We understand that there are circumstances that preclude students from taking AP exams during the June administration. Therefore, students may request to take exams offered digitally in Administration III in school and on paper during Administration I for the following reasons:
Travel home from Deerfield Academy precludes taking an exam on June 1-3. (Seniors depart campus on May 30 and ninth- to eleventh-graders depart campus on May 31.)
Primary residence WiFi is unavailable or unreliable or does not have a quiet space for test-taking.
Yes- @skieurope - you found the info but there is more to the storyâŠu can arrange to take it @ DA if your travel
Plans donât work on a specific assigned alternate day- there was one alternative day for our particular tests in early May on a school day - unfortunately for students on this Block Schedule that is in the middle of the term (of a new course) and learning the material since they are on a 9 week term of courses. Yes- one could have taken the initiative to have self taught the material and prepped all year for the 2 AP courses Spring term. But realistically, most students I know are waiting until June 1-2.
I am trying to come up with a short tour of some schools- but they are all spread so far apart! I want to see schools that seeing the campus would impact the decision to apply- so not super reaches or super safeties. And are really pretty or really ugly.
Where do you want to travel to? Here are some pretty campuses with fun things nearby:
Mid-Atlantic to Southeast Region:
Davidson (very pretty campus & close to the USNational Whitewater Rafting center, Lake Norman golf courses and close to Charlotte.
College of Charleston - always fun & very pretty
University of North Carolina @ Chapel Hill
Duke (no-brainer)
Elon University
Wake Forest
University of Richmond (one of my favorite campuses - very pretty) - BTW, starting this Fall of 2021, this university will meet the full demonstrated financial need of all enrolling/enrolled graduates of the Richmond Public Schools.
Very good FA there.
University of Virginia
William & Mary (Williamsburg, amusement park & outlets)
Washington & Lee
Virginia Tech (very pretty campus)
Hampden-Sydney College (all male) - very pretty campus!
Interested in Upstate New York? Here you goâŠ
Bard College
Union College
Hamilton
Vassar
Cornell University
Skidmore College
Paul Smithâs College (my personal favorite - only college within the ADK)
St Lawrence University (Check out their golf & hockey rosters and say hello to Coach Lawrence - Head Menâs & Womenâs Golf Coach)
I would love love LOVE to do a tour of any of those schools. Especially W&M (go Tribe!). It is like a huge buffet of options.
WashU is a must see, and that means we are limited to the Midwest this time. I want to see Rice, but that isnât going to happen. We have people to visit in Chicago, so I think we will head north from St Louis, do UIUC, University of Chicago, and maybe Carleton. I would like to see Michigan, too. Unfortunately we only have like 5 days, and with the time change from California, travel eats up one of those. I am trying to avoid multiple flights- these trips get spendy fast!
I think we are going to have to wait until after he gets in to visit most schools. A lot arenât open for actual tours yet, and wonât be until fall. He has seen the California schools he is interested in, but the East Coast schools will remain a mystery for now.
If you do head up to Chicago - go see Northwestern and Lake Forest College. If you decide to head up to Carleton (several hour drive) do also visit St Olaf! A friend works there and says itâs open for visits. I actually think St Olaf has more to offer students than Carlton in many ways. Beautiful campus. If you are interested in music, drama, the arts & study abroad, please check it out. It also has one of the best choirs (if not the best) in the USA. If you drive through Wisconsin, be sure to visit Madison (UofWisc) - itâs a beautiful campus - spectacular setting.
St Olaf is supposed to be good in math, too, right? Math and physics departments are the main filter right now.
Curious - do people have a sense of how many total apps your kid is submitting, and of those how many safety/reach/matches? And then what about test optional?
Have the schools given feedback on how the class of 21 did, and how/if the schools are changing things up for the â22âs?
I had a conversation with our college advisor @ number of schools to apply to. I thought 10 would be enough and she said it should be more like 12 Also, I spoke with two former admissions officers (recently left) who are now in the consulting biz. They both said itâs going to be tough for the â22âs. There are higher number of applications to the schools most students on this CC thread (prep schools) will be applying to. I spoke to a friend who recently left working at one smaller LAC in PA and she said they expect to have a record number of applications again. I have heard from coaches that there are fewer spots on the bench because of a number of factors. It could be sport specific, but thatâs our experience. The athletes at the top are getting commitments, for others commitments are coming later or not at all. Again, this might just be for certain sports.
