Parents of the HS Class of 2017 - 3.0 to 3.4 GPA

Parents Forum
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@eandesmom, you’re way ahead of me. We’ve only sent a few schools the “free scores” and I am going to have to look up who’s gotten what from the two SATs and one ACT. I’m trying to decide whether to send both SAT and ACT to every school or not. The scores are pretty much equivalent, but the ACT seems a bit “safer” right now. I haven’t even thought about FAFSA or CSS-Profile yet.

@coloradomom2015, wow, congrats on whittling a list of 400 down to something so manageable! I’ve never had to deal with huge starting lists because older D and D17 both wanted pretty specific concentrations within their majors. S18 does as well, so it looks like I’ll never be starting with a “yuuuuuge” list. :smiley:

My D is in exactly the same place with CU (except it’s closer to home!) She likes CSU better, but has decided to leave CU on the list, I suppose as a “just-in-case” choice. CU is where she’s taking her concurrent enrollment classes, so I’ll be interested to see if her thoughts on the school change any.

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@techmom99 good question! I actually expect it to fall off to be honest. It’s on there as a backup/alternative. Basically S17 loved UPS but wants out of the PNW and has identified some target geographic areas. McDaniel, to an extent, fits the bill plus it’s a safety school. That said, there are others in that bucket and I expect only 1-2 to survive so it will be a choice between Allegheny, Ursinus, McDaniel, Juniata and UPS and my gut is both McDaniel and Juniata will be cut early. Lawrence is our spam LAC lol. It’s a lovely school but not geographically where S wants. That said I would like him to apply to at least one more “close” by just as a back up if he all of a sudden has panic about going that far away. I don’t think he will but you never know!

I’d have to agree with @snoozn on the essay versus paper question unless you really feel the paper gives the college a “feel” for your kids personality.

@curiositycat333 I thought of you this week as a 2016 kid, who I had no idea was attending, “checked in” to Humboldt. I was super surprised to be honest, wouldn’t have called that one at all although the WUE cost is pretty attractive for kids from here.

@snoozn we didn’t do any free scores and while I kind of wish we had, the only one it would have been useful at is WWU. I am not sure that there is a single school outside of that, which is still on the list. At that point S had no idea really and he’d have sent them to schools that have been cut and we’d be getting spam. LOL! Glad we didn’t even if it does up the cost a bit. I confess I was looking at “reach” schools all last night and while I can find so many many lovely ones, they just don’t pencil $ to even apply. I really hope the NCP thing isn’t an issue at Goucher, that was pretty icky to realize last night that I do have to deal with it after all. I need to go back and look at their NPC and see what was even considered aid and what was merit.

@coloradomom2015 congrats on a great list!!! that is quite the variety you have there how nice to have it narrowed down.

@mamaedefamilia while we do know quite a few that attend, as you might expect, everyone we know loves it. Most kids around here choose it as an alternative to the flagship as they don’t want the huge flagship experience and prefer the smaller non sports option at Western. It’s always interesting to see what OOS schools have higher matriculation from the HS. At the end of the day I won’t be at all surprised if S ends up there.

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@snoozn and @eandesmom -

The paper is actually pretty good. It’s about protest music of the 60’s in the context of civil rights, women’s rights and the anti-war movement. However, I told S17 that he has to do the essays or else just apply to community college. There are 2 CC’s near us that offer the program he wants but in AA form and I am going to check into whether or not he can transfer the AA to a 4 year degree in the same field. I’m hoping that he will write the essays but I can’t force him.

As of now, his list of schools is

SUNY Purchase
SUNY Fredonia
LIU-Post
CUNY Brooklyn

He is deciding if he’s interested in:

UNCSA
Temple
SUNY Oswego
SUNY Oneonta
Otterbein
UArts
Pace

He probably needs to add some schools to his list.

