<p>Ok, once I deciphered NMSF, no, scores were great but not great enough-190’s, would need in the 215 range here for NMSF. I did a quick look at Truman, added it to the list. Looks like a great school.</p>
<p>Tulsa’s golf program would be more competitive than she would want, just way too much travel. Golf is a 2 season sport so she would be gone 3-4 days/week all fall and all spring in a program like this and she would rather not do that. </p>
<p>On another thread someone talked about University of the South–I looked at pictures of that campus, WOW, cool campus.</p>
<p>S’13 sent in his summer program app a few days ago. He did great and, I think, learned what preparing a complex app (completing application form,writing a couple of essays, requesting a transcript from the HS, asking for 3 teacher recs, submitting SAT/PSAT scores) is about. It was a good test run for next year. Hope he gets in, but the applying was a lesson in and off itself. </p>
<p>He also completed tennis tryouts today by winning a 2 set match to secure the number 5 seed on the HS team. For those of you who don’t know how the sport works, the top 5 seeds get to play in singles matches and often form the doubles pairs for two additional matches. The team that wins 4 or more of the 7 matches wins. He’s been on the team since freshman year, but this is the first time he is cracking the top 5. Florida is a pretty tough state for tennis (lots of year round players), so he is pretty psyched.</p>
<p>And then SATs are on Saturday. So, it’s been a busy week with lots of good stuff happening. (Too bad I can’t say the same for my sixth grader who got braces this week - he’s taking it well, but you can see that he is uncomfortable. I feel for him.)</p>
<p>dadotwoboys, congratulations to your S on both completing his summer program app and making the number 5 seed for his tennis team! D was the number 5 seed for her tennis team last year. They play with 6 seeds here, and the three doubles teams are formed from these seeds. D played the number 2 doubles. They do not have tryouts for this year until end of February/beginning of March, but they are doing preseason conditioning and skills training right now. Quite a few tennis players on this thread. Hope your S has a successful season!</p>
<p>Good luck to all the SAT takers on Saturday!</p>
<p>No SAT for D’13 this weekend, she is taking it in May, although she is taking the ACT on Feb 11. I have been pleased so far with Practice scores and hope the are evidence of how she will do on the real thing.</p>
<p>D knows her class rank for class of '14 was #1 after the Fall semester but obviously she is giving that up and we won’t know her '13 rank until after the Spring semester because it isn’t accurate. D has 12.5 credits where they all 15 and I don’t want her to freak out. I expect she will be in the top 5 or so but that is just a guess, she can not be Val only ranked #1 because she was not a JR at the start of this school year. D does know her GPA because it is listed on their semester report card.</p>
<p>Hubby is home from deployment, so we are going to visit Rollins again next week. I think we will also take a look at Stetson and College of Charleston soon too.</p>
<p>S got a post card from a LAC, called Carleton College, in Minnesota, asking him to consider them in his college search. Does anyone have an opinion on this college? So, far the two schools he has been considering are Northeastern in Boston and TX A&M in College Station.</p>
<p>Carleton is considered one of the “Harvard of the West” schools, very good academically, generous aid packages, lovely, lovely, lovely campus in a small town 40 miles south of Minneapolis. Northfield is a great town, has Carleton and St. Olaf so very college focused town. Nice downtown area just blocks from Carleton, typical coffee shops, college bars, pizza places, etc. Major crime in the area is the occasional stolen bike from someone’s yard. Looking at needing high GPA and high ACT/SAT scores to get in. It’s a campus where everyone lives on or very near campus. Many out of state students so defiantly not a suitcase college. If your son wants a very urban setting this is not for him but if he wants a “college campus” it would be a great fit. Strong school for law school prep as well as pre-med prep.</p>
<p>Good morning. Interesting to read about how they do tennis teams in other places. Sounds kind of how they do it in college. For High School teams in Southern California, for Varsity there are 3 singles players and 3 doubles teams. When they play another school the 3 singles players play the other teams singles players (1 set each), and same for the doubles. Last year S3 (I say S 3 because he is a son and my third child, he is class of '13) played either #1 or #2 singles or #1 doubles. He is probably the second best guy on the team, but the #1 guy gets injured a lot. </p>
<p>For the summer he will likely be a sailing instructor down at the yacht club. For the first summer it is “volunteer”, but they do get some sort of bonuses and then will be considered for a paid position the next summer. Last summer he spent a week at <a href=“mailto:Summer@Brown”>Summer@Brown</a>. He really enjoyed it. From what I understand it is not all that competitive to get in, but you do have to fill out an application, send transcripts and get letters of recommendation. They have a lot of different offerings. He had never been to the East Coast and it really gave him a glimpse of college life.</p>
<p>We are having a Spanish 5 vs AP Stats debate in our house right now. Class registration starts next week and DS wants to drop Spanish in favor of AP Stats. The Spanish class will earn him 10 college credits (College in the School/Dual Enrollment class). He is looking at going into actuarial science. We had him email the department chair at a couple schools and ask their opinion. They both said the same thing, the AP Stats class won’t help him in college as it is different from the stats class he will need for his major. The Spanish credits will transfer to a couple schools for sure and most likely to all of his choices allowing him to complete a Spanish major without adding time to his college years. Of course, WE told him that as well, but what do we know :). He is going to ask last year’s Spanish teacher his opinion, we know what he will say already so I think that ends the debate.</p>
<p>Hey, my D got a postcard from Carleton yesterday as well. It was the first mailing she’s gotten that has referred to the fact that her PSAT score may possibly qualify her for NMSF. I’ve heard great things; we have a good friend who is an alum. One of our own on this thread has an older child there, but I’ll let her speak for herself ;)</p>
<p>DS and DD got postcards from Carleton too but it’s too close to home for them and not on their radar for consideration. If we lived further away, they would look at it though. Great school.</p>
<p>I give the nod to Carleton academically but they are very close. Carleton, while very liberal, is more conservative than Macalaster. Carleton is where the future doctors and lawyers go, Macalaster is where the future PhD types go if that makes sense. </p>
<p>Campuses, Carleton is very Harvardish in the set-up, buildings, etc. It’s in a small town, 15,000 people. Macalaster is in a residential area of St. Paul. Nice campus as well, just more of an urban setting. Pluses with Macalaster is there are several other colleges in the immediate area where you can take classes that are transferable to Mac if Mac doesn’t have the class you want. Carleton and St. Olaf have a similar agreement.</p>
<p>You really can’t go wrong with either. Both are VERY well respected schools.</p>
<p>Good Afternoon!
