That is a bummer. CA made a rule that high schools can’t start before 8:30 or something like that…
True. The resume is optional. But D24 won’t be applying w/SAT or ACT test scores, so it’ll be an additional way to present more information about herself.
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That is frustrating! I feel terrible for your daughter having to wake up super early and then just wait around for so long. 7:30 start is brutal for high schoolers and dangerous in dark wintery conditions.
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In our neck of the woods, it’s pretty warm all winter compared to other parts of the country. But as for getting there at 7:30 am, such is life. My kids have had to be at school for a 7:30 start time for years now! This is just one more. It’ll be over before you know it!
I still don’t think it’s necessary unless you are really presenting something new that isn’t covered elsewhere.
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I’m so impressed with these parents that have spreadsheets for their kiddo to compare, analyze colleges. Does anyone here have an example that is shareable?
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I don’t have one to post online to share, but will reply later this evening with info on what I have on the different tabs of my spreadsheet.
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1st day of school over and done with. Some highlights:
- kid came home with welcome letters from each teacher. They do this every year. The Bioethics class sounds interesting. They’re going to get to debate some pretty big controversial topics in this class. D24 is really interested.
- the French class sounds hard based on what I read in the welcome letter.
- D24 is the most excited about the Shakespeare class, which makes my heart happy.
They’re going to read 12th Night, Macbeth, and 1 other play that’s still TBD. - the college counseling class sounds awesome and I am totally thrilled that they require every senior to take this.
- We forgot to pick up her parking permit on Monday, so D24 dropped off D26 and then parked in a visitor spot to go to the front office to get her parking permit. And then had to wait 20 min while a bunch of kids from younger grades (like grades 4-7) collected their schedules since they didn’t show up to the “pick up your schedule” day on Monday. She found this frustrating.
- both kids liked getting home earlier.
- about half of the senior class of 29 students have to be at school early for Period 0 (7:30 am) because of younger siblings. School administration didn’t think that the seniors would just hang around. So they’ve all been given stuff to do during Period 1 (starts at 8:25). D24 signed up to be a TA for a French class in Period 1. This will be a plus for her resume and for college applications.
- 1 of D24’s BFFs is interested in possibly being a lawyer. D24 asked if she can give BFF my sister’s contact info so she could talk to her and ask questions about it. (my sister is an attorney)
D24 has made plans w/her BFFs to go see the Barbie movie after school on Friday.
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D24 got turned down at a couple more places, but has another job interview elsewhere on Saturday.
She said that in today’s College Counseling class, 1 of the counselors did a lecture about what it means for seniors to be ‘good students,’ and it involves a lot more than just getting good grades. The counselor gave some examples of various things that are definitely in the realm of “NOT a good student,” like:
- 1 year’s seniors decided it would be fun to play this ‘assassin’ real life role play game AT school while school was in session, complete with fake weapons brought from home and planted in people’s lockers. They were told to knock it off, some still did it, they got in huge trouble.
- 1 senior last year was so checked out of the College Counseling class that he hardly ever turned in any assignments at all and it was so bad that neither of the counselors could come up with ANYTHING nice to say about him in a counselor letter of recommendation.
- Some of the seniors one year thought it would be funny to mess with the college admissions reps who visited school to do informational sessions & presentations. They’d sign up for the session, sit down together and do stupid stuff like hold hands during the session, or blurt out “can I go to the bathroom?” and then just get up and walk out without having permission and just generally acted like arrogant buttholes (my words, not the counselor’s). Counselor pretty much said “Don’t EVER do that.”
- One senior last year decided to do a senior research project. Doing such a project is optional. Seniors’ school year is 2 trimesters long and if you want to graduate with honors, you can do an optional senior project between early Feb and early May. It’s on pretty much any topic you want, requires you to do stuff in person with a business or non-profit in the community and can be located pretty much anywhere…even in other states or overseas if you want. 1 requirement is you do a once a week blog post online on the school’s website and 2nd requirement is you meet weekly w/your HS faculty advisor for the project. Well, it was day before the big presentation (all of the project presentations are on a Saturday in early May) and counselor talked to the faculty advisor and asked if Idiot Student had turned in all of his blog posts and all that. Faculty advisor said, “Nope, haven’t seen or heard from him at all the entire 10 weeks.” So no graduating with honors for him. Kid claimed to be doing some software development project. Guess what? It was all made up. He did absolutely nothing.
