<p>Count me in! My daughter spent 10 days in Guatemala this past summer doing some volunteering and having fun with the other kids who went. She got her driver's license in August and is now off to a good start in her junior year. This is her first experience with AP and Honors classes...not to mention she has to take her Pre-Calc at the community college crammed into a semester. She'll be busy with her Choir and Jazz singing groups at various concerts and events. So, it's definitely going to be an intense year. Since she'll never be a total bookworm, she'll figure out how to have a fulfilling social life, I know! :-)</p>
<p>I forgot to mention my D's summer reading for Honors American Lit and APUSH. Oh, joy. Of course, she procrastinated and didn't start reading until the summer was almost over. I often wonder how a kid who excels in Language Arts has no desire to read recreationally. I used to LOVE reading at her age! I always had a book in my hand. I admit I didn't always care for the assigned reading. But, I LIVED at the library back in the '60s.</p>
<p>We also live in the Monterey Bay area on the Central coast...on the "sunny side of the Bay". :) Your daughter was fortunate to be able to read Cannery Row and East of Eden. Mine had to choose from The Feminine Mystique or The Silent Spring. She went with the first one. Then they had to read some random books --not sure of the names. Two essays due on the first day.</p>
<p>She has no idea where she wants to go to college...at least she hasn't voiced it to us. She did arrange for us to tour Stanford this past August, but she didn't come away with much to say. It was also "studentless". But then that's just the way she is. :) We did tell her that she won't be going to an out-of-state public college because of the higher tuition. Now if she happened to get a very generous financial package (no loans) from an out of state private school, we might change our minds. </p>
<p>Of CA public colleges, I'm kind of hoping she'll consider Cal Poly SLO, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, maybe UC San Diego. Not sure if any of the private colleges have many grants, etc. Pitzer might have something... </p>
<p>I sure hope this whole college app.process won't become too overwhelming next year! All the tests and keeping up the GPA is pressure enough.</p>
<p>You wrote:</p>
<p>Jumping in as well with a just turned 16 YO daughter in California. </p>
<p>Yes on learners permit - no license yet</p>
<p>No on SAT prep - she will start a class in September</p>
<p>Yes on AP class summer work - annoys me too - I'd like to see the test date moved back a couple of weeks in the school year to relieve some of the time line pressure. Summer reading also includes East of Eden and Cannery Row (we live in Monterey Bay Area - Steinbeck country)</p>
<p>Summer Activities - We just got back from a dream vacation in Paris and London - using up many years of frequent flyer and hotel points. She also took a sailing class and is hosting a number of old friends from other parts of the state. Nothing academic (which I regret)</p>
<p>College visits - having just gone through this with DS (who will be a freshman), I am not a huge fan of college visits except during the school year. To quote my son "they all look alike when there are no kids here - and what college would dare to admit they don't have a large library as well as access to the interlibrary loan system" We will be making a number of trips in the fall.</p>
<p>College leanings - smaller school, probably a LAC, in the western US. Leading possibilities Willamette, Lewis and Clark, University of Portland, Saint Marys of California, University of San Diego.</p>
<p>ECs include "Link Crew", CSF, Soccer, Track, and Horse Therapist.</p>
<p>Welcome, 2Leashes. Good luck to you and your D. But who were you responding to in your last post? (post #543)</p>
<p>welcome 2leashes, like your name. Also want to add don't be to fretful about your daughter and an expected drop in her grades (mentioned in B+ thread.) Yes, she is in tougher classes now, but so are her peers. Are her grades weighted? Even if not, I don't think if she were to get a B or two it would be the end of the world.</p>
<p>One thing I JUST got access to at my school is our Naviance system. If your school has this I would recommend getting access if you are able. My kids go to a small private school ~60 kids per grade and it is unranked and there are some teachers who are pretty tough graders. My D has about a 3.8 maybe a bit lower after two years. There are some Bs in there. There could be more this year. But the thing to consider is where similar kids go to school. It isn't just the numbers, but kids going to the LACs she is considering have between B+ and A averages. It has also helped to see which school take many kids from our school and where we have had little success.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>ps- also congrats LIMOM for graduating from "junior member" to "member" in cc land (300 posts)</p>
