<p>We visited Rhodes College this past Saturday during an open house. D loved it except for the sports (football game). Ha! We sat in on a class (psychology) of our choice and all professors try to teach in this manner, that being an active role instead of all lecture. He involved all of us quite extensively. We toured the campus, reminded daughter a lot of WASHU. Very clean and interesting architecture. Gorgeous and huge library. They are adding a new Science building as this is their largest major area. Dorms were so-so, we only seen the quad co-ed, not the newer suites. Rhodes does not super score nor do they stack scholarshipās. They claim to meet 92% of need based aid. They are very actively involved and every student was involved into some type of service project. St. Jude was a very bid contributor to jobs, service, and internships as well as Fed Ex and some of the other larger companies. Very friendly and welcoming students. They had a student panel and all said they were challenged and surprised at how this college has changed them for the better. The area surrounding the college was a nice area, and we were told you have to know the areas NOT to visit. Rhodes reminds their students of this. Security was excellent. This is a gated campus. All students said they felt very safe. D has moved it up to top of the list. </p>
<p>@BayAreaFRP: welcome! Twins here as well. Totally different interests and plans, and mostly different attitudes toward school (which is why I also follow the Class of '16 B student board). This is going to be an interesting ride, yeah?</p>
<p>Slightly off-topic: I was at a Board meeting last night for the kidsā old nonprofit daycare. Another person on the Board is a man who has a son the same age as my DS16. He started lecturing me about āengineering schools, particularly MITā about how the kids never see the professors, donāt know how to read/write, blah blah, and how any physics class anywhere is going to be the same, anyway. Itās hard to remember not to let comments like this affect us!! Only later did I find out that his kid is currently frustrated about not getting football-based admissions, so heās all negative about things.</p>
<p>They are both very academic oriented. Twin Daughter likes computers, robots and the like. Twin Son likes things related to outdoors, rocks, living forms etc.</p>
<p>@petrichor11ā: It will be. Fortunately, we have previous experience. We have an older daughter who graduated from college in 2002. </p>
<p>Greetings parents of class of 2016! My DD 17 just took the November SAT. This is her first college admin test. Canāt wait to get the results. She has visited Tulsa, Oklahoma, Baylor, and Washu. She really enjoyed Tulsa. Big brother is currently a sophomore at Washu. Dd17 has no idea what she would like to major in. So this should be an interesting journey. </p>
<p>I feel like it is finally time to start gearing up. I thought my S16 would be a little more engaged than my S14 but heās too busy with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and trying to improve his grades (first quarter was his best ever ā hope he can keep that up!). Will need to decide whether to take the ACT or not ā most people in our area only take the SAT; his dad doesnāt think it is worth the effort to take both. I might wait to see how the PSAT turns out. </p>
<p>Right now he just feels like school gets in the way of his writing and his learning. Had to push him to stop learning about Aristotle last night because it wasnāt for school but for fun. I started talking about college visits and he said he might want to take a gap year. This is gonna be a challenging processā¦ </p>
<p>I should mention that he got an invite to a Stanford summer program and he commented that we probably wouldnāt let him apply to Stanford for college. He has almost zero chance of getting in given his poor grades, but has always been ambitious. I told him we would support him applying to a couple of far reaches as long as he had plenty of matches. Maybe heās more engaged than I think.</p>
<p>@crowlady there is nothing wrong with a well thought out and planned gap year and lots of things wrong with pushing someone to go to school when they either arenāt ready or donāt want to go for whatever reason. And, the decision doesnāt need to be made now. Make plans for both college and a gap year now and then see where you and your S are at when the final decision needs to be made.</p>
<p>About Stanford hight school summer program. D got invited as well, but I told her that this is probably another of those pay to play programs that has no value but is just a nice program if you have money to pay for fun experience. Please correct me if I am wrong.</p>
<p>@Hoosier96 We already have looked at the St. Johnās web site and his comment was that the curriculum focuses only on Western thought ā I guess he thinkās thereās more to knowledge! I still think we should visit (we are about 30 minutes from Annapolis).</p>
<p>@bajamm I agree ā I just donāt want him to think that the gap year means he can avoid the college search process. He would prefer to spend the year writing, which might mean 10 hours of computer gaming and a couple hours of novel writing a day. I donāt think thatās a good plan!</p>
<p>@seal16 He isnāt that interested in the summer program ā too long! And he already has plans to do the CTY program, which is shorter. Heās less into the fun social scene (a draw for some) but has been profoundly influenced by the courses heās taken so far (international politics, genetics, and ethics). I agree that these programs donāt have value in getting into a college of oneās choice but at the very least heās become quite a serious conversationalist :-)</p>
