<p>ree, I must admit (if you can’t already tell) I love the college visit part. I find it fascinating to see what each school thinks is important to emphasize, what kinds of people are considering each school, what freebies you get, who doesn’t offer you a bottled water, etc. I think this is the fun, low-pressure part of the process.</p>
<p>I wasn’t too keen on the whole visit thing. My son is one of those “It’s fine” kids. But honestly, you all make it sound kind of fun :). I figure, living in PA, there are tons of schools we can visit in a day and seeing how convienient greyhound or amtrak travel is will make a difference. Also, my mom in Raleigh, NC has been bugging me to come visit…lol. So I figure we can visit her as well as some schools in the area even though he will have no interest whatsoever in most. I really only want to visit Guilford, which is in Greensboro, but will also check out Duke and UNC just because. hehe…now, I’m looking into a Chicago trip.</p>
<p>Reeinaz
Susquehanna is our our long list. They have been very good to my son’s high school over the last 5 years. Please report back your impressions. I’m really looking forward to the visits - much more so than my son. Hoping it will make for some great bonding road trips 
Just wish our family had more time for them. With 3 kids of different ages, all their ECs & work, time is too limited.</p>
<p>What’s great is that it’s still early enough that it’s not that much pressure. You spin it as, “Let’s just see the kinds of things you like – big/small/urban/rural – and we can worry about exact places later.” Then, you come on here and obsess with your “imaginary” friends and come up with an awesome list that at some point you can run by him.</p>
<p>One thing I had ds1 do when we looked at colleges was to write down three pros, three cons and at least one sentence of narrative that reflects the general vibe he got. Minimal commitment on his part to help keep places straight (especially if you end up seeing multiple schools in a single day or several schools in a single week), and it was pretty interesting to see when he wrote several sentences, showing that he had strong feelings about a place.</p>
<p>^^^we did a similar thing with D1. After we got back in the car and on the road, we’d say “tell us 3 things you liked and 3 things you didn’t.” It helps them to articulate those vague feelings they have about a school into something more concrete, and it helps you figure out the things they respond to both positively and negatively. Once we had visited more than 1 schools, we’d also say “rack and stack 'em” meaning how would you rank the schools you’ve visited. That helped them to put things in perspective.</p>
<p>Operation Red, Yellow, Green on the spreadsheet seems to be working; D2 is definitely finding that she’s has opinions on certain things. I’m not surprised by any of her color assignments yet, but I think she is.</p>
<p>We attended a summer visit day at Dickinson yesterday; they did a nice job and D and I were favorably impressed. It is a good match for her, she has so many reachy schools on her possible list, I was glad she liked it.</p>
<p>shillyshally, we drove by Mary Washington too last week on our way to Richmond for a lacrosse tournament. Didn’t stop, but I said - ‘look there’s Mary Washington!’ as we passed by.</p>
<p>Our first college fly-by this summer was a drive through Skidmore between games while S13 was attending a soccer tournament in Saratoga, since we were right there anyway. S didn’t have much to say about it other than that the campus “seemed small”. He doesn’t see himself in an urban, city environment, nor at a really big university, so I guess we will be looking for a bigger LAC or smaller U.</p>
<p>It was a 108 degrees today in our area! I took my D up to Mass General the other day in hopes of seeing some specialists. I learned that she was “criminally” overtreated with antibiotics (which was why she was half dead!), and I am a mom who is on top of everything that a dr prescribes and I knew this was wrong. He just kept telling me she would feel worse because the meds would mimic the disease (lyme). When her bp dropped to 70/49 and he did nothing (it was a Sunday), I knew I had to stop the meds asap. He referred me to an endocrinologist. Ridiculous. I am getting my d back which is all that matters, and they are fixing her antibody problems. It’s a shame she had to miss out on half the summer, because of this. His office also told me to file a complaint with the hospital as they felt she was maltreated as did these 2 specialists. It’s horrible,and it made me feel ill to my stomach that something grave could have happened to her.</p>