<p>jackief - thanks for the congrats - I hadn't even noticed. D's school is supposed to be giving parents access to Naviance in the next month or so. Hopefully, they'll send home a note explaining how it works as I'm sure most parents aren't familiar with it.</p>
<p>LIMOM, I just happened to notice that when typing the reply. </p>
<p>Our school gives the individual accounts/passwords in Feb of Jr year. I had a meeting with our college counselor about general timeline topics, and I threw out that it would be nice to get the access earlier, as I was having challenges seeing how kids from our school compared to the data on college websites. About a week later, he sent me account info for a dummy user they have, so that account has bogus stats but you can still see the actual data for grads. It was very enlightening to see the scattergrams, but our school also has it setup to give you lists of schools where your scores fall in comparison to past acceptances, etc. That's the reason they don't give the access until Feb, they take the PSAT scores and do a SAT estimate from that as the starting point.</p>
<p>For anyone who doesn't know what Naviance is, do a search and you will find several topics. You will also find examples of schools which have a guest login where you can look at data from that school.</p>
<p>Our naviance passwords are supposed to be mailed along with the first report cards. I was told that it is absolutely against school rules to give them out any earlier.</p>
<p>Will be interested to hear from LM and QM on what you think of your naviance systm when you get your accounts.</p>
<p>can i join your club?</p>
<p>i have a junior D. she takes all honors/AP classes except for band and the occasional on-level elective. she will get her class rank (top 20% or so) next week and will take the PSAT soon. she has been making 180 - 210ish scores on the practice tests. : /</p>
<p>her original plan was to go to big state U, but after visiting a smaller college, i think she has started thinking that smaller might be better. not WAY smaller (her high school has about 4000 kids) but smaller than 45,000. maybe something between 5,000 and 20,000.</p>
<p>her wishes so far are:</p>
<p>good football team
traditions (her past three schools have been brand new - so no traditions)
pretty like baylor
not too pricey
no frog mascots!!! haha</p>
<p>she thinks she would like to stay close to home, but she might consider something further away. around here most kids go to big state u#1 or big state U #2 and come home fairly often, so that is how she thinks everyone does it.</p>
<p>i don't think she would consider somewhere with cold/snowy weather. she's a texas girl!</p>
<p>does anyone know if PSAT numbers can predict SAT scores? i first heard that you pretty much add a zero and you have an approximate SAT score, but then i saw some posts that talked about how people that thought that were idiots.</p>
<p>
[quote]
does anyone know if PSAT numbers can predict SAT scores? i first heard that you pretty much add a zero and you have an approximate SAT score, but then i saw some posts that talked about how people that thought that were idiots.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Drat. This is the second time today I discover I'm an idiot. ;)</p>
<p>Seriously, I don't think there's a direct correlation. But, adding a zero is good enough for my ballpark purposes.</p>
<p>i discover i am an idiot daily!!!</p>
<p>i have teenagers!</p>
<p>: D</p>
<p>PSAT scores certainly are predictive, but keep in mind that's within plus or minus 50 points or so. The writing score (which on the PSAT doesn't include an essay) can be WAY off. Of course prep, or learning some more math (depending on the timing of the test can make a difference too.)</p>
<p>Ancedotally: My older son took PSAT twice and SAT twice. Here are the scores:</p>
<p>Soph PSAT V73 M80 W74
Jr. PSAT V76 M74 W80</p>
<p>Jr SAT V800 M760 W690
Sr SAT V800 M770 W690</p>
<p>Note that junior year PSAT math went down from sophomore year (maybe because he was taking calculus and got less good at the easy stuff?)</p>
<p>Note that his writing score on the PSAT was much better than the SAT.</p>
<p>Note that the PSAT verbal score underestimated his SAT score twice. :) and that his PSAT total was higher than his SAT score. (Assuming the x10 formula.)</p>
<p>On the other hand, it was clear from the PSAT scores that his SAT scores would be excellent and that they were unlikely to be a stumbling block.</p>
<p>I've mislaid my younger son's sophomore year PSAT scores, but my recollection is that they were
V740 M560 W540</p>
<p>He says that about a week after they took the test they learned the geometry problems that were on the test. He's good at math, but slow. Tends to do very well on the pure multiple choice problems, less well on the fill in the blank ones. I'm very curious to see how he does this year on the PSAT. He's a B+ student, he insisted on dropping a 504 plan when he entered high school.</p>