All of the non-SUNY/CUNY schools are financial reaches for us and will depend on scholarships and FA. FA is tricky because I have one son who is currently a junior at a SUNY, but may transfer down to a CUNY and may not be able to bring all of his credits, so I don’t know if he’ll still be in college when S17 starts. I have another son who is at a community college now and may either be still there or at a 4 year school, so it’s really hard to know how many I may have in school. Both of the older boys will be under 24 when S17 starts college so they will count in my numbers.

His interest is in theater tech. I wish he’d go for stage management but he prefers to build and problem solve. His second interest is in psychology. He isn’t certain about BFA v. BA but the portfolio issue may decide it to the BA.

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@techmom99 my general philosophy is to assume that S17 is the only kid in school when running the NPC’s. While he will have 2 years of overlap with his brother and there is a slim outside chance a few profile schools may consider his stepsister as a kid in college, either way it won’t be for all 4 years and thus not a “discount” I can count on. Conservative, yes but safer.

Tech and stage management are pretty different roles and often quite different personalities so I can understand him not wanting SM, I know my child has zero interest in that role although he has been asked to be ASM in the past which would then move him into SM for senior year.

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@techmom99 From what I know about SUNY Purchase that would probably be a good school. As I said I’m assuming he’s not looking in LA. I have a friend from H.S. who went into lighting & design. I believe he ended up with a masters from Cal Arts & got his undergraduate from Cal State Long Beach. Both would be good schools but probably a reach to get in, plus the extra cost for travel to the other coast and for OOS at Long Beach. (Cal Arts is a private arts school wth private school costs.) But both are excellent in theater tech.

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School start tomorrow for S17. Finally got his final schedule. He got the teacher he loved for Geometry in 8th grade for Comp Science. He is the department head and good. Overall the schedule looks great. But he has spend the ENTIRE DAY today finishing his AP Physics homework. Guess it’s harder than he thought it would be. Certainly more time consuming.

We also talked schedule for college apps. Plan is to apply EC at Oregon State, so fill in their insight essay & application before Nov 1st. (The only thing complicated it the insight essay.) Cal State & UC’s done by the end of Thanksgiving weekend. We have decided not to travel for the holiday and invited my in-laws. (I realized afterwards MIL would make an excellent essay coach.) And UofO and U of Colorado Bolder by end of X-mas vacation. Those last two are the only that need letters from the teacher and a traditional college essay. He’s not going for merit or Engineering at either place… so as long as it’s in by the Jan 15th deadline he should be fine. I’m still holding out he’ll add Colorado State or maybe some other school that come across his path this fall. But he told me today the list is final.

Band will keep him super busy till the 2nd week in November and he really doesn’t do well working a long time ahead. So I’m going to push my luck and not push him. It’s like this AP homework, he’s been working but not working on it since he’s been home from camp. Projects like this tend to fill all available time, and we would both be miserable if I push on this too hard till then.

And he still doesn’t have the online health complete but he thinks he can finish by next week. It doesn’t really have to be finished till Nov sometime. But I’d like it out of the way.

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OMG! Her counselor put her in ceramics instead of foreign language. Apparently there’s a conflict. Also apparently the counselor can’t figure out where the conflict is since “the computer” schedules everything. It will have to be done manually when school starts since no one seems to know what class is what period. I’m in shock from the stupidity.

In the meantime, my angel says she’d rather take ceramics anyway and the counselor turns to me and tells me not to be so pushy because she only needs 2 years of foreign language to graduate. I’m afraid I lost my composure and raised my voice…not that it helped, I just had to apologize. Can’t have her counselor recommendation screwed up over this.

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@“Queen’s Mom” Don’t beat yourself up. We all loose our cool sometimes in these situations.

Perhaps it’s like our school. Students get their “unofficial” schedule a week ahead but it has not class periods or teachers assigned. Partly so students & parents can’t complain. But perhaps the counselor don’t really know?? IDK that doesn’t make sense either… since I KNOW my son’s counselor last year could fiddle with his schedule because of his 504.

What year Spanish is she taking? What does she want to study at university. My son’t not taking 4th year Spanish for a few reason this year. I’ve seen this happen to student senior year, where some class has to break because they schedule just won’t work. Some classes are only taught one or two periods.

