New member with lots of questions

Parents Forum
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<p>1) The number one class rank is very good for college admissions.</p>

<p>2) That is one of the more lopsided SAT scores I've seen posted here. I would recommend working on the Verbal portion of the SAT. I suspect that score could come up dramatically.</p>

<p>3) I would not build-up Stanford as a likely option in your son's mind. It is extremely difficult to get into academically and their athletic programs like baseball would be mostly centered on nationally ranked recruits.</p>

<p>4) My advice to virtually all high school juniors is: build your college list as if Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT do not exist. If the quality of the application warrants, go back and add one or more of these as a pie-in-the-sky longshot. These five schools are simply not in the cards for most applicants.</p>

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<p>Thanks you guys :-)</p>

<p>SBmom: I did find your thread and read a few posts. </p>

<p>As far as ability? His coach does think he could play at that level but he did give us the (bleak) facts: last year only 3 kids from ALL of Idaho went DivI in baseball. Idaho is just not a big "baseball" state. Football is a much bigger deal here....anybody heard of Boise state? ;-)
Then again, I think our entire state population is around 1 million.
He is planning to take some subject tests as well. I'm still waiting to hear back from the wonderful GC at his HS. </p>

<p>Speaking of which, I remember when I was in HS: we had 2 GCs and all I ever saw them do was walk around the halls drinking coffee. Is it the same everywhere, or are some of them actually helpful??!!</p>

<p>editing to respond to interesteddad:
I am currently a student (English major) and talked with one of my profs (a Brown alumna) who gave me some tips on how to bring that verbal up. S has always tested very high in math/science on standardized tests and more in the 80th +/- percentile on verbal.</p>

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<p>My D's verbal went up about 80 pts just from studying some typical voacb words. Lots of threads on this issue with helpful hints, but the vocab really paid off for her.</p>

<p>If your S actually has a shot at D1, then there should be high-caliber D3's who would love to have him.</p>

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<p>Here are rankings for D3</p>

<p><a href="http://www.ncaa.org/polls/baseball.html"&gt;http://www.ncaa.org/polls/baseball.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>TRying to raise the verbal SAT: google Xiggi's tips on prepping for the SAT (using the 10RealSATs); Lots of people have found his tips very helpful (including my S).
Prepping for the writing section: draw up a list of examples from real life, literature, history or even TV and films that could be used to demonstrate a variety of writing prompts. Again, Xiggi had a list of such prompts. Since the student has only 20 minutes to write the essay, it is very useful to be able to select examples with the least waste of time.</p>

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<p>I think you have gotten excellent advice from everyone else so I don't have a lot more to add. From what you shared, your son has an excellent set of qualifications for many selective schools. Of course I would need to know more but already he has many of the basic things to enter the "game". </p>

<p>As far as the SAT scores, while they do look at composite, they also look at the verbal and math which are listed separately....afterall, if composite was all that mattered, the tests would not be listed separately. I think it is ok to be lopsided on one test as being stronger than another. I think for someone going into engineering, they will look at that math score, plus SAT2 math scores which he may do well on. However, I think for a place like Stanford, he would be more in the ballpark (no pun intended) to get the verbal score up. It need not be as high as his strength in math but even if he could raise it 60 points to 650, it would be a bit safer and not stand out as average. I think it is very very possible to raise that score 60 points (or more, ya never know). I realize that is not his strength but he has time between now and either June or October to do practice verbal tests and some vocabulary building. It is worth the effort, he has nothing to lose. His other stuff looks very good. </p>

<p>I have a college freshman daughter who has some things in common with your son....also val, also from rural public high school, highest GPA possible, plus most rigorous courses, was at one time contemplating engineering but instead has opted to possibly major in architecture (this was decided before she applied), and like your son, tests higher in math than verbal (even though she is an excellent English student). Her math score was quite a bit higher than her verbal one, same with the SAT2s, but just not quite the big spread your son has. That is why I think that even if his verbal is not as high as math, given his interests, that will be ok but the verbal needs to raise to a safer range for the schools he is trying for, and not be SO far apart from the math as it stands now. </p>

<p>Like others advise, look into schools where he may be able to play baseball, if that is what he desires, and look at D3 schools as well as D1. Remember, sometimes an athlete can play even if not an official recruit. I forgot to say, the other thing my D has in common with your son is that she is also an athlete, but not a recruited athlete. She is on a D1 team in one sport at Brown and will be playing club sports in her two other sports. </p>

<p>Anyway, welcome to the forum. And enjoy the college admissions ride!</p>

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<p>
[quote]
when I was in HS: we had 2 GCs and all I ever saw them do was walk around the halls drinking coffee. Is it the same everywhere, or are some of them actually helpful??!!

