<p>MomofBoston, I love how kids dismiss schools. We visited a school nearby and D’s response was great at first- loved the grounds and buildings and the tour. Then notices too many girls wearing sweatpants with words on the behind. That did it. “No way am I attending school where people think words on butt is ever acceptable”.</p>
<p>^ D1 had exactly the same response. She didn’t want to attend a school where girls wore sweatpants to class at all! She definitely wanted a school where girls “take pride” in their appearances. No hippie, boho vibe, or sorority girls in sweats for her. S2 is rejecting schools that seem “too nerdy” which is interesting because he is tops in his class, etc. I think he just wants a college where he won’t have too much competition - always wants to be big fish in small pond.</p>
<p>Now that so many schools have their net price calculators up, I spent some time last night running our data through some of them. We are not willing to pay our EFC so wanted to see if any schools might come in lower just for fun.</p>
<p>Started with 2 super reaches…
Cornell U and Chicago. Chicago came in significantly over our estimated EFC. Cornell matched our EFC almost exactly.</p>
<p>Emory… matched Chicago almost exactly.</p>
<p>Looked at some reach/match LACs…
Macalester, Centre, Denison, Luther. All basically matched our EFC. Luther is a ‘mid’ tier LAC so I thought he might get a little extra merit aid there, but did not. </p>
<p>Looked at some ‘lower’ tier LACs…
Central College (IA), Lycoming, and some others I don’t remember. The cheaper ones like Central came in quite a bit lower than our EFC. The others matched or came in a little lower.</p>
<p>Me: How was the PSAT?
Him: Stupid
Me: Stupid easy or stupid hard?
Him: (dismissive look) What do you think? (and he walks back out the door)</p>
<p>So…I have no idea how it went.</p>
<p>S3’s text reponse was: “long and boring ha ha”. Not sure what that means either.</p>
<p>^^^sounds like my house!!
Me: So…how was the test?
Jr: Good.
Me: Did you feel prepared?
Jr: Ya. Um, I’m hungry…do we have any food?</p>
<p>megpmom- Your question to your DS response was classic!!</p>
<p>These kids are quite funny with their responses.
</p>
<p>My D came home from sports practice at dinner time, and asked me to pull up the CC thread on PSAT answers so she could see if her answers were right. She was mostly satisfied with the results. We went through the same drill a few weeks ago after the SAT; now eagerly awaiting the scores from that.</p>
<p>Our school seems to have a lot of poor math teachers also, my kids have had to do a lot of reading the book (and asking me at times) to figure things out. My D has discovered that googling sometimes works for AP Chem (or she could ask her father the chemist or mom with the chem engineering degree)</p>
<p>I was one of those students who rolled out of bed and went to class in sweatpants!</p>
<p>Ds came home and said, “It’s gonna be close.” He means for NMSF status. He omitted one math question but is sure he got all the others right. He actually predicted a score that would make this year’s cutoff. We’ll just see about that.</p>
<p>Med. - Before going the tutor route, has she tried on-line sights? Khan Academy has great, short (10 minute) videos describing concepts. It is outlined very well which makes it easy to find the exact video related to the concept. [Khan</a> Academy](<a href=“http://www.khanacademy.org/]Khan”>http://www.khanacademy.org/)</p>
<p>D2 did not want any tutoring even from us as her parents. She claimed it takes us too long. I bought some AP self study guides for her. She has taught herself on all the science subjects and did well. All her science teachers did not teach any of the subject well. She also can google and get most of these information on the internet.
PSAT is this Saturday for our district. Fall sport has to be rescheduled because most people will be absent.
