<p>It’s <em>much</em> harder if your spring vacation is in March and you don’t have all your acceptances yet!</p>
<p>agent99 and happyORmom - U of O no longer does automatic admission for GPA. Did away with it in 2011. [Oregon</a> Commentator Blog Archive UO to eliminate automatic admissions policy](<a href=“http://oregoncommentator.com/2011/03/03/uo-to-eliminate-automatic-admissions-policy/]Oregon”>Oregon Commentator » Blog Archive » UO to eliminate automatic admissions policy) However, students can apply to ONE public university in Oregon for automatic admission: [Automatic</a> Admission | Oregon University System](<a href=“http://www.ous.edu/stucoun/prospstu/fadmissions/auto]Automatic”>http://www.ous.edu/stucoun/prospstu/fadmissions/auto)</p>
<p>I just spoke with our college counselor and average GPA admitted at U of O is 3.6. Looks like they are working hard at improving their ranking.</p>
<p>We’re waiting for November SAT score before we start making firm visitation plans. Want to stay real. D14 will take Feb. ACT. </p>
<p>Besides a resume, a journal highlighting books they read, quotes that move them, articles that interest them, song lyrics, movie quotes is also a good idea – especially when they have to write essays.</p>
<p>“Besides a resume, a journal highlighting books they read, quotes that move them, articles that interest them, song lyrics, movie quotes is also a good idea – especially when they have to write essays.”</p>
<p>Good ideas! Now, if I could just get DS to read a book! haha</p>
<p>mathmomvt, pacnwmomof2, we are thinking of going on a few college tours this coming spring break while she is still a junior. But the list of colleges depends on her scores though. Oregon spring break is during the last week of March and it looked like a lot of colleges are open that week. Excellent idea about going on tours end of August. Oregon schools start during the first week of September. We will go to a few during spring break of her junior year and summer. </p>
<p>pdxsuzanne, thank you for the journal idea. That will be very helpful.</p>
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<p>That’s a really good ideas! I always have things in my head that I never flesh out or things that really capture my mind…I think this would be helpful for more than just essays!</p>
<p>What are your kids doing for next summer? DD really liked the internship through Saturday Academy in Portland, but she can apply only once. It is a great program for Oregon kids. The only downside was that she didn’t get enough time for her favorite activities. </p>
<p>She will apply to Autodesk internship that’s open to Robotics kids.</p>
<p>We have had a plan of turning spring break into a college visiting road trip until I started looking up college spring breaks. Have any of you run into the situation where almost every school you want to visit has spring break during the same week as your high school? I found one school we could visit but it is far from home and in an area where we would like to visit several schools. The only other one I found that wasn’t on spring break was having “quiet week”(or something like that) where tours are not being offered on campus that week because is is just before spring break and the students are busy with final exams.</p>
<p>Summer? It’s not even Thanksgiving! But, what will my kid be doing? Same thing I always want her doing – getting a job.</p>
<p>I just found this wonderful calendar for College Spring breaks - all in one place!</p>
<p>[Spring</a> Break Dates](<a href=“http://www.ststravel.com/college_spring_break/dates.php]Spring”>Spring Break 2024 Dates - STS Travel)</p>
<p>That knocks one of our main schools out of vacation plans. 
And others would need to be on the front end of our vacation instead of the tail end or the students will have left campus. I had looked at one school and decided they must all be earlier than our high schools. duh!!</p>
<p>Wow, Beadymom! That is fantastic! You have just made our Spring Break tour so much easier! Thank you!</p>
<p>So we decided not to go the Wednesday before thanksgiving, we have plenty of time and it is a short distance. he doesn’t want to miss school or really go on any 3 day weekends. We started spring break sophomore year and planned a short fun trip and toured 2 schools. Then we visited 2 in state matches over the summer. Now that we can add test scores to our info we are adding a trip to Chicago junior year spring break. We will visit 2-4 schools. We can’t be gone too long because of a spring sport.</p>
<p>Hi All</p>
<p>I would be careful about that list of spring break dates.</p>
<p>Having done this a few times, I am pretty good at finding the academic calendars and admissions tour stuff.</p>
<p>For example, one school we had planned to see–that link has the wrong weeks off —totally wrong.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider beyond spring break is the Easter holiday. A few of K2s schools will be closed from end of business Thursday through Easter Monday. </p>
<p>Some schools will still do tours during the break…it isn’t ideal, however better than not seeing the campus at all.</p>
<p>Some of the schools on K2s list - don’t have any tour info listed for spring term as of yet–so it may not be until winter that we have any clue to a real schedule… :)</p>
<p>Thanks for pointing that out, fogfog. I meant to put a disclaimer … I am in no way affiliated, I cannot guarantee it’s accuracy, etc. 