[/quote]
Some are wonderful - I am one of the fortunates. Others not so much. Sounds like you have one of the former and then, of course, you have cc. I came here at the tail end of our process. Who needs a GC if you come here in the beginning? :)</p>

<p>See the below thread</p>

<p>[thread]34007[/thread]</p>

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<p>dumb question:
jmmom, how did you quote me? </p>

<p>I guess my S's GC isn't horrible. She does return my calls/emails....just takes a while. I think the ones at my own HS were worse. </p>

<p>And since you mentioned it, I'm not too late in the process, am I? DH thinks I'm going crazy with all this researching but really, why wait? Especially since S wants to play BB and the colleges we've contacted so far want his spring/summer schedule ASAP. Any coaches who want to see him play have this season b/c next season will be spring of his Sr year. My thinking is that will be too late!</p>

<p>BTW, S did not even do any studying before taking this SAT other than taking a few practice tests. I agree that he could improve his verbal by working on it.</p>

<p>soozievt: S is also flip-flopping between engineering and arch! And, he is interested in Brown (along with some other NE area schools). </p>

<p>I certainly don't think he will ONLY consider DivI schools. One of the best things (in my mind) about S is that he actually LISTENS to advice from his parents (unlike his older brother who ultimately dropped out of HS....<em>sigh</em>). I must say that Stanford is all his idea, though.</p>

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<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/misc.php?do=bbcode#imgcode%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/misc.php?do=bbcode#imgcode&lt;/a>
quote, list, bold, size, color, underline, etc.</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/misc.php?do=showsmilies%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/misc.php?do=showsmilies&lt;/a>
smilies!!! :p</p>

<p>We all learned nifty tricks in the top thread in the parents' cafe (called something like "welcome to the new parent cafe).</p>

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<p>:cool:</p>

<p>thanks yemaya :)</p>

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<p>DrDrewsmom, well, if you ever wanna talk to me about schools that have undergraduate architecture and all that jazz, I've been through this so, I'm here. </p>

<p>Basically taking the REAL SATs as practice could boost your son's verbal. He obviously does well in English at school, as did my D, and just needs practice with this test. I know in her case, her score went up a bunch and it was due to some practice and even just learning how to answer all the questions in the time given helped increase that score.</p>

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<p>No, you're not late. But your S needs to make a list of schools other than Stanford (a reach for anyone) and perhaps visit a few during school vacations; he needs to think which SAT-IIs to take. If he needs three, he probably would be better off taking 2 then 1. Taking 3 in one sitting is very tiring. If he wishes to raise his SAT, that, too, should be scheduled. He has to decide whether to apply EA or RD. If he decides on the former, it would be best to have all the testing done by June or October at the latest and spend summer and fall working on the essays. He should also think of approaching teachers for recs. They will know him far better than the senior year teachers.
It sounds like a long list of things to do, but really, it is a matter of scheduling things so that not everything needs to be done all at once and staying on top of registration deadlines.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Try it, you'll like it.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>:)</p>

<p>The other BB I frequent just has tabs to click on under each person's post (quote, pm, email, etc) and the smilies are pictures when you post and you just click on the one you want....much easier for a computer-challenged dork like myself :p</p>

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<p>Here it is, jmmom! The discoveries that we made were


:cool:</p>

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<p>Look at you DrDrewsmom :D</p>

<p>I should have known yemaya would do the trick. Yemaya remains cool to the third power!</p>

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<p>You also are :cool: to the third power, jmmom!</p>

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<p>Whoa, jmmom. I just noticed that you have posted 130 times since the tenth of February:eek:! You are now :cool: to the 130th power!!!</p>

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<p>I hope I don't get in trouble for linking the other BB I participate in (I promise I'm not "selling" anything ;) ):</p>

<p><a href="http://community.cookinglight.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68732%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://community.cookinglight.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68732&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>This was a time-killing thread I began a while back, if anyone is interested :)</p>

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<p>Yemaya!! ssshhh.... Even I didn't know my addiction was that bad. :eek: Now, everyone knows :eek::eek:! I am leaving for awhile to hide my head in shame... :o</p>

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<p>Sure you are...
You know that you can't resist pressing refresh just one more time ;)</p>

<p>There's no need to be :o. You should be :), not :(. Instead of thinking :eek: and feeling :mad: that I revealed your addiction, you should be :p and :D because you are :cool: to the 130th power. Are you :confused: by my smilie usage yet?</p>

<p>:rolleyes: It is pathetic that I took the time to do this!</p>