<p>Hi Everyone, I haven’t spent much time on CC the past few months. With move in less than a week away I thought I would check in and see how we are all handling it. I can’t believe the time is here already. We finished buying everything on the list and are about half way done packing. It’s going to be interesting to see how we are going to get all this stuff in the car.
I think it finally hit me today that she is actually leaving. We have been so excited and happy for her throughout the whole process of applying, choosing and preparing for college. Today I was more sad and nervous. Hopefully next week I can manage to keep those feelings in check. I am hoping to be the strong one as I am pretty sure my Wife will be an emotional wreck.
We are trying to think of some good activities to keep us busy while she is gone. So far we came up with joining a gym and bowling.
Wishing you all a smooth move in !!</p>
<p>Oops… Thought I posted this in the 2014 thread. Sorry everyone. Good luck with the journey ahead of you :)</p>
<p>@Cheeringsection I guess the question is, essentially, is Miami worth the extra money as opposed to Bowling Green. D16 is looking at Psychology, possibly a Chemistry minor, with an eye toward an Phd in Psych or possibly med school for Psychiatry </p>
<p>@Cruze13 - I found it really helpful to get a glimpse of the future and remind me how good hugs are in the moment. :)</p>
<p>@fretfulmother I have been stalking the 2015 for the exact same reason </p>
<p>@kandcsmom - 
It’s never a bad thing to remember the hugs.</p>
<p>@3scoutsmom – Thanks for posting the Morocco trip report. Altitude sickness is miserable. There are simple meds that can essentially bypass the acclimation. . . I’m not surprised that given the cost of the trip the group had a lot of kids from private schools. As I wrote you earlier, your daughter’s lucky to have such generous and open-minded parents. Lots of parents wouldn’t even consider letting a daughter go there. You’re breaking the Texas stereotypes. . . Anyway, it’s wonderful that your daughter has such broad horizons. </p>
<p>I wish the PSAT’s came sooner. My son covered all (my) planned prep material over the summer by working less than a couple of hours a day, with a lot of days off for swim meets, SixFlags, etc. I’m worried that a lot of the lessons will fade over the next two months. The plan is for him to do about a half-hour of practice a night. The problem with aiming for NMSF scores is that there’s so little room for error, and a careless mistake or two (or a difficult vocabulary word) will render all the prep irrelevant. But I wish it were already behind us. </p>
<p>S14 is off to his pre-orientation outdoor adventure on Tuesday. I was surprised to see that only about 10% of the freshmen choose to go on one of these trips. He struggles a bit socially, so we thought it was a good place for him to start, w a group of about 15 - 20 kids in a “bonding” sort of setting. Then we have him for a day before he moves into his dorm room on Saturday. He’s somewhere between excited and anxious about the whole thing. I’m not sure that academics figure in any way in his thinking right now. Hopefully they will before the end of the semester. </p>
<p>With getting mailings from various colleges daily, my D felt very special receiving mailing from Harvey Mudd. I did not have a heart to tell her that it is probably because we got on the list since we visited. Ever since we visited this college, she is considering it very high on her list. I hope she gets in, but it will be much harder on us financially then UCs since she can only get merit based scholarships. Plus I am not exactly sure about this engineering-general major. I told her that if she considers HM, she probably should consider majoring in CS. If she goes to UCs that she can consider EE or EECS. </p>
<p>We’re getting more of the college mail just recently. I don’t know where they’re getting names, but they’re not terribly particular. I love D16 more than my luggage, but there’s no way she’s getting into the University of Chicago. Her reach college is Kenyon; I’m guessing she’s more Beloit or Eckerd.</p>
<p>@petrichor11 - we got that UofChicago stuff too! My niece, who desperately wants to go there, and who is class of 2015, didn’t get the postcard - I told her about the event, and she said, “oh, I might not learn anything new” so I got to explain “demonstrated interest” and College Confidential… My DS16 is definitely not UofChicago bound.</p>
<p>When the college considers Character/ Personal Qualities what exactly does it mean?</p>
<p>University of Chicago is renown for how many mailings they send out. There have been entire threads dedicated to the topic here on CC. S14 received at least a dozen pieces of mail from them, and he had essentially no chance of getting admitted.
After S14’s experience with all these college letters we thought that we’d keep track of all the mail that S16 receives. So far he’s received mailings from 80+ schools, with some already having sent him multiple mailings. There has been mail from some schools that I’ve never heard of, and I didn’t think that there could be schools that I’d never heard of. The whole thing is silly.</p>
<p>And of course @seal16, it means whatever they want it to mean. If there are certain schools that mention that criteria you might ask the question on the CC thread for the specific school(s). You’d likely get some good answers of what the school may be looking for.<br>
On the Class of 2016 thread there was a lot of heartache when kids got into some wonderful schools that were not do-able financially. Harvey Mudd is obviously a great school, and whatever she might choose as a major there she could write her ticket afterwards. But it’s a tricky line to walk in terms of keeping her upbeat/optimistic, but also realistic if it ends up out of reach cost-wise. Good luck, but given who she is she’ll have good options however it goes down. </p>
<p>We’re in kind of a weird spot financially with a lot of schools where it makes better sense to apply for the expensive ones (because of huge endowments and generous need-based) than to apply to the “affordables”. (Sad fact of having one parent who’s a self-employed artist.) But basically, we’ve sat the kids down and said “look, this is how much we can afford to spend. If you want more than that, it’ll be on you. Think long and hard about how much debt you want to carry at the age of 22.” S16 has internalised the lesson, but I’m not quite sure where D16 is with it.</p>
<p>One of the things I was given this week was a printout of this year’s AP pass rate statistics for our school. There’s a huge range! AP Macro had NO passes. None. Good to know since S16 is scheduled for that class-- I’m seeing some self-study in his future. On the other hand, Spanish Lang was very high. I tried to talk D16 into taking that this year but she’s waiting until next.</p>
<p>Kandcsmom my understanding is that Miami gives excellent merit so I would not make a decision based upon price until all the FA offers are in. Also they seem to attract a different student so fit may rule out one anyway. Both are good schools, just different. If your student’s goal is med school, I think either works as long as the GPA is high. </p>
<p>New twist on the schedule debate. The art class will only be available 1st semester (which will fulfill the grad requirement) but now he needs a 2nd semester elective or could forgo the art until senior year and take Mandarin. We have to email the GC by Monday with a decision. </p>
<p>Out of all APs this year D finds APUSH to be the most difficult. How ironic! One would think that AP Physics C and AP Calc will top the list. She is so stressing out of this class and we just 4 days into the school year.</p>
<p>APUSH covers alot of material quickly; dates; treaties; policy and their is ALOT of writing. So it’s a quick pace class that has a lot of depth to it.
Son will just take the test this year he prep his sister for it last year.</p>
<p>Unsolicited editorial comment:<br>
@seal16 – Something’s not right if your daughter is so stressed out about a class less than a week into her junior year of high school. This ball game, which will go through high school, college, and likely into graduate school is in the second inning. Is she going to be stressed throughout? Doesn’t sound like fun, and doesn’t sound healthy. I hope you can help her get a bit of a better perspective.</p>
<p>@seal16 : I’v heard from several people that APUSH is difficult. (It was a million years ago when I took it, as well.) Lots of memorisation and details.<br>
I don’t know about your daughter, but both of mine tend to stress a lot the first week of school, anticipating the worst. By the second or third week things have settled down and they’re more confident of their ability to handle the work load. Of course, just after that comes the 10 day count, and classes get changed around and schedules disrupted and we go through it all over again. But eventually, by mid-September, things are okay.</p>