SD14 played soccer and went through the whole recruiting nightmare for D1, D2. At the end of the day while she was good, she didn’t have the drive to really market herself do the D1 schools and complete for those spots. it’s an incredibly aggressive endeavor for most of those kids and it requires them to drive it. She drove…just not as hard as some others. However during the process she fell in love with a school that had recruited her. While they didn’t offer her a spot on the team, she chose the school over a spot on a couple of other teams/schools where she could have played. Instead she plays for the schools club team, which is full of D1 caliber girls that didn’t quite make the cut. Or chose not to. Honestly I am glad, she’s not on a team of 36, with little to no athletic money, sitting on a bench. She gets to play and focus on school. Win win.
S19 runs. He’s a middle of the packers (who was a back of the packer so you never know). Currently XC and Track. I don’t expect him to run in college but you never know. He does run year round and it’s a ton of fun as we can do races together.
SS11 had the ability, hated the jock mentality and opted out of sports after freshman year football and basketball.
S17…hates sports and running. With a passion. He’s a busy kid and extremely lean but we would love more movement than the occasional hike. He is a second degree international black belt in TKD but gave that up due to time conflicts with music and theater and did do one season each of HS tennis and swim…to hopefully get a PE waiver for next year. We don’t know yet if that paid off.
As for AP Stats. It is a math credit but not considered on the 4 year college path unless you are doubling up or out of math which given that we require a full year of AB calculus, doesn’t happen. It is generally viewed as an alternative to Calc for those who aren’t STEM focused and don’t want calc. Or want to double up.
“Does anyone have a sports kid?”
Yes, DD has been doing ballet since 5. Ha ha! Not trying to start a debate since many people wouldn’t call ballet a sport. But all the ballerinas at DD’s pre-professional ballet school would say it’s harder than sport.
@4beardolls I just watched “Black Swan”, and it seems pretty intense to me. Hey, they call ‘golf’ a sport, so why not ballet?
@TimEnchanter Wow, 27 hours in the gym. The gyms around here that are really hard-core go for about 25 hours a week! My D20 is in the gym for 17 hours. We’re off to Lexington L8 regionals tomorrow! Very exited to get away from the Midwest for a couple of days…KY is not considered to be part of the Midwest, right? :))
@2muchquan Good luck at Regionals this weekend! D19 qualified for Westerns last weekend, so we are heading to Missoula, Montana in two weeks. She had elbow surgery last March and didn’t get full clearance to train until November, so she was only able to compete all four events a week before state. She was so happy to make it to Westerns, especially from an age group that had 26 girls in it.
@4beardolls , Totally agree! My D13 danced ballet until 16. She wanted to become a professional ballet dancer attending pre-professional school and summer intensive etc. but she realized she didn’t have what it takes to become one, especially the body type. It is a pretty harsh world where your passion, hard work or even talent is not good enough.
^^@HiToWaMom, I could have written every single word in your post. My D did the company and summer intensive every year. At 10th grade, she finally decided to quit company and just do lessons 3x per week. That was a wise decision as it enabled her to focus more on academic instead of chasing the ever elusive dream in the harshly competitive ballet world.
I’m another ballet parent! By not attending any intensives last summer in favor of Concordia Language Villages, D essentially took herself off the hyper-competitive track at her pre pro company. As she says, there are so many other interesting things to do than just ballet
We are considering not having D take any math next year (she’s in Calc AB this year) to allow her to study a second language at the university. As homeschoolers we have much flexibility in course selection! Languages and political sciences “fit” D much more than maths and sciences. She’s still quite good at math and science but they don’t evoke any excitement or passion like they used to.
“I am amazed at how well she balances school and gym.”
I saw that kids who were really involved in sports and had a passion for their sport were extremely good at time management and also were very organized. It is a skill that has served my D15 very well in college.
I’ve never thought of any of my kids as “sports kids” but now that we’re talking dancing…
D11 has been dancing since she was 4 and is now a senior dance major. She’s at a school where the focus is on modern and West African dance. She is not a ballet fan (partly because of the super-competitive harsh climate of the ballet world) and luckily I think she only had to take one or two ballet classes. Right now she is loving hip-hop. Her main passion though is tribal fusion and Middle-eastern dance. Perhaps not a sport, but between college dance classes and outside dance classes and teaching and practicing, she seems to never not be moving.
