<p>Ok, forgot who posted it about “mizzou” is that missoula (the theater co. - is it a school? sorry for my ignorance!) or univ of missouri? BUT either way, being a native NY’er and now living in the tri-state area, I have to say that the whole northeast corridor is so competitive as most of you know (and then DC area as well)…The parents are so pushy and living vicariously through their kids and many demanding that they go to their alma maters. The kids are rebelling by drinking, drugging, etc…There are a few that just want to get the heck out of this area and one, the child of 2 harvard grads, wants to go to school in Montana or Colorado…they did their visits already. I have to say, hearing how friendly people are in the midwest, and going through a divorce, I am so READY to get the heck out of dodge and start over in an area with friendly decent people! If only dreams can come true (I will affirm!)…it’s just bloody awful here and the neighbors (don’t get me started!). Affluence breeds ignorance around here for sure. I’m from very humble beginnings with a mom who worked 2 jobs and I had to work and go to a college to pay my way. It was NOT easy. I gave up after my associates degree, and went full time at a large corporation and then went to school at night (best decision I made but way back then you could do that). Now the corporations want kids with degrees just to work the mail room. </p>
<p>I just want to be around nice people, have pot luck dinners, get the pressure off all these kids, and R-E-L-A-X and just breathe! In fact, I think I’ll take the morning off and go to the beach (we have 5 great beaches in our town)…I never take advantage of it, because I always feel like I have to be doing something productive. My house looks like a mini Barnes and Noble, and I’m just fed up with this whole college nightmare. It’s no wonder, Mike Moyers, the man who runs Cappex and College Peas, chose to go to Univ of Kansas (it was in Kansas and I think that was the name) rather than a prestigious college (remember he had a 2.0 or 2.7 avg in a private high school but his extracurricular was homing pigeons which made him interesting?). I wonder how hard it would be for us to become good old friendly country bumpkins with some semblance of dignity, decency and respect (we got that covered)!</p>
Is this the 25%-75% breakdown? If so, that sounds a little high. In fact I’m not certain there are even any schools with a 2390 top 25%. Maybe a couple of the usual suspects. Same with the 1 out of 33 admissions rate. It sounds a little tight.</p>
<p>Am I offbase? Or is this just for the business school part?</p>
<p>Finearts…While we are in NY state, we are not in NYC, but rather Buffalo, NY. So my urban DD would more than likely come across as a midwesterner to folks in NYC. But here in Sunny Buffalo, living in the city, she is quite the urban hipster. :0) It is all relative. Mizzou may actually be a better fit than Columbia. </p>
<p>Have heard great things about Fordham and their merit packages.</p>
<p>A couple of my D’s friends go, or have gone, to University of Missouri - Mizzou. They have loved it. I thought about going there back in the day for journalism, but ended up at Northwestern. Looking back, I should have gone to Mizzou - Brad Pitt would have been one of my classmates in J-school. Coulda been me instead of Angelina!!</p>
<p>S2 starts school on Monday. He seems to be trying to squeeze in as much fun and friends as he can before then. We just see him coming and going. Tonight, we offered to take him and a friend out for pizza just to sit at a table together and have a conversation. He has an essay to write before next Friday for APUSH - he promises to start it soon. We’ll see…</p>
<p>I’m getting really tired of this Texas summer. It was 108 again today! Not fun - especially for the kids practicing band and football.</p>
<p>bovertine, those are the numbers she gave us for all the schools combined (rose hill campus). However, she was quick to stipulate that it does not mean that is what is necessary to get in - they take everything into consideration. She was basing numbers on 2010 admissions. Also, Kenyon now raised their GPA to 4.0. My friend whose son goes there and is on the admin review board said he was astonished at the numbers. As I might have mentioned, kids who normally might have applied to the ivies are now scrambling for other good schools raising the bar. It’s so frustrating because for a lot of kids who are not that smart, it makes them feel diminished in a lot of ways. My d has lost a lot of self-confidence, as have her peers, in her old private school because the classes were so difficult, you would be happy to get any kind of B and to get an A in anything was rare. We’ll see if it changes when she switches school. But she is a great kid, was singing and doing theater, and now being so sick all summer, she has lost interest in everything. I was grateful that she got to at least 1 college visit! </p>
