<p>RTR, I tried to look on the “matching” section, but all it asked was what D wanted in a college (major, size, location…) it didn’t ask anything about her stats. </p>
<p>I’m trying to back off and let her handle this, as I have a tendency to helicopter but have discovered that left to herself D usually handles things pretty well, and will call me in if she’s having difficulty. Of course that means things move on HER time table, which is a little different from mine…</p>
<p>We actually went through the “I hate every school” that I look at. Then when we took our trip down south (not sure if I already shared this) we had visited 1 school (had 6 more to go) and my DS decided he didn’t want to go to school in the south. I had to breath deeply and ignore him or I would have lost it completely. By the end of the trip he had decided to apply to a couple of the schools. The hardest part is that he will not vocalize why he does or does not like a school.</p>
<p>We didn’t visit Bridgewater - we went to Roanoke, Lynchburg and Emory and Henry. We’ll have to check out the website.</p>
<p>On Monday, we visited Marist. This is definitely not a B student school anymore. They only accepted 35% of their applicants last year and are now considered one of the top 100 most selective schools. </p>
<p>We did get (notice I said we) some good news. My son took two AP tests and just got the results. He got a 4 and a 5. I was very worried since he didn’t study at all. Most (if not all) of the schools he is applying to will give him college credit with these scores. </p>
<p>I’d be more than happy to share my thoughts on schools - my son doesn’t have any thoughts so can’t share those 
!!!</p>
<p>Nah. He has thoughts, trust me. They’re just percolating away inside and he’s not ready to talk about them. I also thought about mentioning E&H. We didn’t visit, but it looks like an interesting school. Pretty much out in the middle of rural virginia, though. Their new President came from Elon and supposedly is working hard to increase their exposure.</p>
<p>warriorboy, I’m surprised to hear that about Marist. I guess my friend’s D got in just in time. I was hoping S would apply there and we were making the trek cross country this week to see schools in the area, inc. Marist.</p>
<p>Very surprising – I did a double take when I saw the Marist comment and checked the website. Yep, from the 2005 data (last time I had ever looked) to the most current year, the acceptance rate dropped from 50% to 37%%</p>
<p>But strangely, the average GPA hasn’t changed (3.3) and the average CR/Writing SAT has actually gone down. 581/594 to 573/585. Seems odd.</p>
<p>Many colleges have been able, through aggressive marketing, especially overseas, to significantly increase their number of applicants, thereby making their acceptance % lower. Similarly, some colleges have been very successful at marketing themselves as safety school for Ivy League applicants, making their scores for admitted students higher. In both cases, the key is whether the scores for their enrolled students have changed significantly.</p>
<p>Remember, too, that a B student from across the country is more attractive to them than another B student from New York.</p>
<p>Good alternatives to Marist may be St Josephs; Iona; Manhattan; Manhattanville; and Fordham.</p>
<p>Our hs is sending 8 kids to Marist this year… kind of wierd, we’re in Eastern MA, and Marist isn’t that big. I know at least one other kid that got in there, and I wouldn’t be intimidated - this kid was NOT a great student. We toured it this spring. The GPA they post is weighted (+.5 for honors, 1.0 for AP). They give automatic merit money for a minimum 3.3 GPA (I assume that’s weighted the same way) with at least a 25 on the ACT. It’s a nice school, and I wouldn’t let the 35% admit rate scare you - it all depends on who is applying.</p>
<p>I need to ask a question, and I’m asking it in this thread because if I ask it anywhere else on CC I’ll get slammed. I had kind of quit posting here for a while because D was on the border of being over-qualified for this thread, her GPA is an unweighted 3.16 but weighted is a 3.53 (using the same weighting as Marist). ACT is a 27. But she’s underqualified for the Parents of 2010 thread!!! (That thread has gotten really scary, kids with zillions of AP classes).</p>
<p>Here’s the question: Thru 11th grade, D took 11 Honors core academic classes but zero APs. Her schedule for Sr year includes one AP - Studio Art. All of her other academic classes are Honors. She was planning to take Honors Statistics, but due to budget cuts the class has been dropped. Her choices now are to take Stats as college prep, or AP. She’s got a ton of extracurriculars, plus the applying-to-college stuff (and the more I nag her to do it NOW while she has time, the more she digs in her heels, of course), so I’m concerned about the workload. Her previous math classes were: Honors Geometry (B), Honors Algebra II (B-) and college prep Pre-Calculus (B+). She was afraid to try an AP math after taking college prep math last year, but she also says the regular Stats class will be full of kids who just want to take the easiest senior math they can find.</p>
<p>She wants to apply to Northeastern, UConn, Elon, Clemson, UMass and Marist, and I’m thinking that not having any academic AP classes is going to hurt her at those schools. </p>
<p>Has anyone’s kid taken AP Statistics? How hard is it? Any opinions on whether D should take Statistics AP or College Prep?</p>
<p>(PS We’re not even considering calculus, D wants to be a Psych major so Stats will be much more useful).</p>
<p>Lafalum: I hope you can get input from someone who has actually taken APStat. I asked my S1 who is now a rising college junior and took APStat his senior year: he always says that there’s not much math in Statistics. Take that for what it’s worth, but he also took APCalc BC. My younger son, who is considering a Psych major will also take APStat next year.</p>
<p>My D took AP stat several years ago and didn’t find it to be too difficult. She was one who with honors geometry and precalc. She got a 4 on the AP exam.</p>
<p>Lafalum84, what is the AP Stats reputation at your D’s sch…hard,easy, in between?
