D21 had a 4.6 GPA for q2. One bad midterm (chem) so total first semester is a 4.5, which is high honors for the year to date. Equally exciting for her is that she’s in a budding relationship with nice sounding young man and he asked her to junior prom a week or so ago! Prom dress shopping on Saturday, we’ll bring her besties with us. She’s enjoying the college mail, very excited to get one from Vandy yesterday which is one of her early favorites.
What fun @VikkiG5.
@vicckiG5. Sounds like your daughter is in a good place. Nothing on the romance front in our house but the college mail has started to flow and my D is also enjoying that. She also has gotten her driver’s license and is doing more driving on her own.
For those of you whose kids entered Scholastic Writing, results are out! Go to your “region at large” and scroll down until you find the link for this year’s awards. Good luck!
@VicckiG5 sounds like your D is doing great. Have fun dress shopping.
Glad to read everyone’s updates! Such great kids.
Well, things are starting to get real over here. S21 brought home the registration sheet for the PSAT10.
He’s also having a great year. Already been told he can do APUSH, Honors Spanish IV, and Honors English next year. And he will be invited for NHS. And he has decided to follow in his S19 brother’s footsteps and stick to college prep math and science. Apparently, my two boys are similar in their desires to play to their strengths (humanities) while ensuring grades stay high in the areas they find more challenging (math and science).
My kids attend a small, Catholic school. There are some AP and DE courses offered but not like I often see around here on CC. AP English is not even offered until senior year. So he’s shooting for the highest he can go in the humanities while staying in college prep for the rest. Really proud of him for making these decisions for himself.
At this point, he will not talk about college. His response is always “I’m 15” when his dad and I mention anything. Can’t blame him. It is just coming up sometimes as we are preparing to send S19 off in the fall. I just gotta chill out. He went on most of the college visits with us and already has some idea of things. Keep telling myself to hold off until after the XC season ends in the fall.
So, I’ll pop in over here in the meantime. LOL! 
Well, D21 got a low C on the Latin midterm, despite so much studying. She has mostly overcome her dyslexia, but this is where it’s still tripping her up. She went into the midterm with an A+, so final grade for the quarter is B+, and it’s honors, so it’s completely fine, but she is down. This is a kid who loves school more than any sport or EC, and whose friends all seem to manage straight A’s at a competitive HS taking the most rigorous classes.
I’m encouraging her to talk to her Latin teacher about what she’s struggling with (grammar/endings/spelling) and formulate a plan for the final since that will be even more info. Right now, she’s too discouraged, but she’ll bounce back.
Any advice for how to reassure her that she doesn’t need straight A’s to get into a college where she’ll be challenged academically and will find her crowd of geeky, sweet, studious kids?
@3SailAway Hugs to your daughter. I don’t see why she shouldn’t be able to figure out some appropriate accommodations for her dyslexia in this class. I agree that she or you should consult with the teacher and/or the school administration to see what can be done. Good luck!
@3SailAway I wish I knew the magic way to get them to realize that they don’t have to be perfect to get into a good school. I just keep stressing to D that I know she will get into a good college and will be successful in life because she has the desire and passion. So far it’s working. We are still waiting on final grades for the quarter.
As for the dyslexia, in NY we have 504 plans it is a legal document of accommodations that the school MUST adhere to, dyslexia would certainly fall into a plan. I can’t see how a school doesn’t make accommodations for her.
Thanks so much, @mamaedefamilia and @AndreaLynn! D21 did get services from the school district in elementary school (and about 80 hours of outside one-on-one help from Lindamood-Bell to learn to read). However, she scored really high on whatever metrics they use in 5th grade, so she no longer got services in middle school. I thought she had to be really struggling (ie failing classes) to qualify for a 504, so I probably dropped the ball there. I think she’s been able to compensate very well up until this year when the level of difficulty took a giant leap.
I hope she’ll talk to the teacher next week. I think that’s a good idea to remind her that she has everything it takes to be successful, including perseverance which she wouldn’t have developed to such a great extent without the dyslexia!
Maybe we should also start by visiting a few “safety” schools so she can see that there are some wonderful places out there with higher acceptance rates where she could definitely be happy.
@3SailAway it’s probably not too late to get her a 504. Doesn’t hurt to ask the school about it. Sometimes it’s grade based, my D was turned down for one when we tried because of her anxiety issues, even with a therapist recommendation she was denied because her grades were so good. With dyslexia though I would hope a few accommodations would be approved, maybe extra time or even a reader for the exam.
On the safety school front I think that is a great idea.
Chiming in on the safety school comment. Both my daughters are currently interested in certain most selective schools - BUT - they have also visited and absolutely loved schools with 50% acceptance rates. Those aren’t safeties per se, but it is good for kids to have schools they know they would love to attend that aren’t in that tippy top/impossible odds acceptance rate ranges.
@JanieWalker - you are so right. Plus, if your child is on the higher end of a school’s stats, they may be in line for merit money, honors college, etc. Sometimes the highest ranked school that accepts you is not the best choice.
D will definitely look at and apply to schools with better acceptance rates. Merit awards and how much she will have to take out in loans will be a very big factor on where she ends up going. She is getting tons of mail from schools and is looking at all of them before she gets rid of the mailings.
