<p>I was also going to chime in on the GC issue. We have had a meeting … at my request! No real information was obtained. We discussed next year’s classes, no problems with his selections (also no recommendations to speak of). Discussed potential college scholarships … “read our wiki page, they’re all on there”. Discussed his potential major and asked if she had any suggestions. She pulled three out of the air, no real help at all! I’m envious of all of you that have the questionnaire for the GC to get to know the student better and able to make realistic suggestions! I don’t know what I’d do without all my imaginary friends to help me in this process! :)</p>
<p>We got out tonight and went to eat and drove around campus. OMG! This place is huge!! I guess with 33,000+ students, it has to be!!</p>
<p>Beadymom: Both Auburn and Alabama are very generous with their merit aid. In addition to essentially a free ride for NMF, they have various levels of aid, depending on standardized scores. DS will apply EA to one (or maybe both) of these schools very early in the game since they both have rolling notifications. I am pretty confident he can be admitted, so having an acceptance early in the game takes a lot of pressure off!</p>
<p>Alabama in particular is recruiting hard at DS’s school. They send a rep to his school in the fall. We also saw a rep at one of those gigantic college fairs, and the rep beamed at DS (he was wearing a shirt with the school name emblazoned on the front) and said, “We love students from your school. We have 9 kids from your school who are freshmen this year, and they are all getting substantial merit aid. Please apply.” I thought it was interesting that she knew the numbers from his school.</p>
<p>2014novamom: Getting that early acceptance at Alabama is a wonderful thing. It was the first of several my oldest son got – along with notification that he would receive a National Merit scholarship and package. It came in early October of his senior year, and I remember him saying, “Well, at least I have some place to go next fall.” Turns out, it was THE place. Gotta love rolling admissions. Alabama does a wonderful job of making a student feel wanted. </p>
<p>beadymom: While in T-Town, try to do dinner at Dreamland or Full Moon. Great food!</p>
<p>Son has two days of midterms before break. Don’t know who’s counting down more … him or me.</p>
<p>Go2mom - actually homeschooling was never on our minds when we had kids. I went to a great public school and assumed all schools were similar. Then I started working in ours… </p>
<p>By the time oldest reached 9th grade I had had enough and thought we probably couldn’t do worse, so we pulled all three out (starting 9th, 7th, and 5th). Oldest did well - beating his peers and getting nice merit aid. Middle did even better (in hindsight I’d have pulled each out at 7th) and could compete with any here on cc stats-wise. Youngest was 2 years behind in math when we pulled him out - and improved to 85% nationally at the end of 8th on his 8th grade testing (99% in verbal - 98% overall). BUT, he wanted to go to ps and he was our last son at home so we decided to let him. He enjoys it there (socially) and is doing very well grade-wise (>4.0 GPA), but at our school, the bar is low, so nationally he’s only fair to middle… exactly where our top students usually end up. He also has learned he doesn’t have to work (very little homework or studying of any sort needed). I’ll admit to worrying about paying for college without high stats and how he will do once he gets there and there are expectations for work to be done outside of class. Time will tell.</p>
<p>In hindsight? We’d have moved to a better school district, but when we moved here everyone told us the schools were good. Locally everyone thinks they are good. They have no concept of what a good school is.</p>
<p>Middle son also used UA as a safety. It’s a nice safety to have. In the end he chose a school that was a better fit (and ended up less expensive by a couple grand), but it’s still nice having an acceptance in hand. He also had Pitt in hand as they’re another rolling admissions school with merit aid given out shortly after acceptance.</p>
<p>Creekland, our local public high school underwent significant changes just as DD was about to enter. Cuts in AP classes, large study halls, no guarantees of classes if you had enough credit to graduate. It’s disconcerting to see 15 and 16 year olds wandering around the neighborhood at all times of the day because our State does not adequately fund education. When we bought into our neighborhood, it, too was an “outstanding” high school. I’ve seen a lot of boundaries change by school boards, too. It’s really daunting. The only schools I see preserving rigor in our district are the IB schools which have a different standard for both curriculum and a requirement for certified teachers. In retrospect, we should have taken that into consideration. Instead, we’re biting the bullet on private school. Fortunately the tuition is not off the charts and there is substantial financial aid. And we have S18 to plan for, too. I admire parents who are willing and able to do homeschooling when all else fails. So again, my hats off to you. Hopefully your son will qualify for some merit aid and follow in his brothers footsteps. Our D’s private school has been exceptionally rigorous and the merit aid does seem to follow the seniors. Fingers crossed that a year from now we have some meaningful choices.</p>
<p>Thank you for Google earth… I have been scoping out the restaurants near hotels since we arrive in towns about 7pm…and
After a long day, I like to have the options covered. K2 thinks we should “decide when we get there” though I have scoped it out…and give K2 options…because a tired parent and tired college-searching teen do not make good dinner companions without plans…</p>
<p>My stopping pts… IF you are in Erie PA, Milford CT, Lancaster PA ,Baltimore MD, Fredericksburg VA…</p>
<p>and have thoughts</p>
<p>pm me</p>
<p>I have other things covered…
and am shaking in my sandels because I am NOT ready for SNOW !!! I haven’t driven in snow in about 20 yrs…</p>
<p>Hang in there, FogFog. I too just discovered that it’s been snowing in the region we will be traveling through on Sunday. It’s miles and miles of desolation that is known for high wind and freezing temperatures. Good thing we still have studded tires on one of the cars.</p>
<p>Sending good restaurant vibes your way. Nothing seals the deal on a great college fact finding mission like a yummy dinner.</p>
