own (and almost break his parents heart in the process). This probably isn’t even the right thread for this story but her comments just hit home - he was so not part of the discussions on these forums.