Parents of HS Class of 2024 3.0-3.4 GPA

Parents Forum Class of 20xx Community
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Just reading through this for interest and if your daughter is interested in PA school have her look at Creighton if she hasn’t. My future dil (graduate of Kansas State) is in her first year at their Nebraska campus. She says the AZ one is very nice. She feels it is a very good program.

For others: Kansas State is a great option for students in this grade range but the OOS costs can be higher depending on the state. We were lucky and got there with lower than IS costs. Best scholarship requires a 3.5 GPA. The faculty there is very friendly and interested in their students doing well. They have great pre-health advisors (pre-med/PA/NP/pre-vet),

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Good point and I actually asked the question about knowing the high schools. He said some of the concern is the huge increase in applications they are getting from schools where they haven’t had interest before the last few years. He said a good indicator can be reviewing how admitted students from the same high school have performed once on campus and they simply don’t have that experience data. By looking at current or previous students it helps them determine the quality of college preparation the high school curriculum provided and if the rigor appears indicative of the grades reported.

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Thanks! Didn’t know that Creighton was setting up a PA grad school program in Phoenix. :slight_smile:

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Hofstra has very good PA program too. They definitely give more merit and need based scholarship. Don’t go with the sticker price.

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That extends to grad schools as well BTW. A medical school will take note of consistently high performance from grads of one college or another, and over time conclude it isn’t just random chance. They naturally will want to enroll more people from that college.

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I am curious to hear about experiences touring and attending (present/past students)the Jesuit schools (Xavier, Marquette, Fairfield, etc) and the differences in faith/spiritual focus and student body? Are there some schools that are more diverse than others? TIA

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I don’t have any info, but am curious to what others might know!

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Finalizing travel plans for our Easter weekend college road trip to TX. Going to drive to Sherman, TX all in 1 fell swoop on Easter Sunday (pray for me :joy:), starting out from my sister’s place in Tucson. Am gonna bribe my family w/NY style bagels though. Maybe that will work? hope springs eternal.

The hotels right in Georgetown, TX near Southwestern Univ are on the pricier end of what I want to pay, so we’re going to stay in Round Rock instead since it’s a 20-30 min drive to campus.

After the Southwestern tour, we’re going to hit the road right away and probably stay overnight in Junction, TX. We had breakfast once at Isaak Restaurant in Junction on a road trip to WDW 2 yr ago…the food was good and reasonably priced and I got a kick out of the businesses advertising to butcher your deer. Plus, we didn’t get to take a pic of the deer horn tree in Junction…you never see anything like that where we live in AZ. :slight_smile:

D24 heard back from the AP Music Theory teacher re: her AP MT practice exam. She got a high 2 and the teacher is recommending that she take the actual exam. Hm…I’m not sure. have to think about that one.

Hope everybody is having a good day!

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Ha! We lived in Round Rock. Maybe we will cross path on the I-35 :laughing:

Southwestern is a nice small school. Great ppl. Professors were nice and readily help students. Class sizes are small. Overall, very personal feel. S24 has MUN conferences there for several years now so we go there quite often. We were so sure he would just go there and save us tons of money. Oh well… he has his plan… :expressionless:

Georgetown at night is very nice. Its named “Most Beautiful Town Square in Texas”. We usually stop by Monument Cafe for breakfast or lunch. Usually have dinner at Blue Corn.

If you like pizza, head south via I-35 and there is Via 313 pizza in Round Rock, i think its the best pizza in town. (S24 disagrees but he is too young to appreciate pizza :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:)

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@2plustrio works for a Jesuit school, I believe, so may be able to provide additional insight.

College Vine has a somewhat helpful post, particularly since its links to all 28 Jesuit schools will then show demographic data and some additional info which might give some additional insight on it: https://blog.college vine.com/list-of-jesuit-colleges/ (take out the space between college & vine)

I won’t comment on the quality of Prep Scholar’s “ranking” of the Jesuit schools, but it does give a bit more info on the flavor of the schools it discusses: The 9 Best Jesuit Colleges

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We toured Marquette and Saint Louis University (SLU) with D22. She ended up at SLU and absolutely loves it there- down to earth friendly people, very collaborative and not a pressure cooker environment, beautiful urban campus, strong for her field of study (Physical Therapy), welcoming and impressive faculty, city with lots of fun things to do including great restaurants. We are not religious but she feels completely comfortable and welcome. She really enjoyed her required religious class. She liked Marquette too but didn’t find campus quite as nice and liked that weather would be warmer in Saint Louis.

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TY for review.

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SAT scores are out from the 3/11 exam. D24’s score went down in english/reading/writing and went up 10 pt on math. Overall score went down.

Have already decided that we’re not going to torture her more by making her do another SAT.

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Sorry to hear this. My DD24 also not a great standardized tester. She has moved on after 2 attempts at ACT, her time will be better spent elsewhere! Thankfully, the TO world seems to be here to stay.

