Hi, I feel like this message thread is definitely high achieving kids and parents! We have done zero visits and zero practice tests. I have two older kids and they were at this same stage, summer before junior year. They started testing and prepping during junior year and making lists. They both got into exactly where they wanted and belonged!
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Congratulations to your daughter! Just checked and S23 got 5s too. What a nice finish to a challenging school year.
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Hi! For those whose kids have taken practice ACT and SAT at homeâŠdid you choose written, or online? I did a quick google and of course there are pros and cons of each. Figured Iâd check with those of you who have made this decision already.
FYI my son is average academically, and had terrible grades during covid. He will not be trying to get into top schools, just hoping to maximize his opportunities for his level. We do plan to do professional prep but just starting with a practice to see which test suits him better. Thanks!
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Congrats to your S!!
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@TS0104 have you joined this thread? S21 is not a high achiever and I found the 3.0-3.4 gpa threads extremely helpful and a more comfortable place for discussing his college search. This link is for the 2023 class (not that you shouldnât stay here also if you want!).
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We used the official SAT Study Guide for test prep. It contains eight written practice exams and is available on Amazon for $14. After completing a practice exam, S23 would score the exam using Khan Academy (his CB and KA accounts were linked). Khan Academy would then tailor practice quizzes to help him improve upon his weaknesses.
S23 also used the SAT Daily Practice app. He would complete one or two questions per day as part of his prep.
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My S did a couple online sections practices and then switched to paper since that is how the test will be given. He was scoring higher on the paper ones. He took the test last Saturday for the first time.
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I think they may have given up on making that distinction. Our tour guides definitely used the term âBrutalismâ while we were looking at these buildings.
It is funny because my DH and I were talking afterwards about our alma mater and the fact that those buildings (and the one from Hamilton that you show here) are very similar to ones that were on our campus, and we never gave a single thought to the architecture as undergrads. Itâs what goes on inside the buildings that is ultimately more important. But it is hard to miss how much these stick out on that campus.
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Brutalism done very, very well is delightful (see: DCâs underground metro stations).
Brutalism done badly, or even simply competently? Oh dear, no.
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Yeah, there used to be a whole thread devoted mid-century modern architecture and unless youâre a junkie for that era (it literally means, the 1950s) the distinction is liable to be extremely subtle.
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One of the things I love about the Wesleyan art buildings is the fact that each one is constructed of load bearing walls of solid limestone (there are no steel beams holding anything up.) You actually canât get more traditional than that and, to me, lends them a bit of romanticism that even the DC metro lacks.
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In combining two recent themes here â brutalism and poorly done tours â on a college tour of CUNY Queens with my D17 many years ago, we had not one or two, but three tour guides. We walked past a truly ugly monstrosity building with no windows that they didnât say anything about, so someone on the tour asked about the building.
The tour guides (all three!) said in unison â paraphrased â âI donât know â some sort science maybe?â Rule #1 for being a tour guide â know the names and general functions of the buildings on your campus! Now I understand some colleges are just massive (UCF, MSU, tOSU, etc) so there may be exceptions, but this is a smallish CUNY college. Thereâs only 30 buildings on the entire campus! (Yes, I just took 2 minutes of my life that Iâll never get back to look up how many buildings there are at Queens College â donât judge me!)
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I hadnât realized AP scores were out until I saw mentions on this thread, so I checked in with D23, and she looked up the one she took: She got a 4 on the German test.
Which gives her credit everywhere remaining on her list except American (which requires a 5 on AP language exams!!), and in fact multiple courses worth of credit everywhere except Drexel.
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Thing 1 & Thing 2 are officially licensed to drive!!! Despite making an appt at a DPS 45 minutes away from where we live it was still over an hour wait, but we got it done!
The twins did okay on the AP World History test (their only AP test sophomore year)âŠboth got 3âs.
Thing 2 is still anxiously waiting to hear back on the Senate Page internship. Weâve been having a lot of meetings with District Admins and our counselor to figure out the academics part and they are all ridiculously excited for him. There hasnât been any student in our district in recent history who has been selected to be a Senate Page so if he gets it, they will do whatever it takes to make sure his academic credits transfer and donât hinder his class rank. If he gets selected, heâs going!!! Aaahhhh!
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And AP students should be happy they get that, since American gives zero credit for foreign languages based on IB or A-levels.
Speaking of brutalist architectureâŠ
That would be most of UMassâs 70âs era buildings. Believe itâs considered to have the largest collection of that style in at least the US, egadđŹ. Fortunately Theyâve since added many very impressive buildings to help offset. Campus feels more like a city within a small town, campus style is very unique and it grows on you.
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Umass is one of the oddest looking campuses around. They donât seem to have any consistent architectural theme other than ugly. But somehow there is charm in that!
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Welp, Thing 2 found out last night he didnât get selected for the Senate Page Fall Internship. Itâs okay, it was so sudden anyway lol, he never even applied for the Fall session so that fact that they even wanted to interview him was huge! They did encourage him to apply for Summer 2022 so weâll see!
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Agree itâs a big time hodge podge of styles.