<p>Busy days… DS1 is on Spring Break road trip with 8 college friends. Just asked if they could detour and stay overnight with us tomorrow. Of course! We are thrilled to host them. Made a Costco run for burgers, salads, chips, breakfast items… I want to feed them well as they travel about 500 miles after they leave us. Two days later we will depart for DS2’s college tour in So Cal.</p>
<p>It will be snowing in Evanston on Monday when we are scheduled to visit Northwestern, but it’s still cold here so it won’t be as much of a shock for us! </p>
<p>I have yelp and other apps on my phone to help me scope out dinner options, but we’re staying with family the first night so will be treated to some good home cooking. Our second night is in Ann Arbor and DS spent four weeks there last summer and we also have some very good friends who are alums so lots of options there already. </p>
<p>We are at northwestern on Monday also. It is their spring break so I won’t stress about parking. Spending a couple days in Chicago: 2 drive-thrus, 1 interview and 3 tours. ( no info sessions)</p>
<p>The business competitions range from marketing campaigns to interviews to speeches. My son, on a whim, entered an open competition (a test) on Parliamentary Procedure at regionals. He got the highest score in the region so he now gets to test at states. They are staying in a hotel and have to dress in business attire the whole time. It’s not college boys! It’s high school boys and girls! They are staying in a hotel and I got a text tonight “This is so cool!” He’s having a blast.</p>
<p>I think every school we look at gets even better! U of Alabama was great! The honors dorms were amazing. The mechanical engineering had a brand new building and equipment-top of the line stuff!! Auburn also had a new building for mech eng. it’s amazing the amount of money the schools are spending!</p>
<p>Anxious to see Vanderbilt tomorrow!</p>
<p>Safe travels to those heading out this weekend!</p>
<p>Double check the weather in Erie as the lake effect snow has been on and off this week and is supposed to continue through the weekend. It can get very intense along I-90 from the east side of Cleveland all the way up to Buffalo and beyond. I hope it behaves for your road trip.</p>
<p>Can’t wait to hear your impressinos of Vanderbilt. DD loved the school and will consider applying ED there if her test scores are in their range. (That’s a big if!)</p>
<p>s received his SAT scores and did quite well, better than he anticipated. nice to have that prior to our spring break trip. </p>
<p>have family visiting from NY, convincing me to bring a very warm jacket for our NE college trip starting Tuesday. thought I might get away with light leather jacket, but since we’ll be doing several tours, and exploring cities, looking for those restaurants, my down jacket may be needed.</p>
<p>go2mom - I don’t really think our high school ever was in the “good” range by my standards (what I grew up with). When my oldest reached middle school we went in for a conference with the pricipal (he’s since retired). He flat out told us that “Public school is not designed for the academically talented student. They will do well no matter what you do. Public school is designed for the average student and around here the average student works at ____, joins the military, or goes to community college. Then we have to do more with the lower academic kids due to regulations.” Admittedly, our school does a great job with that as their goal. We hung in there for 3 more years after that conversation, then I gave up. In hindsight we could have gone with a Catholic high school in the neighboring town, but we’re not Catholic so that thought never occured to us then.</p>
<p>NCLB is actually helping our school improve. The admin and staff are starting to realize they MUST include more content in the classes and hold the students to more. Change happens slowly and with a bit of grumbling, but it is for the better IMO. Of course, there are aspects of NCLB that need to be modified or outright eliminated (esp for those who can’t handle higher level academics), but as a whole, I’m not against it.</p>
<p>Those of you with good schools shouldn’t take them for granted. In state rankings of 500 school districts our school is a little bit below the median right now and has been moving up. There are worse schools out there.</p>
<p>Parking at NU should be pretty easy. Most kids don’t have cars on campus and they are on Spring Break. And nothing is far away on the campus, anyway. No two buildings are more than a 15 minute walk apart, and the majority are within 10 minutes of each other. It’s good to have a compact campus when walking to class in February!</p>
<p>We are a little bummed that they are on break since DS was hoping to meet up with two good friends from HS while we are there. He’ll have to wait until we get to Wash U to take in the college scene with a friend ha ha.</p>
<p>Lindz–bring your down jacket and gloves and a scarf so that you can shed layers as the day warms up. It was 24 degrees here in CT at 6:30 this morning and we saw snow flurries during the day yesterday. Snow expected Monday also. Happy travels!</p>
<p>Good news for D. We received a letter today from her school announcing she was selected for induction into NHS. At her school the applications are completely blind and the review process takes three weeks following their two week period to complete and submit their applications. They have to submit everything without their name or a personal reference to their name (as much as can be eliminated or redacted). Their application folders are assigned a code number and all of the faculty evaluations are submitted against the folder number. The senior admistration and NHS coordinator then tie the inductee numbers back to names for the announcements. I haven’t confirmed it but reportedly the pool of inductees varies from a third to about a half of the applicant pool that met the preliminary base requirements needed just to obtain an application folder. This will come as a pleasant surprise in the wake of all of the heatburn the AP Chemistry teacher is causing the AP Chem students.</p>
<p>Now, only if the SAT score coming next week could be as positive as this news …</p>
<p>Well, NO visits during next week’s spring bring. We found one college on d’s list that was open (not on spring break) BUT there’s a junior visit day. Very general campus tour, Q and A. No faculty/coach visits. So, she’s staying home. Sigh. I really don’t know how we get these visits done without taking her out of school.</p>