<p>David1126 - key to admissions at the top math/science schools is recognition on a national/regional level - something outside of being top in your own high school. Competitions like that Etymology award are the way to go. Even tho it isn’t math/sci, it shows an ability to compete on a national level, but you probably should research some math/science geared programs. My daughter did the AMC exams, Mandelbrot Math competition, Harvard/MIT Math tournament, all girls math competition (not for you!) and spent the last 3 summers at two different math camps. She also took an extra math course at a local university.
At MIT they are required to take one liberal arts course each semester I believe.<br>
Despite the two deaths this year at MIT, my daughter has never been happier or more relaxed than she is now. </p>
<p>I’m happy to share more with you if you’d like to pm me.</p>
<p>Thanks so much, Longhaul, for your descriptive report on the 5C. I will pass your comments on to D so we can decide how to spend our day there. Since she is a D, I will suggest she look at Scripps, which, along with Pitzer and Pomona, has her major. Getting excited about our trip.</p>
<p>Went on our first visit to a state school and dd really liked it. Unfortunately her GPA isn’t strong enough for it to even be a safety school for her. Sad when a kid with a 3.4 GPA has to consider a state university a reach school!</p>
<p>Longhaul: Thanks for the description of Pomona and the consortium. I am embarrassed to admit I live in Southern California and know nothing about them. Can you tell me a little about student/residential life? Do they have sports? residential colleges?</p>
<p>Thanks Longhaul for the description. I have been discouraging in a quiet way about california because of the distance/cost when we have so many good options nearby. However, I have to be very careful that it doesn’t backfire and make her determined to apply to schools in california. I used the parental choice for may son and never could get him to seriously consider the school and am trying another strategy with D. I am going to meet with the FH coach and counselor and tell them which schools I think would be a good fit and, if they agree, could they please suggest them to D? Yes, a bit backhanded but even if she says she keeps an open mind, there is almost a subconscious reaction to assume that what I suggest would be some nerdy/boring school. If, however, another student, coach, counselor or teacher she likes were to suggest a school…well…it has a different glow about it, do you know what I mean? I have researched CC a great deal and I think I have identified some of the small LAC which fits her preferences but will give her the individual attention and experience that she is less likely to get in a large university.</p>
<p>tx5
Sports – Pomona/Pitzer have joint teams; Scripps, Mudd and CMK have joint teams. </p>
<p>All the schools have strong residential colleges. The outside of all dorms were very nice. I was disappointed with the inside of the Pomona dorms – they were good, but did not live up to the hype of “Palaces” I had heard. The pus for Pomona is that many are singles. </p>
<p>I liked Pitzer’s dorm. Pitzer has the most kids live off-campus simply because they do not have the space. They are currently building new dorms.</p>
<p>I loved my small LAC (Ursinus), but by senior year we outgrew the social aspects. All the Claremonts have the small LAC feel, but with the other schools there are many more social options. I don’t think my son would outgrow it. </p>
<p>All 5 share a library. We were told it is the largest library in California.</p>
<p>I don’t want my son across the country, but honestly, his personality is much better suited for the West Coast.</p>
<p>OK Longhaul, I have been looking at their websites etc… and they actually look great. We are definitely going to go for a visit. Do they give tours of the whole consortium or each individual campus? My son is very undecided on what he wants to major in, any advice on which college is best for that? All I really know is Harvey Mudd for engineering.</p>
<p>I talked to S3 about the Claremont Consortium schools and found him even looking on their websites! That is progress. He has the grades, but I doubt his SAT’s will be high enough. But very cool that he is looking at things on his own. Talked to an academic counseling service that has a more “a la carte” menu of services they offer (financial, college lists, essay help, etc…). I can edit (and my sister is actually an editor so she can help edit), but coming up with the concepts to write about, and not procrastinating were the trouble spots with my first two. So I might look into it further.</p>
<p>Mom22girls: That is definitely what I meant. Proofreading for typos, grammar, etc… Believe me, I am a math-science girl you don’t want my “voice”.</p>
<p>tx5 - I expected my son’s scores will put him in the running, but the GPA is a problem. Now, if we could morph our kids into one we’d do great!</p>
<p>Definitely visit more than one of the Claremont schools. Students can eat in any of the dining halls on any campus and can take classes at other colleges. I don’t think you can fully appreciate the entire consortium without visiting at least 2 schools and walking around on your own through all campus. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, all of them have a low acceptance rate.</p>
<p>I can’t believe we are nearly to Thanksgiving of our kids’ Junior Year! It feels bizarre to me so I can’t imagine how it feels to our kids.</p>
<p>I can see that my D is starting to feel the stress. She is more worried about her grades. She did badly on a Trig quiz and was in tears. She said she went and talked to the teacher to see about getting extra help because “she needs to do well so she can get into a good college.” I appreciated her concern but I also want her to realize that bad grades do happen sometimes. You know? It is a fine line to walk as a parent to get them to take things seriously but not TOO seriously.</p>
<p>D takes the SAT in a couple of weeks or so. She hasn’t been doing much studying. I figure we’ll see how her scores are (she did all right on the PSAT but not even remotely close to qualifying for anything her Sophomore year) and then we’ll have an idea of what areas she needs to focus on. We may enroll in a class since she didn’t do the self-studying she was supposed to be doing. When are your kids taking it? I chose December so she could take it again in the late spring and then again if necessary in Fall of her Sr year.</p>
