D took the school SAT today and since she has only been focusing on the ACT which she took this past Saturday, she never opened a book to prep for the SAT. Well she just got home (I picked her up when it was over) and she said she thought it went really well and she may want to focus solely on the SAT. This is frustrating because I was hoping she would just focus on one test and in October she took a practice test for each and decided to just do ACT. I am now very curious which one she will actually do better on.
Huge congrats to your son @Ynotgo ā should be an amazing experience. Hopefully youāll let us know how it goes - we can live vicariously a bit 
@greeny8, S is also decided to focus solely on the SAT. Our school dist is opposite of yours. He took the ACT in March at school and came home saying that he didnāt want to try the ACT again; he wanted to take the new SAT. He is signed up for June. I will be curious to hear how your D does on the new SAT.
I hear everyone saying new SAT is easy. I wonder how steep the curve will be.
They may have difficulty discerning top SAT scorers.
We are only doing ACT.
@2muchquan You made me google 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States
Yup, NE is one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_of_the_United_States
The Midwest just never seemed very āwestā to me. Most of it seems pretty far east.
@CA1543 After reading the handbook with all its notes about not bringing a laptop and not having a cell phone turned on except during the elusive āfree timeā and little time to send email, Iām wondering if Iāll hear anything from him until the end of the 6 weeks. Perhaps a preview of fall 2017? Maybe I should have a talk with him about how 1 text every day or two would help mom cope? But, Iām hoping to spend some quality time with DC21.
Congrats to your son @ynotgo! But six weeks is a long time to go with only a few texts.
Iāve been out of town and just now reading up on posts. Way upthread there was talk about National Merit commended letters and the SI of 209 being the cutoff but I didnāt see the rest of the discussion. Can someone fill me in?
Still searching for that affordable college that checks off all of the boxes for ds. Ole Miss came pretty close but the stateās recent legislation and the realization that āitās in the southā took care of that school. sigh.
The fact that Washington D.C. is basically in the south will be our little secret.
@ynotgo I think I heard from ds 3 times while he was gone. Too busy and too much fun to think of home.
It did awesome things for his programming skills, though. It is really like jumping feet first into multiple intense college classes. The days are long with lots of homework. But, they go on lots of little trips and adventures, too. Ds made some great friends.
Fwiw, I think he is the only one not attending an elite school. There were a broad range of kids there. One young man was experiencing his first time w/o his manservant. :). There were international kids who attended elite boarding schools. There were several there on scholarship. Their list of college acceptances was pretty amazing. One of the girls was accepted to Stanford (I think it was Stanford) and turned it down for a Thiel Fellowship. (I havenāt asked him how it has gone!)
(It is a good thing that our ds is a realist and knows how tight our actual budget is, bc he never had any illusion that we would be able to afford to send him to a top school.)
@Ynotgo when the girls are at summer camp (which has similar rules about electronics) I asked them to send me a text each night basically telling me they were fine. It was like āim fine had fun loveyou gdniteā for three weeks, lol. It was enough for me to know they were in bed safe and had a good day.
I donāt know what Iāll do when theyāre in college-I canāt expect that from them, I think. Can I 
?
Re: the midwest.
Iāve always found this breakdown fascinating and accurate:
(Another link if you are trapped by the Washington Post Pay Wall)
http://www.npr.org/2013/11/11/244527860/forget-the-50-states-u-s-is-really-11-nations-says-author
(Better Still)
http://blogs.voanews.com/all-about-america/2015/08/05/is-america-actually-11-countries/
^^That was fascinating, Dave_N!
I did not know I was in Far West. I thought Far West was only California, etc
I always thought Northwestern was a strange name for a school in more or less in the East.
@greeny8, @mtrosemom and @payn4ward
Iām also curious to see which test will be better for my D. On the PSAT her math score was great (by my standards!), but her reading score was over 100 points lower. She did a decent amount (well, at least a little bit) of prep for last monthās SAT. She felt pretty good about it, though she ran out of time for the last two grid-in math questions. She wasnāt happy since you canāt guess on those!
My understanding about the ACT is that itās more knowledge/memory based. I think this may be better for her, but who knows. Sheāll be taking the ACT in school next Tuesday and the only real prep sheās done was a one day session at her school. Iām insisting that she at least do a couple of practice tests so sheāll have a better idea of what to expect and how to pace herself.
I am so anxious to see the scores from both tests. I want to see which she does better on and get an idea of which schools are matches in terms of testing stats.
Far West is a USSA designated ski region that mainly focuses on California with a couple of teams from Nevada. Some great Olympic and World Cup skiers have come from the Far West region
I guess Far East and Mideast are already taken, too.
@snoozn Just an FYI, on the re-designed SAT there is no longer a penalty for guessing. That was one of the changes incorporated. Overall, Iāve heard itās much more like the ACT. I donāt look at this stuff closely, so Iām just going by what Iāve heard.
@snoozn In re-designed SAT, there are 4 answer choices, one less choice than in old SAT.
Off to my dsās college fair tonight. More than 175 universities - what exactly can one accomplish in two hours with 175 universities?? I need a napā¦
Ha! @crazym0m, hereās a hint: Donāt stop at each booth! Start with the ones on your list. 