Been reading, but haven’t posted in awhile.</p>
<p>megpmom: I would agree with your comment about the colleges being interchangeable, which is somewhat of an advantage for my dd. She’s interested in pretty “mainstream” majors, which follow a pretty consistent course pattern and are generally popular, so for us, choosing a college is about her personal “fit”, our ability to pay, and her opportunity to participate in the band.</p>
<p>Reeinaz: In reference to budget cuts…don’t know what’s happening in your state, but in ours, we are still dicovering program cuts (meaning less money) even now. We are also finding out, in addition to the big cuts this year, that we will have even MORE next year (which was unexpected) So, that may be a similiar situation for your school. I imagine it’s very discouraging.</p>
<p>We are still working out a college tour schedule, but I did buy my airline tickets. The biggest factor was a car rental…we got a car for 3 weeks for just under $400 (amazing, in my opinion) and I had estimates for my different itineraries up to $1800!!! My big thing is I want to go to Dollywood! I went 25 years ago and have alwats wanted to go back.</p>
<p>DD is really excited…for the rally tomorrow, the theme is “Her High School” Got Talent. There is a representative from each class performing at the rally and of course, students cheering and going wild…she was chosen as the junior representative. Of course, the talent has to be the kind of thing that fits well at a rally…we have kids who go to state or nationals, in things like debate, but that wouldn’t really work. Her talent is a great fit. Anyway, she is excited. </p>
<p>Classes for next year won’t happen for a bit, but she is pretty definite now in taking Spanish 4 (not AP) and Stats AP (not Calculus). Everything else is still under advisement!</p>
<p>I was interested to hear how different varsity tennis teams are structured. Here, the players have six singles matches and three doubles matches. The top players play the top singles and doubles spots, but our coach often puts various players in at the lower spots to give them experience (and at that level, they have similar ability levels). My son will almost definitely play #1 singles and doubles this year. Last year when #1 was injured, my son told me that he would be playing #1 for that match, and my terrible response as a mom was, “Oh, no!” He ended up playing #1 most of the rest of the season, and I had to work on my responses!</p>
<p>[Tennis story for those who are interested: At one match, he played #2 position against a senior who had beaten him 6-0, 6-0 when he was a freshman. My son won the first set, but had to play a tiebreak at 6-6 in the second. The other guy was up 6-2 in the tiebreak, and my son came back and won 8-6. That was the most exciting match I saw in a season where he had a lot of losses playing #1 and #2 as a sophomore.]</p>
<p>mncollegemom–your post about your son’s schedule makes me wonder why he wants to take AP Stat instead of Spanish next year. It seems that he must have some reason, given your convincing analysis (for example, likes the Stat teacher better than the other, feels Stat would be easier, cute girl taking Stat, tired of Spanish…) It might be helpful if he could articulate his reasoning. I will say that I am much more relaxed about my S’s schedule than I was with my D’s schedule when she was in high school, and wish I hadn’t worried so much about hers.</p>
<p>Thank you Youdon’tsay, for graciously sharing that info. and your experience with Carleton. It was not a name that we were familiar with until yesterday. So, it seems like we are discovering a hidden gem in this name.</p>
<p>Schokolade–DS’s reason for taking AP stat was that he is planning on going into a math field and he felt like that would be more beneficial down the road. After talking to professors at potential colleges (emailing really), his guidance counselor, current math teacher and current Spanish teacher, all of whom agreed he should stick with Spanish, he will be taking Spanish next year. The sad thing is that what is really messing up his schedule is a couple phy ed classes. He tried to get exempt from them but could not. We did get it worked out and he is ok with how it will be next year. I don’t know that we are not relaxed about his schedule it’s just that where he is at in Spanish makes a lot more sense to continue on then it does to take the AP stats class and not being 16 years old, we can look down the road a bit better than he can right now.</p>
<p>Bumping us back to page one. Another mom has asked if D wants to go visit two more schools with her D, one during spring break, one on Good Friday. Yea. I am happy to let another mom have that experience. I need a break, but not from CC of course.</p>