<p>On the drive up we passed a myriad of schools and once in Boston, we passed MIT and my d loved the creative buildings; in particular, the cancer research building. She’s not a math or science person but said if she were, she’d seriously consider MIT (if she was smart enough). It was nice to see her old self back. She loved Boston and will consider schools up there. She loves big cities so NYC will be on the list as well as some schools in CA. </p>
<p>When we visited the local public school in our area to consider classes for next year, we picked up a copy of their school paper which was very impressive. One of the articles was entitled “another reason to hate freshmen.” Believe it or not, 4 freshmen were offered early admittance to Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Brown on “bizarre talents.” The jr’s and sr’s were upset, naturally, because they were all working so hard to get perfect SAT scores and straight A’s. It was not explained how the schools found the freshmen bu they did. Their bizarre talents included singing the alphabet backwards while gargling; balancing ping pong balls with a big toe; performing most daily tasks with only their eyelashes; and perfectly imitating the sound of the school bell. There was no info on those students grades either. But it did infuriate the upperclassmen who said years ago desperate kids tried to get ahead by cheating or inflating their resumes; and now this new way of finding students (sort of American Idol-ish) is a huge “game changer.” </p>
<p>The colleges did not want jr’s or sr’s who suddenly developed bizarre talents. My d shared classes with an all boys school (both schools were rigorous academies), and one freshman last year was offered a full scholarship to Yale for ice hockey. All he had to do was keep a C average throughout high school and not get into trouble. He didn’t even have to take honors or AP classes! </p>
<p>It is tough today and you just don’t know what colleges are looking for, but Mike Moyers (Cappex) seemed to hit the nail on the head. It’s not enough to just have good grades, you need to show leadership and do something different like he did to win admittance to prestigious schools (he had a 2.0 and raised homing pigeons but in the end, he chose Univ of Kansas as that is where he felt most comfortable).</p>
<p>Pretty interesting stuff. Have a nice cool weekend everyone!</p>
<p>DS just got the dreaded e-mail from the VP – you have a schedule conflict. Call me. Argh. Can’t wait to see what disaster awaits.</p>
<p>Hang in there, meda.</p>
<p>ETA: Oh, and he’s switched hours with another intern who wanted the early shift. The later shift means more hours, which is fine, but now we’ll be in rush-hour traffic going home. :(</p>
<p>Keep thinking that is going to happen to my D, YDS. She is back from her week of service in triple digit temperatures. So proud of her and the work her crew completed for their resident. They replaced some posts that supported a front porch, ripped up a bathroom floor and retiled, repaired a shed roof, and put two coats of paint on a two story house. I still can’t believe she was up on a ladder painting a house! My H says he is going to put her and her new skills to work around here!</p>
<p>My son got his firts paycheck on Friday and was quite miffed that I didn’t just cash it for him. He has a kid’s account at my bank so we deposited the check on Saturday and the bank teller was nice enough to explain why it could take up to seven days for him to have access to his money. In the past, when he got a check as a gift, I would just give him the money and deposit it in my account. But now that he’s working for it, I figured it’s a nice lesson to learn that payday doesn’t always mean you’ll have money. I loved asking him for money all weekend and having him tell me he doesn’t have any just so I could say “But you just got paid” lol. And since his internship is only a month long, he won’t make enough money to have taxes taken out. He was happy to see that because I had warned him about FICA.</p>
<p>On the college front, I finally sat down and did “The Spreadsheet” and it’s a nice sized list of 47 schools ranging from show up and you’re in to how the heck did you get into there. I’m actually looking forward to reordering things as grades and scores change. The nice thing is that there are several that he could get into now based on his current stats. With some, I was surprised to see that he was in the top 25% in some SAT areas. Now if only he can get that GPA up a little more…</p>
