Congrats @crazym0m
@SincererLove - My S was a finalist not a winner. 101 kids were selected as finalists and was invited to the St. Louis and 10 were selected as Deanās List winners.
Thanks everyone! I was amazed at how fun the FRC competitions are. My dsās team is also a rookie team and there is a certain amount of luck - not in the actual robot building and competition - but in the alliance selections. My sonās team seemed to have lady luck behind them every competition and then performed really well when given the opportunity. DS had absolutely no time to do FRC but he did it anyway because āit was fun.ā Sigh. I guess he can sleep when heās an old manā¦
Have a great week and @felicita, we can spend our time worrying about when our kids will find time to study! Ha!
Dd did FLL for three years and loved it. She has to make a choice between extracurriculars in high school and decided to drop robotics.
Back to the discussion of number of applicationsā
Dd has narrowed her list down to a solid 9 schools! Three of them are Arabic Flagships: Arizona, Maryland, and Oklahoma. Maryland does not have the IR courses sheād like to take, nor is it affordable without their highest scholarships. Sheās keeping it on the list as a easy practice visit for getting to know a Flagship before we fly around the country to visit the other two. The non-Flagship schools (American, George Mason, George Washington, Mississippi, Ohio State) have the most Arabic offerings combined with very strong opportunities in IR concentrations like intelligence, security, and diplomacy. And she has to apply to our state flagship where she currently studies Arabic.
Note: we did not look at schools like the UCs and Texas schools (unaffordable OOS) nor did she consider schools without merit aid whose NPCs show they are out of our range (Georgetown, Tufts, Penn, Yale). She decided against applying to Harvard, though that could change under the influence of a MUN friend who was admitted early this year.
Much relief that there is a path forward! Sheās excited to dig deeper with the departments 
@WhereIsMyKindle I donāt know the real answer to this question but I would suspect if your dd wants to be in intelligence/security/diplomacy that schools closely located to D.C. (Maryland, George Mason, GW, & American) would be most attractive for job prospects out of college as well as possible co-op/internships. Althoughā¦ there is not a lot of āintelligenceā coming out of D.C. latelyā¦ I digressā¦
@crazym0m Actually, there are schools around the country where intelligence agencies recruit. When we were at UIUC they said that their Russian literature majors were recruited for analyst jobs.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek That makes sense. They obviously want the kids who are best prepared for their line of work. I just know those schools in and around D.C. are feeder schools for all of that too and make it easier to find internships because of the ideal location. When my husband and I were graduating from a school closeish to D.C., we had to go out of our way to be placed in Atlanta to get away from all the government stuff - companies just assumed we would want D.C. because we were close.
@WhereIsMyKindle I think I missed before that your D is studying Arabic. How many years has she studied the language? My D is serios about learning Arabic, which is only somewhat a surprise to me since she likes languages and has always wanted to pick up another one. I spent a lot of time over the weekend reevaluating her list and came to some of the same conclusions as you as to the best options. Maryland seems to be the best option. For us too, she would need win one of the Banner-Key scholarships. She really likes Maryland after spending last summer at another college there. Ole Miss seems to be the next best option since they have the flagship program without the name and there are many ways to get enough scholarships for it to be affordable. The problem there is she is very resistant to going to college in Mississippi due to concerns about racism. We were not going to visit any more colleges but since Ole Miss is one of only 3 schools that meets most of her criteria, weāll have to visit to get her excited about the possibility of going there. Then in 3rd place is Ohio State, which has many scholarships. OU would br great as well, but will only work if she makes NMF as they have few other OOS scholarships. To make a 2 languages program work, sheās really going to need a full ride or very close to it as it seems Iām going to have to fund a lot of study abroad out of pocket.
So instead of narrowing down the list, it actually grew!
I look forward to getting your impressions about Maryland after you visit. It looks like an amazing place for top students.
@WhereIsMyKindle, I donāt want to repeat myself, but you may want to go back and look at my post #2979 regarding Arabic and intelligence work. I will add that my D11ās friend (the Russian major) was recruited for the CIA internship from St. Olaf, so you certainly donāt need to be in the DC area (though it may help). My niece started at the CIA after getting her masters from London School of Economics. Let me know if your D may have any questions about intelligence work that I could ask my niece.
@crazym0m American and George Washington definitely have the edge on part-time internships taken during a āregularā semester. In fact, American made a Big Deal over that when we were at the SIS visit day.
Maryland would not work that well because the student would (1) need a lot of time for commuting and (2) need a car. Parking would be so expensive!
George Mason runs a shuttle bus to the nearest metro station, the end of the orange line. Commuting would consume so much time.
The neat thing about Flagships schools (for any language) is that both study abroad and internships are integrated into the program. Students study abroad during summers for language acquisitionāthatās how someone gets from no knowledge to Advanced rating in four academic years. The Capstone Year abroad, usually taken as a fifth year though dd could do it during her senior year, consists of two internships conducted in the language of study. Government agencies and NGOs are popular employers. At the end of the Capstone Year, students officially become Flagship graduates if they score at the Superior level in the language.