For sure not the best looking or traditional campus, but they have facilities now that are among the best. Fortunately they have a lot going for them in other areas besides campus beauty. I agree it somehow works in a weird way 
. It seems appropriate UMass being in the Happy Valley.
The last three tours of the trip!
- Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. This one was done mainly for D25, since there arenât any ultra-high-powered R1s on D23âs list, and so this filled a gap in college types. This one was a bit over a mile at a slightly (though only slightly) slower pace than the usual one mile per hour these generally take, with masks required for everyone the entire time (entirely outdoors! and no exceptions for those who are fully vaccinatedâthe first one weâve had that was that strict) on a figure-8 through the very slightly hilly Colonial Revival campus. (After the tour, D25 called Hopkins âthe most campusy campus that ever campusedâ. Even so, though, D25 wasnât as impressed by the eye-candy architectural embellishmentsâe.g., Shriver Hall, one of their showpiecesâas D23 was.) It was the first tour we went on where the reaction to us visiting from Alaska didnât even merit a raised eyebrowâthey clearly have a wide range of national and international interest, and yes, Alaska was the furthest distance away in our group (one of many that morning, and these werenât tiny groups), but we had a handful from California, too. The tour guide had a microphone, which is always appreciated, especially in these days of mask-wearing. The kids reacted very positively to the university, and D25 in particular was in love with the casual emphasis placed throughout on student involvement in research. (And for those keeping track of swag, this is the first one where absolutely nothing was handed out. Seton Hall didnât hand out a bag of stuff but still distributed cards with an application fee waiver. Hopkins? Clearly no need for that. They have enough people touring and get enough applicants anyway that they donât need to remind you who they are, I suppose.)
- American University in Washington DC: This is a relatively compact campus in an extremely upscale section of the city (literally blocks away from Embassy Row), mostly built inâunusually for a college, but not entirely unexpected in DCâa Neoclassical style. Despite the compactness of the campus, the tour was still nearly a mile and a quarter, and as you might expect from that felt very comprehensiveâbut the campus didnât feel claustrophobic in any way. There are a couple significant roads cutting through campus, but the surrounding area is residential enough (well, residential-ish, but embassies kind of feel like residences on steroids, I suppose) that that didnât seem too overwhelming. They were churning a bunch of people through the morning we were thereâthey were running several decent-sized tour groups in parallelâbut the tour still managed to feel non-canned, not in the sense that the tour guide tailored the tour to the potential applicants who were touring, but in the sense that she seemed to tailor the content to her own experiences at American, and gave a feel for what the university has been like for her. (Perhaps of note: The tour group we were in wasnât as geographically wide-ranging as our group at Hopkins, but even so coming from Alaska once again didnât merit any evidence of surprise. Clearly, another place with a pretty wide geographic reach.) One possibly interesting thing: This was the first tour we went on where the tour guide explicitly said something along the lines of âThis is a great place to go to college, but if it isnât for you, hey, donât feel like you have to come or even apply hereâthe purpose of a campus tour is to figure out whether itâs right for you.â Thatâs a level of security thatâs rare in college tours, but that I always appreciate, and I wish that more selective private colleges would include something along those lines. As for the kidsâ reactions, both of them came out of the tour quite impressed (it doesnât hurt, of course, that DC is D23âs favorite city, bar none), and feeling like it would be an amazing place to go to college.
- The University of Maryland College Park: This tour covered a mile and a half of the almost aggressively Colonial Revival campus with two tour guides leading us at the briskest pace of any of our tours this summer, and it was that long despite not making a full loop (if it had it probably would have clocked in at a full two miles)âthey closed the tour at a location where it was easy to direct people back to the starting point, but where people could also peel off to look at various campus landmarks more closely or go to the bookstore or whatever. Lots of construction near and on campus (largely due to mass transit expansion), but I donât think that that really affected the experience. On the whole, though, I have to say that I was quite disappointed by the tour. This is where both Spouse and I got our undergrad degrees, so I know well what a stunning campus it is (though I had forgotten that itâs quite so hilly), but the tour route almost seemed purposefully designed to avoid most of the pretty parts of campus up until the very last stop. And that last stop was another example of the poor design of the tourâyes, it was scenic, but it was also an extended stop in full sun; this seems to be the only college weâve toured that didnât get the memo that in midsummer it might be good to keep your tour groups in the shade as much as possible. And on as beautiful a campus as Maryland is with as many trees as it has, one might think that those would be easy things to highlight, you know? So that was kind of weird. (And it wasnât the fault of tour guides making poor choices! They had four groups running in parallel, and all the groups were making stops very near each otherâwhich meant it was sometimes hard to hear our guides because of the other guides talking to their groupsâso clearly the route through the campus was set for them.) As for the kids, D25 thought it seemed to be a decent place but wasnât overwhelmingly impressed, and D23 was kind of checked out because they donât offer her major and it was the last tour, so not much to report from their side of things. (A few final notes: This was the only tour of the trip where we had to show proof of covid immunization for itâand they handed all of us red disposable masks to wear both indoors and out throughout the tour, to help keep track of tour attendees. Also, no swag bags at this tour, not even of papers to be thrown in the recycling immediately afterward.)
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