<p>octoberdana, ds1’s first college tour was the summer after freshman year. It remains his top-choice school. 
You never know!</p>
<p>Since is the '13 thread, I guess I’ll add that our schools makes freshmen take the PSAT. Ds was very happy with his score, even though it means nothing. ;)</p>
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<p>Wow. Do they provide trainings too? I’ll encourage S2 to take it next year as a sophomore. Given the trend I’m seeing now, I probably should have let D, a current sophomore, take the last one.</p>
<p>OctoberDana: you would be surprised at the number of seniors who are still making their list! And I’m talking about the AP kids too.</p>
<p>My freshman took the PSATs also & did well. Her 1st semester GPA is far higher than her sisters was, so my gut feeling that she’ll end up being a more competitive candidate down the road seems to be holding true. </p>
<p>She is the process of figuring out her schedule for next year. Course selections need to be turned in within the next week or so. As of right now, this is the schedule:</p>
<p>English II Pre-IB
AP European History
Algebra II Honors
Chemistry Honors
Spanish III Honors
Economics Honors (1/2 year) but potentially Macroeconomics AP which is new for next year/
Personal Finance (1/2 year; new class required in TN beginning with the Class of 2013)
Theatre Arts I (there is a 1 year fine arts requirement)</p>
<p>Apparently, this college has a separate visitation day for just freshman and sophmores that they offer in addition to ones open to all grades. Guess it’s not as unusual as I thought for her to be looking as a freshman- she would have perhaps been more comfortable on the fresh/soph only dates.</p>
<p>DD is currently enrolling for her Sophmore year courses. She is a year behind in Math (she wants to double up as Junior) so she is looking at:</p>
<p>Advanced English 10
Biology
Algebra I
Health & Computer Applications (both required for graduation)
AP US History
German II
Dance I & II (for 2nd fine Arts elective)</p>
<p>We think it’s a pretty good schedule- 2 advanced classes- 1 of which is AP. 2nd year of foreign language and fine arts (she took a year of choral music this year). </p>
<p>She plans to take AP Lit & Comp, AP Psych, and ACP Lang and Comp as Junior/Senior.</p>
<p>My D’13 is finishing up her 3rd year of Spanish this year and I do not think she’ll be persuaded to keep with it so she’ll have 3 elective slots open and while she could fill it with AP History, I’d rather she take that as a junior so her schedule for next year will likely be:</p>
<p>Int Pre-Calculus
Int English 10
Int Chemistry
PE/Health
Theater II
Technical Theater
Photography II (she’s submitting a portfolio to bypass Photo I)</p>
<p>She is my artsy one and her transcript will certainly reflect that in the end.</p>
<p>Can’t believe there is a thread for my D2 already. D1 has submitted all except one application (class of 2010), and I’ve sworn off anything having to do with the college search for another two years!</p>
<p>Well that worked well. Here I am reading about how others are preparing their kids for the process. I’m not sure I want to be a part of this, but I also know I won’t be able to stay away! It’s like an open bag of potato chips!</p>
<p>I will do things much differently with D2- learned so much from our mistakes with D1. The most significant change will be to build the college list from the bottom up.</p>
<p>D2 is studying for midterms as I type. She had three on Friday and already knows she scored a 99 on her Latin test. She is very throrough and has high averages in all her classes. If this carries through to her SAT scores, she will be in a good position to get into most schools. All except for leadership, that is. She plays the piano, dances, and plays tennis, but doesn’t excel in any. She’s a follower, not a leader, and I (we) are not about to attempt to change her personality so that she will stand out in the application process.</p>
<p>I’m thinking state flagship.</p>
<p>Welcome aboard, FMTTM!</p>
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<p>Congrats to D2 on such near-perfect achievement! Although none of my kids are into Latin, I’ve heard that there is a good correlation between Latin and SAT verbal…actually I witnessed the correlation in my brother’s case.</p>
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<p>Don’t let not having official leadership titles discourage your D2 from exercising real leadership or presenting herself as a real leader. </p>
<p>Leadership comes in many forms. In essence, it is a quality that enables a person to “lead” another person or a group of people to a destination that otherwise would not have been possible or as timely. Destination may be physical, psychological, spiritual, or simply an accomplishment or a state of being. It is of value when the one being led is made better for it.</p>