I’m surprised you got to even talk with the counselor. Our school is VERY INSISTENT that the student try to clear this stuff up by themselves before they bring in mom & dad.

729

I went in because I didn’t believe that she couldn’t figure out what class was causing the problem. I thought it was a misunderstanding. I was wrong. She’s planning to major in English or creative writing so I guess as long as AP lit is in the schedule the rest will just have to do.

730

@curiositycat333 -

The West Coast is not feasible for us. I have been following the threads on California OOS tuition and the relative lack of FA. It’s just not doable.

My latest thought is to let S17 go to community college for the first 2 years and get an AA in technical theater. SInce the CC is a SUNY, it might be possible for him to transfer into Purchase without having to sweat the lack of algebra 2 and physics and with the opportunity to prepare a portfolio from his college work. A friend of my boys’ is in the program now and speaks very highly of it. I am going to contact both Purchase and the CC and find out how many students apply to transfer into Purchase’s program and how many are accepted. I did a comparison of course equivalencies to Purchase’s BFA and more than half of the classes transfer straight out and the rest have equivalencies that look as if they can transfer. Plus, he can get his gen eds out of the way.

It might seem like the easy way out but this way he can take the AP Science class he wants without worrying about the grade, just the test score and he can just enjoy his senior year. I am going to present this idea to him after I check on the transfer rates and after the September ACT - I am hoping that he will score high enough to avoid remedial math because it’s a waste of money.

Another plus for the cc is that if he is home, he may be able to get a job with a friend of D’s who runs a lighting and production company.

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@eandesmom - Yet another invitation arrived from McDaniel today. I can’t tell if it’s a free app or not, if it is, I might let him do it although it doesn’t really seem to be what he is looking for. A friend’s son is very happy there but he loves to write. For my son, writing is like pulling teeth without novocain though, ironically, he has a good talent for putting phrases together.

732

@“Queen’s Mom” – GCs can be so frustrating at times, but we need to play nice for the next 6 months :slight_smile: One thing I’ve learned from our college search process is that the minimum courses a HS requires for graduation may only be sufficient if your child plans to go to a public college in your state. I don’t believe there is a public college in our state that would accept a student with 2 yrs FL – the minimum is 3 – but a few OOS we’ve researched only require 2 yrs. S17 has been shut out of some of our state publics because he only took the minimum 3 yrs FL & they “recommend” 4 or even 5.

While S17 was in camp I e-mailed back & forth with the GC for a week about his schedule – it was so frustrating. First she recommended non core electives to replace the S/S elective, then I had to ask which core academic classes were available, & finally what AP courses were available. S17 went in to speak to her because he was annoyed by the fact she refused to supply a list of what was available, but they finally worked out his schedule (which we will receive on Thursday).

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@techmom99 You could wait to decide. Have his apply to a few schools. See if he gets in at Purchase. If not consider the CC decision.

My local CC’s are very very good. It’s really a good option for many kids. Plus CA CC’s offer some of the easiest way into the top UC’s. There are disadvantages like the courses are impacted, and such. But I’ve known quite a number of determined you adults who have made that route work well.

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@curiositycat333 -

I’ve seen the phrase impacted major on the site, but I don’t know what it means. If it means that only a certain number of students can take the major, I don’t think that applies to the CC’s in NY. The CC I am thinking of doesn’t offer every major, but it does offer theater tech and psych and it offers two years of ASL, which are all things he’s interested in.

I am going to have him apply to Purchase and some other schools. However, I was going to wait on the CC until he either was rejected from other schools or we couldn’t pay for any of them. Now, I think maybe he should apply to the CC going in and have that in his pocket.

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@techmom99, my local cc has an honors program which is considered good. Quite a few kids from there transfer into the state flagship with (apparently) no loss of credit. I think when it comes to CCs there’s just so much local variation. That it would be hard to advise you. I would be fine with a child at my local CC, the next county over, not so much.

