<p>Thank God, our school has the finals before the Christmas Break. Too many stressed out kids not enjoying the time off before. And they get off before Memorial Day too. Of course this means they start mid-August, but small price to pay.</p>
<p>Anyone going to take the Feb ACT? Debating whether or not to right now</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>D is taking the April ACT “for real.” She took the October cold so now we know what she needs to work on.</p>
<p>We are a finals-in-January district. At least starting in September rather than August eliminates having the kids in school during some of the hottest weather. </p>
<p>arisamp, congrats to your D on the license! D1 has started driving in traffic. :eek: Did I really cause my parents this much angst when I was learning to drive?</p>
<p>kumitedad, D1 is taking the Dec. ACT, and probably the March SAT I. Then she’ll see if she wants/needs to squeeze in another go-round of either test. Fall testing is a possibility, but she’d really like to avoid that.</p>
<p>Missypie: The Feb will be her “cold” take, so I think we will go with it. She is taking the online course so it (hopefully) wont be too much of a shock for her.</p>
<p>Looking forward. The last of our college visits will be this spring break. We plan in the fall of her senior year to do overnights at her match/safety schools for her to get info for the final decisions. Any of her reachs we will wait until after acceptance. Does this make sense?</p>
<p>S will take the ACT for first time, early spring, have to see when it is offered around here, not as common in this part of the country. Will retake SAT in May. Will take SAT2’s in June. </p>
<p>S flunked the test for his learner’s permit in May and never went back. Not really sure why. Right now he is too busy to do driver’s ed so it is probably just as well. Congrat’s to Arisamp’s D! </p>
<p>Hoping to get a lot of college visits out of the way this winter. I think making overnights after acceptance is fine, so long as an initial visit was made to “show the love”, especially to those reaches. Some colleges seem to expect a visit.</p>
<p>D1 has at least one more safety visit to make this year, more for her to make sure she’d be OK being there than to show love. I’ve been checking Common Data Sets to see what schools that she might consider care about demonstrated interest.</p>
<p>How is everyone doing? Son and I went with a friend of mine and her son and another friend of my son’s to the Philadelphia College Fair on Sunday. If you have the opportunity to go to one, I urge you to do it. Son’s stickers were a big hit and so was any mention of his favorite EC. This was also a really, really good experience in talking with lots of different admissions people and working out the balance of self-promotion and finding out information. </p>
<p>Two great tips from CC were to make up the address stickers with name, address, e-mail, grad year and possible major. EVERY college asked for this info and all the reps gave him kudo’s for them. Another tip was to take five minutes before entering the venue and highlighting all the colleges that we wanted to look at. </p>
<p>Now waiting to hear how he did on the SAT’s…</p>
<p>kathiep: Sounds like a very productive outing. Another college fair to look for is the Colleges that change lives fair. A lot of good little schools that fly under the radar go are highlighted there. We went to it out here for my S and got a lot of good info</p>
<p>[Colleges</a> That Change Lives](<a href=“http://ctcl.org/]Colleges”>http://ctcl.org/)</p>
<p>After reading much advice here. DC will take the SAT in Jan…we were going to have him wait until March but with the March date he has a conflict on the calendar…
He will take 4AP exams and 3 SATiis May/June. and perhaps the SAT again June…
Guess we need to research the ACT dates too as the GCs at hs want all kids to take both</p>
<p>Another comment on College Fairs. Right before we went, I practiced shaking hands, good eye contact and chit chat with my S. Of course, he rolled his eyes and thought I was a dork. He had a list of questions for each school he was planning to speak to. He borrowed my leather portfolio, made his stickers and was totally confident starting with his first meeting. He took great notes and wrote down all the answers to his questions. He made sure to get the card of the rep so he could send a follow-up thank you. Lastly, without my prior prompting, he shook hands with the rep as they finished. I was never more proud.</p>