After I posted it, I went back and realized that it is some sort of travel agency trying to book spring breaks for students. I am definitely not endorsing their services! haha I thought it would be a good starting place. I would definitely double check any school I was planning to go visit.</p>
<p>What are your school’s Thanksgiving weeks look like? Do most of you have to go Mon-Wed? Are you out? DS’s high school only goes Monday & Tuesday, but they get a free day off for each EOC exam they took last year. So he is taking Tuesday off, only going one day next week. I had purchased at a silent auction fund-raiser a two-night stay at a lake condo several months ago. I didn’t realize when I purchased it that it had to be used during the week - no weekends. So I’m taking advantage of the days off to take the family to the lake! Not much to do at the lake, but it’s near a tourist town that we’ll go visit.</p>
<p>HappyORmom: An internship for Robotics kids sounds interesting. DD hasn’t firmed up her summer plans yet, but she may be studying in Paris for the month of July. </p>
<p>We’re heading to California in February to check out two colleges in the L.A. area but haven’t decided if we’re doing any college related activities for spring break. </p>
<p>College4many: We ran into the same thing last spring break. Several schools were not in session, but it’s when we could make the trip.</p>
<p>DD’s school is out for early release on Wednesday and then they are off for the rest of the week. DS is out the entire week, but he’ll be getting up at 5:45 a.m. on Monday to shadow his sister at her school.</p>
<p>My son has finals Thanksgiving week so he has half days. He’s on tri-mesters. His sister comes home from college for the first time since we moved her in! It’s going to be a great week next week :)</p>
<p>D is off school tomorrow so we are on a two day trip to visit two or three schools we will be in Nashville tomorrow for the Vandy info session and tour. Then we head to Lexington for a quick look at UK. S-11’s best friend and our across the street neighbor is there and will give us the personalized tour. Saturday is a visit to Miami of Ohio for a tour and info session followed by a meeting with a couple of girls from our town who are students there. They will provide the dorm tour and the “inside” info. I will report back next week.</p>
<p>Our school is off from Tuesday through (and including) the following Monday. Like many schools in our state, that following Monday is the first day of deer rifle hunting season - and therefore - a school holiday.</p>
<p>We go for one day this coming Monday, but it’s mostly a “fun” day for the students with them watching movies and choosing between activities to do (only a couple of hours of morning classes). It’s not exactly an academic day… Most kids actually get bored with it, but since it’s one day out of a week, attendance would likely be poor otherwise.</p>
<p>S '14 is home!!! So grateful and glad to see him. He’s sleeping right now.</p>
<p>In putting together my ‘personalized college guidebook,’ I’m checking to see if I missed any Flagship U’s in the Northeast US that have honors Engineering ‘school within a school’ with ‘nice’ merit scholarships for OOS kids. UConn has an honors program and an Engineering school, but I have no idea how much ‘overlap’ there is. Rutgers has an honors Engineering program that one can participate in from the first term. PSU has Schreyer Honors Program and an Engineering program and a Honors Engineering program that seems to be aimed at 3rd and 4th year students. I’d love any info that anyone else has gathered. </p>
<p>What I would like the benefits of an honors ‘school withing a school’ for Engineering would be ‘Intro classes with 50 or fewer students’ during the first 2 years, dedicated STEM Honors living space, and culture of undergraduates doing research.</p>
<p>Smiles,
PS</p>
<p>DD and I went to Cambridge for a conference @ Harvard Medical School. Nice day. Most of the stuff she knew. When asked if she had learned anything of interest…</p>
<p>Her response was “No, my mom has taught me all this stuff.” Priceless! Spent $ on a room/food etc and everything they presented, she knew already! The power of CC… :)</p>
<p>Collegeboard has the November SAT scores online. DD’s scores were at or exceeded the schools we have on our Naviance short list. Now to compare with the CDS to see if there would be potential for merit aid. She’ll take it again to improve one section’s score but really knocked it out of the park on the other two. Big sigh of relief in rainy Portland.</p>