@Gator88NE, did your S take the in-school SAT or regular Saturday one?
I just followed the link below to the ACTâs letter about the concordance tables. They come out very strongly against adcoms using the tables, particularly the one that concords new SAT to ACT. They say the tests canât be concorded until after a yearâs worth of data has been collected. I donât know; adcoms may just ignore this letter and use the concordance tables, because that is all they have. But, yet another way in which these big companies are causing problems for the Class of 2017.
http://www.act.org/content/act/en/about-act/perspectivesandhappenings.html
Huge congratulations to your dd @Mom2aphysicsgeek 
What an accomplishment!
@whereismykindle What I shared with you is what she submitted. Thanks for the congrats!
@ynotgo Thanks for sharing that link. That was an interesting read. I had no idea that they had collaborated on the old conversion charts.
My daughter has a list that might actually be her final list (11 schoolsâIâd rather see 9 or 10, but thatâs just meânot counting the two in-state options that donât offer anything even close to what sheâs interested in but would be free tuition because I work for the university system); might be worth posting sometime in the summer so we can all compare notes.
Anyway, todayâs AP Stats (her small school offers AP Stats and AP Calc in alternating years, so itâs pragmatic utility this year and fun magic next year), and then weâre done with AP testing until next year, when it might only be AP Calc, since theyâre shifting her cohort into dual-enrollment with first-semester college composition rather than an AP Lang course (and she refuses to take APUSH, due in part to friction with the teacher). Sheâs happy with her ACT scores, too, so no more testing at all for a year, for that matterâhurrah!
@Agentninetynine thanks for that blog tip, I hadnât seen that one and it looks fabulous to start following. Of course todayâs topic is why I pretty much hate everything on our safety list lol. Hate is strong butâŠugh.
@2muchquan love that link for comparison purposes. I track a lot of it on my ownâŠthat is a nice snapshot with different options.
@Gator88NE same conversations here. Well, without the Princeton and MIT part. :)) I asked him, for mothers day, to look at just ONE school on a certain list. Checked in on Tuesday.
âI looked at oneâ
Which one?
âI donât rememberâ
It made that much of an impression?
âYepâ
Sigh.
@MSHopeful question on the NCP waiver. In looking at our schools, about half seem to ask for the NCP version and the rest do not. Does that mean (never having filled out a profile form lol) that we wonât need to provide any info on the NCP for those schools, only the ones that show NCP PROFILE as required? Trying to figure out if that actually helps or hurts in our situation. We will be almost certainly needing a waiver.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek congrats to your dd, thatâs wonderful!
D is signed up for the June SAT. We were pretty happy with her March scores, but the engineering dept at her HS strongly recommends taking each test twice. And with super-scoring there doesnât seem to be any drawback. My one worry is that she is doing the writing section. Four schools on her list require writing (with either ACT or SAT). Honestly, they are four of the schools that I think arenât right for her or where she wouldnât get merit. But I canât blame her for wanting to do the writing and get it over with. Sheâs so funny â we were talking about the SAT this morning and she said âI guess Iâll have to start studying as soon as schoolâs outâ (May 26) and I about did a double-take. âYou mean you have to start studying now!â Her â âOh, riiiiight!â At least her hardest final is done (AP chem) and sheâll have one more final done before finals week. Iâm really just expecting some light daily practice on Khan and at least one practice test.
@jedwards70
I think you might be able to find your Sâs âmagic schoolâ or at least something close. Writing screenplays for a year takes some serious effort â maybe itâs not so temporary (if not screenwriting, then something related). Though Iâd agree that he should go somewhere with other options. I would recommend going to the film majors section of CC (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visual-arts-film-majors/) and asking your questions there. Iâve gotten some great advice in the Engineering majors section.
Well, I just signed D17 up for the June SAT without the essay.
I am creating (like others) a, hmm, I donât want to call it a âwar roomâ, maybe âTable of Knowledgeâ in the dining room with all the books, info, etc. Potentially one of Claire Dunphyâs whiteboards might appear laterâŠ
Anyway, Iâm pulling all the info together into the binder that used to house my Spanish book, and I realize that Dâs December SAT is a 1950 (CR+M+W), and she would have needed a 1960 to get NMF last year. Then I start getting uneasy about the fact that sheâd have to wait until October 1 to take it this year, AND sheâd have to keep doing the Magoosh stuff to keep it fresh in her mind, and sheâs SOOOOO sick of doing the magoosh online tutorial.
Sooo, I venture upstairs and talk to her (I took notes before I did so I didnât ramble, lol). Long story short, she says yeah Iâll take the SAT June 4 and the ACT June 11 and try to knock them both out of the park and be done with it.
I said (and I feel) that if we have all the numbers in over the summer, even if she doesnât make NMF or NMSF, sheâll know what to target in terms of merit and schools. I also worried that if she did make NMSF and had to take the October SAT, the pressure would be bad for her to get a good score. I donât think she needs to do the essay because she got an 8 on the Dec one, which I think is ok?