<p>The colleges that change lives tour doesn’t really stop near here. Wish it did. You would think that if they go to Rochester New York that they would also stop in Philadelphia but they don’t.</p>
<p>Wow, good for you FLmathmom, it didn’t occur to me to work on the handshake thing, and not one hand was shaken. <em>sigh</em> Not going to push the thank you notes either. If we actually visit, I’ll encourage that but that’s about it.</p>
<p>D1 was talking about how all the seniors are on tenterhooks about ED/SCEA applications. There is much discussion about what is the hot school of the moment among the seniors and maybe the juniors, where “everyone” is applying. Right now, it’s Boston College, no idea why. We have a professor friend there who’d be happy to talk to D1 about the school if she wants, but I can’t see the attraction for her. D1 says she knows entirely too much about the entire college app process, but it’s apparently helping her think up essay topics for applying for summer programs. She’s also taken a look at the current essay prompts for one of her reach schools. </p>
<p>I was at one of the local Cal State campuses yesterday with D2, checking out the local “Fame”-type high school, heaven help us 
And there was D1’s college counselor, touring with her kid. Small world. D2 was all agog at the resources of a college campus (Food court! Starbucks! Bookstore!). </p>
<p>kathiep, thanks for the reminder about the stickers.</p>
<p>Half a doz or so athletes have signed “commits” this month and a few more will sign in another week. </p>
<p>DS isn’t hearing much about who is applying where…I think there are alot of tense kids waiting to hear and those that had hoped to be recruited ath may not have gotten the letters they hoped for…we will see as the next month or so brings more news.</p>
<p>Well Happy Thanksgiving to all parents. Enjoy it. Next Thanksgiving there will be more to worry about than drying out the turkey :)</p>
<p>Now if I could only get my DD to study for ACT my life would be complete</p>
<p>kumitedad, you are not alone.</p>
<p>D got her SAT scores yesterday. She was fairly happy with them - although a bit disappointed with her math scores. She does want to take the SAT again, perhaps in March, to try and boost her Math scores. Her scores are good (not great by typical CC standards) and put her on the high end of the score range for most schools that she was looking at.</p>
<p>Given this, should she take the ACT? She did originally plan on doing so - but now, she’s wondering if she should bother.</p>
<p>Just spoke to D, she’s home early from school today. Plans to sit around, doing “nothing”! Could use the down time! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!</p>
<p>That is great that her first set of scores are high for the score range of schools she is considering! Does she want to re-take the SATs in March, or wait until May - a big test date for juniors?
I would definitely recommend taking the ACT. She has nothing to lose, and often if one doesn’t do as well on the SATs as one hoped, you may well see a much better result from the ACT. Apparently the two tests (SAT vs. ACT) are quite different in their approach.
My D just received her SAT scores too (good to have an early baseline we felt), she will take the ACT (in April I think) and then the SAT in May and SAT subject tests in early June …plus an SAT prep course this winter. Then I hope for her sake for her to be done with testing, perhaps?! Of course, there are autumn SAT opportunities next year too…
Happy Thanksgiving!</p>
<p>Hope y’all had a good holiday. In between family time, my S actually managed to do his homework, the first draft of his resume and one ACT practice test, all without my nagging. We also did some checking on one school so as to keep up our pace of researching one school a week. Not too bad.</p>
<p>mayhew, she’s thinking about retaking the SAT in march. She has to find a good time - and May/June is likely to be too busy for her. This time around, she was in some local SAT prep classes for a few weeks before the test - not sure how much this helped her, but it sure gave her a bit of practice. For the next go-around, I am not sure if she will actually prepare…we’ll see…</p>
<p>I’ve brought up the ACT with her…she’s really not too keen on another test…but perhaps I can convince her to take it early next year.</p>
<p>D2 taking the SAT for the second and last time this Sat. to bring her CR up. We discussed the ACT, but she’s prepped out, which is OK because D1 and I are nagged out! One SAT II in June and she’s done with standardized testing.</p>
<p>Of course there are those pesky summer program applications due early next year…</p>