D17 likewise has no interest in competitive sports. She’s been at the same wonderful Brazilian jiu-jitsu studio since she was 8 and fills her time with BJJ, Muay Thai, and Cross-fit. She’s looking forward to summer when she can take even more classes. A BJJ studio in town is make-or-break for choosing colleges.
S18 never had much stick-to-it-iveness with sports. He quit several and now just works out at the Y to stay in shape.
@4beardolls , @HiToWaMom , @WhereIsMyKindle Another ballet mom here, and yes it’s a sport and then some! Show me another sport that involves balancing one’s body weight on one’s tiptoes. Regional company with a 15-20 hour per week commitment during the school year, and summer intensives on top of that, don’t know how she does it while keeping up her grades. It’s a harsh world, especially if you don’t have the prized body type, which D1 does not. She will continue with dance at college, but probably with more emphasis on contemporary-modern. Ballet is too hard on the body, and potentially the psyche, although not to the degree of Black Swan.
I was just thinking about how admissions offices can sometimes be a bit underhanded…
This one seems common – when a kid whose PSATs are not near Ivy level is contacted by Ivy and Ivy tier colleges. I’m always hearing about how they’re trying to be more selective to increase ratings and I do have to wonder when D gets these mailings. I understand the colleges don’t know the exact scores but buy them in blocks. Why would these schools contact kids whose overall score is less than say 1500 or so?
The call centers. People were talking about those weird call center calls and D eventually got one as well. Caller ID said “Univ Admissions.” The man’s tone was very flat and definitely sounded like he was reading from a script. She wasn’t interested in the school he represented anyway. Oh, and also the call came at 8:30pm. When I reverse looked up the number it was a company that called for several universities. Even on the do-not-call list we receive so many unwanted phone calls that this is the last thing we need. I hope this practice will not pay off for the colleges and will come to an end. Send an email next time!
And the last one which came the closest to fooling me – a school that’s been off and on D’s list and which she has been in contact with sent her an email to let her know she was going to be sent an official invitation in July, but she had been selected as a “Leader’s Edge” scholar. This didn’t seem completely unrealistic. It’s a school where her stats would actually stand out. So I looked it up on their website and here’s what it is: The only difference between a “Leader’s Edge” application and a regular application is that the first one has some fields pre-populated for the student. Yes, you are special and we will fill in your name and address for you. Sheesh.
Any other sneaky admissions offices out there doing sneaky things?
My DS’s phone is always off, except when he calls/texts me “I’m done, can you pick me up?” so we are saved from those calls. I also do not answer my cell phone if a name does not show up.
I toss all the junk mail in the recycling. We got one “Without you, something is missing” from Marine Corps. 8-|
U of Chicago is sending the most glossy mail.
Generally, we do not pay ANY attention to those and treat them the same as “Great Lawn Care” & “We buy houses as is” stuff.
We now have a sort of, close to final college list with 16 schools. A few will have to come off. Even if we pick up a couple colleges along the way, the number seems manageable.
I’m happy to have this “list” now, not in September, and satisfied that they all have over 20% acceptance rates (from Naviance at our school.) I pondered over a couple highly selective schools for a while but decided to toss them. Our list still contains great selective reach schools without getting into teens in acceptance rates.
Bring it on!
Unfortunately college admissions became numbers game ie boasting low acceptance rate. S’s sophomore score is not that great but he got material from Ivies. This year he opted out so not much junk mail.
Thankfully, we don’t get phone calls! I asked DS, and he bubbles in his own cell number. But, I’m not sure he ever uses the phone call feature of his phone. It’s always muted, and his voice mailbox has been full for months. If they wanted to get in touch with him, they’d text, which thankfully they don’t.
We got 4 glossy mailers in one day earlier this week. I think that was a record.
After saying no calls…we got our first one yesterday. Interestingly enough from an LAC that was on the list at one point but fell off long ago.
We toss most mail unless it’s from a school of interest or an actual thick packet of pertinent info (from a school of interest). I will say, even the bad glossy postcard can kill a school. There was a borderline list making LAC that sent such a postcard…buh bye.
When ds was applying, a few were particularly annoying. He would get daily emails counting down the days to the application deadline followed by WEEKS’ worth of “the deadline has been extended just for you.” Nothing he did unsubscribed him from the emails. He finally went in and added specific schools to his spam filter. There were so many from one to 50 school that he wouldn’t have considered applying period bc they were so obnoxious.
I am in the minority here, I see. I love getting the college mailings (email? Not so much, but more of a don’t-care)! Even if it’s a school I have never heard of before.