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@techmom99 An impacted major is one where there is more interest for the major than spaces available. Therefore the school can’t let everyone into the major (or pre-major) who would like to take the course of study even if they have gained entrance to the university.

I don’t know about in NY but applications to our local CC is done very differently than 4-year schools. Bottom line is it’s more of a registration than application. (Anyone who has graduated from H.S. can attend.) But they do have a very simple application/registration for the students, and a simple process for who are coming in straight from H.S. But it’s not until sometime in the spring. Lots of time to hear from other schools first.

737

First official college expense beyond sending scores! Bought S17 a new laptop. S17 and S19 have been sharing a mac that is now 6 years old and painfully painfully slow. I’m a bit of a mac hater as it is and the thing drives me nuts. We’ve been fighting with it all school year and summer and I had been thinking I needed to do something about it. S texted me last week asking if we could maybe talk about his college laptop, due to the mac situation but was pretty shocked when I moved on it and ordered one the same day! It is not what I would have chosen to be honest, I’ve gone ultra light (external CD drive, limited ports etc) and cloud based personally as I travel a lot for work. I worry it’s a bit big and heavy to haul around and it may be revisited. But in the meantime it’s seems to be a solid performer, has great reviews and is a significant upgrade for him and he is happy. Plus he doesn’t have to share with his brother! It does mean he spent most of yesterday setting it up versus homework but, did spend the rest of the day on summer homework. He has definitely knuckled down on it this week and I feel good about it getting done. It doesn’t mean there won’t be night before stress but he is chopping away at all 3 classes that have it.

Somewhat related, I also bought a new printer. Ours had been dying a slow death for 2 years. I struggled with this one as we’ve always had a multi function but this time I decided to go for a laser printer. I’ve had it with the slow jet printers and constant ink replacement and ones that refuse to perform if out of one color even if you are only trying to rpint in black and white. I miss the scan and copy functions already (but was NOT willing to pay laser multi function printer prices for a home printer lol) but oh, it is SO nice to have uber fast beautiful printing! I can print from my PHONE. It is so stinking cool. Lol. It’s the little things. Seriously though, it’s going to remove a lot of homework stress that revolved around fighting with the printer last year.

@curiositycat333 that sounds like a good plan all around app wise, you are ahead of us with a “final” list and plan. We are still in 2nd draft CA essay phase and…that’s it so far! We did discuss LOR’s yesterday and that he needs to ask basically on day 1 of school so he recognizes that he needs to 1) firm up the list 2) get his activities updated into Naviance’s resume and tweak the resume I made him (yeah I made him one, I KNOW he will forget stuff that should be mentioned and3) use the one I made him as a cheat sheet for both Naviance version and the CA activities session. realistically that is about all I expect to be done if I am lucky by the time school starts in 2 weeks. I am glad your S’s schedule worked out well, S17’s looks good. A few small disappointments, he didn’t get the beloved math teacher (but the one he did get is good) and did not get the one PE class he wanted (apparently every senior wants that one and not all get it) but other than that it’s exactly what was expected. He will have more homework than last year he thinks and it will be a harder load. Upon seeing it on paper he did remark that maybe getting some of this app stuff done now wasn’t the worst idea everl LOL! I did help him put in request for days off for work the next 2 months, it was a bit overwhelming to him to figure out where all his conflicts were with band and tech.

@“Queen’s Mom” I too am impressed they let you go with her. I would have been very very frustrated by the FL remark. Most kids would prefer ceramics (is that a year long class??) over a 3rd year of FL. I know that most colleges around here want to see 3 even if that’s more than required for graduation and many prefer 4. I would look over your college list and see what they list before really signing off on the plan if it’s not too late. Even though she may not need it for her major, it could be an application hinderance or could require her to take FL in college, depending on the school. Some will waive FL as part of the core if you test out, some require it regardless and some it will be based on level achieved in HS so I would check it out. It may be fine, I’d just want to know.

