<p>@Beadymom</p>
<p>We have done only one school in MA… Harvard. We went up during the spring of her frosh year. We sat in on a lecture of Dr Gates… it was great! Wish we would have popped over to see Tufts… she has expressed some interest in that school as well.</p>
<p>We will do more MA schools this fall. I really hope she likes the schools we visit. One state away for college would be beautiful. I just can’t imagine paying for flights home on a regular basis…</p>
<p>DD14 is taking her final two exams today - make up ones as she missed them on Friday when she was at HOBY (which was fantastic!). She took her regular US History I exam yesterday as scheduled and will take APUSH this fall. The teacher apparently posted the first summer reading assignment on-line yesterday afternoon! And she’s not even done with school yet! Next year is the first year the school is offering APUSH to Juniors. There are also seniors who will be taking it but will be in a different class as they’ve already had two years of honors US History. Her class had the first half this year and will do the second half the first semester next year, then use the remainder of the year to review what they did this year. So it’s almost like doing the whole course in 1 1/2 years, which doesn’t seem too bad to me, but we’ll see. The teacher’s tests were very hard this year and apparently are even worse in AP - harder than the actual AP exam! The school does a modified block schedule - 7 classes in rotation which meet 5 out of 7 days. A couple of days, the classes are 75 minutes long, the other three days they’re an hour long. It seems to work well and they all have a good handle on the rotation schedule, but it seems so confusing to my old mind!</p>
<p>Can’t believe she’ll be a Junior in a little over an hour! Wish it was nicer weather here today for her to celebrate, but it’s still a busy week. Dance recital rehearsal today and tomorrow afternoon, teacher appreciation lunch to put on tomorrow morning, play rehearsal tomorrow night, Relay for Life Friday night (her team has raised over $8,000 so far and is thinking if they can get $2,000 more by tomorrow night then they’ll make the next level!), dance recital on Saturday afternoon and play rehearsal again on Sunday afternoon! I think she’ll be sleeping in late on Monday morning!</p>
<p>I just found out 2 10th graders from our town qualified for Olympic trials. Guess they’ve been eating their Wheaties! </p>
<p>I think that kind of athletic prowess is part gift, lots of training, and family support. Kind of amazing.</p>
<p>Can you share the sport?</p>
<p>One’s a swimmer; one’s a runner.</p>
<p>I am in awe.</p>
<p>It’s humbling, isn’t it? We all think our kids our special (and they are) but then you read about these “super stars” in their given fields of accomplishment and it puts you back in your place! And to think that they are only 16 years old! I’m still waiting to hit my stride and I’m 50! DD has her last two finals today–honors chemistry and world history. She’s stressed but at a certain point, I think she surrendered to the fact that she’s done all she can. She’s prepared and that may or may not be enough. Of course, that’s life, isn’t it? Congratulations to all of your kids–junior year will be a beast to tame but how fortunate these kids are to have great support systems at home. In the end, it will make all the difference moving them forward to adulthood, not just college.</p>
<p>We were able to go to Day 1 of the Senior Ladies US Gymnastics Championships. D, a former gymnast, is now old enough to be a Senior. I am in awe that girls her age have sacrificed so much and are willing to attempt such difficult and dangerous skills. I am even more in awe of the few who go to regular HS.</p>
<p>Have you all looked at the summer assignments yet? I’m stunned by the amount of stuff. At least three books between APUSH and English, and the usual math and fortunately a “maybe not too bad?” AP Chem packet. Oh my…S, who waits until the last second, may have to buckle down. That said one of the books is Unbroken, which i have been meaning to read, so hopefully he will think its cool too.</p>
<p>DD14 found out yesterday that she won’t able to fit APUSH into her schedule…there is a conflict with the Anatomy & Physiology class(where they spend alot of time @ the Yale anatomy lab working on cadavers with the medical students)… so she has to take honors US History… so she will now have 2 AP classes which is a bit frustrtating…</p>
<p>Even the Honors classes lack the rigor that she so desperately requires/yearns for. So she is going to attempt to take 2 college classes/semester. </p>
<p>The only class this year that gave her a run for her money was the AP psych… that teacher is a beast and she loved it! You have to walk on water to earn A’s in his class.</p>
<p>I am feeling sad that she is now a junior… missing the days of reading aloud to her, or the long conversations about cheetahs and great white sharks… and the days when she thought I was the best thing since sliced bread… all grown up…why does the time go by so quickly??</p>
<p>^I know – it’s the beginning of the end – 2 years from now, they’ll be getting ready to go off to college. Happy for them, bittersweet for us. It’s like the final push out of the birth canal. Painful, joyous, and absolutely necessary.</p>
<p>After this year’s HS graduation ceremony, I said to D14, “Only two more years, and that will be you.” Her reply made it sound like two more years was a life sentence. Different point of view, I guess!</p>
<p>haha! Yeah, I guess for them, it’s an eternity. For us, it was only yesterday we were dropping them off for kindergarten! 