<p>I don’t know if any of you heard Trump ranting on Greta Van Susteran the other night. He said (paraphrasing) “why is this country letting in kids from Asia and then educating them, and then having them go back to their own countries with math, science and engineering degrees so they can basically outsmart us and take away our businesses. We need to educate our own kids first.” </p>
<p>It does make it so much harder for the kids to get in, but that is how the Asians are trained - to memorize and get it right, and you see that here too. We have 3 friends (I used to live in Singapore and HK years ago and saw it first hand) who live here now and their kids get up at 5am to practice instruments for 2 hrs, do ballet, and continue after school - they started them young. The kids LISTEN. When I speak, forget it. My d used to tune me out. However, their kids all wound up in Harvard, MIT, Columbia (like Hymn of Tiger mom!) but it is true - they are trained so differently. And Singapore math, although difficult initially, is so much better. A few schools are now using it here. The books are super thin vs. our 500 page math books that never get used during the year costing a $150 a pop! grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. </p>
<p>University of Missouri sounds so interesting. I’m going to check it out. Megpmom, just cut out Angie’s face, and insert yours…Give my regards to Brad!!!</p>
<p>Perazziman: Calculus, Physics, Chemistry and find a good school. I would also recommend that he stick with mechanical, electrical, chemical, civil, or computer for his BS. If he is interested in Ceramic, met, Nuclear etc. plan on getting an MS or he will probably end up as somebody’s tech rather than a full engineer when he gets out. There are plenty of great schools. The problem is not so much getting accepted as actually graduating in the top half of your class. Simply graduating is not enough to get you a decent job. I tend toward the state schools and graduated from UMR (now Missouri Science and Technology.) I’m also fond of Colorado School of Mines and Georgia Tech. Here is another hint for you MIT is for graduate studies. I’ve been told they ignore their undergrads. That is from the dad of a student who choose Georgia Tech for undergrad. Yes, he was accepted to both. And the kid picked Georgia Tech because of their focus on teaching. At UMR I had a Dean teach my intro to engineering class. You want that kind of commitment to the freshmen level students. Granted I also had grad students teaching calculus, but hey it is only calculus, everybody on campus has to take it and anybody can help you with it! Research is important, but you are paying them to teach. <em>Getting off soap box now</em></p>
<p>Medavinci - It could have been K U or K State, both good schools and I can’t even keep them straight even though I grew up on the Missouri-Kansas state line. The only thing I remember is that the one in Lawrence has a great Pharmacy program.</p>
<p>Bovertine, it’s not what is required; it’s what the range was for 2010 of kids who applied. </p>
<p>Also, US News, according to most professionals and college counselors and admin directors, is not to be trusted. The list that gives the best ratings, reviews, and best value for the buck is the Forbes list. US News went into the counselors at my daughter’s old private school to ask them to go and review colleges, but they refused. From what we were told only about 40 college counselors participate in the ratings. The colleges do not agree with the findings or ratings for the most part.</p>
<p>This year’s Newsweek/Kaplan had a new rating system and the Head of Reed College in Oregon even wrote a review that disagreed with the rankings and gave specific websites that you can trust to get good solid college info. I thought that was excellent of Newsweek to allow someone with a totally different view to write an opinionated column!</p>
<p>For the most part, many parents believe that US News is the Bible.</p>
<p>Here is another hint for MomfromKC…I was never ignored in my 4 years at MIT. The people saying that are trying to justify why they did not get in/attend MIT as undergraduates, quite frankly.</p>
<p>Good for you. I’m glad you fit in. It might not have gone as well for a student from the south to try to fit at MIT. Perhaps they ignored him during his tour because they considered him a southern bumpkin. In any event he was happy with his choice. You fit where you fit.</p>
