@ScarletRobin I can’t forget about Lafayette as both my wife (who is a Chem E and got a masters at CMU) and I went there .
Going to have to live in dorms at Lafayette as freshman.
What about Case Western in Cleveland. Real good engineering in City and they give lots of merit money.
@Rue4, Our plan: D will prep next summer by herself using Erica Meltzer’s Reading and Grammar and math is “PWN the SAT” test prep books. plus practice test from the 8 released Official SAT. then going over every wrong answer. Rinse and repeat. This is our plan next summer.
@ScarletRobin Welcome! I too am a longtime (very longtime) single mom. D and I live alone and her dad lives 5 hours east (Texas is a big state). High SAT/ACT/NMF is important for us because we have an unaffordable EFC that is high than state school. . What I have found at the type of schools we are targeting…there is more money for high test scores. D wants a traditional college experience with big sports for the school spirit. She too has no desire for greek and most likely will major in engineering.
@BingeWatcher The whole financial aid thing is completely foreign to me. I forget that it’s the #1 worry of the parents! (We’re on tuition exchange.) I’m 99% sure we’ll be targeting small schools. Every one of his cousins has gone to U. Delaware and he’s not impressed with the size/atmosphere.
Right now we’re just trying to get English sorted, and then will worry about SAT’s if necessary. He is bored in Academic English because it’s too easy, and every time we try to bump him to Honors English he fails because he can’t write. I’m begging the school right now to let him use his open block in the 3rd quarter to do an Independent Study with one of the English teachers to get his writing on track. It’s encouraging to him that I had the same issue - I very nearly failed 10th grade English, had to be tutored all summer, then by 12th grade I was in AP and got a 4 on the exam.
@burghdad Cleveland is probably too far. Heck, Clarkson is too far but he’s obsessing over it for some reason. We’re looking mostly NY/MD/PA/DE/maybe NJ/maybe VA/maybe WV. However my sister went to a tiny LAC outside of Cleveland (Hiram) and loved it, and is always talking it up to him.
@BingeWatcher sounds like Clemson would be a good landing spot for your D…lol…
Thanks @BingeWatcher, I have just added the books to my Amazon cart. My D21 is highly motivated and these look great.
Hi to all. Just received DD’s PSAT scores - 1260 (640 EBRW and 620 Math). Did not prep and is in Calculus this year. DD is interested in Business/Accounting. Looking at our state’s two flagship schools and would like to get an idea for some other good choices/fit. Would like to see her apply to maybe 6 schools total. Not sure what’s a good amount but know she needs to have a couple safeties, matches and a reach or two.
DD is interested in a big public or relatively large private school with some school spirit. She attends a competitive HS with close to 4,000 kids and does not want to go to a school smaller than her HS. She thinks that someday she would maybe like to live in Texas but it seems those schools, like TAMU’s business school, is hard to get accepted into due to the large number of auto admits for the top Texas HS students.
She’s not interested in sororities or drinking but would enjoy a healthy, average social scene. She loves her sleep, so I’m sure she would not be thrilled with a wild dorm experience. I know some dorms have that type of reputation on the different campuses. She’s an “only kid” but I don’t know what type of dorm-living experience she would prefer just yet (traditional roommate or suite style). I guess it depends on where she ends up going and what type of arrangements they offer. I think, like most kids, she wants a dorm experience where the kids are open to having some fun and making new friends.
Having twins and going through this college process is already tough for us. They are equally intelligent (based both on observation and previous testing), but VERY different. One is a very fast worker, the other works much slower. PSAT 10 scores, with no prep, were 200 points apart (along with not remembering math concepts, the lower scoring one did not get to several reading questions and felt time pressure throughout). We know the twin who scored lower can bring scores up with practice, but can’t let that twin know the other twin’s score because of how upset and discouraged they’ll be (this was already expressed). Hoping that with time (and test prep), this score differential will become a non-issue!
@havenoidea wow that would be tough as a parent. Good luck to you and your children as they work through all this.
Hi, new here. College talk is getting very real in my house. My D21 thinks at this time she wants to do computer science/engineering. She is a good student, just scored an 1170 on PSAT’s so has a little work to do , especially on English portion (560). She is very active in school, class secretary, on the school dance team and also dances competitively outside of school, 15 hours a week and teaches for 2 hours a week. We don’t get class rankings until mid Junior year. Her weighted average is about 100.6. She takes 1 AP this year, but will increase that next year.
