Just checking in. My 10th grader is just taking a more typical high school schedule. She has all honors classes such as English, US History II, MATH 3. She has to take 3 semesters of gym - she took 1 last year along with health and is taking the other two this year. We can’t do things like summer or online pe here. She is taking a college dual enrollment class this semester - sociology. She took PSATs at school last week - free and mandatory for all 10th and 11th graders. The biggest prep they did was give them a booklet the day before. She said the verbal part was easy and way too much time. Math she said she there were 2 or 3 that seemed a tad harder. In classes she she is better at math but state testing always seems to have her scoring higher in verbal then math so who knows.
S22 said he thought the PSAT went fine. He found it easier than the SSAT had been, which I hope is encouraging.
Just had a nice weekend celebration of his 15th birthday, which was yesterday. Now that we live in the Boston area, it’s easy to get to one of our favorite places in the world, Martha’s Vineyard. We took the car ferry over Saturday afternoon, checked into our hotel and went out for a great dinner. Yesterday I took him to play golf on one of the island’s best courses while my wife went to her favorite yoga studio. The three of us had a late lunch/early dinner, then took the ferry back and drove home. Excellent time.
@momtogirls2, my S22 has a similar schedule to your daughter. All honors classes except for advanced French, which is a notch above honors, and an elective called Engineering by Design. We all figured that one was a good fit with his interest in architecture.
@Vineyarder my daughter would love a class on hands on engineering. She is taking gym both semesters to finish that off and her other elective is chorus. Since you mentioned SSAT I’m guessing your son goes to private school.
My daughter is in public school in the Greater Boston area. I’m waiting to get her MCAS score back for biology. I’m not concerned but it will be nice to now that is good to go.
@momtogirls2 My son took the SSAT when we were considering keeping him in a private school upon our move back to the States from overseas, where he was in private schools in London (fourth through seventh grades) and Geneva (eighth and ninth grades). But we decided the public school in the town we now live in was the best fit, so he’s also in public school.
Oh my goodness, driving! Mine is supposed to get her license in late November, and she is quite eager! We do have to solidify her restrictions though.
I have known a couple of people who paid for that but it is really rare in our area. The people I knew who did it were wealthy and transplants from the East Coast or California 
PSAT done here. She did prep because I insisted. I thought some prep would calm her anxiety when she saw the test. Anxiety was a huge issue for one of mine and made her unwilling to do much in the way of testing. I would like to look over her results for strengths/weaknesses but ideally not make a big deal of them. Probably won’t show her unless she asks. I don’t actually anticipate this one being competitive for National Merit, but I don’t want to rule it out. Her older sister was NMS and it was useful for her.
We are at the midpoint of first semester and things are okay. Fall sport done, and she is doing a little volunteering before winter sport starts. Grades okay. Social life contains much less drama than last year, thank goodness. She was homecoming princess for her class which occurred with significantly less fanfare than I recall for “royalty” back when I was in high school in the Deep South (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.)
We’re going to our first college fair on Thursday night. S22 is unexcited about it, but it’s what I asked for on my bday last week. I want him to go and have a good attitude about it. He begrudgingly agreed. There are a couple schools there he has talked about, so I’m hoping it starts to get him a little excited about college and maybe he can put that little extra effort into school to push him to As instead of mostly B+s like he has now.
S22 was supposed to go to a college fair last Sunday but it was a rainy day and he was grumpy so we skipped it. ?
We have a good college list in place in a Google sheet so I think the college fair may be unnecessary.
Grades are excellent as we approach end of quarter – so much better than Freshman year! Would love to see this become a trend.
I couldn’t get S22 to go by a recent college fair either; even though it was at his school, he had just finished play rehearsal, and I offered to check it out with him. He’s not ready to think about it yet. We’ll check out a couple colleges this summer that are in the area of previously scheduled trips, as an introduction.
My S22 is also not very focused on colleges yet, which is fine. I did look up the top schools for architecture, since that’s his current career goal, and he was interested to hear them. Not easy for tours as there’s little geographic rhyme or reason. One list’s top five are Cornell, Rice, Cal Poly SLO, Syracuse and Notre Dame. Could do Cornell and Syracuse in a weekend, at least.
