<p>It’s so true, yabeyabe2. My son has had only one really bad math teacher in his whole school career, but it took him 2-3 years to get back to where he was before that, in terms of confidence and comfort level. There’s no other subject where the teacher has so much power to make kids feel brilliant or stupid.</p>
<p>My son is appreciating the fact that he applied early. He has one app left and then he will get to relax while his friends are busy working on their apps. (Although he will have to do some scholarship essays!!!)</p>
<p>My ds found out today that he also got into Ohio Wesleyan. We haven’t visited yet so now I’ll be checking out flights. </p>
<p>I have a sophomore and a freshman and I plan on pushing them to apply as early as possible.</p>
<p>warriorboy congrats on the new acceptance! Wooooo Hoooooooo! Yup early = more time to relax.</p>
<p>Congrats Warriorboy!</p>
<p>Congrats warriorboy - isn’t it great to have an acceptance in your back pocket? I know we feel a lot of relief around here-</p>
<p>Historymom - find a good math tutor and keep him/her on your family payroll! Tutoring helped my son enormously, and even now as a senior he still calls his tutor every so often for help in finite math.</p>
<p>WB, Congratulations!! </p>
<p>WB, I sent a PM to you.</p>
<p>Hello everyone, and congratulations on all of the acceptances! It’s a thrill for us parents of juniors to hear the happy endings!</p>
<p>As for math, my D has a teacher this year who puts the effort into letting the kids do corrections to everything - homework, quizzes, tests. Not only can they raise their grades, but more importantly they truly get to a point of understanding the concepts. For years my D has been rushing from one math unit to the next, never quite getting it all, and basically throwing up her hands and saying, “Oh, well, another one I screwed up.” Now she works and works until she really knows it. She’s more confident in class, and she’s much more confident that come ACT time she’ll know what she’s doing. This is huge, and we can’t thank the teacher enough. Her response is, “Of course, how else can they really learn the stuff?”</p>
<p>EmmyBet - Wish you could send that idea to all high school math teachers.</p>
<p>My older son had a teacher who used this technique to teach, but there was a parent who complained. The teacher had to stop offering this opportunity.</p>
<p>PebV420… I sent a PM to you RE: Housing at Alabama.</p>
<p>Historymom, if your son connects with this math teacher, consider whether you might wish to hire the teacher for SAT prep–his knowledge of how your son learns and your son’s trust in the teacher may make it very effective</p>
<p>Thanks for the math tutoring advice. I agree with you all totally. A friend told me that math is the subject where performance is most determined by the emotional state of the student. It took me back to my own math classes and I realized that for me anyway it was so true. When I took a college class from a trusted, funny and hugely entertaining professor I did quite well but when, as a smart kid, I hit my first math wall in high school I got frustrated and it didn’t really work out too well.</p>
<p>Re allowing students to rework. As a history teacher I do this on every test. Kids fix it and get a passing grade. So many of my colleagues are hell bent on making sure that if the kid doesn’t "get it"on the teacher’s/state’s schedule they should be punished in the form of a grade hit. I preach whenever possible that our goal needs to be comprehension, regardless of the time frame.</p>
<p>Emma Bet: Since 5th grade, my S too has seen his teachers marching on while he floundered a bit behind. Every year when they review for state testing he gets it then he forgets over the summer and the cycle continues. But this year seems to be different and I am very encouraged. When he was a preschooler he would announce things like “Mommy if I have 6 cookies I could give you 3 and we would have the same.” Not Einstein but a sign of a mathematical brain, I am hoping it comes back.</p>
<p>Warriorboy, congrats. I’ve heard great things about OWU. </p>
<p>Elizabethh, not familar with ASU, but hats off there as well. </p>
<p>Historymom, the point about a kid’s emotional state really rang true for me. Our son struggled with math until the middle of last year (his junior year), when we found a tutor he really liked (a middle-aged woman from Eastern Europe with a rather thick accent-- go figure). That’s the point at which we stopped working on math together, which I think was really stressful for him. And since then, he’s gotten it. In fact he pulled a 91 first marking this year in Honors Pre-Calc (with the comment “quickly grasps concepts”).</p>
<p>I do want to say to all those parents with kids who aren’t achieving up to their potential, for us it wasn’t the pushing, prodding, yelling, threatening or anything else that turned the corner. He simply grew up a little. It’s not like he’s a totally different kid, but he really has come a long way. It can and does happen, and it’s nice to see. So hang in there! </p>
<p>And yes, do apply early, if you can swing it. We dragged our son through the process (including working on his essay over the summer). He complained, but you could hear the pride in his voice when he read me his acceptance letter from Alfred the other day. After years of hearing me say “not if you don’t step it up,” knows he’s going to college.</p>
<p>Historymom,my S2 also had a horrible experience with algebra in eight grade, barely passed with a D. He re-took it again in ninth grade (much better teacher) and did sooo much better. At the end of the sem. he made the highest grade in his class (92) on the state alg. exam. Math has always been his worst subject. Re-taking alg. was the best thing he could have done. Good luck to your S.</p>
<p>Congrats to everyone that has already heard. </p>
<p>My son’s GC commented that you if you don’t receive any rejections then you didn’t “reach” high enough. I believe my son will have at least one (if not more) rejections. I was sooo worried that he wouldn’t get in anywhere that I didn’t have him put to much effort into the reach category, especially since those reach schools would most likely give no merit aid.</p>
<p>^thats kinda a cynical way of looking at it… what if you get in to your reach school?</p>
<p>NJsoccer - Don’t know - maybe that means you needed reachier reaches!!! Who knows?</p>
<p>warriorboy: in this environment, I would recommend you adjust that to “if you don’t get any waitlists/rejections” you didn’t reach high enough…just talking from experience; older daughter was never rejected to any school and never got off of her waitlists…she was waitlisted at every reach…</p>
<p>At the risk of being too cynical, unless the GC was just trying to immunize students against rejections stinging, I would change “if you didn’t get any rejections then you didn’t reach high enough” to "if you didn’t get any rejections, then you didn’t try hard enough to reach our goal of maximizing acceptances to more selective schools, even at the expense of your child or your financial well beingHaving a degree from the msot selective law school in the country benefited me in some ways, but some of my classmates would have been better off at a place which did not empty their wallets; put them under such academic pressure that they lost their confidence; or which gave them the local connections which would have helped them when they went back home to work. And a more famous teacher is often not a better teacher.
And why is “reach” based purely on selectivity? The child from Tennessee who forsakes Vanderbilt to go to Alfred is not doing a selectivity reach, but is certainly doing a personal reach.</p>
<p>There are kids who really do benefit more from overall by choosing a school because of fit, rather than selectivity, let alone that selectivity is not a sign that all departments are stronger.</p>
<p>S’07 only had one waitlist, no rejections. I realize now that it wasn’t that we didn’t have enough “reaches” or that he didn’t reach high enough; I just aimed his matches and especially his safeties too low. Frankly, he applied to 3 schools he had zero interest in attending because I was panicked he wouldn’t get into his matches and I wanted safeties. One of those 3 safeties would have been sufficient.</p>
<p>Live and learn… D is only applying to 5 schools. At the moment she’s saying there’s “no way” she’d go to one of them, she seems to have forgotten that when we looked at it last spring she really liked it! She’s just seen schools she liked better since then.</p>