Chiming in on safety school conversation:
A.Even matches can become reaches if you add in cost of attendance and families willingness to take on loans etc. I was shocked how EFC for middle class families ruled out financial aid and left merit aid and loans as options to fill the blank.
B.My experience after going through this with S18 is that admissions #'s can be misleading. Lots of really great students got denied from schools they thought were matches.
D21 will apply to 9 ish schools that are a mix of reach, match and safety, both academic and financial. S18 chose a match/safety school that gave him big $, he’s got a 3.81 after first semester. Since he’s considering law school the great grades and no debt will be setting him up well for next stage.
I tell you guys one way to make sure your kids don’t completely fall in love with big reaches. Don’t bring them there. Those schools do not care about demonstrated interest. With our S19, our visits focused on safeties and matches for sure. We haven’t seen his three biggest reaches.
When looking at safeties, look the other way at the acceptance rates and look for the things your kids want in a school. Location. Major. Vibe. Our S19 really liked the LAC model after visiting a few low match LACs. We did eventually visit two reachy-er LACs and he loved the fellow students more. He really wants to be surrounded by kids “like him academically”. I get that but part of me wishes we hadn’t even visited these schools because then this “fellow student” thing became as issue. That being said, it’s not changing his view that he indeed liked the lower ranked LACs.
He just received his first acceptance yesterday to Dickinson with their biggest merit scholarship (we are full pay so no need based aid). $20k per year which brings the price down to $45k per year. That’s quite a bit less than the $73k per year some of his other schools will cost. Dickinson is one he has not visited but showed a ton of interest meeting the rep twice when he came to our school and emailing with questions when he had a few. Do I think he will go there? Most likely not. The school is pretty unknown in the Midwest. But it means that, if there’s some disastrous March decision time and he gets shut out of a bunch of other schools, he’s got one that he’s excited about and ticks almost every box for him. I feel relieved to have this acceptance in his back pocket.
@homerdog agree entirely, getting that first acceptance that checks enough boxes that your child would be happy there is a great feeling! The first one S18 got was his real safely school but I still remember him relaxing and saying now I KNOW I’m going to school next year.
@3SailAway Ask about obtaining a “twice exceptional” classification for your child. This is a known category - gifted + learning disability. Such accommodations are not available everywhere but you might want to do some reading on it before you meet with the teacher and/or school administrators. Knowledge is power!
I have seen threads here on CC about identifying schools that offer good support for learning disabilities and that might be a good place to start to begin identifying colleges that your child will enjoy and where she will thrive.
Also, be advised that it is possible to get accommodations for SAT/ACT like longer time, alternative test format, etc. This can take awhile to get approved but is definitely worth looking into. Also, when the time comes, she might do better on one format than the other. ACT rewards speed and is more straightforward. SAT probably favors deeper thinkers and is paced more slowly. My D17, while generally falling into the “deep thinker” category, actually did better on the ACT, so the results may not be what you think.
Our experience with D17 was much like what @VikkiG5 and @homerdog describe. She wanted a LAC or smallish research university but we needed merit so we cast a wide net with respect to selectivity. She applied to 9 schools plus our not particularly selective in-state flagship. One of those was Dickinson EA (congrats to your son @homerdog !) where she also a scholarship. It was a great way to take off the pressure. She also was searching for intellectually passionate (dare I say slightly nerdy?) fellow students, and ended up elsewhere but she could have been happy at Dickinson too.
I like to think of schools as bundles with like attributes. So if your kid likes Brown or Tufts but can’t consider them because of affordability or selectivity or both, he or she can think of options like Wash U, Rice, or Case Western, or U of Richmond (still very selective but there is very limited and highly competitive merit money available). Or look to a mid sized school with an interesting honors program like Ohio U, which offers merit to OOS.
For LACs, maybe Middlebury, Williams, or Pomona is the dream, but just a notch down in rankings with merit scholarships are Macalester, Oberlin, Grinnell and Kenyon, or a bit farther down, places like College of Wooster, Denison, Beloit, Lawrence, St. Olaf, or Dickinson. Again, great schools where a high stats kid might be a bigger fish in that smaller pond but would still find like-minded swimmers. Still great, but even more accessible might be CTCL schools like Allegheny, Ursinus, etc.
If your kid likes Georgetown, maybe check out other Jesuit schools like Fordham, Gonzaga, etc. Women’s colleges - instead of Barnard or Wellesley, then Bryn Mawr, Mt Holyoke, Smith, or Scripps (competitive but offer merit) or less competitive - Agnes Scott, Wesleyan College (not University). Wants to go out of state to a large public with big sports? Maybe Ohio State (Morrill Scholars), ASU (Barrett Honors College), or one of the very long shot scholarships (UVA, Jefferson; UNC, Robertson).
The merit landscape seems to change rapidly, so by the time our kids get to senior year, the options may have shifted. But there are lots of great choices out there. @homerdog I am cheering on the sidelines for your son and eagerly waiting for more acceptances to roll in.
Good Lord, being born and raised in Texas, I haven’t even heard of most of the college’s being discussed here!
@Momof3B Neither had I, until my older child started looking at college, LOL! You are lucky in that there are so many excellent options in TX that you may never have to look outside of your state!
@homerdog, we’ve been to Dickinson and Carlisle more than once - Dickinson is a GREAT school and one of the ones both my kids would be thrilled to attend. Congratulations to your son. ?