Free advice 
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/how-to-write-a-college-essay
I went back to College Essay Organizer (account created in Nov. '15) and found I canât âremoveâ a school from our list. Weird. But looking back at it, it really is kind of cool. I like how they show you the supplements from last year.
@eandesmom , I never heard of music teacher dropping his/her student. It is sometimes very difficult to schedule the lessons. Even my D, who isnât involved in time consuming ECs at all, finds it hard to juggle the lessons with her other activities. Iâm very happy about the band gig and the scholarship oppotunity for your son, though!!
I just learned that your S17 has AP testing at his own school. I thought all the kids from our district go to the community center and take it. Because my Dâs high schoolâs AP tests happen at the community center, itâs easy to NOT go back to school afterwards, which is exactly what my D is planning to do.
Essay writing was heavily discussed during our "Admissions"night. Some of the parents were concerned by the informal style used by one of the top applicants. The real AO said an ongoing debate rages on in AO circles about informal versus formal writing.
@eandesmom , by the way, your sonâs US history teacher is mean. Iâm pretty sure she/he knows that some of the kids have AP testing that afternoon and have to leave the class midway. Some teachers are either so oblivious or doing things on purposeâŠ
@HiToWaMom its new this year for us. Last year it was at the district auditorium or one of the meeting rooms back there. This year the interim principal changed it so kids wouldnât skip.
Which I guess was good for S yesterday since he had a test in the class immediately prior.
Of course the physics teacher gave the ones who took the test yesterday permission to skip today lol.
I spoke to the trombone teacher this morning. He was equally devastated and we worked it out. He did want to give S a wake up call and honestly I can really appreciate that. He knows, understands and loves my kid and sometimes it takes that level of shock and disappointment to get thru his teenage skull.
@eandesmom So happy things are worked out with his trombone teacher!
@eandesmom âŠso glad that worked out! Honestly, life is so crazy this month with a high school Jr. It makes my head spin.
And alsoâŠseems to me the trombone teacher needs to give a little on his communication? I meanâŠno text, email AND doesnât answer his phone?? That would make me crazy.
@Agentninetynine I totally understand about older people giving advice from their experience 30+ years ago. We just went through it with my D16 and everyone telling her she will get into every ivy she applied to. Well, itâs not the olden days and my D didnât get into any ivy like she hoped. It all worked out but it was hard for my D even though I told her she wonât have an easy acceptance even though her grandparents told me I was insane.
That really stinks about your sons friend. Some people are so selfish.
My D16 wrote her essays and I helped edit them along with my sister-in-law who is a college admissions counselor. Still her own words. I will do the same with D17.
@ynotgo â
âA few weeks ago, DS decided to reinstall the Ubuntu (UNIX) partition of his laptop and somehow accidentally obliterated the Windows partition. Luckily, he uses Google Docs for all his documents (including essays) and GitHub for most of his programming files. It seems like the only thing he lost (other than time and ego points) was his 3D modeling files, though 2D images from ones he liked were posted to his blog.â
ok gotta ask - have you kidnapped my son? Yours & mine sound very similar (I read some of your other posts). We used to have these problems (absolutely the partition issue!) as well as MANY hardware failures routinely!!! To add to that DS fell in love with learning everything he could about hacking and computer viruses and over time could not resist the urge to put them in a âvirtual machineâ on his school laptop â of course eventually one or more got out & infected many important files. He also loves old operating systems so that produced lots of conflicts due to incompatibility. He was backing things up & has started to use Drop Box & google docs, but over the years heâs has to reimage his computer, beg Microsoft for extension of licences, add disk space etc. It has gotten better this year - I love the cloud!! But we keep a backup laptop handy just in case. Heâs turned now to building servers so hopefully his laptop will survive another month of school. Silver lining is that he got an IT internship for summer. Best of luck to your DS on this stuff!! It used to drive me pretty crazy Iâll admit!
Has anyone started receiving application fee waivers yet? Any tips on how to receive fee waivers (not on a financial need basis?
My D had a lovely pancake breakfast with her AP Physics teacher and her fellow test takers, great way to get the stress down. They found the FRQs different than what the say on the practice tests but the teacher did a good job of covering the topics they saw on the test.
Teachers started assigning projects to fill the time until school ends on May 26. My D is so glad she may be able bring up her grades after all the AP practice tests hits.
@CaucAsianDad My D has decided sheâs going to sleep during review of the FRQs. lol She does not want to stress over her answers, which I can appreciate.
Same here, she just needs a 3 for university credit, I think that is around 40%, so not too worried. HumGeo will be a blow-off, 3 gets some Gen Ed credits. Big ones are APUSH (8 credits for a 4) and AP LANG. Her SAT score will require to place out of Comp I, a 4 on the AP Lang gets her credit for Comp II.
While she wants 5 on all her APs, mainly for bragging rights, I tried to focus her on the bigger picture and strategically go for the college credit.
@CA1543 I think our sons must be related!
So far, I donât think DS has tried to keep viruses in a zoo, or at least hasnât admitted to it. I donât allow network sharing of anything other than the printer or flash drives of his to touch my computers. For hacking competitions, he does more of the cryptography programming than the website vulnerability stuff.
My sister and I were going through my Dadâs old things, and DS wanted a 5 1/4" floppy disk and the oldest Microsoft manual I could find (Windows 3.1). He passed on a stack of AOL âfree offerâ disks, though.
Congrats to your DS on the IT internship this summer!
The mentions of Linux reminded me: Itâs my class of 2019 daughter, but my high school kidsâ schoolâs regular classes have ended, and not theyâre amidst a sort of âMay termâ thing, where they take a single class for a few weeks. My 15-year-oldâs class is a phys ed class, and so she has to enter in her stats and everything on a school computer.
Yesterday I got a text from her saying âJust realized this program is running over Linux. They locked down the Terminal, but I got in anywayâ, followed a few minutes later by âOn the school network, trying really really hard to resist looking through all the schoolâs files nowâ.
I wonder how I should best tell them theyâve got a pretty big security threat sitting there in their sophomore class⊠
I have those 5 1/4" floppies, 3" diskettes, and Windows 3.1 manuals as well as AOL, Earthlink CDs! LoL
My Mac IIsi in the basement has Netscape 0.9 installed.
I have Mathematica 3.0, WordPerfect, etc :))
I donât think I have Lotus 123, dBase though.
@Ynotgo â oh lord - our kids must have similar holiday gift wish lists!! Old floppys, wants an ancient IBM, got a donated mac and all the manuals and got it working (had a blast) & other old Dell stuff, harvests parts from broken machines etc. He has done CMUâs PICO CTF, been to Def Con & is in silver level for USACO - will try for gold next year. I tried to get Cyber Patriots going but not so far. But our school does do FTC and local contests as well as programming for FBLA competitions. No major hackathons yet. Thankfully my computers have not been sacrificed!! April fools pranks get cranked up a notch but Iâve grown wiser!
Remind me - is you DS looking at mostly engineering schools?
Re: fee waivers, some schools will give them to you during a visit if you ask at admissions. We forgot to ask when we visited schools in AZ. D15 received a few out of the blue through snail mail. But you had to read the literature to find the fee waiver code.
@payn4ward â my son calls me a 7-1/2" floppy disk as a nickname - I was a huge Word Perfect fan!!