<p>Do you all have any upcoming visits planned? We’ve not got any for now. The second half of Jr Year I will probably start to panic about getting more visits in.</p>
<p>As far as colleges go, I’m planning to wait until we find out what my S’s test scores and GPA are, and THEN, figure out what colleges that he can get into. I wouldn’t want to have him tour a college, fall in love and then realize that he can’t get in. He’s toured a couple schools (and is going to see Oklahoma City U in a couple weeks) but only schools that we know he’s qualified for. I would really like him to be slightly overqualified for all the schools he applies to - better for merit scholarship chances.</p>
<p>I think S is planning to take the SAT in March, after all of his EC craziness is over. Still deciding if he should do ACT (it’s not very popular here). Whichever he takes, I’m pretty sure he’ll be a “one and done” kind of kid (as was his older sister). Neither of my kids believe in putting much effort into academic endeavors.</p>
<p>D is already registered to take the SAT in March. We decided to wait and see PSAT results (probably issued to students after the holidays) to see where she needs to focus her preparation. That being said, D has all she can handle with her school work and ecs, so she will probably not steal time from those areas to study too much. Grades in her course work are far more important to her than standardized testing. Not sure whether she will ever try the ACT, although it sounds like it could be a good fit for her. Most kids around here have never even heard it. </p>
<p>We aren’t planning on any more college visits until spring break. However, we are not big planners either. Nice weather and a day off of school could send us on a spontaneous road trip to some nearby campus.:)</p>
<p>My D is also planning to take the Dec SAT in a few weeks. She has only visited one college so far and liked it but is afraid that she won’t be able to get in. It will be nice to have some standardized test scores to be able to figure out what the realistic range of colleges to consider and visit will be. Her sophomore PSAT scores were disappointingly low, but she didn’t prepare at all for it, so I don’t want to rely on those scores to select colleges to visit. She’s been doing one hour per week of private SAT tutoring for about 10 weeks, but hasn’t done much other prep, other than the homework the tutor assigns, which isn’t much (~30 minutes each week). </p>
<p>After we did the one college visit, she asked about visiting more schools. But I don’t think we’ll manage to do that until January or later. Spring break will be full of college visits for us - but we don’t know which ones yet. I wonder how much the season impacts how much a student likes a school - does bad weather give a negative impression to the school, even if it just happens to be a bad day?</p>
<p>When I took my S on spring break visits a few years ago, there was beautiful weather all week up and down the east coast, sunny and ranging in temperature from 60s in DC/VA and 40s in upstate NY. We were amused by the shorts and flip flops on students in 40s temps in upstate NY, as it felt too cold to us from NJ for that, but does show that it was warm for them.</p>
<p>Every tour I took D1 on (she is now a college senior), now matter where it was, it rained. Except UC Santa Cruz (which is known for rain). </p>
<p>It seems something always interferes with the SAT, S3 is signed up for the December SAT, and will take it, but it interferes with closing day at the Yacht Club. But the January SATs are right before finals (and I want to save his brain cells). And we are aiming for the ACT in February. Depending on the scores we will make a plan for future testing after that. He will take the SAT subject tests in June (likely math2, US History & Biology). If your kids take the ACT remind them that they do not get penalized for guessing (like on the SAT). Both S2 and D1 did “better” on the ACT, and both took it Fall of Senior year.</p>
<p>S is flying up to Stanford next weekend for the Stanford-Notre Dame game.
Stanford has been his only TRUE college tour since doing the Track camp over summer.</p>
<p>Would love to schedule the rest of the tours over Spring Break, but (2) of his largest Meets are during our break So it looks like we will have to wait until mid-August. Which will be a bummer since school will not be in session yet…
On the plan so far are: Brown, Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Duke.
May shoot for a long weekend trip to Texas for SMU and Rice.
He will do USC in late Sept of his Sr year.</p>
<p>I just got an email (my daughter got it too, I’m sure) from the College Board reminding her that her SAT date is two weeks away (Gah!)</p>
<p>It also suggested that she choose schools that she wanted her scores sent to, because it would be free to send them to 4 (?) schools. Now, given that we don’t know how she will do, I was going to suggest that she NOT do this.</p>
<p>However, they now have a thing on their site that allows you to select school prior to taking the test (thus keeping the free aspect) but then SELECTING which scores you want to send AFTER you get them. It shows you what the average scores are per section and then you can pick and choose which scores to send, or none at all.</p>
<p>I’m intrigued by this but I’m wondering what reasons there would be NOT to do this. </p>
<p>@ Blueshoe- I’m a spontaneous trip planner too. Makes it more fun! When we did our VA trip we had a heck of a time finding hotel space though. It was crazy!</p>
<p>re:ACT- I signed my daughter up for the Feb. one. I don’t know of any other kids taking it around here but I figured it would be good to see if she favors one test over the other. I bought an ACT prep book but I expect she’ll be taking it more or less “cold.” </p>
<p>Don’t SAT scores come out much faster than the PSAT scores? The PSAT takes a couple of months but I seem to remember hearing that the SAT was much more readily available.</p>
<p>I kind of want to do a Spring Break college tour but D wants to do a mission trip with our church. I’m not sure which way to go on this. It would be nice for her to see the schools while many are in session but I also want her to enjoy going on the mission trip with her friends- she works hard and I know she would have a good time. Decisions!</p>
So it looks like we will have to wait until mid-August. Which will be a bummer since school will not be in session yet…