<p>Here’s hoping ApolloSon get’s an interview for The UWC! It sounds like it would be a better fit and an amazing opportunity.</p>
<p>Welcome beadymom - Speaking as an e’school mom, I would encourage you to look for strong engineering programs overall, not just electrical. The chances of your son changing his major within engineering are actually quite high. We would have put money on one area and our first-year student is shifting gears. He won’t apply for his major until the end of the year however he’s pretty set. All it takes is a strong program, and a great professor to really inspire them, and they see things an entirely new way! :)</p>
<p>I think we have FINALLY figured out the schedule for next year. My dd is at a parochial school, came in this year as a 10th grader so is off their track for a few classes.<br>
We decided she will do two ap’s - english and us history, the rest honors, and because she’s off track she’ll do anatomy next year and honors physics as a senior. </p>
<p>What I still don’t understand is how rigorous a schedule has to be to be considered rigorous. At the kids school they don’t want kids taking more than 3 AP’s. However other schools have no limit and there’s little work. </p>
<p>After going through this with my son, I do believe unweighted gpa is extremely important.</p>
<p>Anatomy sounds like an interesting course - especially if your D might have an interest in medical careers. From our experience with a child in the college class of 2015, I agree that the unweighted GPA is very important, especially for scholarship consideration.</p>
<p>S14 got an interview for UWC!!! I was getting nervous that his quirky personal statement was going to do him in so I am very relieved. It does mean, however, that we won’t know where he is going next year until April. I’m glad I don’t have a child graduating this year. Having one big decision at a time is enough for me.</p>
<p>Congratulations to ApolloSon! Best of luck on his UWC interview!!</p>
<p>eyemamom - I would agree that UW GPA is always going to be important. You can see what a school weighs (GPA, scores, rigor, ECs, LORs, etc) by looking at their common data set.</p>
<p>dpr2college – check out the Athletic Recruits forum. FenwaySouth is very knowledgeable about baseball recruiting, and there’s lots of into about D3 there.</p>
<p>Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and it reminded me, years ago, when S’14 went with a friend (we’re not Catholic) to church and his friend got the ashes on his forehead. And I said to S: you know this marks the beginning of something special (thinking Lent). </p>
<p>My DS’14 wants to try the SAT this spring (“Just to see how I do.”). I am thinking it is fine for him to practice the test, but I don’t think he should take an actual SAT1 until next year some time. What do you guys think? (He is 15).</p>
<p>I’m curious about that as well. I have already signed my son up for the April ACT. It’s common at his school to take the tests in the sophomore year to get one under their belt. Is it going to hurt him if he does not do well this time but brings the score up as a junior or senior?</p>
<p>With d1, we did the baseline ACT in the fall (Oct) of Junior year. We might do that with d2 as well. The school added a test prep course, though, which she is signed up for. THe kid hates bubble tests with a passion. If she could take one, in December, and score to her satisfaciton, we might get by with just once. I’d like that. She’d like that . . .</p>
<p>I personally wouldn’t recommend writing a SAT or ACT “cold” just to get a baseline, because they may have to send the scores (more likely to their “reaches” than other places, which is exactly where they won’t want to send them). If they just want a baseline and to see what areas they need to work on, they can do it for less money at home by ordering a book with practice tests and taking one at home.</p>
<p>I’m going to agree with mathmomvt. Not every school uses scorechoice. You don’t want your student to find out fall of Sr year they are applying to a school that wants scores from every test they’ve ever taken and wish they hadn’t taken a test cold in their soph year.</p>
<p>beadymom: Colleges don’t look at the SAT or ACT scores taken before high school, so whatever tests our kids take for those CTY/DUKE summer programs won’t be sent on the SAT Report from the College Board.</p>
<p>My DS’14 took the PLAN and did a little better that I expected he might. He has started practicing some problems, but not too often. He has a lot of room for improvement, so i will take all of your advice and tell him no real SATs until next year - maybe in October if he practices over the summer.</p>
<p>Well, D registered for her classes last night (online registration). She ended up changing her mind regarding marching and spring band. She originally had no intention on continuing either. Our school system is opening its second high school and the rising Juniors have the option to stay or go if they are in the new zone. D has decided to go. She realized that she was the only current Mellophone/French Horn player zoned for the new school and saw an opportunity for a leadership position (drill tech) and would help the new marching band become established. She also decided to continue with concert band (spring) so that she would have a “breather” in a tough schedule.</p>
