Parents of the HS Class of 2023 (Part 2)

@ClassicMom98 totally agree. I do not do well with ants in my house, and I’m very aggressive about that.

So gets cats and starve them, got it. :wink: Again I’m horribly allergic, so I could never have an indoor cat, but who knew! Maybe a 20 year old suburban tract house is just right for me!

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It is SO thick. It looks like Ireland right now, but yes, I’m really worried about how fast it will burn once it dries out.

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Same here…NOTHING will send me into a tailspin/meltdown like seeing a rodent…I can’t even use the emoji :face_with_spiral_eyes::persevere:

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Our cat is like a watch-cat. We know there’s a mouse in our house in the woods when she starts crouching in one place, staring intently under a cabinet or something.
Her routine is to corner it for days, then chase it and eventually scare it to death. She leaves it out for us as a trophy.
It kind of works.

There are occasional mice in the walls, however; nothing we can do about that. They burrow in from outside - there must be a vast network of tunnels.

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D23 just committed to Suffolk University in Boston and the parent FB page has a few posts about rodent sightings. I know it’s just a city problem but…blergh. Hopefully she and her roommate will be good about crumbs in their dorm room. (But I doubt it, to be honest.) I look forward to that text.

I did a big recap of her choices in the 2023 3.0-3.4 thread if anyone is looking for B student schools and results.

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I completely agree with this. Foreign Language APs give the biggest bang for your buck, followed by history, where at some college 3 can give you 6 credits. Going in with a A lot of APs allowed my 21 to double major. My 23 will not have near as many, but since he is undecided it gives him a little wiggle room to explore and stay on schedule. Topics such as calculus, calculus taken at college is much different from that at HS, even AP. If your child is planning on higher math classes such as in computer science and engineering, I would not recommend switching a class out with AP credit. It will make the next classes much more difficult. It is a good primer, however. My 21 could not switch out her AP Stat credit for her psych stat class, but in a class where kids struggled, she had a very easy time with it. So there was a benefit to the class.

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oh - at my daughter’s school (Charleston) - they’re all over. I think it’s just a city thing. She’s always sending me videos she takes. Never heard my son say this (a more suburban school) in a different climate, etc.

That’s not a safe assumption. The reality is that mice and other pests don’t want to be seen and tend to stay in the walls and places you would never see. Suburban homes have more places to live and breed without being seen and more food available outside homes so no need to adventure into living spaces.

I’ve had plenty of cats over the years and some are good mousers(and any other thing it can catch - chipmunks, etc) and others could care less.

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This really depends on the kid and the school. Many kids with AP calc credit use the credit to start in a higher math level, and many schools(specifically Duke, UPenn) strongly discourage taking a calc class that you have placed out of via AP. Other top school simply do a math placement test and let that be the determining factor.

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Well, she almost chose Charleston so…she was looking at a pet rodent almost anyway she sliced it.

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C23 flying solo to admitted students day where C19 will host him for the weekend. It’s finally dawning on spouse and I that we’ll be empty nesters soon. So many mixed emotions.

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And as I have mentioned before some schools will have an Honors/Proof-based version of the same level that a student could take even though they can place out of a regular version of that level of Calc.

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Yes to this. Once I know the date for family weekend, I am going to plan something special, just for me, or maybe me and DH - so that we have something to look forward to in the fall other than staring into D23’s empty bedroom and worrying about her.

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mixed emotions too here about kiddo leaving. spouse and i are planning trips without kids, but incorporating them in our travels. one of those includes a trip to see the full solar eclipse in a year from now on our 30th anniversary! fun times

It’ll be 27 years straight we’ve had kids in our house. I’m thankful though that she’s going to school 1 hour away as my other 3 are all out of state.

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We too will be empty nesters come August. We are tired. Many years being responsible for other human beings. Definitely some positives and some negatives. We do look forward to some off busy season travel.

One thing about family weekends. This varies by school for sure. At some schools family weekend is a madhouse and very crowded. Hard to get hotels close to campus. People everywhere. We found later it was better to visit on off weekends. Also restaurants weren’t as crowded.

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I’d probably be able to deal with mice, but if there were spiders in my dorm, this would be me. I’d be at a hotel in no time.

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We will go freshman year and then probably not again. My family did not come for parents weekend my freshman year and it was not that long after the start of school and I just remember HIDING in my room all weekend while everyone was with their families. I didn’t have a good enough friend yet to invite me along with their family. After freshman year, I don’t think I would have cared one bit!

And I would love Boston restaurant recommendations, thank you for offering.

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Monday night was the senior academic awards night at D23’s high school. To remind, it’s an effectively 100% dual-enrollment high school, so she doesn’t really know any of the other students there (exacerbated by so many of the college’s classes being online in the immediate wake of covid), and she didn’t want to go but we made her. The school has about 250 students, all juniors and seniors, and graduates just under 150 students per year.

She ended up with three awards—an academic star (given by the school district for a GPA above 3.5), the ACTFL’s seal of biliteracy (for German and English), and recognition of her admission into the honors program at the college she’s going to in the fall.

There was special recognition of the two NMF students in the graduating class, and the one going into the AFROTC program. The valedictorian and salutatorian were also announced, and there was a special award for those students graduating with a 4.0UW.

There was some bragging by the principal at the opening about how the school has a higher graduation rate and GPA than national and district averages, but even my kid recognized that that’s because it’s a self-selecting cohort of students (plus the fact that you have to place into college-credit-level writing and/or math to enter it—it’s one of two test-entry high school programs in the district). But I guess it makes the school staff feel good, so whatevs.

One thing that surprised me: It’s a dual-enrollment high school, and they said that the average number of college credits students graduate with is 24. Most students enter the program as juniors, and they cap the number of credits (for most) at 12/semester—and if you do the math, you’d expect it to be higher, even if students are taking 9 credits per semester. I guess not all students start taking college-level math and writing right away, but even so, 24 was unexpectedly low to me—I’d’ve expected somewhere in the 30s. (D23 will be graduating with 45 credits. The one semester she took 9 credits she was tearing her hair out over how little there was to do, and has decided that she’s very much looking forward to 15 credit semesters.)

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i’m glad you had her go - and well done to her awards. How many credits will transfer to her college in TX?

i’ve been looking at it all for my kiddo; she has lots of DE and AP credits; but for her major as far as i can tell she’ll come in with 11 hours that actually mean something and cancel out needed classes.

if you transfer all of her credits, does that hurt FA in any way? Like she might end up being a senior a few years early? And that also makes me curious - is there any particular reason to transfer over all of a kid’s DE credits if they dont cover classes needed? you’d think i’d know this being kiddo #4