<p>Yay ari for kid cast in musical - congrats!</p>
<p>Keep taking peeps on this thread, but funny because all the posters here are the ones on my senior kid’s parent thread :)</p>
<p>drmom, kids are different. Your son sounds like my S’16 (it was nice to read your post and know that I am not the only one here with a kid like mine). My daughter, a college sophomore, is the straight A, into all of the EC’s possible kind of student usually found here. My two kids are vastly different. I wanted to say they couldn’t be more different but then something would probably prove me wrong.</p>
<p>I think my son is just a late bloomer. He is trying to try hard in school. It just isn’t really his strong point or something he is interested in and he will likely get better at school as he is allowed to take more classes that are interesting to him.</p>
<p>Hey 'rents!</p>
<p>I’m part of the high school class of 2013! I regularly post on the parent’s forum for the class, but I decided to wander on over here. A few months ago I stumbled across this blog: <a href=“http://admissionsproblems.■■■■■■■■■■/[/url]”>http://admissionsproblems.■■■■■■■■■■/</a> It’s ran by anonymous college admissions counselors. It’s really interesting to read, and I think that it would be beneficial to read it. We all want to get into the heads of admissions counselors, and here, we have the ability to. Good luck to you and your kids!</p>
<p>Drmom, I agree that all kids are different. To me, one of the benefits of the American educational system is that it allows for later bloomers. Sometimes it means finding the thing that ignites your passion, whatever it is – in high school, college or beyond. My older son (the 16er) is lucky in that his passions and abilities dovetail. My younger kid may have a more circuitous path–still yet to find those passions.</p>
<p>So I think build on the things he does like–summer jobs, camps, E/Cs, etc. And see if the passion is ignited, the academic piece may follow. But for some people, it doesn’t seem to happen until college (or maybe never with school itself), but they still carve out a successful life.</p>
<p>Folks on this thread have been mighty quiet for two weeks! </p>
<p>I’m looking for suggestions to fill DD’s summer. I am less interested in building her college resume (right now, at least :)) than in providing her with great life experience, so I’d love to hear what your S/D’16 plans to do. Like most of your kids, she won’t be driving in Summer 2013 but will be driving by Summer 2014. She will participate in some family travel, belong to a American Literature book group, practice the piano, continue her sport, and register for a required week-long dance camp. Sounds like a lot, but there will still be some long hours to fill. Love to hear your ideas…</p>
<p>D will take driver’s ed (though doesn’t get a license until 10/14), a week of traditional camp, continue her HS sport at the club level, travel with us, attend a week of theater camp. HS sport starts mid-August so her summer gets cut short. She’d like to help coach younger kids in her sport, but unsure if she will be needed.</p>
<p>She has really missed her older sister so I expect they will spend some time together.</p>
<p>D will probably do some lab work at the local U and probably do some short summer events in between.</p>
<p>S will likely go to a week of church camp and visit his aunts in Chicago. </p>
<p>He has also been trying to find a job off and on, grocery stores here are allowed to hire 14 yo’s to bag grocerys and carry them out. He has not had much luck. I imagine he may try harder over the summer. He turns 15 in May, so that may make him more marketable, or at least more able to work more hours then 14 year olds can.</p>
<p>H has not worked in his field for almost 3 years, so he has been job hunting. He has had a few nibbles recently. So, there may be an out of state move this summer to occupy S’16’s time.</p>
<p>EastGrad - thanks for the shout out! </p>
<p>This summer DS will do football camps and 2-a-day practices in Aug., second section of driver’s training and hopefully a STEM camp that I am hoping he gets accepted to. There may be other things but that is as far as I have gotten…for now ;)</p>
<p>All interesting activities…bajamm, hope those nibbles turn into bites. So nice, Dentmom, that younger d will be able to spend time with older d and that they want to! Texas, how’d you find the lab spot? Momma, it’s been a fun ride this year…looking forward to the next one–we could have more overlap…I have two more. 
</p>
<p>Love to hear more ideas from other '16 parents. Found a great community service activity tracking birds in a canyon close to us but they say they only take over 18s. Sent an email, but not too hopeful.</p>
<p>Funny how many on this thread have kids graduating in the 2013 thread … that applies to me too. We must have all followed the same playbook. 