Hi! I’m new here, too. I feel with the release of the PSAT 10 scores, this college stuff is getting real. My S21 (does that mean “son, class of '21”?) got a 1360 (710 Math, 650 other). He really wants to get that up another 100 points. I hope we can do that without spending money on classes. Does anyone have suggestions for free tutoring? He has interest in finance/business/comp sci, so maybe Management Information Systems as a major? And if he can “put away bad guys” at the same time, he’d be thrilled. He’s pretty open to any college location. Being in Central Texas, college visits are more difficult, as it takes nine hours just to leave the state. UT-Austin is definitely on the list, but it’s very hard to get into because of state requirements and they limit how many from each HS they’ll accept. Irritating. As of the end of his freshman year he was 73rd out of 929. Great, but not upper echelon schools, which is what he thinks he wants. Sigh, it’s all so overwhelming.
@lisadh524 I used to teach SAT courses for all of those big test prep companies. Honestly, the best thing you can do is have him do SAT tests and really dig into the ones he gets wrong and then see why he is getting them wrong. Rinse and repeat. That is all any tutor or test prep company does. The learning comes when you dig into the mistakes. I like the Princeton Review materials the best, I find them to be the most accurate representation of the College Board tests.
+1 on @Ann777 advice. At first, DS also looked at the answers for the one’s he got right as sometimes there is a better way or faster way to do something and/or sometimes he just got lucky. Khan Academy is quite good for having a large number of questions to practice on.
@lisadh524 - Yes S21 does mean son in class of 21. For PSAT 10 that is a great score. Remember the scale only goes to 1520 compared to 1600 for SAT. I agree with @Ann777 - practice. Khan Academy has great free material online that helped my S18 with SAT prep.
Check with your school too - D21’s school subscribes to some test prep - I forget the name - but the kids can access it for free through their Naviance accounts. D21 says she wants to self-prep for the August test and we’ll see from there if she needs more.
I second @NJWrestlingmom about free test prep through school. Our public high school gives access to a program called Method Test Prep. D19 found it very helpful. I found it a lot cheaper than tutors?.
@3SailAway I just looked it up - Method is what our school has also!
Thank you @Ann777 ! I will point him in that direction. I’ll also look into what the school district has. Most of the notices they send out are for paid “boot camps”, but I’m sure there has to be something free of charge. Thanks, everyone!
How is everyone doing? I imagine midterms are looming for everyone’s kids? Mine has one before the holiday break (AP Calculus), then two right after the break (AP Biology and AP Spanish), then one in American History Honors in early Feb(!). She has two finals right before Christmas for two one-semester classes (photography and a drugs/alcohol PE course), but she isn’t stressed about those. One of her courses, AP English Language, doesn’t have a midterm, but just does a final grade at the end of the year (grade is based almost totally on all the weekly writing assignments).
(We homeschool using different course providers, and each class has its own timetable and vacation schedule - the juggling gets interesting, lol).
We are on a slightly different journey than what I’ve seen in recent posts. S21’s (small, Catholic) school does not offer the PSAT or APs until junior year. This year started off with a big adjustment to honors English and history. And math was challenging. Well, this kid got focused and started putting in the time. Doing really well all around. Even talking about going for honors math.
And after having no ECs last year, he is doing XC, track, and Spanish club. He’s also a student ambassador. And is hoping for NHS next year. Freshman year he was a bit adrift. And now, he is self-motivated and pushing himself. Really proud of him. He even entertained some college talk this week. Seeing me pay the deposit for S19 to attend Penn State next year may have provided some motivation there. 
He went with us on most of the college visits for S19. Right now, he feels that a small to mid-sized school would be right for him (aka not where his brother’s going). And there are few schools already on the list. So, we’ll see how it goes. As I learned from S19, a lot can change between now and application time. 
D is in the middle of mid terms. She had her easiest one yesterday (newspaper) and her two hardest both today (Honors Alg. 2 and AP Bio.) She is devastated that she is most likely getting a B in AP Bio. She had a low A then bombed a test last week that brought her down to an 88. She could bring it back up if she got an A on the exam today but she says she is going to fail - of course she always says she is going to fail and she never does! I am trying to get her to relax about a B but since she has only had one B in her life in 6th grade she is having a hard time with it. I hate that these kids push themselves SO hard.
She took the PSAT this year and got somewhere in the high 1100’s. She is not a great tester and stresses out about them so I won’t push her on the actual exams too hard. I will have her do a practice of each test this summer to see which one she should focus on - her older sister did much better with the ACT. She isn’t thinking too far ahead yet, all she knows about college is that she doesn’t want anywhere with a true winter, says she could handle somewhere in the middle like VA but no way will she look at places up north. We leave for our trip to MA and NH this week and she is excited to see family and friends but not for the cold weather! :))