<p>Just scheduled S2’s first official college tour for this coming Friday at Southwestern University. I know that the campus will be pretty deserted, but it’s the only day he doesn’t have rehearsals. It’s about 2 hrs away from us so it will be a nice little getaway. I’m hoping that Southwestern will be his “safety” school. S2 is only slightly concerned that the student body is smaller than his HS. Fingers crossed that he likes it anyway!</p>
<p>meg, we toured there with ds1 in the summer and had a great visit. Lots of personal attention, and the tour guide was great because we ran across a reptile on a wall while walking and she let us all ooh an aaah and talk about what it might be. Loved that. Warning: When we were there the adcom came out before the tour and started chatting up ds, asking him all kinds of questions. Caught him totally unaware. Oh, and good Mexican food restaurant down the street. Can’t remember the name, but the adcom told us about it.</p>
<p>Ah “The Spreadsheet ;)” D2 is being ruthless with her opinions, but that doesn’t surprise me because she was always the kind of kid who doesn’t hold onto things for sentimentality sake. This is not a kid at risk of being a hoarder 
She is diligently doing 1 school per day. Yesterday was Day 7; 3 greens, 1 yellow and 3 reds so far. I’m thinking it’s going to be a very manageable list by the end of August. Woot!</p>
<p>I haven’t said anything about most of the schools on the list, but she’s doing a good job figuring out what I was thought were issues about them with regards to her personality & interests even with my lips buttoned.</p>
<p>I wish I was good at Excel so I could do The Spreadsheet. Rob, I was in awe of Keix’s. And it saved me lots of trouble because so many of her schools overlapped with ds1’s.</p>
<p>My son could care less about the spreadsheet I so lovingly put together. So then I hid many columns because he said it was too much info. He still doesn’t want to look at it. </p>
<p>Is this because he is a boy?</p>
<p>So different than my neice was at this stage of the process.</p>
<p>Doesn’t help that the only friend he has discussed college visits with is only applying to a state school - Friend plans to visit one school. If he doesn’t like it then he’ll apply to the “other” state school that sounds good on paper. My son wants to know why I won’t let him do the same. Hmmm - never said I won’t, but the schools in question have not 1 thing he has said he wanted.</p>
<p>Yep, boys. Ds is better than I am at Excel, but I can’t imagine him doing a spreadsheet. For ds1, I bought a big calendar so we could keep track of everything. He never used it once. This is where Love the Kid on the Couch comes in handy.</p>
<p>haha…I never said my son looked at the spreadsheet Right now he has a major crush on one of his coworkers and is spending all his free time trying to 1. decide if she “likes him” likes him and 2. come up with a plan to let her know he likes her without letting her know he likes her. I’ve been giving him topics of conversation that they can discuss over lunch. I’m really proud that I haven’t suggested he ask her about her college plans since she’s a rising senior.</p>
<p>Longhaul: there are many columns that I want to add, but I’m waiting until after her first pass through is over. Don’t want to overwhelm plus I want to be able to add the most current data which should be available once the freshman classes officially show up in August & September.</p>
<p>YDS: I don’t remember Keix’s ss. What did she have on it? I might need to send her a message ;)</p>
<p>Boys v girls. Yup that’s part of it, although I know quite a few of D2s friends who’ve said they’re not ready yet. But junior year is full especially for these kids with full AP/IB schedules & I am happy that this “just look at 1 a day” plan is working for D. Makes me not be a bad guy.</p>
<p>DH actually got into the conversation last night. D2 mentioned that she’d finished her school for the day and it was red. We asked which one (Emory) and why. Then Dh asked her about what other schools she’d judged already and then asked her to read the rest of her list. I am amazed how chill he is this go round about schools that are a flight away. I guess with D1 being in England and him seeing how Skype & FB keeps you connected makes him realize it’s not an awful situation. Good for D2!</p>
<p>You know how people talk about test scores that aren’t in line with GPA? I guess like a 2.9 kid scoring a 2360 on the SAT. Does anyone know if there is a chart or something that lists what scores generally match certain GPAs?</p>