@nw2this I am putting together a talk on the college app process. This link might be helpful in understanding the difference: https://www.edvisors.com/media/files/tip-sheets/fafsa-vs-css-profile-tip-sheet.pdf
I went to a financial aid workshop and was told FA process makes doing taxes look like childâs play. I agree.
There are also small number of CSS âconsensusâ schools vs the rest CSS Profile schools.
http://www.gofinancialaid.com/blog/financial-aid-consensus
This year FAFSA will open October 1st and use PPY prior prior year income. That is, use 2015 income for 2017ners.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek that is fascinating that CSS adjusts for regional cost of living. Very interesting. I still think we are up a creek but that is interesting to know!
AP schedules! If you look at the booklet you get, youâll see that the 8:00a exams are to be given at 8:00a local time wherever in the United States you areâexcept for Alaska, where theyâre to be given at 7:00a! (The afternoon exams are also given an hour earlier.)
I canât figure out why this is. I though it could be that theyâre trying to have everybody start before the Eastern time zone kids have finished (and so prevent anyone from texting any of the prompts to more western test takers), but they donât require test takers in Hawaiâi to start three hours early, so thatâs presumably not it. Maybe they just think that since weâre getting 16+ hours of daylight now in most of the state, our students are energized enough to be able to handle it.
@dfbdfb I think you are correct that everyone will start the same time and the eastern wonât be finished to give any info - and maybe they just donât care about hawaii :))
I have D1 do that (sheâs had her license about a year and a half). She just got home from a mock trial dinner and drove home through HAIL of all things (georgia!), and is fine. I usually have her text me when sheâs headed home.
Here you can get your permit once you turn 15, but you have to have your permit for a year and a day before you can get your license, and you have to go through 30 hours of classroom teaching called âJoshuaâs Lawâ. Once you get your license thereâs a curfew by the state for the first few years, and you canât drive other kids for the first year unless theyâre related. Seems reasonable and D1 has had no trouble sticking to it.
@Agentninetynine wrote âRegardless if a school is need blind, the AO knows, or can roughly assess, the SES of the applicant because they see the address of the student, the high school the student attends, the level of college completed by the parents, race, the age of other siblings and of course if the student is eligible for free or reduced lunch and or a waiver for the SAT/ACT.â
Yeah, that is good to know, and I suspected as such. At least I wonât have my bachelorâs completed by the time she applies-no such luck for younger daughter, I hope :).
@itsgettingreal17 wrote âAnyone elseâs kid have a horrible AP testing schedule coming up?â
Yeah, both of mine next week. D17 has AP Calc and then right afterwards the first part of IB Physics, then IB Comp Sci and the second half of IB Physics the next day. Talk about brain drain. Younger D has AP Comp Sci and AP world, so a much lighter load. D17 also has, um, AP Lang. Her IB Bio stuff isnât until next year because itâs a two year class, so thatâs a small benny. Itâs nuts. Just nuts. Iâm not going around saying itâs nuts, but I wish theyâd stretch it out more. Then the weeks after that are the finals and the ACT.
Next year both girls have an easier schedule-we made a decision as a family to get off the crazy train and get on a slightly slower one.
@NoVADad99 thatâs amazing! Well done by your son!
@dfbdfb thatâs crazy that theyâre making your kid start at 7 am!
AhâŠfun AP test storyâŠ
Back when I took AP Chem in High School in the 80âs, it was fairly new (I think it was the first and only AP class offered at my High School at that time), and I thought it was âChem 2â. I had no idea it had anything to do with college credit. When we took the test, I was told it wouldnât impact my class grade (Woot!), so I rolled into class with a #2 pencil and just (as my DD would say) YOLOâed it.
One of my (very bright) classmates, didnât even attempt to answer a single question, but instead wrote an essay on the X-Men.
@Gator88NE thatâs hilarious! So what did you make?
I donât even think our school offered AP classes. If they did it certainly wasnât on my radar. I do remember being placed in Honors English⊠We had eight kids total in the class and we thought we were all that and a bag of chips. I mean⊠We were the only eight in Honors, right?
Lol! I was in several AP courses and was clueless as to what they meant as well. I didnât get to take the exams bc I was extremely sick with mono, of all things. In bed with a severely swollen spleen.
All I remember is that bc I couldnât take the exam, my AP English teacher had me read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Obviously made an impact bc I still remember it all these yrs later. (probably far more memorable than if I had taken the exam. 