</p>
<p>I told my son the other day … nevermind looking at colleges across the country. He can stay right here at home and go to the local college!! In one breath I want the very best for him, on the other, I know if he does get the very best, he may never come back home!</p>
<p>Ds has tons of homework and I am not sure when he plans to start it. I will encourage him to take some on our road trips this summer.</p>
<p>I set up two in state college tours this summer. He hates to miss school and won’t want to use any of those precious days off either. Most likely he will be be admitted at these two schools so I can save the uncertain reaches for next spring and summer after we get scores back.</p>
<p>With a possible scheduling conflict we won’t know about until the computer sets master class schedules in August (that’s right the master schedule isn’t set…not just the students, as in what classes are when) we had to set contingency plans in case S3 has a conflict with two classes that are only offered once a day and had a conflict this year. Because of this we don’t know if he’ll be in AP Comp Sci or AP Stats so he’ll have to do summer assignments for both, along with AP Bio, AP Comp, and APUSH. It is not going to be a fun year, but it’s what he wanted. Me, not so much.</p>
<p>DS’14 is loading up on community service hours and trying to practice some SATs. Not really a summer vacation, but he is not complaining. I am a little worried about burn-out in the middle of JR year :(</p>
<p>DD will be taking AP Government and AP Chemistry next year. Her school doesn’t offer AP courses in 9th or 10th grade - just honors courses.</p>
<p>DD attended her regional HOBY program last week and really enjoyed it. She just received an email confirmation for the national program in Chicago in late July and was doing cartwheels. Rather than driving two round trips to Chicago we will let her fly to Chicago on Southwest since it is direct and Midway airport is much more managable than O’Hare. She is excited about flying by herself. Although she has traveled quite a bit over the yeas she has never gone by herself. We will attend the closing banquet and bring her home as its about a six hour drive for us which is not a bad drive.</p>
<p>She didn’t get either of the summer jobs she applied for so she is now babysitting and volunteering until we leave for vacation right after the 4th of July. We plan to tour a few colleges on our way to and from the beach in SC.</p>
<p>Happy Father’s Day to All !!! :)</p>
<p>AvonHSDad: My husband just flew through Midway, and he loved it. Great airport. </p>
<p>Son started an intense training program for the cross country season. Dropped seven pounds in the first four days of lifting, running and eating more healthy (lots of fruits and veggies). Got his final report card – had an excellent year after making the transition to a bigger, more academically demanding school. Volunteered at a summer running camp and did inventory for the social studies department at his HS – the department chair (who will be his APUSH teacher this fall) knew that he loved to eat eggs during training, so she brought him a dozen and a half from her farm as a token of appreciation. Now, he’s off to PA and MD with Dad on a business trip of sorts. I proved to be the mean parent and told him to bring along some of his APUSH assignments. He can work when his Dad is working.</p>
<p>Hey all, I’m actually a 2012 parent but a co-worker friend has asked me to try to help his 2014 D with college stuff so I’ll probably pop up in here every now and then too. I’ve only just finished helping one kid get into college so not sure I’m ready for providing unofficial guidance for my friend’s kid too. I do also have a 28-year-old “kid” in college right now but he was in the Navy for 6 years and is going to college on the GI Bill now (or whatever we call that program these days!) so I haven’t been involved in his college process at all. </p>
<p>My friend’s D tells me she’s interested in medical school one day. She’s a URM and I think also the first in her family in college (fingers crossed on that anyway!), not interested in attending a HBCU but wants a decent amount of other AA students on campus. Her dad suggested the military route to medicine but she vetoed that. Also said she doesn’t want to attend college in Texas (we’re in Dallas metro area) and probably also not somewhere “really hot.” She’s lived back and forth between Chicago and Dallas all her life and said she wouldn’t mind a college with cold winters. </p>
