<p>
Yeah my S too, civil engineering, now Recording Engineering…not even close to traditional engineering…and our BIG list is still being compiled…I feel so far behind, and yet so much further than I was a month ago…this site helps!</p>
<p>On the positive side, all this List making has made my D’13 start thinking :D</p>
<p>My older son was planning to do Computer Science or something in that field when we started looking at colleges in his Junior year in HS. But in his first semester senior year he took his third programming class and realized that as much as he liked playing computer games, he really disliked programming. We went from looking at tech Colleges to looking at LAC’s. He’ll graduate Saturday with an English major and a communication minor and without having taken a single computer class in college! I made sure that every college that he applied to had a computer science major, just in case he changed his mind again!</p>
<p>We were at CMU this past weekend and kind of drove by the Pitt campus as well. H wanted to stop by and do a tour, but everyone else was pretty tapped out. Looked like a nice campus - kind of hard to detect where CMU ended and Pitt began in some cases. I wouldn’t think it would be a bike friendly campus - but then again, I did see a few bikes on the CMU campus. Fairly busy roads. We drove around this area the previous night trying to get oriented for the next morning and boy, was everything dead! Kind of spooky, actually. Especially since it was a Friday night that we were driving around.</p>
<p>Has anyone visited Duquesne while they were in Pittsburgh?</p>
<p>Last night D and I had a few minutes to talk about college. (State testing this week, so no homework.) I was finally able to impress upon her that she is going to have to ask *someone *for a teacher rec. Her favorite teacher left the school last year (and let it be known that unless the student made a real effort to keep in touch, she would not be writing rec letters.) D does have sort of an unfortunate assortment of teachers this year in her core classes.</p>
<p>^^ Do the essays really stay the same from year to year?
hummmm</p>
<p>I have heard that there is an advantage for the kids to sort of mull the essay over and do it the end of summer due to experiences and maturity.
Any clue about this advice? Is that wonky or valid?</p>
<p>Given the testing through the second weekend in June–and then if our student is at Jr Nationalsl most of the summer-- I don’t see much work on the essays being possible until August…</p>
<p>sigh</p>
<p>It seems this level of stress is taking away some of the joy of being a teenager right now…
Our student has not smiled much in the last 24 hrs knowing the SAT2s loom on this weekend, followed by APs, the SAT and a second shot at the ACT…
Can’t blame 'em The reward is that if all goes well, it can be done and not revisited in Sept…
Praying thats the case…</p>
<p>I think there’s a necessary balance between staying ahead and being overloaded. Definitely use the summer as you can.</p>
<p>D wanted to jump right into a second ACT, kind of pumped. But her ACT “coach” (our friend who knows the biz) said save it to September, give it time to jell. Especially with APs and subject tests in May/June. We’re saving the essay for when those are over. But she does have to talk to people about recs before school ends.</p>
<p>She’s gotten better at juggling eggs, but we’re trying to keep it as few as possible.</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone for your Pittsburgh comments. I think UPitt might be too urban for LuckyBoy (he rejected BU completely after seeing pictures in something they sent), but I’m going to keep it on The Big List for now. I think I’ll need to consult Google Earth, too.</p>
<p>I’ve reached a zen position about Saturday’s SAT. If he doesn’t do as well as he wants, then he’ll just take it in September, no biggie. I am so proud of how he has been managing his time and studying for the APs the past 10 days. He is confident about some, not so confident about others, yet he is remarkably UNstressed. Such a nice change from the beginning of the month :)</p>
<p>He has a friend staying up to 2am every night, existing on Monster and stress :eek:</p>
<p>@fogfog - It looks like your D will have a great summer. She should definitely wait to write her essay, as she might want to talk about her experience at the Jr. Nationals. </p>
<p>I will advise my S not to look at any essay topics and just write 2 essays on any topic as long as they would show his character. He will start them in mid-June after school is over.</p>