<p>Morning all! 7 school days into junior year and all seems to be going well “The List” is going into it’s 2nd phase now. The first sweep narrowed from 36 to 20 schools. D is planning to take a 2nd look at the schools she colored yellow by looking at their profile on the Association of Writing Programs list. She’s thinking she’ll have the list to 15 by Sept. 1 and then we can decide where we’re visiting when.</p>
<p>So I was on a great site yesterday that I wanted to share with y’all since we’re all trying to figure out the same things: [The</a> Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System - Home Page](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/]The”>IPEDS) IPEDS is the “Integraded Postsecondary Education Data System” which is a program of the U.S. Dept. of Education. The College Navigator is great, but I really love the IPEDS Data Center once you have a list of institutions. EXCEPT it seems as if the data in the College Navigator is more current than the data I downloaded from the Data Center. Ah well :)</p>
<p>“Bovertine, it’s not what is required; it’s what the range was for 2010 of kids who applied.”</p>
<p>I’m not sure what this refers to, but the Common Data Set shows the numbers for the students who matriculated, not applied. USNWR is said to use the CDS when available (not all schools publish their CDS).</p>
<p>Good Morning! I can’t believe summer is officially over! DD began her Sophomore Semester this morning…officially she will be a Junior in January, then a Senior next fall. Now that she is committed to an early graduation, she will begin a light review for the Feb. ACT and we will continue looking at colleges, UMiami and FAU are next on our list and we plan to tour in November, I am hoping to fit Rollins in by the spring. Depending on how DD feels after those visits will dictate whether we make a trip to the North East.</p>
<p>Ds2 had his first full day – classes and x-country. He drove carpool this a.m., leaving at 5:45. Said it was fine but expects to be dragging tomorrow because they’ll do hill work and it’s the day he has his hardest classes. So far, homework is quite manageable. I’m hoping to get him in bed early tonight, like 9, just on principle.</p>
<p>Day 2, the HS teachers waste no time getting to the homework and of course the college instructors have no graded homework…which makes me really hate AP classes. The workload is ridiculous and they say the reason why is it is a College level course. This is a semester College course taught over a year so twice as long, if the expectation is the AP student is capable of learning College level material then teach it that way, my daughter spends way too much time writing outlines and defining vocabulary for material that she could simply read and know…if she needs to create outlines or write vocab to learn it that should be her choice. Okay, I am sorry I am just frustrated.</p>
<p>Interesting HeavyLidded - the start of the school here (Sept 6) will mean the end of family dinners for a while, with games 2 or 3 evenings a week and practice the other evenings. It will be different though, as D’13 will be my last child left at home. </p>
<p>That does sound frustrating, Longsx3, most of the AP classes we have experienced have not been that awful, usually it is the social studies ones that pile on the work here. I wish they did more work in the English AP’s. Your school possibly doesn’t feel that its population is really capable of being left to its own devices to learn the material? My college D had 3 classes last semester that had problem sets due every week (calc and 2 econ classes), so not all college classes have no graded homework. I’m not sure how much they were weighed in with the final grade, but I know the prof looked at them and commented.</p>
<p>mamabear1234 you are right, I did have some classes in College especially in Math where they required some homework and that even those without “official” graded homework can require hours of studying to do well in the class. I think you are right about my Daughters school not believing that the students are capable of learning outside the classroom using their own methodology, in all fairness it does seem common for the other high schools in the area as well, oh well this is her last AP course as she will be taking all dual enrollment courses next year.</p>
<p>Thanks for letting me vent, D has no idea on how I really feel because with her I continue to support her AP Teacher.</p>
“The List” is going into it’s 2nd phase now. The first sweep narrowed from 36 to 20 schools. D is planning to take a 2nd look at the schools she colored yellow by looking at their profile on the Association of Writing Programs list. She’s thinking she’ll have the list to 15 by Sept. 1 and then we can decide where we’re visiting when.</p>