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My D took it for the first time on 3/11. Her verbal went down 20pts from her PSAT and was 50 pints lower than her best practice test score. Her verbal percentage score stayed the same from PSAT. Her math went up 100 points from her PSAT and percentage score went up by 7. Her overall percentage stayed the same as her PSAT.

She did not hit her goal score in either section (missed each by 20 points). I was tempted to just have her call it good, since the percentages are very good, but her tutor told us schools really focus on the raw number not the percentages. :pensive:. So, She will take it one more time, because it seems crazy not to, but that will be it.

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D24 was crying about it in the car on the way home today, said that everybody was talking about their scores. D24 said, “I must be like the stupidest kid in school!” One especially braggy girl (not in her BFF group) went on and on about how she was mad that she didn’t get a 1550. :roll_eyes:

D24 said that girl brags all the time and has even claimed that she’s Arabic when in fact the kid is 25% of Arabic descent and looks like a full on white kid. Then D24 said, “Mama, 2 of my best friends are really conservative Muslim, they were born in a Muslim country, they speak Arabic at home all the time, they wear hijabs all the time, and they’re fasting right now for Ramadan…like, DUDE…even BFF #1 gets irritated by her and complains that this girl claims to be soooo Arabic.”

D24 is afraid that she won’t get in anywhere. She also wants to get into an honors college because of the early class registration benefits. I told her, “Ok, so maybe you won’t get into an honors college. But you could get into the honors college after your first semester. Or you could end up at one of the TX LACs we are going to tour next month…at those places, you get a faculty advisor the entire time you’re there and meet with them regularly and THEY help you get into the right classes at the right time. A big public college won’t necessarily have that. And a kid like Miss Braggy Pants will look down on those “lower ranked” LACs because she thinks that she too good for that.”

D24 said that Miss Braggy Pants is 15 and is really immature. I told her that just wait until she gets to college and starts talking like that…college students absolutely will serve you a dish of humble pie if you go in acting like a butthole like that.

Tried to cheer her up a bit by telling her that she really has some amazing emotional intelligence. Told her what the HS counselor said on Monday…that kids like Miss Braggy Pants often have difficulty adjusting in college because they never had to work that hard and they’re big fish in a small pond and then are suddenly at a school where everybody else is as smart or smarter than you…can lead to some mental health problems, depression, anxiety, imposter syndrome.

Also learned today that she’s missing 4 assignments in APUSH. Am not yelling at her about it. Discussed some ways of how she should consider changing her habits now so she develops some work-arounds and “bumpers” (like the bumper lanes at bowling alleys) to keep yourself on track so you don’t slip off course…since when you’re in college, the professor isn’t going to remind you to turn stuff in on time.

Also told her that with the SAT score she has right now, she qualifies for some good scholarships at UNM and NMSU that make it really affordable.

She also shed several tears talking about fears of being alone and not making any friends at college.

So…yeah…rough day today.

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My D20 was not a great standardized test taker - never could even crack 1200. She ran with a high achieving crowd in high school and had lots of days like you’ve described. She got in everywhere she applied with TONS of merit and is happily enjoying her time at a small school nothing like the brand name schools most of her friends ended up at.

You’re being really smart and strategic and your D is going to have great options.

PS - my D20 hasn’t given a single thought to her SAT scores since the day the first acceptance letter arrived in fall 2019. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Omg I’m glad it’s not just me (‘24 student here). My reading/writing went down by 40 points from the PSAT although my math went up 90. I’m going to try again in August. I wanted to cry. It was way below all my practice tests

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S40 is not a great test taker too. He got 80 points less than the previous test, while some of his friends are all over the places (1200 to 1500).

Tell your D that it is not the end of the world. There are always colleges out there, good colleges too, that will accept her and even give her good merit aids. Keep her head high and walk tall.

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On top of all of the above, D24 is still upset over the prom last school year, when she confidently went w/o a date but learned when she got to the prom that all of the other 10th graders who went arranged to meet up at a local park to take pictures beforehand. And nobody invited her. And then a couple of times during the actual prom, her friends/acquaintances (none of her BFFs went, their parents don’t let them date yet) ditched her and kind of ignored her.

I’m telling ya…I don’t miss being a teenager. Because stuff like that just sucks.

So even though she’s not going to the prom this year because the day of the prom is the day that her school trip to France starts, she still wanted to go to the prom.

After dinner, she went off a bit more about Braggy Pants, who was loudly talking smack about a male classmate who D24 is pretty decent friends with. D24 said that the boy’s family “doesn’t make very much money” and Braggy Pants was saying that because the boy is “poor” and black/African American that “he’ll of course get into an Ivy.” Oh man, you should have heard D24 going off about that comment.

I told D24 that I’m proud of her because she’s a good human, because she has a good heart, and that any college she applies to will love to have a kid like her there because she’s the sort of person who will try to help other people feel included and because she doesn’t care what you look like, whether or not you have money, where you came from, what your religion is, etc. And that’s far more important than what your SAT score is.

Then I told her to just let me know if she needs me to go kick anybody’s butt. :rofl: She’s working on APUSH and French HW right now. :slight_smile:

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