I figure someone on here knows from applying to California universities, so:
As I think I’ve mentioned here before, my D23 is very taken by San Diego State’s music tech program. (It’s basically just a generalist BMus program, but with a guaranteed four-year internship-ish slot running sound tech for SDSU’s public events overlaid on it.) SDSU is a CSU school, and the “a-g” courses are a common tripping point for kids applying from outside of California.
She has the two years of a non-English language already, so that’s good. She’s planning on taking her fine arts course (it’ll be a DE music theory class) in the fall. Is it a problem, though, that she’ll be applying next fall with one of the a-g requirements completely empty at that point? Or is it okay if there’s an “I solemnly promise to take this course” in place?
(The other issue is applying to a music program without a music course on her record, but that may be easily enough finessable—she has weekly lessons on two instruments, they’re just outside of school and thus not transcripted.)
I don’t see where it would be a problem, her transcript next year will show courses in progress, assuming you do your schedule only once a year then the whole year would be listed.
We had a college fair at the local university this weekend. 100 plus colleges in attendance from all over the country. D23 and I went at the last minute and I’m so glad we did! She did a great job asking questions and had a very nice exchange with the UNH rep, which seemed to make things more “real” to her and got her googling average gpa’s and sat’s for the schools that interested her. A good step in the direction of getting her to engage and take charge of the search, I hope!
It’s not uncommon in our HS to take the required visual/performing arts course in senior year, because it’s a relatively leisurely option to choose when you are busy with college applications.
well, here’s something i’m glad about: my D23 likes her small private school that we switched to during covid. On at trip to NYC recently, she actually took the time to zoom into her math and physics classes while sitting in central park. I’m thankful for her this school motivating her.
thoughts for careers using math and physics? (her bro is an actuary . . . so that’s one idea.)
Outside of the already mentioned engineering, math majors are sought after in almost every industry jobs like Financial Modeling, Government Intelligence, Video Game Development, Computer Animation, Meteroligists, Geodesits…
Well, our carefully laid plans for a splendiferous college visit jaunt down the Eastern Seaboard over spring break just blew up. S23 is going on a class trip to Italy with his arts class. He’s so excited; it’s a great opportunity, and I’m thrilled for him. Crossing my fingers that the pandemic stays below a dull roar and this actually happens.
And the musical - he’s been cast as the villain (again) – has already started rehearsals and it isn’t until the end of February, and that pretty much knocks out any chance of his doing Mock Trial this year, which has him really bummed.
Italy is way cooler than Disney which is where my son will be over Spring Break (also with school).
We dont even have auditions until next month and we too do the musical in Feb. My son is really burned out right now and is debating not even auditioning. As much as he needs the break, I would be so sad if he skipped a year.
As long as she has 11 of the 15 minimum a-g courses completed at application time, she will be fine. All schools expect some of the a-g courses to be in progress for Senior year and they will be listed on the CSU application. Since SDSU is an impacted school, the # of a-g courses exceeding the 15 minimum required will be important in the application review however, since the Music tech program is auditioned based, the audition may hold more weight.
Has anyone used CollegeVine? I know it is just a silly chancing website, but I plugged in D21s schools and stats and it gave very similar chances to what our school told her, as far as what were safety/target/reach , and even has similar estimated %chance to what the school gave. She got in to her all her safeties and matches, and two reach-ranges(low reach vs reach), so college vine retroactively predicted her quite accurately. So, now I am trying to use college vine to predict D23 (just for fun!) and it is giving me much higher than anticipated “chances” at some reach-for-everyone schools, but has the in-state flagship safety as a “target”. I think it is off. I’d better wait for the school’s predictions for D23 before I put much stock in this.
not tried it; but i think college confidential is working on a “chance me” type site; had it in beta testing awhile ago. it was really really wonky; wonder what your results are there?!
D23 is getting lots of emails in her college email account. pretty much the same group of colleges - regional and few national - as last year. I’m trying to discern if these emails have changed at all from taking the PSAT this month. have any of you seen changes or emails possibly related to PSAT?
My kid has seen an uptick, but I think that’s just a function of the time of year. I suspect any PSAT-related change in which colleges send emails will come after scores are done, since a lot of colleges buy names based on characteristics plus score ranges.
Ha! I did the CC one! She has less than 20% chance everywhere, even safeties(she is currently ranked very very highly with top rigor, all 5s (Stats, Chem, Phys1, AB), and a very high SAT and ACT, and has won 2 statewide awards). CC’s chancer put the highest chance at 18% for an ivy, but serious obvious safeties lower. Consider it a flawed chancer. Collegevine, though, has many tippy tops as “targets”, so I believe that one is off in the other direction.
Yes, we use CollegeVine and we also use Niche. With Niche you can narrow it down by major and it shows student’s ranking based on gpa and SAT/ACT (e.g., You rank higher than xx% of accepted students shown). I’ve also used PrepScholar for our older student. I do like that with CollegeVine you can input ECs and level of participation to refine chance. Not sure of the accuracy of any of these, but I just add it as another data point in the spreadsheet.