FWIW, Kiddoâs friends (from school and back home) who applied to California institutions this year had disappointments. Most schools seem to keep their test optional status for the upcoming admissions cycle.
DD and I actually got to visit several schools last August (Duke, Elon, High Point, Guilford, Roanoke and VA Tech). We are waiting for Notre Dame to open up for visits and then weâll head there + St. Marys. We will try to do Tulane and Rice in one trip this summer. She also wants to visit Pepperdine but Iâm not sure how I feel about flying across the country and navigating my way from LAX up the coast this summer⊠that might be a âwait until youâre admittedâ visit. She will def take advantage of the continued test-optional option at schools this fall. Her ACT was not great, but she has strong grades with lots of AP-level courses, ECs, and several leadership positions (prefect, class VP, captian of varsity teams). Hoping sheâll have success at some of these schools.
Fit is most important to us⊠her brother did NOT have a good fit (we were wooed by the offer from a reach school) and is working on transferring out to another college for his Jr/Sr years. We learned our lesson and will not be wooed again.
That jibes with what we heard. I got the sense that it was rough on the unhooked kids this past cycle, after several cycles of trending that way. Letâs just say our expectations are being managed. Which I definitely appreciate. I told kiddo that he has done as much as humanly possible with the opportunities given to him - his weak spot is us. Lol.
We are being told to apply to more schools in the Midwest - very tough for our kids who are unhooked, middle class, need Merit, etc. It was also disappointing because if we had kept kiddo down in the swamp there would have been a better chance of being a National Merit finalist - but being in the MA pool was impossible. Also, GPA depression at DA is brutal and has already had an impact.
That GPA/grade deflation is worrying to me! I did hear that they keep the Deerfield transcript separate and so as a repeat Jr, my kid will have two different transcripts to submit to colleges, one with her 4.22 for 3 years and whatever she gets at Deerfield. Luckily she has high scores on her first attempts at ACT and SAT and will take SAT again. It does make me very nervous though. I hate that there is really no fair way to compare gpaâs when schools grade so differently. And being in the top 10 at a LPS class with 300 students, some of whom donât even plan to go to college, canât compare to class rank in an elite boarding school where everyone is smart and college bound.
BTW - there are no class rankings at DA. You can go on the website and check out the School Profile. There are NO WEIGHTED grades. Many courses that are high level are not âAPâ designated but prepare you (or are supposed to prepare you) for the AP Tests. Due to the crazy block schedule (9 or 10 week compressed courses) this year, few students we spoke with felt prepared to take the AP tests. Take stock in your kidâs high SAT/ACT scores, that will help and will help to make college advising take your kid more seriously. Even with a high GPA at DA, a mid-range or low SAT/ACT will put your kid on the recommended list for colleges that are probably not ones you associate with a rigorous preparation (âHighpoint is a great school, but it is a reachâ).
Truth bomb ahead Itâs a crap shoot at DA - depends on the Humanities teacher. My kid has had bad luck with teachers who are burned out, apathetic, languishing in their positions, or who are getting ready to leave. Other students have had great experiences. It really depends on who you get. The admin doesnât have a clue and they donât care IMHO.
Can I try to reassure everyone fretting over grades? I was in your shoes 6 years ago. And tbh, I was a mess. My kid was probably right in the middle of his class in terms of GPA. A solid B++ average. Lots of rigor. Nobody had ever gotten a 4.0 as far as I could see from Naviance, and it seemed like our school had set him â and most of his classmates â up for a disastrous application process.
My kid was not a recruited athlete. Just a nice, all-round kid. He had very good results as did his friends. No, he didnât apply to Ivies, but several very selective schools. The colleges KNOW your school. Your kids will have recs that speak to who they are.
Had I discovered CC before heâd applied and listened to the parents here, Iâd have been even more distraught because I am sure theyâd have said he wouldnât have a prayer with that GPA.