I think many of us have been quiet because we’ve been trying to make sure our 2013 kids are dotting their “i’s” and crossing their “T’s” for where they are going to college next year. </p>
<p>My 2016 kid to CTY’s Intro to Biomedical Science last summer but this summer she’ll be staying local and doing some 1 week summer program at the local university to learn more about engineering or business. She has crossed off doing anything in the medical field after missing 2 weeks of school (right before Christmas) and spending 4 nights in the hospital, 4 emergency room visits, and several doctor visits. I suppose she got a good view of what goes on in the medical field and didn’t like what she saw or feel it was something she wanted to do anymore. </p>
<p>Anyway, now we’ll have her explore engineering and business (likely Finance) so that she can start narrowing her focus. My 2013 kid had things pretty well figured out by the end of her freshman year … my 2016 kid has many more options and will probably explore them all. That means more work for me. :(</p>
<p>Our summer seems very packed this year. S will be coming home for boarding school, staying home for two weeks, attending a close friend’s wedding. Then we are all off on a 3 week vacation. One week after we get back, S heads out to a CTY camp for 3 weeks. Comes back, has one week at home before heading back to school and band camp. Except for our vacation time, I am going to guess I am not really going to see him much :(</p>
<p>He loves CTY - has been there for the past few years with the same group of kids. Wants to do it again this year and didn’t really think too much about our other suggestions. I’ve told him that I’d go along this year, but he has to look at other options next summer. There was a cool mock trial academy camp that he would have liked, but it is running the same time we are on vacation.</p>
<p>In other news, spoke to S last night and he seems to be really taking to his new school. He is trying new things - joined the school newspaper and an acapella group. Has been invited to join an honors jazz band group. Recently went for a long weekend to a band festival and enjoyed himself a lot (so much that we didn’t hear a peep from him for the whole five days!). He seems to be becoming so much more independent and confident about his abilities/capabilities - which is fabulous, but at the same time, making me a bit sad 
Doesn’t seem to need me as much anymore :(</p>
<p>Wow! More families with kids in both c/o 2013 & 2016! I never thought it was THAT common until now. I love all the familiar faces here!</p>
<p>Yes, we’ve been busy with scholarship apps for D’13 … And worrying myself sick with the looming admissions decisions for her. <em>sigh</em></p>
<p>I’m a 2013+2016’er also! Hi 2013 peeps! For those who don’t know me, my DS13 will be going to University of Alabama - fell in love when we visited and was one and done with applications. He will be benefitting from their extremely generous scholarships for NMF’s and also for engineering students, leading to close to a full ride. It has been a wonderfully pleasant, stress-free experience. </p>
<p>Not thinking we are going to be quite so lucky with DS16 LOL. He is just as bright as DS13 but not as focused or committed yet, so we are having a bit more adjustment to high school issues with him. He does seem to be improving as the year goes on. We also have him taking a study skills class at a local college next week, we’ll see if that helps. He went on all of our college trips for older S, and says that as of now his first choice is Wash U. After seeing the crazy amount of wait list results there this week, though, I might try to gently nudge him in another direction LOL. We’ll see. So much will depend on how his grades and test scores shake out. He really liked Bama also but doesn’t like the warm weather as much as older S does, so that might not be a good choice for him.</p>
<p>As for summer activities, both my boys have gone to overnight camp since they were 9 years old. It is a huge part of their lives and they count down each year to when it starts. It is 7 weeks long, so as long as they are doing that there isn’t a whole lot of time for other activities. I kind of thought both of them would enjoy the CTY camps (both qualified), but nothing doing - they wouldn’t even discuss it. So summer will not be a college resume building time, which is fine with me. I love the camp and the lessons they learn there are invaluable, especially when it comes to going away to college, IMO. They will be at a huge advantage having regularly lived for an extended time away from home with other kids and needing to accommodate personalities, clean up after themselves, etc.</p>
<p>So that’s about it. Looking forward to getting to know a new group here!</p>
<p>D2 signed up for soph classes last week: she chose honors English 10, honors chem, Spanish 4, honors algebra 2, regular world history, choir, and theater/health. She is looking forward to no APs and no geometry! I didn’t tell her that chem is going to be a TON of work. D1 went through the same class so I remember.</p>