D24 said that when counselor was talking about all of this, she and the rest of the kids in her class just looked at the counselor with these dumbfounded looks on their faces. D24 said, “What the heck is WRONG with all of them? I mean, how dumb can you be?”
I told her that I was super proud and that it made my mom heart happy to hear that her immediate reaction to all of that was to think, “Wow, that’s really dumb. Why in the world would you do THAT?!”
So the fact that my kid has “only” a 3.2 unweighted GPA? Eh, that’s ok. At least she isn’t bringing fake weapons to school and isn’t acting like a fool in front of college admissions staff and isn’t committing major academic dishonesty sins. By comparison, it feels like my and all of our kids here in this group are totally kicking butt. 
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I’m impressed with her dedication to job hunting.
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Hi! My son loved his first year at mines. He is a computer science major.
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It’s the last month of summer, but starting to feel like fall both weather and school wise. D27 had a captain’s practice and the hs was hopping! Maybe it’s like that when S24 has his practices, but he drives himself. It just gave me a good feeling at pick up.
S24 is registered for an open house at his current top choice school. We’re trying to figure out what else we need to see, but we did a lot of tours last year. I think he is just done with the tours.
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Could you elaborate on why he loved it? Was it the classes/ professors, or the social/ activities?
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Picking up D24 from 3 weeks of camp today. School starts on Tuesday. We picked up her schedule and it’s brutal, hoping for some changes. Three AP’s and ASL at the community college first semester, then four fun electives second semester (school is on the block schedule). Hopefully we can balance things out since she will also have at least a couple of college applications and ACT in the next few months.
Fingers crossed she talked with other campers about colleges and careers and has some interest in where to go and what to do. So far she has just said she wants to go to college somewhere cheap and left the rest to me…
We were just discussing how to keep her a bit motivated when grades matter ‘less’ then they did the last few years.
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S24 instate FL.
GPA 3.0 UW, 3.3 W
rising senior
SAT 1420
looking at summer 24 admission chances - 1st choice: USF. He is also planning to apply for UF/FSU ( reach), FIU/FAU (most likely)
Major - Political science
Any guidance?
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Target out of pocket cost of attendance after financial aid?
Preferences in terms of geography?
Preferences in terms of school size?
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Hope to get instate tuition (public/scholarships). Affordable FL education.
I would start a new thread with this info under College Search and Selection and you should get lots of suggestions.
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D24 had Olive Garden interview yesterday, was told they’d get back to her in a day or 2 and today, she got a notification about an interview at a different location for tomorrow afternoon. Same position (host/hostess), just at different locations. Fingers crossed.
Did the “talk about college stuff for 15 min” thing today w/her. Stuff we talked about was:
- she went on Naviance and went into the “Colleges I’m Thinking About” section and selected high, medium, or low for all of the colleges that were listed there. She put Southwestern as “high” and Austin College as “medium.” Thought that was interesting.
- Told her that by end of this month, she needs to complete a draft Common App personal statement essay AND complete drafts of the 2 Austin College supplemental essay prompts AND complete a draft of the Common App optional “is there anything else about COVID that you want to tell us?” prompt.
- Told her I was proud of her for all of the job interviews she’d been on.
- DH joined us for the last few min. He asked her a question about spending money & personal expenses in college, which got her thinking about on campus food options. He & D24 got to talking about on campus dining options at U of A. Frankly, 1 of the problems w/U of A is that unless you’re an honors student, there IS no traditional dining hall on campus anywhere. It’s a lot of fast food type of places. D24 said, “Yeah, I’m going to get really sick of places like Starbucks and Chick-fil-A at the student union. I can probably come up with some stuff to make easily in the dorm since I’ll have a dorm fridge.”
- DH didn’t realize that almost every dorm today has pots & pans & cooking utensils at the front desk that you can check out and use in the community kitchen in each dorm. D24 said, “oh…yeah…that would work. I could do that sometimes. I really don’t want to eat just fast food all the time.” So DH & I suggested that over the next several months as she’s weighing her options, she should consider the on campus food options.
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Correction…did some research and it turns out that U of A has 3 ‘all you can eat restaurants’ (aka dining halls) on campus AND the 85 North one that’s attached to the Honors dorm, anybody can eat at as well, don’t have to just be an honors student.
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