<p>Megpmom: Nope, no benefit unless you count the floodgates of mail if they forget to check the box saying “no thank you.” Talked to D about that today; told her she would want to get the mail starting next year, but she needed to decide if she wanted to start getting it in December :)</p>
<p>Tip: think about setting up a separate email account now for your kids to give out for college information. Helps keep their “real” emails clear of junk. D gave my email out last night for a program she wasn’t entirely interested in, but felt obligated to sign up for. Thanks Kiddo!</p>
<p>Went to BTSN last night. I think we have some pretty good teachers this year. My DD is not seeing eye to eye with her English teacher, but I think it’s more that my DD needs to get with the program than her teacher being difficult. Seems we are off to a very strong start. Should be a good year!</p>
<p>Our school has all the Soph and Jr’s take the PSAT in school in Oct. I don’t think we will do much prep for it. My son took it last year as a soph and did not do that well. It was kind of a wake up call for him that yeah doing the least amount of work that he could get away with was really not enough. I’m expecting my DD to test higher, but it will be interesting to see her scores.</p>
<p>Thought I’d give an update on my interaction with our HS regarding my DS who has type 1 diabetes. We have moved a long way in a couple of weeks! Diabetes does in fact qualify as a 504 disability, however the school encouraged me to NOT file for 504 status. I told them I felt backed into a corner and that I had a few demands that I thought could only be met by declaring son a “disabled” student. </p>
<p>What I really needed from the school was 2 main items: 1) that his monthly diabetes education classes at the hospital be “excused” rather an “unexcused” and (2) that he be permitted to test his blood glucose level whenever he felt it necessary and manage to those results (e.g., eat a snack if his glucose level was low). </p>
<p>Also, from the advice given here I asked for those agreements to be put in writing. Sweet victory, I have a letter and a copy in his file that agrees to these requirements for him for the rest of his HS career. YEAH - thanks to all for the advice, and the outrage, until I read some of the posts I thought this was a struggle I was going to endure for a few more years. Many of you thought the school had taken an unfair position and that I should fight them on these issues, thanks for the support.</p>
<p>texasmom - what great news! I’m so glad you have it in writing and they met your simple requests! I’m curious though why they did not recommend you getting him a 504 unless they felt that would cause him more harm than good - I hope it wasn’t just to protect themselves! Either way I am so glad you kept pushing! Don’t be afraid to push again if his needs change! Congrats!</p>
<p>Megmom - you are right to be concerned in my opinion. I am living the readiness right now with my daughter who attends A&M. </p>
<p>A little background - my daughter graduated this year and is a freshman at A&M. She is a great student, graduated with a 3.97 GPA and a 33 on the ACT. I am keeping up with the parents of 10 students from our HS that are currently attending either A&M or UT Austin. </p>
<p>My daughter is doing quite well, but she has learned that our local AP calculus teacher missed some fundamentals. DD was surprised the first 2 weeks of class when the professor was reviewing that there were concepts she had never learned. She prompted signed up for a private tutor (landed a TA who is great!). She does 3-4 hours of private tutoring every week to keep up in calculus. She is however ahead in Chemistry (she took AP chem in HS). So far she has learned no new material in chem and passed the first exam with a perfect score. DD is also taking US History and Biology, both of these classes she feels very prepared for however the history class has nine novels in addition to the text book so requires much more reading that she is used to (about a book a week for the entire semester). </p>
<p>The other students from our high school are having “mixed” results. Some are having difficulty with getting integrated into the university socially. They feel very lonely and have made several trips home since school started. A&M does a great job of creating freshman activities so this does not happen, but it appears somewhat common at UT (both schools are very large). </p>
<p>On of the girls that was ranked very high in HS is really struggling at A&M, she did not take a lot of AP classes and is finding it hard to keep up with the homework requirements. </p>
<p>My DD was very organized, always used a planner, worked ahead of due dates etc. She says she is running out of space in her current planner to track all the assignments, TA sessions, lab session, study sessions etc. She signed up for 16 hours of classes but is actually in class closer to 28 hours (labs count as 1 credit hour but are 3 hours in length). Both chemistry and biology have “supplemental instruction” which is really helpful and an additional 2 hours per week. We had originally thought she could master her course load in a 40 hour week - it is taking her a lot more than 40 hours to keep up with the homework, library and reading time. </p>
<p>So…translate that to my DS who does next to no homework, plans the night before for projects and tests and yes, I’m worried about how he will survive in college. I think I will focus on organizational skills this year and hope he matures enough my next year that I can implant my advice about study skills (ha ha). Also hoping sister comes home with a few stories that scare him a bit (ok, probably not but I can hope). She will likely tell him what a great time she is having.</p>
<p>Shillyshally - you are exactly correct, they did not want me to file 504 because it causes them to have to complete regular paperwork and hold regular meetings with all his teachers to ensure that the 504 plan is being following. The thing about diabetes is that I will know instantly if the agreement is not being followed so a monthly meeting is also inconvenient for me. I have told them that I will try the non-504 path for now but if I ever feel his needs are not being met I will be back. We did meet with all his teachers as part of the process and I am comfortable they all know his situation now and will allow him to do what he needs. </p>