As has been said, Mississippi has almost a Flagship in Arabic (they have a Chinese one). The Croft program in IR is a very strong draw for dd. Weāll see how she feels after this summer.
Ohio State is a compromise on the Arabic front. Their International Studies program has great internship and job placement histories. Itās also ranked in the top 25 US undergraduate institutions by Foreign Policy.
This is ddās second year studying Arabic, though sheās compressed a lot of study in that time! Last academic year she took a typical high school Arabic 1 class (online w live meetings, because she homeschools). Last summer she attended Concordia for the four-week high school credit program (high school Arabic 2, essentially). She tested into second semester Arabic at the university here and is finishing up the third semester class. Her speaking is Intermediate-Mid while her writing is Intermediate-Low and her listening is pretty close to Intermediate-Mid. Unfortunately the university will not be offering the Advanced Grammar and Conversation class she needs next semester 
Weāre going to need to find a tutor to help her progress through the next book in the Al-Kitaab sequence in hopes that a situable class will be scheduled for the spring semester.
D has massive doubts about Ole Miss in light of the legislation just passed. I try to stay away from political topics online, but I feel it could be a deal-breaker for her. Sheāll be there this summer for the Summer College. I expect sheāll come home either loving or hating it lol Sure will be an inexpensive way to find out, just the cost of books and transportation and a smidge of spending money! (Her ACT qualifies her for free tuition, room and board.)
Re study abroad financing----there are many competitive merit-based scholarships for critical languages like Arabic. D will be applying to everything possible! Look at the Boren and Critical Language Scholarships (CLS) for example. A student in the Arabic class above D will be studying in Morocco on a CLS this summer.
Thanks for the offer @snoozn Iāll keep it in mind!
@WhereIsMyKindle I also try to stay away from political topics, so Iāll have see what the new legislation is about. Ole Missās summer programs look great. Too late for my D, however, as sheās already accepted 1 and has 2 more apps out. Iām not so much concerned about the Arabic study abroad financing due to scholarships. But if she does Arabic and Spanish, the only way to make it work is for her to spend the breaks (winter intersessions) studying abroad to work on her Spanish. They are pretty pricey and there are not as many scholarships for those trips. She will definitely be applying to all scholarship possibilities.
I see that itās the anti-LGBT legislation. sigh If it is not repealed soon, that is pretty much going to be a deal breaker for my D.
Congrats @crazym0m 's kid! Younger Dās team didnāt make it past the regional finals this year, so Iām sort of privately relieved that itās not eating into all the tests/finals/etc that are coming up for her. I donāt know if sheās going to continue with it next year-she goes back and forth.
girls are back at school today since spring breakās over-so sad!
D17ās spring break starts on 4/18.
Boo. We registered for Bryn Mawrās info session and the campus tour then created the whole east coast college tour from there. Last night, Bryn Mawr contacted my D saying, āSorry, we have the admitted students day event that day and we wonāt be offering info session/tour. Please rearrange your visit.ā
Grrr. Why did they allow us to register for that day then???
Too late. We already booked the flights and the hotels that are non-refundable. D17 might as well crash the event pretending to be one of the admitted students. Maybe that will give her some idea of what kind of kids are attracted to the school. We might score some free food.
The more I think about it, this might be better than cookie cutter session and tour. Itās still frustrating, though.
Thanks, @srk2017 ! We are in MN, actually, but our traveling team competes with teams from CA. This was his first year on the Speech team and S17 is auditioning today to be on traveling Speech for next year. We have to find out more about the schedule, since heāll be so busy next fall, and see if he can actually fit it inā¦ Heās enjoyed the winter team, which is all pretty local, and just makes for some very long Saturdays for him. He especially liked getting to know the students from the other teams in the Twin Cities area, as they seem to have a lot in common.
Congrats to your S17 and good luck in his Science Olympiad State Tournament!! Iām a second generation Californian, and although weāve moved here 20 yrs ago, CA is still āhomeā to me! We were just in Laguna Beach for spring break. Weather was gorgeous! Are you in No CA or So CA?
@morningside95 - Looks like we have few things in common besides S17s:-) I lived in MN during 1990-1991 (Mankato). We are in NorCal now. . Our school has no travelling team for S&D. only competes in local and bay area invitationals (Logan, Berkeley and Stanford). I heard one school in MN has great S&D program.
Typically lot of seniors donāt compete that much in Fall due to application deadlines,
My son got accepted to the Summer Science Program (SSP) in Boulder!! So excited for him, but heāll be away from home for 6 weeks this summer. He can see aunt, uncle, and cousins near Denver, before or after though.
I guess heāll be turning down a similar, but new, program at Yale because SSP is more well known. But, the Yale one did sound like an interesting program (and was only 4 weeks away from home).
Congratulations @Ynotgo!