Thanks for asking about the show, @Gatormama! I think the show went well. The critics reviews all seem to be good – two were published yesterday, and both referred to the strong technical theatre aspects of the performance. The reviews also referenced the strong portrayals by the lead actors as well as some ensemble members. I do have a tendency to skim and look for technical theatre references, though. :">
D19’s calendar is overtaken with theatre stuff starting January 2 (no, I am not kidding) through spring break. We’ve already been burned by the theatre director making spring break a tech week, so I’m reluctant to rely on any of those days working for college visits. So a big part of the meeting the week after turkey day is figuring out how we best proceed, especially since we have to factor in a portfolio/interview series.
@Cotton2017 it is always nice to have a safety school that a student likes! What did you visit at the open house? Any particular majors peak her interest?
Hmm, @orangefish, we don’t have a college advisor and I’m not aware that our GC’s even take meetings to go over college lists. I’m glad my county tax dollars paid for a college advisor for someone, haha. S19 was assigned a GC who spent her entire career in elementary school up until two years ago so that’s good.
Maybe just have your D email the advisor ahead of time to see what she should bring. Hopefully the advisor is experienced enough to know which in-state schools are good options. Isn’t GPA less important when applying to portfolio/talent based majors?
S19 just had a good first quarter with just a lone B+! But then he failed an honors pre-Calc test to start the second quarter. He’s currently feeling like he’s not very good at the only two things he actually likes (math and music) because of this test grade and realizing that, although he made regional orchestra, his audition scores were all at the “B” level. I almost wish they hadn’t given them the score sheets! The regional event was wonderful and he was feeling inspired, but not he feels like he’s not good enough to audition for all-state. Hopefully it will pass and the kid will actually work on his scales properly.
Thanks for the suggestion, @eh1234 – D sees the advisor in the hall every so often so I could ask her to check. (If she remembers.) D did hear the college advisor will be retiring at the end of this school year, so I hope to learn all I can to be ready when S22 starts this crazy process.
D’s in-state options are (mostly) BA programs, so portfolio/talent plays a role but not an exclusive role as BFA programs do. Plus she is not sure if she really wants a BFA as she would like to combine some interests. We’re planning a January visit to JMU, for example, and their BA program would allow her to combine both theatre tech and media arts. (Decisions, decisions.) We have heard some of the in-state options do allow for a program to “put in a good word with admissions” for more borderline academically candidates.
Congrats on S19’s first quarter grades! Sorry about the blow to the self-esteem from math and music “numbers” (letters?) but they do not represent his talent in either. One day and one “assessment” do not represent him in totality. But not easy for 16 year-olds to process (“But you don’t understand – this is the end of the world as a junior” . . . blah blah blah).
When are all-state auditions? My cellist is in 8th grade so I don’t know these things yet.
wow, @OrangeFish – you guys get REVIEWED???
lol
nobody notices our po-dunk theater performances.
We sat down with the theater director last week to talk about portfolios and how D can get some decent accomplishments under her belt. She’s been shoved aside in stage management - essentially she’s been punished because she does lax in the spring and isn’t around for the spring play (she is there 24/7 for the musical, which performs the weekend before lax season starts). So that’s not an option. But the theater director was eager to help and they’re starting a project this week to stage some sets for the AP Shakespeare course she’s taking. Plus she’ll be taking a lead role in set design for “Into the Woods,” which is the musical this year, god help me.
Crossing my fingers that this is “enough” … she simply doesn’t have the massive breadth of experience and options that others do.
@OrangeFish We have our first meeting with our College Counselor tomorrow. I started a thread last week to ask for advice on what questions to ask and got lots of great ideas. I’ll see if I can figure out how to link it here, if I can’t just scroll back a page or two and you should find it.
I wanted to go over some things with D last night so she doesn’t sit at the meeting and answer every question with, “I don’t know” but we never got around to it since she was at her volunteer job then went straight to homework. Will have to work with her tonight - she is quiet and I am a talker so I know she would be happy to just let me take over the whole meeting. I tried to explain to her that the CC has to write a reference letter for her so she needs to make a good impression whenever we have the chance to meet with her.
One show each year gets reviewed, @Gatormama – it’s the Cappies (https://www.cappies.com/) show for area high school theatre. So the Cappies reviewers are also high school students – many are theatre students, but many others are we-love-to-write-about-theatre students, too.
The larger theatre programs have a feeder system so they win many Cappies each/every year. That’s not the case at D’s high school, but they do pretty well.
You’re smart to meet with the theatre director! That’s how the portfolio gets built, that’s how the letter of recommendation gets handled, etc. You may want to ask the theatre director about area conferences, too. D is sketching out a calendar for the winter/spring of area events where high schoolers can attend and get in front of college theatre faculty.
