@MotherOfDragons & @STEM2017 - Hey, I resemble those remarks!! 
@CT1417 School ends in~June 20 here, thatās why I was thinking June would get her through more material. Seh has APHUG in May.
Didnāt think about Bio, she is in honors Bio and will likely never take AP/IB bio. I may have her take a practice test and if she nails it canāt hurt to add.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek my freshman is all about the outdoors. Sheās good at science and math, but I totally see her being a park ranger, or environmental researcher or something out of doors.
I am still waiting for the money/prestige thing to hit the students/parents at Dās school! So many people in our upper middle class area are convinced they are going to get great packagesā¦Haha. Their kids will end up at an instate school with loans:)
@VickiSoCal ā I think my son felt that he had gotten through enough of the math by May, but obviously this differs across schools.
While it will cost more to take two subject tests on different dates, if she is thinking of Bio, she might want to take one in May and one in June, allowing her more time to dedicate to cramming for each. Son also knew he would not be going on to Bio. I donāt know if the Bio subject test is easier than the Chem subject test, or if our school curriculum lines up better with Bio, but more 9th graders take Bio SAT II than 10th graders take Chem SAT II, and it is mostly the same population of students who moved from Honors Bio to Honors Chem.
@vandyeyes Iām rooting for you! Good luck
I donāt think people are on the ball with subject tests at our school the first one that d17 took was chemistry as a sophomore and she didnāt know anyone else doing it. She ended up getting a 700 after the first year Iām sure if she took it now after two years it would be better but 700 was good enough.
@vandyeyes Fingers crossed for a good outcome at the ED school!!! Hope you donāt have too long to wait!
This thread will be going coo coo for cocoa puffs over the next few weeksā¦
@Mom2aphysicsgeek That was my world growing up. Physics was part of my world growing up the way music is in some households. One of my amusing childhood memories has to do with thinking Iād invented the big bang, and that quarks were the empty space a wine corks. I flitted with Physics in college, but decided a math degree was easier to get. And then ended up in computer science work after college.
@ our school those who are on science teams take SAT IIs early while others take them later. DS took 2 at the end of Sophomore year and one at the end of junior year. For diversity take he took 4th one in October of senior year.
Wow-- IDK if any of you follow RBF Purdue acceptance threat but a 35 ACT, 3.8 got a denial from Purdue. Not sure of intended major. Iāve heard of Tufts syndrome. So apparently here is Purdue syndrome also?
Fit versus Prestige. Probably as many nuances as there are kids/families. Seems to be it depends on a whole host of factors such as the kid involved, goals, family finances and schools involved. I know several people who are prestige at any and all costs no matter what. Kids go to highest ranked school that admits them. No questions asked even if kids may like a ālesserā university better. Large part of that from what I can tell is having identities that are tied up into their college (parents lead with college when they first meet someone though graduation was 30+ years ago). Seems to work for them (though that isnāt me).
I take a more practical approach. I have two high stats kids. Son two years ago got into several high prestige engineering schools. I told him unless he showed a real passion/desire to attend one school or another, he was going to state flagship. He didnāt and now goes to state flagship. Is doing very well. No regrets. Maybe he will pick more prestige if he goes to grad school. Up to him.
Daughter wants low paying career that requires grad school. Whatever she doesnāt spend of money we have saved on undergrad goes to grad school. She would rather graduate from grad school in her dream career with no debt than go anywhere prestigious for undergrad. Grad school is limited to state school because there arenāt very many in the country and out of state costs are huge. Works for her too.
Would it be cool to say my kid goes to X prestigious school (no bumper stickers in our family for anything)? Maybe. But why? Shallow reason it seems to me when kids are successful and doing what they want to do.
@jeepgirl āyes! I swear I am rooting on all of these kids but some of the parents just havenāt run the numbers.
The dad of one of the kids gunning for one of these schools was at a college presentation I did recently.
Looking at the EFC estimate/quick reference chart: āwaitā¦ Is this per YEAR?ā
Yep. Per year.
2 weeks later D tells me the child of this parent let it slip in class that mom and dad are refinancing the house. Wow. Iām hoping its for a different reason. But I do know the kid applied ED to a very $$ school and I think they are going to have a high EFC.
Oh well. Not my zoo. Not my monkeys. I just wholeheartedly want them all to be at a good school that is an affordable choice for their family!
@motherofdragons @vickisocal My DS took the math Sat2 in January when he was 1/2 way through AP calc. It was a quieter month, testing wise. Going against conventional wisdom, he thought having more math only helped. He learned quicker ways of doing things, which is always helpful on timed tests.
@carachel2 ā Tufts syndrome is something I fear, and what has prompted me to follow through on any real indicators of demonstrated interest (optional interview, optional LOR).
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Is your DS now applying to grad schools or is it next winter? I do not remember well. Maybe he decided to stay to pick up the master. Getting some journal papers out and published is always a good idea. It is REU and SULI application time.
@eandesmom I totally missed it!! Yaay!! Congratulations on Ursinus acceptance! and 24K merit! Thatās significant!
The class of 2013 class president is a senior there and looks very happy. Where does this school rank for your son? Top of the list? Bottom of the list? Somewhere in the middle?
Someone (sorry, lost track of who) asked an interested sidebar question upthread on the whole fit~prestige question: What makes a school prestigious?
This is worth exploring in a safeĀ® space like this thread, I think.
Iāve been participating at a low level on a couple other threads where people have been doing things like insisting that (to simplify, because itās easier to make it sound silly that way) we all know that, to pick a geographically-coherent example, Princeton is a better school than the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and USNWRās rankings reflect that, and so thatās evidence that USNWR gets things rightāwhich is why pretty much anybody who has the stats and can afford it would send their kid to Princeton if accepted to both.
My counterpoint is that for my D19 (who wonāt have the stats for Princeton, but even if she did), given her longstanding interests, which would result in her being in something like industrial design (if she heads more toward the art side of things) or industrial engineering (if she goes more with the STEM side), NJIT is actually the better school, since they offer both and Princeton offers neither.
Thatās perhaps an extreme example, but I think it speaks to the fit~prestige balance under discussion here. For my D19, the Ivies are utterly out of the prestige equation, because theyāre not prestigious in her fields of interest by virtue of being nonexistent in them. (Others here have mentioned similar things in discussing reactions to, e.g., Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.)
Anyway, though, back to where I started: What does āprestigeā mean, then, anyway? And is it a generalizable concept?
@eandesmom Congratulations on the Ursinus merit! <:-P
@happygolucky @MotherOfDragons @VickiSoCal I signed up Math 2 for S17 after Honors Precalculus in June. The school ended in May, 3 weeks before the test date. He took it cold and got 720. Made lots of silly mistakes. I signed him up for December test (6 months later, quiet month testing wise in Junior year) while he was in the middle of AP Calc BC. He took it again cold and got 800 easily. He said he finished with time left to review. If he had touched the test booklet once before the June test, it would have been sufficient. oh well.
Good luck to all of us next week for ED/EA outcomes :)>- :x :-bd $-)
Arenāt we all so much smarter with kid #2!!! Thanks for all the input.
Awaiting our one EA decision anxiously, hoping to hear by Friday.