<p>Yesterday, after school and an EC meeting he did practice test for 2 SAT IIs that he will be taking this Saturday, and got the score he wanted. So that is it for the SAT II prep. This will be his last SAT test, so I am going to use the free score report. - Thanks entomom for the reminder!</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I was going to say the same thing. I know 2 kids in recent years who are borrowing way, way, way too much money because they refused to attend their safeties and didn’t get the aid they hoped for from other schools. She still has time to look.</p>
<p>Missypie, S is interested in Duquesne also. It was on my list a few months ago because S&H were planning on visiting CMU and UPitt and I figured while they were there, why not. But then I removed it, I just didn’t get the warm fuzzy feeling. When S talked to their rep at a college fair a couple of days ago, he said he was interested in taking a closer look at it. S will visit in person but it may be a couple of months before we get there.</p>
<p>Is there a quick link–to the ACT policies of schools…
which require all scores, etc
and which superscore?</p>
<p>This is the SAT list
<a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat-score-use-practices-list.pdf[/url]”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board;
<p>and I haven’t seen a similar list of ACT superscoring…</p>
<p>fogfog: ACT superscoring is school by school; someone on CC tried to create a thread last year, but it didn’t seem to come to fruition…there is no comprehensive list of ACT superscoring…</p>
<p>@entomon thanks for the link about comm app essay</p>
<p>fogfog: superscoring for the SAT is really school by school. I tried to get the information on this for the schools that D is considering and found that most of them will superscore, but they did require all scores to be sent in. If you need to send in all scores, I don’t really see why we need to distinguish schools on this.</p>
<p>One exception though - Penn State University Park - we were told at their information session that they will NOT superscore. They accept the highest score from a SINGLE sitting.</p>
<h1>@arisamp this is the recent resposne from “ask dean” in CC</h1>
<p>If a college wants you to submit all SAT scores then YOU must tell the College Board to send the scores. This is all done on the honor system. The scores will NOT be sent unless you order them.</p>
<p>You are not supposed to use the Score Choice option for colleges that insist on seeing all your results, although the colleges will have no way of knowing if you complied with the request or not (unless your high school routinely puts test scores on transcripts. In this case, the colleges will see whatever the high school guidance office includes.)</p>
<p>I’m sure that some students “cheat” and use Score Choice when they’re not supposed to. But, like in many other instances in life, this is really a question of personal integrity and responsibility. </p>
<p>Ideally, all colleges will eventually decide to honor Score Choice, which will help make this already too-confusing process a bit less so, but so far we aren’t there yet.</p>
<p>Good luck with the admissions maze ahead,</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, pretty much so, and if they change some, they always have the ‘topic of your choice’.</p>
<p>It is nice if a kid has prompts for most of their schools and jots some ideas down during the summer. For major essays, you can usually get by with a couple, but there are a few schools that do change their suppl essay from year to year (for example, Amherst, UChicago, Princeton, I think). </p>
<p>I’m going to broach the subject of essays, but not until AFTER AP exams :rolleyes:.</p>
<p>News flash from LuckyBoy at dinner-----he has to have a first draft of his common app essay done for Monday :eek: I asked which topic he had chosen—he hasn’t even read them yet. Guess what he’ll be doing on Sunday??? </p>
<p>So pleased that the first AP exam (Calc) isn’t until Wednesday!</p>
<p>And apparently he and a group of friends are having study sessions for the APs: one Saturday, one Tuesday (told him he wouldn’t be going to that one as I think he should NOT look at calc Tuesday night), one Thursday, and one the following Sunday. Only S and one guy are taking 4, most others are taking 2.</p>
<p>
The list for my D"13 is easy - she just wants to go to a school with a very good vet school…only 27 in the nation and they are ranked by US News and World Report…but she has grown up wanting to go to UCDavis for so long… I wish they had a list of best Recording Engineering Schools…</p>
<p>I would kill (a house lizard) to be in an American high school class of 2011.</p>
<p>Tell your kids how badly many international students WANT to go to a US university, to cherish were they are at right now and work really hard for their final year in high school.</p>
<p>(I’m an international who’s supposed to enroll in Fall 2010. If I can afford US)</p>