@techmom99 I’d check your mailer, if there is a waiver it should say there somewhere. While some LAC’s are no fee to apply schools, I don’t show McDaniel as being one of them. They do offer a theater arts degree with an emphasis on the production side. It is part of why it made the list, as it does offer S’s major, has music and tech options. It might be good to at least visit or apply just so you are considering an LAC option as well in your mix. I’d run their NPC first though, ours showed a decent merit award. I don’t know if it’s close enough for you to easily visit but I did see this on their home page today. Personally I think some of the CTCL schools (McDaniel is one) are magical for this gpa and test range, very nurturing and I really really wish we’d met with McDaniel at the CTCL fair. For some reason I mixed it up in my head with another school, thought it was in a different location and smaller than it is (it is small mind you but not as small as I thought) and S called it good after visiting 4 schools.

*Visit Early and Waive Your Application Fee
We believe that seeing the campus is so important that we will waive your application fee if you schedule an official visit to the campus through the Admissions Office before you apply for admission. It’s our way to encourage you to explore our vibrant community and discover for yourself if McDaniel is right fit for your college years.

Registration is required for all programs and is limited to the student and two guests.

Please contact the Office of Admissions at 800-638-5005 or e-mail us to schedule your visit. Please include your full name and address, current high school and enrollment term so we can better serve you.*

I don’t see a thing on there about specific HS course requirements for admission so the math situation may be a non issue.

As for CC, at least around here, there really isn’t a rush to apply it is definitely something that can wait. For theater tech I think both of our local ones are fairly strong and two of our directional colleges (one in my state and one in the next that has an exchange program) are known for that area in particular. I know kids transferring into the 4 year program from the CC with no issues and doing it really for financial reasons. That said I do think if you go the CC route first, which is a great way to go, it is important to really map out the courses taken and ensure they will transfer the way you want them to, to the 4 year college.

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@endesmom LOL to your being a MAC hatter comment. I’m a long time mac user, but I’ve moved to using a PC for work stuff. It drives me nuts. It’s always selecting things I don’t like. I’m double clicking to select a word, and it selects my whole line. Stuff like that. IDK what I’m doing… Windows 10 is a lot better than Windows 8, but still drives me nuts. Gives me a computer based on unix any day.

As to computer for the kid. He’s really quite frugal. I suggested he needed a new laptop a few weeks back. (I bought him his current one in junior high.) He’s taking AP Comp Science and will need his computer for school work more. (We bought a new computer for my DD as a graduation present.) But he didn’t want to move from Windows 7 and likes his computer. IDK. He was the only one on Windows in the house till recently. But it had a few broken keys, so we bought it a new keyboard & replaced it yesterday. (Didn’t work out great – keyboard came from China with the F4 key broken. :frowning: and I don’t want to bother with the headache of returning it.)

S17 just woke himself off, make himself lunch and drove himself to school. He didn’t need me, I woke up early because I was worrying about a work thing… I didn’t even try to ask to take a picture of him on his first day of school. I hope it all goes well for him this year.

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S17 and I just came from a workshop at the HS on common app and Naviance and linking the two, etc.

I asked the Head of Guidance about not having alg 2/trig and he said that for the type of schools and programs S17 is looking at, it’s probably not an issue but that it could be at schools like NYU/Tisch and higher academic schools where they are looking at gpa first and talent/potential second.

S17 was interested in the community college idea as well. It’s not going to he his only app, but it will be his fallback because it’s open admission and the programs aren’t limited. Even if it is, he will apply and declare early so he’s not shut out.

Now, it’s get past the ACT, the road test and H’s knee replacement surgery…

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@techmom99 My experience in looking at the more art/theater type programs is the same. Not all require that alg 2 class. Did manage to get DD through a year of Alg 2 ‘lite’. But I do know many of the schools on her list it wasn’t necessary. And she graduated university with only one additional math class. (And I encouraged her to take Physics as her science class, what was I thinking???)

Just thought about the plan S17 & I made yesterday. The one problem with it is if he does get into OSU, he might not be motivated to work on the UofO or UC Boulder App. But then… OSU & UCSC are my top choices for him, so I guess that wouldn’t be a terrible loss. I guess we will just have to see.