<p>Hi all! I am so glad to have some from the graduating class 2013 on here too. I forgot what this was called for a bit, so I couldnt find out how to get back on!!<br>
DS16 will be at a sleepaway camp for the end of the summer and has decided on joining marching band, so that will take up a few weeks more. I WISH I could get him to find some kind of job----I think if he could work a bit, it might light a fire under him to focus in school…but, he is also a late bloomer, and a late spring birthday. Not sure he’s even able to work before age 16 around here…in terms of classes, He wants to take Honors History and Chemistry, still deciding about Honors math (algebra 2) and will take English 2 (a college prep class not honors) and Latin 2. there is no honors in that class, but I think if there was, he’d be in it, he’s getting High A’s in that class. so, possibly 3 honors classes. I like the idea of taking him on some college tours and looking at some “stats”…not to scare him, but to let him begin to evaluate his own abilities and consider possibilities…</p>
<p>So for those that have gone thru the whole process already, what are some of the best activities for the summer at this point in their High School career?</p>
<p>My boys (twins s16) currently will be looking at volunteer work and thier soccer team practices. </p>
<p>What are some of the best volunteer work has your older children done? </p>
<p>Also, how are your 16 year kids preparing for the PSAT? </p>
<p>Some background of my boys: </p>
<p>Took SAT in 8th with enough to qualify for CTY but didn’t attend.
Grades, so far, haven’t been an issue. Top rankings for both with high GPAs.</p>
<p>One S16 is interested in medicine currently (strengths are in science)</p>
<p>Second S16 just hasn’t decided on anything (strengths are in english, history, math and science)</p>
<p>Trying to see how others have proceeded.</p>
<p>fflmaster - welcome. We’ve been through this with D (class of '11) and are going through this next with S (class of '16). With D, she pretty much did what she wanted to during summer. This included playing on summer basketball and softball teams and volunteering to work at a camp for special-needs kids. She loved sports and she really loved working with these kids - so she enjoyed her summers. She qualified for CTY classes, but refused to go there - no academics in the summer was her stance.</p>
<p>S on the other hand has attended CTY for several years now. He wanted to try it - once he did, he loved it! He has a huge group of friends there and they have a lot of fun - they even had a countdown to this year’s session beginning right after last year’s session concluded! I don’t count this as academic or resume building for him - he thinks of it as fun. He has explored different topics from writing fiction to cryptography to electrical engineering out there. I am trying to get him to try something different - but that’s going to have to wait until next summer.</p>
<p>Feel like I’ve kept my focus on the older sibling and only occasionally pop over here to see what y’all are chatting about. </p>
<p>Schedules - guess I forgot that that’ll be around the corner soon. Not even sure what choices will be on the plate since at this stage I think they’re still fulfilling graduation requirements more or less. Thanks for reminding me to have a chat with soon-to-be sophomore!</p>
<p>Hi everyone!</p>
<p>Another '13-'16 parent that isn’t even managing to keep up over there between illness and crunch time. At least we get a break. I just saw someone that has a '13 and '14er. Yikes!</p>
<p>Already done with soph schedules here.</p>
<p>Our kids called the shots with their summer activities too. A couple of them did very selective programs that they loved and probably helped with admissions, since S’13 seems to be following in D’10s footsteps. Two chose to be heavily involved with less prestigious activities but do not regret their decisions. S’16 will probably be somewhere in between. I really think the best volunteer work is whatever they want to do-that really show up later in the applications/ interviews too. My S’13’s SCEA admissions guy specifically talked about that in a couple of paragraphs he wrote to S on a congrats letter. What he did wasn’t so special, but it was local and meant a lot to him over the years. I really just watched our kids for interests and would help them find opportunities as needed. Most of the time they just drag us along kicking and screaming!</p>
<p>Preparing for the PSAT? Take it soph year and then some practice tests before the one junior year. Hey, it’s in the fall and we have to deal with the PSAT smack in the middle of fall sports and having to find another school to take it at because ours always schedules the PSAT during their post-season.</p>
<p>Wow, ffl…just saw you have twin boys? It’s challenging enough having two boys three years apart! (Although easier than it was having three teenaged girls at the same time!!!)</p>