If you havenât checked out that very very long thread in the Chicago forum about how well the middle of the Harvard Westlake class does there, do so. Itâs a case study in how college admissions officers read transcripts based on where they come from.
I recently went through the school profile and matriculation data for the high school kiddo would have gone to. Kiddo has a friend who had a similar skill set but stayed at the lps, so they compare notes. The average weighted gpa there is a 4.0. They have 35 students in the class, and their math and science offerings max out at the AP level. They donât come close to covering the material Cate does - kiddo was just helping his friend study for the calc AP, and it was shocking to him the difference.
Their admissions rates to the name brand schools track pretty closely to the schoolsâ published rates - which equates to a couple of kids getting into Ivy+ schools per year out of their class of about 350. I donât doubt there are legacies getting some of those spots. Also interesting, no one applies to Williams, Bowdoin, etc. I assume there is no name recognition. Cateâs matriculation is very different- some name schools they are markedly higher than the national admit rates, some markedly lower. Some of that is because of legacy admits, some it just seems that students donât apply - like MIT and Princeton. There are many more kids going to LACs, though.
Who knows where kiddo would fall in the academic spectrum if he stayed home. There is little opportunity to differentiate yourself. He will have had the equivalent of a bonus year of high school compared to his friend, in classes with 10 students instead of 35. The school cultures are so so different. I have no idea how AOs can compare. His friend is absolutely deserving of and capable of attending anywhere, and is a great, interesting person. If he has a better shot than kiddo for the Ivy+ schools and thatâs what he wants, more power to him.
I am trying to focus on kiddoâs high school experience, which I would not trade for the marginal benefit in applications (assuming it exists) of staying home. Kiddo still is enthralled with name recognition schools, though, because he hangs with students who also are. We are going to follow the advice of his CC, and it will all end up just fine. First world problems for sure.
It will be interesting, since my kiddo was at the LPS for 3 years and in the top 10 of the class of 300, to see where things go once she transfers this fall. Sheâs kind of a work only as hard as I have to kid and I am curious how she will fare when she really needs to push herself. The LPS has one guidance counselor per grade, a lot of not great teachers. In the 5 years we have lived here I have not seen any Ivyâs or many difficult to get into schools on their graduation lists. I absolutely feel like what she will get out of the experience will be worth it regardless of her gpa. I know this is the class of â22 thread, and she was â22 (now â23) so hope itâs ok to comment here!
We are so grateful for the education and exposure and diversity of classmates/thought/perspectives that she will have gotten at boarding school, vs the 2000 kid catholic school she would have attended which was not diverse in any of those ways. She has been challenged to think, to lead, to move out of her comfort zone. And so while she (and we) fully acknowledge there have been things we traded sending her to BS, we would absolutely not change our decision if we had to do it again.
ETA: Plus, she has a community for life; a place to return to in 5, 10, 25, 50+ years that will always be part of her soul; the global community that we call the âlong blue lineâ. That is something priceless, and something I have come to value more and more as my time away from my own graduation platform lengthens beyond 30 yearsâŠ
This is kiddo. Junior year was transformational. His definition of âgood enoughâ changed. The big difference for him is seeing how other students he admires shoot for higher goals than him. And teachers who notice that he is working hard and encourage him to keep it up. If your daughter has a similar experience, she will totally rise to the occasion.
Also, I spoke with two former admissions officers (recently left) who are now in the consulting biz. They both said itâs going to be tough for the â22âs. There are higher number of applications to the schools most students on this CC thread (prep schools) will be applying to. I spoke to a friend who recently left working at one smaller LAC in PA and she said they expect to have a record number of applications again. I have heard from coaches that there are fewer spots on the bench because of a number of factors. It could be sport specific, but thatâs our experience. The athletes at the top are getting commitments, for others commitments are coming later or not at all. Again, this might just be for certain sports.
Itâs a crap shoot at DA - depends on the Humanities teacher. My kid has had bad luck with teachers who are burned out, apathetic, languishing in their positions, or who are getting ready to leave. Other students have had great experiences. It really depends on who you get. The admin doesnât have a clue and they donât care IMHO.