Same here!! Both of my twins are on the leadership team for marching band. We’ve got 3 more games in regular season and 1 more contest…but it also looks like we’re going to post season since our football team is 7-0 undefeated right now…I don’t know how these kids manage to handle it all. On contest Saturdays they’re gone from 9:00 am’ish to almost midnight. They cram in studying and homework wherever they can…on the bus, in the band hall…lunch block….
I’m the president of the band booster club so I’m putting in the same (sometimes more!) hours that they are
Our high school moved their start time a few years ago so it starts an over an hour later than it used to. We live in a large rural town so before the time change you might have to be waiting at the bus stop at 5:45am depending where you lived on the bus route!
D23 typically works between 7-14 hours/week at her job, and her sport takes up about 14 hours/week. Homework probably takes between 2-4 hours/day, depending. It seems like sometimes she has a ton of work assigned all at once and due the next day; other times she has time to work ahead on projects or essays. She’s in a few school clubs but they meet right before or after school. She’s managing it all but could definitely use an extra hour or two of sleep.
With my D17 and D20, I often wondered if it was a crazy amount of homework or just that they did way more work than expected on every assignment. Written assignments where I think the teacher wanted a sentence, they would write a paragraph. If it seemed like a paragraph was needed, they did an essay.
My S23 is more of “do what’s asked, and no more.” He does the work, but is better at doing a right-sized amount of work. And he’s still doing 3-5 hours of homework a night. So now I can clearly see it’s frankly too much. And as @dfbdfb said above, I think a year of online work has created a new way for teachers to add work, without necessarily understanding the different time-load that creates.
S23 is already talking about trying to get a little more balanced in his schedule next year. 4-5 hours of homework a night and typically a bunch over the weekend. For his ECs he’s involved in a sport outside of school as well as clubs and activities within the school. Happily we did sit down before the semester and talk about his goals for around sports and college. We were at a point of deciding if his goal was to be recruited as an athlete it would mean a pretty intensive training and competition schedule. Took that off the table and said he would not pick a college just to play a sport and wanted to dedicate more time to some of the school activities. Although I still feel like he is overworked/stressed and always tired, it has helped tremendously. No issues if he needs to skip a practice or competition.
S23 only has about 5 hours of HW a week. During benchmarks it might ramp up to twice that. He has a lot of time at school for group project work. He plays D&D most weekends and started the D&D Club at school so he and a friend run that. He also streams on Twitch 2 or 3 times a week. He has Music Theory 1 hour a week though he does put in time making music for D&D, his Video class, etc. Sometimes he complains about too much homework and I just roll my eyes.
@Novacat9191 do you mind saying what sport? We went down the same route with my D17. Her sport was fencing, and she did end up on a competitive D1 collegiate fencing team, but managed to scale back the sport in HS, but still do enough to continue in college.
The sport really wanted to take over, but we had to wrestle back control of the process from her fencing club, which wanted way more of her time than she could handle – or frankly, we could afford (really, Mr. Fencing Coach, you think my daughter should fly to Europe for the weekend for tournament X? Yeah, that’s not gonna happen). I’m just mentioning this as an anecdote that it’s possible to thread the needle of doing enough in HS to still continue in college without going overboard.
@stencils it’s fencing too! We were really feeling the sport starting to take over as well, and for boys it’s not like there’s a lot of potential scholarship money. Thinking about trying to balance even a NAC schedule and missing school days was crazy. We’re lightly threading the needle now (one lesson and one to two practices a week, will fence regional events on the winter…) right now viewing it as good EC (he also helps coach beginners and refs). Where it leads as we get into next year who knows
S23 probably spends about 3-4 hours a night on homework M-Th and then about another 3 hour chunk sometime during the weekend. He’s taking a pretty challenging workload this year (on counsel of S21), so he knew what he was signing up for this year.
During the week he might spend about 6-12 hours on extracurriculars, mostly basketball and MUN. Weekends that have MUN conferences are brutal, but those have been mostly online to this point which are more manageable.
He tries to get to bed between 10 and 11 on weeknights. His time to relax is on the weekends.
S23 doesn’t seem to have a lot of homework - especially after dropping DC english and US History. He does well enough in his AP classes. Really hope that he can get admission to college…
The vast majority of colleges (yes, including quite good ones) out there are nonselective.
Despite what spending time on College Confidential leads one to think, admission to college is available to most everyone (just not necessarily admission to the colleges that get love on this site).
This is our 4th kiddo. We have never had a one-and-done, as I am a strong believer in everyone should take the test (SAT or ACT) twice if, for no other reason, it takes the stress out of the first one. (Our first three all did better on the second try.) DS’23 hit his goal on the first try. I’m thinking one-and-done, maybe invest his time in something else? We don’t even know what colleges are going to do with the standardized test scores next year. He thinks he could get the Math score up a little, but I just don’t think it’s worth another 30 hours on Khan academy and a Saturday.
My opinion: I think one and done is healthy, if you get what you want from the first time. Like you implied, 30 hours plus a Saturday when you don’t need it is a lot.
I agree! No need to re-take unless they really want to. Our 23 did August , hit/beat goal, but wanted to go for one more try in Oct , for math. She just did a few more practices since test was only 3 weeks away by the time august was released. She knew it didn’t need “prep” , it just needed a good day without careless errors. While waiting for the score she did wonder if maybe it was a waste of a Saturday to try for something kind of ridiculous, but was glad she hadn’t spent months working on it if it had ended up not improving. FWIW, though, in reading websites on testing, more than one college indicates “optional”, but if you send them they “encourage “ sending all scores! I don’t recall seeing that wording with D21 but she did not apply to these places.
D20 took each test once (we are in Illinois, students are required to take the SAT as Juniors). She exceeded her target score on the ACT by a couple of points - and she didn’t think there was any point in trying for a perfect score as she wasn’t applying to any school that would give her more money for another point or two. She is a pretty laid backed kid when it comes to those things.
D23 is going test optional (unlike her sister, she isn’t a super strong test taker), so she will take the SAT as required but no scores will be sent. We told her not to worry about taking the tests; there are plenty of schools (even direct entry DPT 3+3 programs) that will look at her course rigor, her GPA and her ECs and be happy to have her as a student.
Besides schools that do, in fact, give more money for a perfect test score - I really don’t think there is even marginal value in trying to improve an excellent test score by repeated test taking. Your test score of 33 v. 35 (or a 1510 v 1560) isn’t the reason you get a yes or a no from any particular school. I think it is easy to get caught up in the idea of taking the test repeatedly because there is something comforting in the idea that a quickly quantifiable piece of college applications is going to have an outsized role in determining a school’s decision. I just don’t think it does.
I think the only reason to do it would be trying to qualify for auto-merit that is just out of reach with the current score. Barring that, I think if kiddo got a terrific score one-and-done is great!
In our house, we’re waiting to see what D23s PSAT looks like before scheduling any other testing. She may take SAT, try ACT, or do neither and go optional/blind - we’re leaving all options on the table depending on how she feels.
That is exactly how my DS feels. He got one wrong on the Math and knows he can get it correct if he took it again. I told him I just don’t think it is worth it (He is in a play now, so can’t take it until November or December, and that is right up into exams). It’s his choice. I would like to see him put his time into something else.
Reality is, you dont always get a do-over and of course one should be more prepared the second time they experience something than the first time. I always think of it as the first time is more your basic true knowledge, any other attempts are more a score about test abilities and how one responds to critiques or feedback.
