Yes, it’s a good fit. He likes the smaller school environment. Sad for parents since it’s not easy or cheap to visit.
Well, D24’s history teacher is out sick with COVID. Glad we got her a booster shot last weekend.
@RadM UC admissions are so random and some decisions just make you scratch your head!
Glad he is happy and it is working out. NY is far from CA and I would also prefer S24 to be on the west coast for ease of visiting but I know I have to open minded and accept any where as long as it is a good fit in everything else.
Yes preparing myself for this and mentally preparing for out of state.
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Yes, I saw the thing about the home tests the day after I bought a second round. Lol!
And I saw the plans for the public schools. Love it. Very needed.
One positive thing to note is that at the private school, my S has the freedom to explore both of his main STEM interests before declaring a major and minor. He can also double major if he wants. At UCSD he would not have been able to get classes in one of them after being admitted in the other - both totally impacted. UCSD says you can forget about a minor in CS. Too many people. So, this was a plus in his case going away. His school is seeing a spike in strong California applicants. There are so many great schools in New England. We were hoping for the Pacific Northwest but he was waitlisted at UW and there’s not much else that is very selective for STEM and he didn’t want urban.
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That’s great that your S can explore. This is something that I think we need to keep in mind for my S24 also as he is as of not sure which area he wants to proceed in.
I know there are some limitations with the UC’s and some of the private colleges are better in these aspects. We have not yet finalizing colleges yet hope to do it next year and will have some OOS privates in the list.
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@RadM It’s definitely a huge benefit if you can afford the tuition or get aid to afford the cost. At Brown, there’s no GE requirement other than two semesters of writing-designated classes (S21 took Neurosci, Cognitive Sci, and Psych that was a writing class). It has been his dream. He’s on the premed track but he can truly concentrate on a field he enjoys vs having to major in bio at the UC (for class registration priority and to be efficient due to the GE requirements). Brown isn’t the only college with this type of open curriculum.
You get the upside of class size, not having to fight for class, etc. But the downside can be the cost. Schools like UCs allow for AP scores to replace GE classes so that also helps.
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Right. Before S21’s cycle I didn’t appreciate enough how much you need to stay in your late at crowded publics, especially if you want to graduate without taking a lot of extra time.
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That’s great to know about Brown and I think we will keep an eye out for open curriculum when considering privates. For the right school we are ok to pay higher.
I will seriously need to start looking at college lists may be in few months time as we do want to visit some colleges in summer if possible (the east coast ones)
This will be our first college application cycle, So thanks for sharing your experience.
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YMMV when using AP credits at UCs. UCLA and UCD do not allow AP units to be used for general education. For Berkeley, UCSD and UCSC, it depends on your major/college.
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UCLA does for some requirements but Davis only goes toward degree requirement (180 credits, I think). Either way, I thought UCLA had more GEs than UCSD with its Hogwarts school set up and Cal.
On the page you linked to it says, “AP units may be applied toward graduation” and “AP credit does not satisfy General Education requirements”
A student needs to fulfill their major requirements, general education and 180 units. AP units count towards the 180 but cannot be used to satisfy GE requirements.
Thanks for the tips regarding UCD and AP credits. That seems very restrictive. It does however appear that dual enrollment classes would count towards the GE requirements at UCD. https://ge.ucdavis.edu/
In the search for S21, we found a frustrating mix. Some colleges would give more credit for AP’s and less for Community College classes, others were the opposite. But it was definitely true that publics were generally more generous.
My child at USC (private school) was able to use more of her AP credits than my child at UCD (public school).
UCD does allow AP Lang/Lit scores to be used for their Entry Level (ie. lower division) Writing Requirement. My UCD student was not able to take entry level Spanish in college because he had passed the Spanish AP exam. He could not apply his AP Spanish to the GE that the college Spanish would have fulfilled but if he took Spanish in college, he had to start at a higher level because of his AP score. Really convoluted and confusing.
It seems like it only satisfies the foreign language for sure. I don’t even know why they require FL when the other UCs are good based on min FL taken in high school
@parentkeith I would think UCs would allow more credit for community college based on how tightly knit our CC’s are to the UC and CSUs.
@lkg4answers That is also a watch out. I always tell kids not to submit AP scores til they have the scoops on their college. S21 didn’t submit any because he didn’t want to be placed higher than needed. The exception was chem and I think that prob was a mistake because his Gen chem class smacked him with quantum mechanics, something I studied in 4-series PChem.
Good advice. In our case, it didn’t matter as the GE that Spanish would have fulfilled was something about diversity and cultures and there were other classes that he was interested in that fulfilled that GE. He wanted to take Spanish more to brush up on his speaking skills but they wouldn’t let him take those classes.