@4beardolls Colleges dropping ACT writing
http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/act-writing-and-sat-essay-requirements/
For CA (UC’s), U MI, OSU, UF, and TX colleges as well as a handful of selective colleges, it is still recommended to take ACT with Writing every time as of January. That could change during this summer, who knows.
Thanks @payn4ward for all the helpful info. I need to do a re-do of my spreadsheets too. Captured way too much detailed info. I’ll save a lot, but cut back a lot too, now that the list is more manageable.
I’m also doing a short “school profile” for each school (also Google doc). Stuff my D may care about (club lacrosse, distance, weather, honors info, majors, pluses, minuses) that will be easier for her to review this summer. I am on school 5, so hope to finish before end of school. A lot of it is just links to other stuff.
Anybody familiar or have experiences with RAP?
I heard about one at U MASS Amherst. The tourguide highly recommended it.
I now found one at CU-Boulder website.
@kac425 – I am firmly entrenched on the East Coast, but I think we will observe a migration from SAT to ACT by the class of 2017. If the unknown of the new SAT content were not bad enough, the extreme delay in releasing scores will discourage students from taking the SAT.
If your child has taken both an SAT & ACT practice test and prefers the ACT, I would have him take the ACT.
Our HS only started publishing mean ACT scores on our profile two years ago. I am not sure why they waited so long as there were a significant # of students taking the ACT. I am guessing that we will see a big jump in the # of ACT-takers with the release of next year’s profile.
@payn4ward Is this different than other residential housing you’ve seen: “LLCs” (Living Learning Communities) are fairly common. We were at Duke over spring break, and they called their’s SLGs (Selective Living Groups). They sound like a great option. I’m hoping for something similar if D goes somewhere with an Honors program/college. You’d have to talk to the kids to see what they think. Is the ‘faculty director’ doing 100 other things, too? Do they live in the community too? What are the activities?
But to answer your question, “no” I have no experience with them 
I am making spreadsheets too - we are all working so hard for our kids!! Just wondering - does anyone have a list or know of a handy resource that lists colleges that really want students to show interest strongly - and what is recommended besides visits or info sessions in your area, interviews etc.? Thanks much.
Sorry, no idea on above. I assume LACs would consider demonstraded interest and large universities cannot really track interest nor interview. I assume writing “Why this college?” part of supplement well counts.
I’m liking the Compass Ed Group blogs.
I found
http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/using-psat-scores-to-compare-sat-and-act/
It shows how to choose ACT or SAT from PSAT scores and ACT scores (from State test).
DS is right in “Judgment Call” so no test is favored.
I must agree. No one favors the test! :))
I have heard people mention Tulane, Northeastern, U Rochester and CWRU as schools that value expressed interest.
When you register for a tour you can sometimes schedule an interview. You can sign up to receive college information.
^This brings up another question. Is the interview for the student, or the school? Who’s interviewing whom?
American University is another school that wants applicants to demonstrate interest.
Demonstrated interest is basically anything that involves the student leaving their name–campus visits, meeting with representatives at the high school, requestibg info about special programs, and so on.
UVa is very clear that they do not track interest. In an info session Tulane said that they do not consider it, but I wasn’t completely convinced. Case & URochester both require interviews, so they definitely track. Skidmore also considers interest, to the point where if you email your student tour guide to thank them, they will forward it to admissions to go in your admissions record.
Every school we visited this week (CU, CSU, U of Wyoming) offered some type of interest group living. Either by major or other interest. In some cases it cost more, in others it did not. We saw this with SD14 as well. I honestly can’t recall if she chose that or not, as she was focused on dorm type and location more than students in the same classes. As a result she had a mix but they were all in related sciences if not her direct major so it may have been a college dorm, versus a major.
Tulane says they consider it according to their CDS-C7. A lot of anecdotal CC info supports that I think.
I don’t really go by that anymore, and assume EVERYONE at least ‘considers’ it. They may not care if you ‘visit’, but they want you to show 'em some type of love.
Thanks for the reminder of interviews…have to add that to the spreadsheet. Can’t believe I forgot.
@payn4ward they discussed RAP’s quite a bit yesterday at Boulder. It is an extra fee there. I recall the number of $800 and think that was per semester but am not positive. S saw pro’s and cons to it. Great from a study group standpoint, but from a diversity one, maybe not so much. Definitely freshman focused there, very very few upperclassmen stay in the dorms and those that do (even sophomores) are usually RA’s. Honors would be different though I would think. Ever school we visited offered this as an option in some format.