<p>You can “lead” a friend out of despair and into hope, and potentially save a precious life. You can “lead” a child out of fear and into confidence, and add another leader to the world. </p>
<p>FMTTM, your D2 sounds like another excellent college student in the making.</p>
<p>I’m emerging from the fog of DD’s college search to find this for my DS, class of 2013!! </p>
<p>DD and DS are very different, I wonder how his college search will be?</p>
<p>So far, he loves high school and is listening carefully to everything DD is doing right now.</p>
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<p>Thanks goodness for the above post(in quote) because I was going to admit that mine is not leader either.</p>
<p>Momof10of13of15: One thing our counselors warned us about for the freshmen was that they were starting to see some pushback from colleges with hs credit for foreign language at the ms level. They are strongly recommending 2 years of language IN hs even if your kid took them in MS (which mine did) and 3 years in HS if your kids is potentially considering any top schooD ls.</p>
<p>My older D didn’t seem to be affected by this (but she only applied to one school in the top 20) but it’s something to keep in mind when scheduling.</p>
<p>PCP, no PSAT workshops. I think the thinking is that if they expose them to the test in freshman and sophomore years, then they’ve done their job. I know very few kids at the school who’ve done SAT prep, though I suppose there are a lot but no one admits it.</p>
<p>FlyMe, I know what you mean about already post on here. As you can see, I rarely do. After seeing us go through the process this year with ds1, I think he has a clear idea of what’s ahead. I don’t want him thinking too much about it already.</p>
<p>YDS Word! :D</p>
<p>Welcome FMTTM! :)</p>
<p>The tension of semester final exams is palpable. Ack! My daughter doesn’t do well on these sorts of tests, and it’s new for her to have semester exams as an additional (beyond the average of her 2 qtr grades) percentage of her grades. Is this a pretty general practice for most high schools?</p>
<p>Sophomore year is shaping like this:</p>
<p>Honors Pre-Calc
IB/Honors Biology
IB/Honors English
IB/Honors World History
IB Phy Ed - hoping this only needs to be one semester, waiting on answer.
Varsity Choir
Spanish Immersion 10</p>
<p>Nat’l qualifiers for Debate Fri-Sat and SATs on Sunday. Thank goodness it’s a three-day weekend again!</p>
<p>They have an IB Phys ed? Wow!</p>
<p>They do - they are differentiated for phy ed too! I’m not sure how many concepts they weave in, but they do. The state graduation requirement is 3 credits of phy ed, so I hope she can knock out the health requirement next year instead of having 4 credits of phy ed.</p>
<p>Frees up an hour to pursue other things her Jr year.</p>
<p>PaperChasePop,</p>
<p>I know you are right about the different ways to exhibit leadership, but I’m really not seeing any hint of it in her so far. D1 exhibited all kinds of leadership qualities, right from the beginning. This D is more of an academic, and I guess we could encourage her to do something that would demonstrate leadership, but from what I am learning about chances at top colleges through D1 (class of 2010), it doesn’t seem as though the pay off will be there.</p>
<p>We’ll see what happens. But we have a top-notch state flagship that is very strong in the sciences, and she has indicated that is what she wants to major in. I’m leaning towards that since I fully expect that D1 will be rejected by all of her top school picks and will end up going to our state flagship with a full tuition scholarship. Nothing to be ashamed of, of course, but D1 is currently regarding this choice as a consolation prize.</p>
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<p>Would she be interested in tutoring middle schoolers? May be even her peers in school? This is a big EC that can demonstrate, among other things, leadership if she can sustain her commitment. Perhaps she can even ask her friends to join her. Just a suggestion.</p>
<p>Paper - you are brilliant! I never thought of that. I think you are on to something. I’ll broach the subject with her at the “right” time.</p>
<p>RobD - yeah I’ve heard of the language push-back too but this is my very individual child and if she’s on board you get full commitment, if she’s not, no dice. I’d be more frustrated if she wasn’t exactly like I was as a student so we’re just trying to strike the right balance for her. And our language programs are pretty lousy. They realized most students weren’t getting a full year’s worth of language so most spanish II classes use Spanish I texts and so on up the ladder. We’ll see how it all shakes out but she also is not likely to be aspiring to any top tier schools but she’ll probably surprise me.</p>
<p>DD got her PLAN test results today. She scored a 18 mostly because of her above average scores in reading and English. Her Math and Science scores hurt her.</p>