<p>On a high note - the biology teacher was so excited (she did apologize for being excited that he was a diabetic) but asked for permission for the class to track his blood glucose as a learning experience. This is fine for my son but would not be great for other diabetics who are private about their condition. My son injects insulin in the cafeteria in front of his friends and the rest of the student body - he has no privacy issues. </p>
<p>The end result is that my son feels like he no longer has to sneak food when necessary and he no longer has to rush to test before certain classes (he has been tardy several times trying to manage this outside the classroom). All seems to be moving in a good direction. But, I’ve grown a little courage and will not hesitate to file 504 is the school doesn’t keep their end of the deal. </p>
<p>texasmom14: Glad you were able to work things out with your school and teachers. Hope things go smoothly for S. Dealing with diabetes is hard enough without having to battle the administrators. </p>
<p>Interesting that your D and friends are experiencing the same as my D and her friends (all products of Texas public education). My D is also freshman in college (private OOS). She doesn’t take math or science so can’t comment on preparation in that regard. But D technically placed out of Freshman Writing class because of a 5 on AP exam. However, college advisor said, “As long as you’re comfortable writing a 10-20 page research paper - you’re OK.” D never wrote a paper longer than 3-5 pages in HS! AP English classes were spent prepping for the test, which only includes short essays. So D opted to take Freshman Writing and reports that it is really kicking her butt. She is realizing that A’s in HS and 5’s on AP exams don’t necessary mean that college will be a breeze.</p>
<p>Sounds like most of these class of '13ers will take the PSAT this month. Do any of you remember how long it takes to get the resutls back? And how closely did the PSAT correlate with your older kids SAT? I’d like to at least start to think about some preliminary lists of school visits for next summer for dd '13 but the SAT score is such a big missing link in the equation.</p>
<p>Way to go, texasmom! Common sense prevails – with a little push.</p>
<p>Ds1 went to a rigorous HS and took tons of APs. So far, he’s got A’s in his classes and hasn’t been too stretched, he says. We’ll see how long that holds. Hey, why aren’t all of y’all with college freshmen on the 2014 thread???</p>
<p>lottagirlz, ds1 only gained about 5-6 points from sophomore to junior year on the PSAT, but his SATs were MUCH better. Ds2 tests really well. I’m really curious to see his sophomore year PSAT.</p>
<p>lottagirlz: when you get your PSAT scores back depends on your school. You don’t get them directly from the testing service like you do with SAT & ACTs. The school usually receives them from ETS in mid December. Some schools give them out right away, some wait until after holiday break, some don’t give them out till the Spring. Our HS usually distributes them through English classes in January, but last year the kids were able to get them from the GCs the day before winter break. </p>
<p>TexasMom: glad that you were able to get the diabetes situation straightened out with the school. As if things aren’t difficult enough!</p>
<p>That is a heck of a course load your D is taking. So far I haven’t heard of too many troubles from our local kids; D1 is taking mostly humanities classes & I think our HS has pretty strong english & history classes.</p>
<p>TexasMom Great news about the agreement! I really hope they keep their end of it. It really sucks to think that your kid’s school doesn’t really have their best interests at heart.</p>
<p>I don’t think my son’s school offers any AP classes until 12th grade, if that. I do know they offer dual enrollment at a few of the local universities, not just the community college, for math and science classes as an option. So maybe that would be a better option for my kid than an AP class. He really neads a realistic idea of what college is like.</p>
<p>These boards have taught me at least half the colleges will not grant credits for a dual course if the course was also granted HS credit. Some colleges will not grant credit if the course was taught on HS property or by a HS teacher. If the course is actually taught at the local college, by sure to account for the commuting time and the havoc of scheduling (esp if the HS is not on block scheduling).</p>
<p>We opted for an AP course this year instead of the dual enroll on HS property (which he did last year). Actually taking classes on college property couldn’t work for us logistically.</p>
<p>My dd took PSAT last year as a freshman and will take next year as a junior. We did no prep as a freshman- just took the exam. That is the practice in our school. She was fairly down on her scores, as many of her friends did better than she did. (Many did much worse too). She attends a selective honors only school so the expectation is they should do better than average which she did. </p>
<p>We had the same experience with Dual Credit my daughter ending up not being able to get credit for her MV Calculus class because the teacher taught it 50% of the time from her HS (it was a distance learning class from the CC so the teacher taught it from multiple locations). Ended up not being a big deal because D wants to repeat it now with a professor she really likes in her Engineering school but we were also led to believe wed have no problem getting credit.</p>
<p>Heh, unless something miraculous happens between now and summer 2012, top 100 is not in his target group. I’ve been lurking heavily on the 3.0-3.3 thread.</p>
<p>My S took the PSAT last year as a freshman. Our school tests all sophomores (for free), select juniors and any freshmen that want to pay for it. I am not sure when they distributed the results, but they never made it home. For a long time he was sure they were in his locker (from the looks of his room I can’t imagine what his locker looks like) but then when I bugged him to bring them home he couldn’t find them. He will take them again next week as a sophomore. We will see if they make it home.</p>
Big thumbs up for pushing the issue. Reassuring to know the school is now taking your son’s health as seriously as they should.</p>