<p>She registered for: AP English Language, Honors Chemistry, AP World History, Precalculus, Marching Band, Symphonic Band, Spanish 3 and Spanish 4. She will also take a college course through a program our flagship offers…most likely Japanese. Now we wait to see if she gets what she asked for :)</p>
<p>D was part of a group of sophomores called up to the HS office, where they were encouraged to register for a psat/sat prep course the school offers as a class. Apparently, these were kids that scored at or near the usual National Merit cut off. She had no interest! She couldn’t believe they wanted her to drop one of her academic classes to take a test prep class! LOL!</p>
<p>glido~we are still waiting on D’s PLAN scores. Our school is notorious for keeping the scores to gather info, etc. before passing them out. Frustrates the heck out of me! Hopefully it won’t be the case next year at the new school.</p>
<p>Our testing “plan” is to have D prepare during the summer. She will then take the PSAT and the ACT in the Fall and then the SAT and probably the ACT again in the spring. Leaving the senior fall for retakes as needed. This worked well for D’11.</p>
<p>I think the break in the tough schedule is a good idea. I had a tolk with my d’11 about just such a thing - (you know if you drop chior/voice, you will just fill your schedule with classes) - and she’s a college sophomore (why, because she kept jamming in college courses in high school). Some kids just push, push, push.</p>
<p>D’14 did drop band to carry two sciences. I thought it would be all right, but if she gets homework like she has now, she’s going to be one tired, cranky little girl. Can’t wait (unfurl sarcasm sign).</p>
<p>All this talk of course registration for next year got me thinking about what S may do. He doesn’t have to register for a while yet, so he has time to think about it. I’m assuming English (required), Chem, AP Latin, some kind of math (he’s in BC Calc this year so is running out of the normal curriculum, but the school creates continuing classes for the kids in his situation), and probably US History. He can only take 5 classes. It’s a small school and it doesn’t offer many AP’s as such (AB/BC Calc, Stats, Econ, some FL and a couple of others), but lots of kids take the AP exams anyway and seem to do fine. We’ll see what his teachers recommend. And how he does on the AP Physics exam this year, based on a very conceptual (i.e. non-mathy) course this year. He’s supposed to be prepping on his own, but I don’t think he even knows where the prep books are. His sister ('11/'15) at least put them under her pillow and dreamed that she might one day open them. I guess they send out good karma.
I wish I could get more worked up about this, but I am still recovering from D’s Very Emotional Adventure last year and am happy to have a phlegmatic S who is working pretty hard but not winding himself in knots. He’ll wind up in a fine place for him, and is different enough from his sister that he does not feel he is competing with her over high school stats.</p>
<p>S14’s life just got a little more exciting (and complicated). All the study abroad programs to which he applied for next year have granted him semi-finalist status! Rotary has already offered to send him to Taiwan. He is waiting to hear if the National Security Language Initiative for Youth wants to send him to China to learn Mandarin. He’s scheduled to interview for United World Colleges at the end of March and now, on the same evening, he is supposed to fly to Denver for an “in person selection event” (scholarship competition weekend) for Yes Abroad so that they can determine whether they’d like to send him to a Muslim country for a year. Crazy! We were just hoping that one of these programs would work out (preferably one of the free ones, but Rotary isn’t very expensive, either). We never imagined that he’d end up interviewing for all of them. Unless he goes to UWC, he will definitely changing his graduation year to 2015.</p>
<p>Hi everyone: Just found this thread. D is beginning to consider her college future more. We will be touring 6 campuses this spring break and she is pretty excited about it.</p>
<p>Welcome Agentninetynine! We will probably try to see a couple of schools in-state over spring break. S3 tagged along on many of the college tours we did with S2 (2011) so we’ll try to hit some of the one’s he hasn’t seen. What schools will you be visiting?</p>
<p>Blue: Since D’14 is a physics & math kid, we are looking at Harvey Mudd, CalTech, UCLA, Occidental, UCSB & D’s holy grail – Stanford. But first we’re going to Disneyland so we can chill after the long drive and I can sit by the pool :)</p>
<p>PDXSuzanne: Our kids may be at the same school or they are at rivals D took the AMC in mid February. Not sure when the results will be back. </p>
<p>I’m surprised that so many kids take the ACT/SAT in 7th or 8th grade. Is this an east coast thing or am I out of the loop? D’14 is our oldest and I must say, this has been quite the learning curve. So glad I found CC.</p>
Best of luck on his UWC interview!!</p>