<p>Careless mistakes count more on the PSAT since it's a much shorter test.</p>
<p>I don't have a high school junior but my very good friend does. She is a good student at a good private school. She also loves dance, and it seems to get in the way of academics. I have been telling my friend that if her daughter wants to go to a very competitive school (although she is not thinking Ivy) she should take the most challenging courses the school has to offer. That's what I always heard when my kids were in high school, and I thought on cc. Well, she is only taking one AP this year, the rest all honors. She does not have time for PSAT prep due to the dance schedule. She does have ec's. Anyway, yesterday my friend got back from the first real college counselor group meeting of the year. The counselors mentioned something that contradicted the "most challenging courses your school has to offer" statement. Her daughter can do the work, but now I think my friend is thinking that As in the less rigorous classes are better than Bs in the higher level classes. It took me a long time to convince her otherwise, and now she isn't sure! Am I wrong, has this changed?</p>
<p>Thanks mathmom for that PSAT-SAT analysis. In my D's experience her sophomore year PSAT score was not too predictive of her SAT score (she took the SAT in May as a sophomore). She did much better (+200 points) on the SAT, probably because of all the extra material she learned in the interim, but also because she did some practice tests and familiarized herself with the question types before taking the SAT.</p>
<p>This thread by DougBetsy also has some good anecdotes- <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-act-tests-test-preparation/566314-psat-average-improvement-soph-jr.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-act-tests-test-preparation/566314-psat-average-improvement-soph-jr.html</a></p>
<p>D has had time to do one PSAT practice test so far this year. She doesn't have time to do the whole thing in one sitting. I am going to tell her to take a section at a time and spread it out hopefully she can get some more practice in that way. Unfortunately, I think all sections could have improvement. Latest comment is that Latin translating of Ovid is screwing up her ability to recognize a well formed English sentence... I doubt she will get NMSF unless a stroke of luck, but could make commended.</p>
<p>Threekids- many stories of when adcoms are asked "is it better to take lower class and get A or higher class and get B" they answer "better to take higher class and get an A." Since your friend's D is at a good private school my hunch is they don't rank and in that case going for the highest grades possible might be the best. Also factor if they weight grades. But adcoms will want to see challenging classes. At my Ds' private, they are very conservative with # of ap/honors classes a kid can take and give a close look to anyone requesting > 2. Suggest friend and D talk to some college reps and see what they say. If you can talk to a rep familiar with the particular HS that would be a bonus.</p>
<p>Welcome 2 Leashes - glad to have a neighbor on the thread... </p>
<p>and Mike W. a warm welcome to you as well :)</p>
<p>Thanks, good advice. Better that she hear from the NYU rep than me. The daughter is interested in schools like NYU and I'm afraid she'll be competing with students from very competitive high schools, both public and private. In that case, I still think, since I believe she's capable, that she should take the APs where she excels, like science, and language arts, and maybe not in math, taking Honors Calculus instead of AP Calc. In her school you really can't take APs until junior year, but then a lot of the students load up, doubling up on science. The school does weight GPAs, but doesn't rank, (except for the top 10% cum laude). Each year is different, but this year her class seems to be exceptionally bright, as the counselors have said. Is this true in other schools, that the class of 2010 is a higher achieving class?</p>
<p>Re Naviance:</p>
<p>Our school has has given us access for the last couple of years - and it certainly shows promise - but the key seems to be in the implementation of the system. I think for it to really work it has to be core to the whole advising department - and at our school it is far from that. As a result, scores are only sometimes entered (e.g. missing SAT and PSAT scores) and more importantly, college admits are only spottily entered. As a result, the stats are a little wacky. I also think that they need to do a better job of protecting confidentiality as I can reasonably easily figure out who students are by their acceptances - and from that determine GPA and SAT scores for those students. E.g. we have one girl who went to Harvard - I guess that one acceptance to Harvard must be her...</p>