The school I went to got rid of the weighting for chorus and band after a big controversy when a member of the concert band and the chorus became valedictorian over the (only) student with perfect A’s all four years. The person that was passed over took all Honors/APs so it was not a weighing issue on the academics it was the bump from four years of band and chorus. The rub was the girl with straight A’s was an all conference athlete that went on to captain her D1 team in college.
It didn’t help the girl become valedictorian, but the weighting was removed from band/chorus going forward as it was hard to argue that it should be weighted when varsity athletics was not.
Hope everyone had a good summer. Broke my foot and started a new job (both in May), so I have been busy and away from CC for a while. Getting ready for the new year to start soon. Only did one college visit over the summer (W&M). Pretty sure that it will be on the list for applications.
D worked 40 hours a week at a camp and then crashed most days when she got home. Not nearly as much SAT prep as we thought would get done. Guess we will se how it goes.
D’s schedule came out and she was all four of her APs in the morning and the four non-Aps in the afternoon. Not sure what I think about that, but it is what it is.
My opinion: Ranking is so easy to game that weighting and ranking by high schools ought to be forbidden.
Just have the students and teachers run separate popularity contests to give a pair of student speakers at graduation, and forget the whole val/sal thing.
Ugh- I took S25 to renew his passport today. Forgetting they take the old one and that is his only ID and he has the SAT next Saturday. I know there is a form you can go get notarized to use as ID, like I needed another thing on my to do list!
That is what DD’s HS does. Kids vote on the speakers. And they were amazing, and the kids were smart with who they voted for. There were also two awards at graduation, one for the student who best embodied the school and one academic award. Faculty chose those.
We have a val and sal but they don’t necessarily do the speeches. Any kid in the class can apply to give a speech. It’s then decided by the principal or teachers or something. I’m glad it’s not a popularity contest at D25’s school as the popular kids aren’t the best.
There is a form on College Board that you can print, put a photo on (the extra passport pic) and have notarized. We’ll go that route rather than deal with the DMV, as we will be going there soon (not before Saturday) to get his permit. It’s just bad timing, I wasn’t thinking about ID’s when I decided to be proactive because his passport expires in January.
D25 toured Le Moyne in Syracuse. I work at a Jesuit and I think it would be a great environment and teaching approach for her learning needs.
The smaller school works well for her as well. The buildings were mostly updated. She liked what she saw with diversity on campus. Campus smelled good and was clean. Staff were amazingly helpful and even gave her a private tour of the dance studio and theater. Their sports go D1 this year. Guaranteed housing for 4 years. Dorms were typical but not bad from what we saw but no a/c.
Did anyone’s kid do the Digital PSAT Practice test where they were supposedly going to get paid for participating? My son did all the requirements, however when he finished the last question it booted him out and restarted his computer. Just got an email that he isn’t eligible to be paid because he didn’t complete everything. Wondering if being kicked out means they didn’t even get his scores? So frustrating!
College Board is a real train wreck all around. D25 took the practice digital PSAT, no problems there and she did get her $50 Amazon card. She’s been prepped for the SAT this summer so we’re hopeful that she did pretty well.
she was however supposed to take the SAT this Saturday. I noticed yesterday though that the College Board had refunded her registration fee. I looked on the website and her testing site had cancelled their test. We never got a notice, just cancelled. D25 isn’t too disappointed because she has a calculus test on Monday and was a little stressed over making it all work, but it’s frustrating to have had her put the study time and not get a chance to take it. And the lack of communication…
She’ll take it in October instead. Hopefully there’s time to continue prepping a bit with school and everything that comes with that.
But, I feel your frustration. The College Board could do so much better.
Yep. I’ve been pretty skeptical of them going digital with the tests since they have never been able to maintain the stability of their basic website or ability to even send test scores through their website. The odds of them pulling this off without screwing it up for a lot of kids is almost zero.
C25 is getting ever more interested in the possibility of college outside of the US, whether that’s Canada (the University of Alberta is arguably the most easily drivable OOS option in the entirety of North America for us, so there’s that, I guess😅), the UK (particularly Scotland), Ireland, or Germany or Austria (the kid has decent basic competence in German).
So that’s a whole extra layer for us to think through, innit?
That sucks. My D25 just printed her admission ticket off yesterday for Saturday’s test. She’s nervous.
I’m kind of surprised you don’t that the score from that practice PSAT yet. One of the selling points I’d been seeing was that you get the score by the next day! Sounds like it might be a mess in October when the entire country takes it on the same day! Another reason why I wanted D25 to take the paper SAT before it changes!