@carachel2
That’s too bad things didn’t work out for your niece in the career counseling area. But I think each school within CSU has their own career counseling office. From what our guide said, the engineering office is very involved with helping students find work and helping with resumes and mock interviews and so forth. He had a number of friends in engineering who did summer internships (he listed off some of the companies but I can’t remember them). He said fall/spring internships are not too common and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of support for co-oping.
My D11 is also into the kinesiology area, wanting to go on to PT school. She’s at CU-Boulder and they’ve been very supportive in that area. (Though she’s also had some really crappy advisers at CU). She’s gotten lots of hours working with PT’s in the on-campus health center. What are your niece’s plans for now?
@payn4ward
Your table sounds a lot like mine – I’ve just been really slow in getting everything filled out. I definitely need to look into whether any of D’s schools require the writing sections as D has not done any yet.
Regarding CU RAPs <raises hand="" excitedly,="" yes="" i="" do="" know="" something!="">
My D11 lived in 2 different RAPs at CU and she enjoyed the experience. Her freshman year she lived in Baker which is the science RAP. She got to take her intro chem classes right there in the dorm with small class size and a great professor. There were also a lot of activities involving outdoor stuff or going into town, but she didn’t get too involved with that. They did sound cool and I think they were fairly popular.
Sophomore year she lived next door in Sewall (think that’s the name), which is the performing arts RAP. She liked this one even better (she is a dancer). She had an amazing West African dance class (one of CU’s specialties) in the dorm dance studio which was also available for students to practice in. She did do a few activities with this group, mostly going out to see dance and theater performances (not surprisingly!) I have only ever heard good things about the RAPs.
@snoozn …I’ve always thought it was a mix of her just not being aggressive enough and finding the opportunities plus the degree plan back then at least did not require any type of internship. It is a shame. She is a beautiful, smart young woman and she is taking a bit of time to figure out her next step. It has been about four years though and I’m not sure she is any closer. She has a happy life in Denver with friends but she is not employed full-time.
Regarding who is interviewing who…
D17 had one great interview and I think it was mostly the adcom finding out about her, but she is very reticent, so probably not a great data point. She doesn’t plan on doing any more interviews unless required.
D11 had a mixed experience. But almost always the adcom interviews were way better than the student intern interviews, which I guess is not surprising. She had 2 horrid interviews with students. But with the good ones, she definitely felt like there was a good bit of back forth with her learning more about the school and the adcom learning more about her – basically each coming away with a better idea of the “fit.”
I wonder if CB was skewing percentages high on the PSAT to get more kids to take the new SAT? My daughter was 99% state and national and barely made commended and won’t make NM. But she got a perfect composite score on ACT a few months later. She was thinking about taking the new SAT before she got that score back because she thought her PSAT scores were great until we starting figuring it out on CC.
Re: CU-Boulder – The dorms at Boulder do look nice from the outside. I looked at them on Google Maps street view; DS will be staying in the Kittredge complex this summer.
Re: Living Communities – I agree that a lot of universities have a variety of living communities that give people choices among their dorm selection. I don’t know about seminars associated with dorms; Stanford had one you could apply to that was like that. I think the only college we’ve visited so far that didn’t talk much about different dorm/house activities or selections with different benefits was Berkeley, and they only have guaranteed housing for freshman year and are pretty impacted for housing after that.
Re: ACT essay – @payn4ward Thanks for the info about some colleges not caring so much about the SAT and ACT essays. A couple of colleges on DSs list say the essay is optional on the Compass Prep list. DS’s higher score is the ACT, but his writing score was only 24. We paid for a rescore, and after 1.5 months it went up by one point, so not the dramatic improvement others have seen.
Re: Interest – I think one school on DS’s list tracks interest. It’s not in a location where we can visit, so he’s signed up for their emails (even though he was already getting some). He says the links in the email are set up to do link tracking, so he tries to click on a few when he gets the emails. I’ve read that you can also “like” the school on Facebook and email the adcom for your region with (good) questions.
Re: Percentile inflation – @acdchai Yes, that’s the speculation about why the CB changed their way of calculating percentages to make them seem higher for a lot of kids. Congrats on the perfect ACT composite, BTW.