Just finished the college fair. S22 thought he would be the only sophomore, but then he saw a bunch of his friends that are sophomore honor students there. When we left he said, “that wasn’t as bad as I thought.” That’s super high praise coming from him!
We talked to five schools (wanted to keep a small sample so I kept him interested and not annoyed). We talked to TCU, Tulane, Florida, Clemson, and Elon. He didn’t care for Elon, but he liked the rest. I put Tulane in the list so I thought he’d automatically say he didn’t like it, but he did like them a lot. I’m thrilled he was keeping an open mind. He has always liked TCU, and that is still his fave after tonight (after USC, that is).
A super successful night in my opinion.
Sophomore year is a great time to start some college introductions! We don’t get much in the way of college fairs up here or I would be taking mine for sure. Glad it was a good night, @Lovetogolf
Mine has been to her older sisters’ colleges (UW-Seattle and Princeton) and did a tour of University of Puget Sound last year on a band trip. Think they are doing a tour of University of Central Florida this year on the band trip. I wouldn’t say she is at all excited or inspired at this point, but I do think it’s helpful to get a glimpse of the options. We live in a geographically isolated location, so it’s no small thing to do a college tour.
@OrangeFish that’s great news on the grades!
So my DS22 couldn’t be more different than DS20. He had a rough freshman year, (academically and socially) transferred to private school, and seems to be righting the ship right now, so to speak. But it’s tenuous, and he’s nowhere near ready to think about college. Meanwhile, my senior just got his first EA college acceptance last night, and he is fending off recruiting emails for his sport. Anyone else out there with an over- and under-achiever under the same roof? Give me strength.
@CTCape We have a somewhat similar case. My S22 does require some…ahem…management to stay on top of things. It’s bumpy, although right now things are good. But it can slip just like that. Meanwhile, D25 is very much on top of her game. All A’s in her 7th grade mid-semester grade update. They both get attention, it’s just the nature of the attention differs.
@sfSTEM Management is the perfect word, lol.
Just got S22’s first quarter report card. He went from all Bs and B+s last year to half As and half Bs in his first report card this year. He is seeming to care about his grades and asking to look at them online this year, it’s definitely giving me hope! Maybe if he continues down this path he’ll continue that upward trend colleges love and open up some possibilities for himself!
Just wanted to say “Hi!” My D22 is a strong student. Thankful for easy path with her. Has siblings D15, S18, D20- gets lots of indirect college advice from them.
Amazing to see her mature, enjoy hs experiences. Just got her driver’s learner’s permit! Where does the time go.
Just created an account and wanted to say Hi!. I’ve been reading CC for quite some time and I’ve found it to be very helpful. Since I was born and raised abroad, it has been very useful in helping me understand the US college system better. I am in a much better position now to help my DS22 on his journey to college. My DS22 is an only child, and a Top 10 student at his highly-rated public high school. His interests lie in the math & sciences, and he very much enjoys participating in FIRST Robotics and Mu Alpha Theta competitions.
Thanks to all the parents and students who post and keep this great community going!
Just got S22’s report card. An A, an A-, two B+'s and two B’s, so a 3.38 average. Neither thrilled nor devastated. He can do better, and I expect he’ll want to. Maybe my expectations are too high – a B+ is “very good,” and very good is … very good!
(Drafted that earlier and have since seen him. We didn’t go over it extensively, but he’s pretty satisfied with it.)
PSAT scores are out today and I am thinking it might be a good idea for my twins (22) to do a test prep class next summer. Is anyone else thinking about this? When/what will you do? We didn’t go this route with my eldest (DS20) because he is a good tester naturally. One twin is stronger than the other but dropped a bit % wise from last year. I’m thinking it can’t hurt to test prep but curious what really helps.
We will do a PSAT/SAT test prep in late summer/early fall. It helped my S18 tremendously. S22 has a decent 2019 PSAT score and is ahead of where his big brother was at this stage, but will need some help if NMF is to be a possibility.