I showed her one school that already would offer her automatic full tuition with a 1950 (CR+M+W, I think it was Florida A&M) because she doesnât think sheâll get in anywhere, and I said, hey, youâve already got that, now itâs an evil game to see how many more you can get to, which speaks to her rather dark and nefarious sense of humor. She seemed relieved to see that in black and white, and to see that sheâs pretty close for some other substantial automatic scholarships.
Itâs so stressful. I donât want to make a mistake that would take away opportunities for her.
@jedwards70 we have a close friend if Sâs at USC doing a cool mix of those things. Another less intense option to maybe look at is Ithaca, lots of options there.
@greeny8, as far as I know NM Scholars arenât announced yet, however, the commended SI at 209 has been announced. We will only know if our kids made it to NM semifinalist level sometimes in September when each individual stateâs cutoff scores are announced. Sorry to be a spoil-sport, but see thread here and donât bother reading all 297 pages!
My son surprised me by saying he wanted to take the SAT and ACT again in June. I had signed him up for both earlier, but I was fully expecting him to blow them off. I think his competitive juices are flowing and he wants to up his scores a bit. I donât know how heâs going to handle the studying aspect of these tests though as his school work his ramping up, lax playoffs coming up, finals around the corner. For some reason he does not appear to be stressed out, just rolling with it.
@jedwards70 I donât know about anything about it personally, but VCU has a film dept that friends say is very good.
http://bulletin.vcu.edu/undergraduate/arts/cinema-program/cinema-ba/cinema-ba.pdf
@eandesmom I think if the NCP info is required it will say somewhere in the financial aid section of the schoolâs website. Most schools that require CSS do use NCP as far as I know. The only one Iâve come across that doesnât is UChicago. Some schools use FAFSA only and in that case, no NCP info is required.
Speaking of taking notes, @MotherOfDragons , I just made a list of posts I wanted to comment on. Thereâs so much going on here! I think itâs NMâs evil game not announcing cutoffs and qualifying SAT scores until fall. Essentially, this summer, we will be making two lists. One that assumes no NMSF and one that assumes NMSF (and for that we are hoping the March SAT score he got is good enough). Since S has about as much enthusiasm as @Gator88NE and @eandesmom DCs for the college research, this will be a fun summer.
Congrats on your Dâs achievement @Mom2aphysicsgeek!
@snoozn I havenât spent much time over on the engineering forum. Itâs so comfy here. But I will need to brave it and see what I can pick up for dual college lists this summer.
I think I need to stay in this thread and away from the SAT talk elsewhere on CC. They are starting to make me a little bit paranoid, though D did really well, in my opinion.
I finally got some details about AP Lang. She actually found the passages and essay topics really interesting so wrote a lot (which often she does not). AP Spanish Lang to go next week. D wishes she had been able to take all AP exams last week instead of over 3 weeks, because then sheâd be done. Finals are optional for her, so she only plans on taking 1 to try to raise her grade in that class. Since she only had AP classes this year, they arenât doing much in school for the rest of the month. School gets out first week of June. A few classes have fun projects, a couple of class trips are coming up, otherwise in the other classes, they are literally doing nothing. D is using the free time to read and work on her projects for the other classes. She has been catching up on her sleep after school, which is good.
Summer plans are almost all set. Sheâs still working on one other volunteer gig, but then sheâll have a pretty good summer schedule. Sheâs excited for school to be over and about her summer plans but not so excited about the essay writing. With the down time, I will nag and nag until she really starts looking at the schools on her list that she hasnât looked at too closely yet. lol The list wonât get shortened, if at all, until after the NMSF announcement in September. I think this year, large merit scholarships are going to be more competitive than ever, so Iâm considering adding a few more schools to her list if she doesnât make NMSF.
My daughter didnât really care about the whole National Merit thing, and so didnât freak out terribly when she took her sisterâs calculator by mistake and couldnât get it to work(!) when she started the math section. She lost some time doing stuff by hand, though, and as a result didnât do well on that part, and despite being near-perfect on the language side just missed commended.
From the parental point of view, the extra money would have been nice, but with a few glaring exceptions (Alabama would give her an annual stipend plus one year of housing!), the money sheâd have gotten from it would have been a marginal plus, but to be honest we have to chase bigger merit aid than that to make the finances work.
@itsgettingreal17 Reading SAT and ACT threads on CC is like reading the chance me threads on steroids. Yeah, donât read them. FWIW, if I had been reading CC before ds applied to SSP, I would have been convinced he was off in lala land applying. I was so glad I didnât venture in here until after he had attended!
I think that CC is far more test score obsessed than actual college admissions. Yes, test scores matter, but only to a degree. No, a marginal difference in scores is not going to lead to acceptance or rejection.
@itsgettingreal17 He took the regular Saturday exam, but the proctors handed out the wrong booklets (SAT without essay) and that caused a great deal of confusion. Seems nobody that tested in his group, has gotten back their scores. Heâs friend who got special accommodations (sight impaired), is the only one to get his scores on time (since he wasnât involved in the booklet fiasco).
Heâs re-taking the SAT in June, but I had hope that the test scores would motivate him to study for this next test!
@dfbdfb There are some pretty good auto and competitive full rides out there for NM. Are you looking for full rides only?
I should have made my screen name âIJustNagâ.