Oklahoma! Yes, OU is quite a good value OOS. You might also check out FSU in case you can get in-state tuition. However, even OOS is reasonable.
Back to OU, we live in Dallas so there’s a huge draw to OU. Over the last ten years, OU has been our school’s second most attended university after UT. Quite a few UT alum kids go to OU. Some think it due to the allure of the OU/Texas game. OU has solid academics across the board, 30%~40% Greek, attractive campus and allows you to switch majors. If you’re open to first jobs in Texas up through Kansas, it is a solid choice.
It isn’t a T20 so their acceptance rate is actually in the double digits, around 16%, and her stats put her in the top quartile of their acceptances for 2021. Definitely still a reach, especially as her high school has not sent many student there in the past (scoir indicates about half the kids from her HS with similar stats were accepted, half rejected). The school does have two additional essays, but from my count of her list, she “only” has 7 to write in addition to the common ap.
I think “gentle reach” is an attempt to provide a bit more granularity to the traditional three buckets, which is probably appropriate. My D has schools that probably would be in the Reach bucket if forced into the three, but have a much higher probability of acceptance than MIT/Caltech.
As expected, we’re seeing wrong answers from students who violated testing regulations by attempting to use a second device (e.g., a smartphone) to google the correct answers while taking the digital exam at home. We know this because of how the exams were designed. The college professors who wrote this year’s questions crafted them in such a way that incorrect response option(s) could include words and phrases that would appear in internet searches if a student googled key words from the question. In contrast, the correct answer to AP digital multiple-choice questions required students to apply their knowledge to a specific scenario not searchable on the internet. In other words, the right answer couldn’t be googled.
Yeah, some kids were smart enough to take AP, but dumb enough to think they could cheat despite having been told upfront that be the answers could not be googled. I’m anticipating a lot of students shocked by their scores come 7/21.
@sfSTEM - hope camp drop off went well for you guys. No issues here. He must be having fun as we have not heard from him at all. I did the parent tour that day and liked much of the campus. Dorms are old!
Well our D24 is in BVI for three weeks for SCUBA camp (delayed from 2020). S22 is working and taking an online coding course from Michigan. He recently received recognition from Apple at WWDC in the SWIFT Student Challenge. He has finalized his list as of yesterday:
Iowa State — admitted
Alabama — applied
Arizona State — applied
Washington
Auburn
Purdue
Ohio State
Texas A&M
He are heading to Auburn for the Senior Tiger Engineering Expo next week before heading to Iowa State for a tour with A&M early next month (I know they aren’t close).
All very easy for dropoff at Rose-Hulman. We flew in to Indy on Sunday, stayed there for the night. Walked around and watched the fireworks. We drove to Terre Haute Monday. A lot more history there than I knew. Terre Haute is where the iconic Coke bottle was designed. There are artistic versions of the Coke bottle around town, sort of like the cows that are all around Chicago. And a huge statue of Larry Bird on the Indiana State campus. Also, Square Donuts was a hit Tuesday morning.
S22 is enjoying himself there. The BSB dorm rooms are old school, aren’t they? Seem to have a lot of character (based on all the art/writing in the halls and rooms). We enjoyed the parent tour, our guide was great. She took us all over. One thing we learned: if you go to RHIT, you could have a car on campus as freshman! I particularly liked the Kremer Innovation Center (“kic”). I know S22 likes computer science, but some cool engineering things happening there.
I’m enjoying following along on social media as Operation Catapult posts things they’re up to.
Ha! I agree with the nuanced scale. D21’s college counseling(at school) provides families very detailed tiers and also % chance of acceptance AFTER they ask the kids (after multiple meetings) to chance themselves(also in writing which is funny to see since parents aren’t asked). Our D gave herself “25%-30%” at her reaches and the school knocked them down to varying degrees from 6-20% with notes on why. It was fascinating. She got into all her likelies, low matches, high matches, a low reach and one regular reach, but got NO at the high reaches. She had a good friend who got Nos at more than half the matches including a low match. So it just depends. True mid-range Matches are rated 50%, so that kid also was within the school’s estimates. It was a weird year for sure–the school overall was slightly less successful than prior years but it was close to typical by the time all WLs came through–hope for all of your '22s that it is back to more “normal” numbers applying this fall. I am lurking here occasionally to keep “in the know” as I catch my breath and start preparing for D23’s cycle.
@2Devils I think that’s such a cool thing your school counseling office does. Ours unfortunately is way understaffed and mostly deals with social/emotional issues and almost no college counseling. So we have kids who either don’t go to college at all, and smart kids who think they are in the running for T20’s and end up terribly disappointed. We had one very top student last year who got rejected from every single school because she only applied T20. Fortunately, she applied to one uni abroad and got in there. (McGill). The students at our school could really use some counseling on what schools are reaches, matches and safeties.
I just hope my D22 is putting appropriate schools on his list. I’m soo glad we found CC so we could get some good advice and insight!
Among non-native/heritage speakers, those who “generally receive most of their foreign language training in U.S. schools” have percentage of 5s is in the low 10s to low 20s % range, with an average around 3, closer to typical APs.
I always wonder if native/heritage speakers actually think a high score will benefit them. Perhaps my D22 should take the TOEFL
I wish our school counselors knew how to get beyond “So, Pitt or Penn State?” for the top students.
Our local adult school is offering a college essay writing workshop and my D has agreed to work with the teacher individually due to her job schedule. She is naturally a good writer but having someone to discuss ideas and check her spelling and grammar who is not her parents is good for all of us. The teacher said most kids do 2-3 sessions with her and they will do it this summer before D gets busy with varsity soccer.
We didn’t have time to see anything local. We got in about 9pm Monday night. I plan to get there early enough this Friday to walk around and have dinner, etc. Then if there is enough time and he has not been in town, he and I will visit/walk a bit before driving home.
Old school dorms for sure! I don’t think they are terrible. But I am glad they are not plush. It will give him an idea of what a lot of schools have. And maybe he’ll decide it’s fine or that he’d like something else. I’m just hoping for an opinion! Lol
I didn’t know that about a car. That’s nice for sure. The Kic was pretty cool! Our guide said sophomores with under a 3.0 have to live on campus as well. They find sophomore year to be the hardest so they want to give enough support to kids that might be struggling more.
Wow! I proctor for AP and have been a little out of the loop since May exams ended since they were all in person but good for them and seriously how dumb are students? Also the AP CS Exam is one of the easier ones if you actually know what you’re doing!
And ingenius that the writers of some of the exams specifically wrote some of them so kids taking them at home couldn’t Google the answers. There will of course always be kids who game the system and some successfully but hopefully this caught a chunk. Did they mention anywhere how many students were caught cheating on any of the exams?