D2 went to see Columbia University adcom and told me she did not like the school because of the core curriculum(I breathed a sign of relief). I thought she likes to go to school in NYC but apparently not. She also has decided against Cornell(too remote). She might end up going to one of the UCs.</p>
<p>D’s take on the PSAT was that the CR & Writing portions were solid & she felt pretty good about the math but she knows she got a few wrong for sure. She & a few friends have a new appreciation for their sophomore English teacher after today as they realize that a lot of stuff she drilled into them last year really helped on the writing portion of the test. They’re planning on dropping in to say “thanks” to her tomorrow; I thought that was pretty cool. </p>
<p>Our GC’s are pretty cool about giving the results to the kids that ask right before Christmas break so only about 2 months till she’ll see a score. Hoping that her SAT results on 10/20 will give some insight as well since she said the PSATs were way easier than the SATs.</p>
<p>Sigh. DD did really well on her practice tests, but said she didn’t “wake up” until 3/4 of the way through the PSAT. She’s thinking she did not do very well. She is a night owl, not a morning person. Oh well, it is not that critical. TIme to focus on SATs and APs!</p>
<p>D13 thought the test wasn’t bad but knows she missed a couple math questions and wasnt sure about one other. She did have time management issues on the math so knows she will have to work on it. S who is a freshman also took the exam and thought it was easy.</p>
<p>D had time management issues on the math section as well. She was mad at herself because she had taken a practice test over the weekend and scored extremely well. She is very much a math person so this will always be her highest score on the SAT, but she knows she missed more than she should have. On the bright side, she felt she did better on the CR/W sections than she previously has. Cut off score for national merit is quite high in our state, so that has never been a goal. Just steadily preparing for a go at the SAT in the winter or spring.</p>
<p>heavylidded - One of the things I learned te first time around is that in our world, D1 was a seemingly 17 yo very mature adult…she has always had her act together and has been comfortable in most situations that had come her way until the whole college process came along…and then she became very much an 17 yo kid.</p>
<p>She chose an urban campus…For the first time in her life she was truly out of her comfort zone and really nothing could have prepared her for that. She was/is surrounded by very smart kids from all over the world, she was/is totaly overwhelmed with the complexities of living in an urban environment, and it has taken her longer to become adjusted than anyone could have predicted. </p>
<p>So, we have to remember, although our kids seem to be mature they really are just 16 yo kids…and there is a whole lot of pressure on them right now…some will embrace it while others will drag their feet. D2 also didn’t want to engage in the process…but I with held her driving privledges until she went on a half dozen tours…now she gets it. Now she understands that schools are very different from each other, each has their own unique personality. She ending up not liking the couple that she had in her mind as her top choices…I was hardlined about masling her go but to be honest, I really wouldn’t have gotten her full attention otherwise.</p>
<p>My son thinks he did “ok” on the PSAT. Luckily his precalc class has had a prolonged alg2 review which he says helped him a lot. But his weak spot was/is geometry and beyond what was in the study guides, he didn’t do much review of that. I begged him to get up early so that he could make sure he had a good breakfast but he insisted that he would be fine with breakfast at school. Of course there was no breakfast yesterday but they did have granola bars for the kids. He said he was fine though. Overall he said it was much easier than the PSAT last year. He knew more of the content and agreed that Direct Hits really helped.
And I got an email this morning from his English teacher (remember my son is the one who wants to be a writer) letting me know his current average is 57%. What??? She called his completion rate “unacceptable”. Needless to say, I was FURIOUS. His response was that he only failed to turn in 2 assignments. He told me that he has a problem with time management. I told him that watching youtube videos instead of doing your work is NOT a time management issue. Is it too early for a martini?</p>
<p>NellieH–You asked what to do with younger siblings on college tours, as your freshman S didn’t want to join you. My D (now a freshman in college) is 2 years older than my S (a high school junior). We dragged my S along with us on her college visits when it made sense, and usually combined the visit with something fun. My D saw 14 colleges, and my S went along, under protest, to see 5 (4 of which he hated). Then, lo and behold, when we went to a college fair recently, he wanted to talk to only two colleges, one of which was one of the hated ones!</p>
<p>In my opinion, this falls in the area of: “Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do because you are part of this family.” We didn’t force our S to go on tours when it was a day trip during which he could just stay home by himself, but it didn’t make sense to make alternative arrangements for him when we were taking a family trip. I think he got some benefit out of it despite the complaining.</p>
<p>PSAT: My S got sick of hearing about CC when my D went through the process. Unfortunately, because she was very, very active, dinnertime was the only time that my H and I could talk to her about college, so he had to hear about it. HOWEVER, when I was looking at the CC discussion on the PSAT last night, he looked over my shoulder, saw the answer list and said he agreed with all the answers he saw. He even explained to me why “deplorable” was clearly a better answer than “equivocal.” I think he feels some internal pressure because my D was a NMF; of course, I want him to do well but I also recognize that they are two different children.</p>
<p>S3 went to a college night last night. I sent him with labels, but I don’t think he used them. He said it was fun and he came home with a bag full of stuff. But that is all the info I got. </p>
<p>Nelliah: A couple years ago S3 was in middle school and took the PSAT the same day that his older brother (S2) did. S3 said it was easy and then S2 asked “well what did you get for this one?” “Oh I skipped that one”; Well than what did you get for this one? “oh I skipped that one”. LOL. S3 has always been a glass half-full kind of guy. </p>
<p>reeinaz: It’s five o’clock somewhere!!</p>
<p>So I went to a big and rather useless college fair last night…I told D to stay home and just picked up brochures from schools we may visit. BUT all the popular colleges were already out of brochures and you couldn’t get near the reps. I had some really interesting conversations, however, with reps from less well known schools and. Sometimes I just felt bad that no one was interested in them so I stopped to ask some questions. I was super impressed with Ursinus and Guilford. I also thought the reps from Furman and Wofford did a nice job saying what was great about their schools. Has anyone ever visited any of these schools?</p>