<p>D had a wonderful experience at the leadership conference last week. Now she has to catch up for 4 days of school that she missed. 15 weeks grades are in and thankfully no surprises there, but this wait for PSAT / SAT scores is tiring. I hope she did as well as we hope she did, but am afraid that she is ACT person, not SAT.</p>
<p>@seal16- Re the Stanford Summer High School Programā¦ you are absolutely right. Your definition nicely fits most of the summer programs at colleges where you pay for the privilege of attending.</p>
<p>@asleep- I think I remember reading a few pages back that you visited Mudd and Pomona. We know a ton about the Claremonts, having had one graduate of the consortium with a lot of āinsiderā info and many, many other contacts, recently with S '13. He was interested in 3 of the colleges. Mudd was especially interested in him and he got to know the people and place very well-had a hard time turning them down. Please feel free to ask specific questions or maybe pm if that would be helpful. S '16 is looking at couple of Claremonts as well! He got to help his sister move in and we did most of her shopping while she was camping pre-orientation, plus he got to go to a lot of orientation activities. He knows he likes it there already. He also just did a visit to his brotherās school which I believe is in your neck of the woods? Heād been there a couple of times before, but just superficially. He liked it better than he thought he would. He is starting to see that he could make a school his sibling attended his own, which is good, since he has 4 older siblings! How is that playing out with your '16er and his brotherās experiences?</p>
<p>Oh, and someone earlier was talking about Claremont and smog. D was there for four years with zero problems. </p>
<p>Does anyone have a child experiencing a junior year nosedive? D managed to pull grades up at the last minute so that she ended up with a C, 2 Bs, and 4 As last quarterā¦but at the moment she has two Fs and a C (and the rest As), mostly from not doing homework. We had the āhow do you feel about the local junior college?ā discussion last night. It wasnāt joyous.</p>
<p>Sometimes it feels like this school year is flying by and other times it feels like itās dragging on. Ten more days until the release of the Nov SAT scores and almost four weeks until we might get the PSAT scores. D16 is meeting with the OU college rep today at school (Iām very anxious to hear how that went!) and we plan to visit OU in February. I havenāt made reservations for the trip yet because Iām afraid that Iāll jinx her scores. I know itās silly but Iāll feel better after I see her Nov SAT scores. Her sophomore PSAT scores aligned very closely to her March SAT so I hope that her Nov SAT will give us an idea of how she scored on the PSAT, I know thatās backward, using the SAT to predict the PSAT! She really only needs a slight improvement from her sophomore year score but I hope she did very well so I wonāt be sitting on the edge of my seat until September!</p>
<p>D16 is starting to research the requirements for audition pieces, and found out that she needs to audition in February 2016 which all of a sudden sounds very close! It appears that both music Majors and Minors go through the same audition process, I hope they judge the minors a little easier. Sheās good but not great and it would kill her if she couldnāt continue playing in college. She also just found out that the Hochschule fĆ¼r Musik und Theater Hamburg is within walking distance from the University of Hamburg so that hopefully she can continue with lessons and maybe and ensemble group if she does the semester abroad program in Germany. Itās fun to see her starting to get excited about the possibilities and opportunities she will have in college.</p>
<p>@Petrichor11 Iām so sorry you are going through this, hopefully your daughter will be able to turn things around soon. The not doing the homework would really bother me, that is her job. Anyway you can require her to go to school early or stay late or limit the distractions when she is at home so she can have focused study time? We are holding steady here but the homework load is killer. They have redesigned the AP Physics class to make it a combined 1 and 2 class and do not have all the kinks worked out. We have had hours of frustration and tears because the problem was written incorrectly on the worksheet or the answer key was wrong. I will be so glad when she is done with that class!</p>
<p>@petrichor11ā grades for D S are always great for the quarters but then finals hit and You can count on a 20% drop so those A become A- or B+. He see no purpose in studying subjects he has been tested on already so he does very little or no studying for them.
This year I am hoping for a miracle and studying happensā¦
[-O< </p>
<p>Good news, I was mistaken and itās only one week until the Nov SAT scores are releasedā¦ still wish it was sooner</p>
<p>Bad news, tomorrow is an official āno homework nightā I HATE HATE HATE no homework nights!!! All the teachers double up their assignments the night before the no homework nights so that means double homework tonight. D missed the in class work in CAL BC today to meet with the OU rep so she has triple work for math, since itās Tuesday d had a music lesson across town after school and didnāt get home until 7:00 and now she has 6 plus hours of homework (would have been more if she hadnāt been working ahead!) and has to leave for school by 7:00 am to get to school on time so less than 5 hours of sleep for her tonight and no time for practice :-(</p>