Parental advice needed on UK IB diploma program versus US AP Capstone diploma program

I don’t think we’ll have an issue on foreign earned income for 2017, as my husband started working in the UK in September. Total earnings for him in 2017 came to the equivalent of about $4515. For 2018, it may be different. But when we do the FAFSA form for my daughter next year, we’ll be looking at 2017 federal income tax returns. For the following year it will be different in that we may very well have to declare some of the foreign income earned. If I’m doing NPC now, the foreign earned income shouldn’t be a factor.

Use your 2017 earnings in the already listed colleges (#71). What results do you find? Which ones list net prices of 12K and under?

So, not Cambridge.
They’re saying she’ll essentially be in the 33-36 bracket and they’re thinking 36 is what they envision for her. 36 makes for a very tough application to schools like Brown, who’d want a 37-38, so make sure to keep expectations in check when the Spring evaluations come in.

Do reinforce that a college list is NOT a Christmas list.
It has to include affordable colleges and colleges in different brackets: colleges she’s pretty sure she’ll get into and likes(often, colleges that have higher acceptance rates than her favorites but share many common points in terms of vibe or majors) and colleges where her odds are 50-50 - those would be her two safeties and 3-5 matches/targets. Because you need substantial financial aid, she may need more than this number in that range.
Also, remember that your family’s job now is to find TWO safeties that you can afford (ie., where net price is below 12K) and that she likes. THAT’s the hard work of crafting a college list - anyone can have a dream college everyone’s heard of, that’s no work at all. Making the list is hard.

You can try and get a used Fiske Guide or Princeton review’s Best colleges. Look at all colleges in Oregon and Washington first, running the NPC for each one of them. For those that are affordable, read the description in depth and if she finds them interesting or intriguing, she should fill out the “request info form”. Then, move around a bit. Have her look at the description for Centre, the description for Wellesley, the description for Scripps, the description for Macalester, the description for Dickinson, etc;

Oregon is part of WUE although I’m not sure it’d really help financially speaking.
https://www.wiche.edu/wue

Scotland info:
https://www.theschoolrun.com/overview-scottish-education-system
https://www.scotland.org/live-in-scotland/school-systems
https://education.gov.scot/parentzone/learning-in-scotland/senior-phase
https://education.gov.scot/

@Sybylla - at our IBD school, kids get “term” grades which are essentially predicitions starting first term Junior year. However, the first few terms of IB only predict as high as a 5. The final predicted grades (the ones reported to colleges) are determined based on the last term of Junior year and the first term of Senior year (both of which predict as high as 7).

Also look at the University of Utah if you are thinking about the western US. Easy to get residency for in-state tuition after a year without parents going there but more importantly for you the presidential scholarship (which shows up on the NPC if you have the stats for it, implying it’s near automatic) gives full tuition plus half ($5300) towards room & board, so net cost pre-loan is about $8K p.a. They have an even better (Eccles) scholarship which is full tuition, room & board plus $1000 p.a. for books for 30 people a year.

I think the spring predictions will be a better reflection of IBD than the early term. I think that will tell a better story about some of my daughter’s top reaches. Wow…we should look at the University of Utah! Thanks.

Missouri also offers this possibility. Truman State is very good overall and Mizzou has a top program in journalism, but I don’t know whether those would be of interest.
UNebraska, Florida Universities, and Maryland Universities offer quite a bit of credit for IB. Most would expect applications this summer.

Thanks so much.

Here’s another question, highly related to the original topic question. My daughter did contact her old school (Redmond Proficiency Academy) to ask several questions regarding the possibility of her returning (in other words, if she wanted to return, could she and how would that be done, etc.). In the context of that conversation she also asked about whether she could get credit for the IB courses she was taking and that in the UK students don’t get term (semester) grades or receive a GPA as the IBD is a two year program and it all hinges on the scores (versus in the US where schools also grade the individual assignments and provide a letter grade for each IB course). In this (hypothetical) scenario, her old school said yes, they would give her credit and base her grade on the coursework, quizzes, tests, evaluations, etc. I’m curious to know whether any of you have encountered this before and if so, how your student has gone about getting the appropriate grade (does it align with the predicted score at end of term time, does the individual teacher have particular input as well as scores, etc.)?

Again, at this point my daughter is on the fence about all of this and is trying to envision herself in each school for next year. In the meantime, I’m also trying to gather up useful bits of information that may (or may not) come in handy.

Thanks!

I agree. The AP Capstone is rather new, and not many high schools are even offering it yet. And colleges/universities don’t know what to do with it (the College Board says that only about 100 colleges/universities are currently working with them to determine how they will count it at the college level).