)
My D17 has a flurry of tests the next two weeks, AP Chem on Monday, AP Physics 1 on Tuesday. SAT subject tests in Math 2 and Chem on Saturday, and AP Stats on the following Thursday. Since she is applying to schools in the UK, her AP scores are just as important, maybe even more, than her ACTâ
our HS offered one AP class. Or at least one I knew of. There may have been some in the science and math areas but I really donât recall it. When I look at my HS annual for that year it is full of comments on how ridiculously hard that class was. I honestly am not sure anyone in the class passed the test! I had zero issues last year at registration when S17 opted out of APush and as I see some of his friends struggle, am quite glad he made a better choice than I did.
I know⊠none of us will make into the colleges we graduated from if we were applying today⊠and our parents had no idea what was going on then. sigh.
@payn4ward so true. My parents has zero involvement. I did all the paperwork, financial aid, housing stuff, applications etc. They werenât paying so it really fell on me anyway although there were some tax situations we could have planned better for had they been a bit more savvy.
Iâd like to think I would get into my college today with the same basic application but it would be considers a match now, not a safety. It didnât even occur to me that I might not get in.
My parents non involvement bit them a few years later when my little sister expected them to tell her what to do. Lol!
@payn4ward I wouldnât really say I know whatâs going on now!
My parents were totally clueless. Neither of them attended college, though all of my siblings did. We all paid our own way, so our parents just didnât pay attention to anything. (They didnât know anything that was going on in high school, either.) I was offered a full-ride scholarship and turned it down without even telling them. (And my reason for turning it down had nothing to do with college, only my boyfriend!)
Ah,mother good old days! Funny stories^^^ like @payn4ward said, I doubt I would have an easy time getting into my alma mater now. These kids have it much harder. But I tell them, it all works out. If you keep a positive attitude youâll find happiness wherever you end up.
Such funny AP stories!
I went to a competitive high school. Everyone started out in regular classes. Then based on grades and teacher recommendations sophomore year on you could apply to either honors or AP. The smart kids were in the honors classes and the smartest kids were in the AP classes. So those of us who just wanted to be with the smartest kids (our friends) ended up taking a lot of AP courses. It had nothing to do with college credit. College was so much cheaper that graduating early was unheard of. Due to family situation, I ended up using my AP credits to graduate early, so good thing I had them.
At my Dâs school, anyone can take a pre-AP or AP course. So different.
Iâm doing so much for my D in this admissions process. She is so relaxed as a result (probably a little too much). I did everything myself when I went to college as I was first generation and my parents didnât have a clue. It was like, can I have $X for applications, just sign here and here, and I decided to go to X college, can you drop me off in August please, Thanks. lol
Thereâs a tendency for schools to overload on AP classes offered because of things like the Challenge Index, which is predicated on the assumption that high-level classes are optimal for all students, and that AP classes are high-level classes, which means that therefore any school that has as many students as possible take as many AP classes as possible is doing a better job educating its students.
The chain of fallacies in that logic are legion, but itâs a prevailing logical path. The biggest downside of it, though, to my mind, is that a student who might have been like most of us posting here were back in the day, doing quite well and maybe getting to take an AP class or two in fields that interested us (I took two, English and chemistry, but not the third my school offered, in history), well, then if theyâre at a school that offers nine AP classes and they only took two or three, they get dinged on the guidance counselor report for whether they took the most rigorous courses available.
Iâm of mixed minds about the AP frenzy. I agree with @dfbdfb and others that too much emphasis is placed on chasing APs (for schools and students), and that more is not necessarily better. OTOH, DS (who took 2 APs as a soph and 4 as a jr) has absolutely loved these classes. Compared to other classes heâs taken, he is so much more engaged in and challenged by the APs (which also tend to be smaller, and taught by some of the best teachers at his school). I think he especially enjoys being in classes with other serious students. However, I also worry about the fact that many schools seem to put more resources into AP classes for students who will likely succeed anyway, when they should be paying more attention to students who are academically at-risk or struggling (research suggests that struggling students benefit more from low student:teacher ratios much more than high achieving students do, for example, yet AP classes are among the smallest at our high school⊠Iâm grateful that my kids have access to these great classes & instruction, but not sure it is the best or most fair way to allocate resources).
@Mom2aphysicsgeek do you know any programs I could look into for ds to get started on learning Russian? He studies french for 3 years but had to stop because of scheduling conflicts. Heâd love to find some program he could start now with Russian on his own but he attends a very small high school and they do not offer anything there.