Have your D ask around.</p>
<p>S1 took AP Stats his senior yr. He took AP Calc AB as a jr. Made a B in Calc. and a 4 on the exam. Same thing in AP Stats, made a B in the class and a 4 on the exam.<br>
He scored 660 M SAT if that helps. He said it helps to be a good reader for Stats.</p>
<p>The teacher for AP Stats at our sch. is the head of the math dept. and also the head varsity football coach. He’s not a warm and fuzzy guy so it’s not known as an easy class but that could be just our sch.</p>
<p>S was glad he took it and passed the exam. It was req. for his college major and was rumored to be really hard at his college.</p>
<p>So far D’s been told Stats was easy. But that came from our neighbor, who took AP Stats and Calculus AB as a junior, and is a math whiz (taught himself times tables in kindergarten). DS took stats in college and said it was easy, he took basically the same math in hs as D except he took Intro Calculus (not AP) his senior year, he usually got about an A- in math. DH and I remember stats in college as being fairly easy. But the stats teacher at our school has a reputation for being hard to understand, he’s from some South-Asian country and has a heavy accent and disjointed grammar.</p>
<p>lderochi- Emory and Henry was an interesting place with a pretty campus. It also had a more intellectual feel than we expected. We ended up being paired with a pair of assertive parents and their football son. It turned into a football tour which was not a good thing for my son. The tour guide really did a good job talking about the “philosophy” of the school. So at the end of the tour, the football Dad, wanted to know where the frat houses were… He obviously hadn’t listened to a word she said. The poor girl then spent 15 minutes talking about the feel of the school and the community and how “frat houses” would distract from the school’s purpose. </p>
<p>When we were talking about the school later, we had to pretend that we weren’t stuck with these people and evaluated the school as if they weren’t there. Because of this any school that gives you a choice of tour guides, we avoid the jock or the groups that look like they have the jocks. (I have a son that is a football player so I don’t hate jocks just the ones that monopolize a tour)</p>
<p>Warriorboy, sometimes the tour guide can make all the difference! It really helped that we were on a small intimate tour at Alfred University with just one other family, and they were a very friendly bunch from the Midwest. And the guide’s major was same as the D’s. 
</p>
<p>Warriorboy,</p>
<p>Thanks for the informative–and amusing-- story! I look forward to your other visit impressions.</p>
<p>Lafalum…sorry, it was the meritaid site that has the chances calculator. Give it a whirl and tell me what you think!</p>
<p>warriorboy, One of S1’s lifelong friends attends E&H. He is a football player,lol but not the frat. type at all. This guy was not a very good student in h.s. but was recruited by E&H for football so decided to give it a try. He has been happy there. They must have a very nurturing faculty. He is a rising senior and will grad. next May.</p>
<p>The decision has been made. D wants to take AP Stats. Now I’ve got to figure out who at the h.s. can make this happen before school starts, because I don’t want her to be a week behind in this class waiting to get her schedule straightened out! I don’t think schedules are done yet; no one knew what the school budget would be or how many teacher layoffs there would be until about 2 weeks ago. On top of that, the main office and guidance office are being remodeled/rearranged, and most of the guidance furniture, computers, etc, are currently piled in the main lobby of the building. </p>
<p>Patience, patience…</p>
<p>The School Committee chairman was thrilled to be able to say that the only layoffs this year in the district would be one person at Central Office, 4 Phys Ed/Health teachers, and every librarian in the school district. How sad is that??? At one point it looked as if we would be laying off a minimum of 16 teachers, and a maximum of 60. Last year they had to lay off 45 teachers, 15 in the high school alone. Both of the teachers D wants to write her recommendations were on layoff lists at one point or another last spring, but it looks like both have been spared. Thank goodness this is my youngest child, and its her last year in hs.</p>
<p>I’m sure they will be able to make the schedule change during the week before school starts. Try not to worry.</p>
<p>I sent an e-mail with a question to my son’s GC two weeks ago and never heard back. Apparently she isn’t working much this summer due to budget cuts. (I’m not sure how budget cuts affect how much a GC works, unless previously she got paid to work in the summer and now she doesn’t?) So, nothing is getting done here at our H.S. either!</p>
<p>And BTW…is my son the only kid that hasn’t started on his essays yet?</p>
<p>r2r I am sure your S isn’t the only one. Last summer when DDs were applying I tried like a valient CC parent to get them to start but it was a pointless exercise in fussing. </p>
<p>What worked for us was to break the college to-do list down, give them a list on a preappointed day (they chose it) of things they needed to accomplish in that week and then I promised not to nag or talk about college for the rest of the week until we met again. Their part of the bargain was that they actually had to do the things on the list or the nagging would resume.</p>
<p>The list would be something like this:</p>
<p>Look at the website for collegX through Z and write down the EA due dates
Look at the common App supplement for those schools
Narrow your list down to 3 publics, 3 privates and 3 wild cards
What are two unique things about you that make you specail</p>
<p>It worked pretty well. I did have to resume nagging once or twice but when I did, there was far less resistence…more resigned tolerance.</p>
<p>The actual essay writing didn’t start in earnest until September or October</p>