<p>She says she gets As/Bs in a high-performing school district that offers a lot of AP classes but she hasn’t taken any AP courses before now. I’m not even sure yet if she’s taken any honors classes in her first 2 years in HS because I forgot to ask her that. When I said in our first brief chat about it this week that she probably needs to take some AP classes, she was concerned and said they’re hard. Don’t know yet if she can’t handle rigorous courses well or is just intimidated about taking one, so i also don’t know yet if her medical school plan is even realistic. But first things first with undergrad! Her 11th grade schedule is set and not sure if she can change it much now to add an AP class. Maybe she could still take two AP classes as a senior if I can persuade her. I know it’s only “recommended” for college admissions but it would probably help her a lot if she could do fairly well in at least 2 AP classes.</p>
<p>Also no SAT or ACT taken yet. When she said she wasn’t sure if she took a practice PSAT last year, I got nervous. Our school district makes every 10th grader take it in October. I need to ask her dad where he keeps any school records at home and see if they’ve got a copy of her 10th grade PSAT results anywhere. Otherwise, no info on that til school starts up again. She did tell me she’s taking algebra 1 in summer school right now but I realized later that I didn’t ask her if that was by choice or it’s a required re-take, yikes.</p>
<p>She’s in a one-parent low-income household but so are we so I know what pitfalls she needs to watch out for with that in the application process. She says she has no contact with her mom which means she might need to only apply to colleges that don’t require the CSS just to make things smoother in that regard. I need to verify that with her dad though. Once I get a better idea of her current GPA and what types of classes she’s been taking, I’ll know whether she should give QuestBridge a shot for some of their college prep scholarships in 11th grade and their college match program in 12th grade. My kid did well with QB in grades 11 & 12 so at least I’m already very familiar with that sometimes confusing program. </p>
<p>Now that I’ve typed this out and seen all the little bits together, I’m thinking that we need to get together by next week and really start talking numbers, ideas, possibilities, etc. Hoping I’m not in over my head on this one! But I went thru a lot of different things with my own kid’s college search and application process so hopefully we can keep this girl heading in the right direction with all this. My kid was in a full IB program at a different HS in town with some unique leadership activities plus very defined ideas about the kind of humanities degrees she wants to pursue and also some of her career goals.</p>
<p>Hopefully as I get a better fix on this younger girl’s strengths and weaknesses, y’all may be a big help in giving her (and me!) some fresh ideas about campuses that might be a good fit for her. At this point I’m already sure it’ll be a much different process than what we just went through with my own kid since the two girls are so different. </p>
<p>Oh yeah, and I’ll be dropping my own kid off in August at Earlh@m College in IN if anyone’s kid is possibly eyeing that college and is looking for more info about it in the future. If you want to know if they give some students a bunch of merit aid, yes, they do! They also have a great scholarship program available for low-income kids that has to be applied for separately but if selected, it covers the full remaining COA after Pell grant and basic federal Stafford loans. PM me if you need more specific details for a student that might qualify. Kid got accepted with merit aid to 9 other colleges so will let you know any other merit aid details and other stuff about those schools as it comes up.</p>
<p>Hi, </p>
<p>We will be travelling through the Twin-Cities for our vacation and are thinking of doing a couple of low stress college visits. We were thinking of one “big” university, so UoM - Twin Cities, and one “small” LA college, so Macalester. </p>
<p>It seems like both of these could be done in one day. Has anyone tried this?</p>
<p>We want these to be low stress introductions to college visits. Does this seem reasonable.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Welcome woody35! That’s great you’re helping this young woman. Would she look at single sex schools? I went to Smith – I believe they might be receptive to her if her grades stack up. Maybe you should post her stats etc. on the Smith College forum and see what the feedback is. </p>
<p>Good luck!</p>