Your D’s portfolio will be great! It’s been our experience that theatre faculty know not everyone is coming from a performing arts high school (for example) so each student is coming from a different base of options and experience. They are looking for students who are eager to learn and have a passion about the craft.
@OrangeFish - she seemed to gravitate to the Mass Communication table. She really doesn’t know what she wants but no STEM!
We went to breakouts on Admissions, Financing College and Student Q&A. Only students were allowed in this one large room (Potomac Lounge) and they were able to ask current students any questions they wanted without parents around to hear. Parents were in a different room with admin/current students/faculty and were able to do the same. The tour was freezing cold and we did get to see one dorm room (in Douglas). It seemed very small to me but she would manage. Overall happy to have an instate she seems ok with applying.
None of the plays at our school gets reviewed either but we attend to support the students!
I asked our GC about Naviance and she said we don’t have that at our school. Disappointed after reading about it a lot on this thread. Makes things a bit more challenging.
@Cotton2017 – is the Mass Communication department part of the College of Fine Arts? I seem to recall my D being interested in the Electronic Media and Film department, and she was thinking she might be able to take some communications classes alongside as a minor. We had looked at the major as part of the Academic Common Market.
I like how they split the students and the parents – less intimidating that way.
Sorry about lack of access to Naviance. We’re in a huge school in a huge school system, so I think the price per student is probably much lower than in a smaller school/school system.
@momtogkc - thank you for linking to that thread. I made notes of my own from it, and found some really helpful info by doing as a respondent suggested and googling:
site:ourhighschool.com “school profile”
It gave me tons of info about our school - middle 50 SAT range, AP exam outcomes, matriculation list, percentages of all kinds. A veritable treasure trove of stats. Thanks again!!
@dj1028 I’m getting the same thing. I just googled our high school’s name with “school profile” and all I got was some basic information from places like US News - not sure it is even up to date.
@OrangeFish We, too, are in a competitive HS…2300 kids and a counseling staff that does little. (To be fair…in my Los Angeles HS there were two GCs for 2500 kids…they had me write my own recommendation.) Our GCs do sit with the kids to go over their list. But the expectation is that the kids and parents create it. My older S’s experience is the meeting was useless. She told him that his on target schools were actually stretch and not to apply…he got into every single one she told him to drop.
If your school does meetings and you are included I would suggest that your child explain the rational for the list (e.g., “I like big schools in cities with theater programs plus my parents made me put in some inexpensive safeties”) and then let your child run the meeting. By HS, most staff want the kids to take ownership.
Thank you, @SwimmingDad for your suggestion to have D19 explain the list. That’s a great way to “set the boundary” (and keep her talking)! D has experience running a meeting as she handles her own 504 plan meetings, but this college stuff is a whole other beast.
The school counselor (different from the college counselor) knows D is having this meeting, so I’m sure she’ll ask how it went, etc. But the school counselor simply does not have the time to sit down with students to review college lists.
@gatormama -thank you - we are very bad with technology around this house. Last night my D19’s online French teacher asked D to Skype her. First we had trouble downloading Skype (turned out we already had an account under my email that S23 uses for video games) then we couldn’t figure out exactly how to “call” the teacher. We found her contact but it seemed like we could only message her. She wasn’t there anyway so we will have to try again tonight.
Also, we had the meeting with the CC today and she gave me a print out of the school profile!
@Gatormama My children’s school calculates GPA the same way on the transcript. However, when D16 was completing the Common App, the CC gave her the needed cumulative GPA to enter (average of 9th-11th grade separate GPAs).
S19’s transcript has a GPA for each school year and a cumulative. Ours also includes HS classes taken in middle school, so the average needs to include those.
Our school doesn’t rank, but I wonder if there is some super secret ranking that the guidance counselors have access to for the sake of completing recommendations that ask for the student’s percentile. Or maybe they have the option of just indicating “our school does not rank.” I also wonder if they have some official formula for determining the “level of rigor” for colleges that want that info. Although it seems like everyone but S19 has 4 to 6 APs this year, I have no idea what the “average” number is.
S is finding his first AP classes both fun (AP Psych) and pretty easy (AP Physics) so hopefully the GC won’t put the brakes on his course selections again next year if he wants to take up to 4. Still, I think this “lack of rigor” could come back to bite him.l
@swimmingdad I’ve heard that our school’s counselors have a tendency to tell kids their match schools are reaches (to the extent that they provide college advising at all). I wonder why that is?
The reviews also referenced the strong portrayals by the lead actors as well as some ensemble members. I do have a tendency to skim and look for technical theatre references, though. :">