<p>Have him take another SAT II. You only need two top scores. Bennington and Hampshire won't care about the 610. Sarah Lawrence won't even allow you to report it! The others might, but they might not. Bates and Bard are SAT optional (among many others.) I really think you're alright.</p>
<p>OMG, citygirlsmom, I had a very similar experience with son.</p>
<p>We were leaving to drive about 3 hours for a college thing. He had to have his wallet for this.
We're backing out of the driveway and I start doing this thing, "do you have your toothbrush? do you have your shoes (he doesn't wear shoes while driving), etc."
He snipes, "Just go!!!!"</p>
<p>We get an halfway there, and he starts in saying he doesn't know if he brought his wallet. We end up stopping at a rest stop on the turnpike, combing the car, and realizing the wallet is at home (after we call a neighbor and have him go into the house, finding said wallet on the table).</p>
<p>I was never so mad in my life. Screaming for about the first 10 minutes we turned around to go home. He kept trying to talk, finally I shouted, "Just don't speak to me! Don't talk!"</p>
<p>We were silent for the next hour and a half driving home, and the next hour and a half until we got to the same rest stop on the turnpike.
Then I started speaking to him again.</p>
<p>I will NEVER forget that.</p>
<p>BTW: My son will be music major at a LAC.</p>
<p>momo,
Yeah, but I still had to audition to get into the UNC music department (performance). I had the world's crappiest SAT scores and I got in out of state.</p>
<p>The schools my son applied to did not require an audition for a music major. Most LAC's don't. (Even schools with conservatory programs such as Oberlin and Bard offer music majors and even a performance concentration. Others like Bucknell and Gettysburg do require an audition. My S and I agreed to only apply to schools without a required audition because this was truer to the real liberal arts atmosphere he wanted. This simplified our lives. We did however send tapes of his playing and his compositions. Several acceptance letters and e-mails alluded to them.</p>
<p>Mythmom,
Yes, this is consistent with the research I have done. The programs he seems interested in do not require auditions, but I am sure he will submit CD's of his compositions/performances. Given these interests/aspirations, do people have an opinion about the low math SAT II? All his verbal scores have been in the 700's. SAT I math was a bit better than the subject test, but still not stellar.</p>
<p>I don't understand how people can be giving advise about his Sat 2 and if it needs to be retaken, without knowing his grades and other scores, the instrument he plays, his level of play, his references.</p>
<p>^^^exactly.
But assuming he's pretty good performance wise, which most kids are if they're going into music performance, I would THINK that the musical skill would be far more important than a SAT II score. Just my opinion.</p>
<p>I guess you can worry about crossing EVERY T and dotting every i. The very BEST thing to do, is ask around at these particular schools and find out what kind of scores they're looking for, and how much the musical audition/tape factors in.</p>
<p>Let's play devil's advocate:
Assume a kid wants to go to Oberlin and major in music. He can't play "Up We Go Down We Go" on any instrument but he has 700's on ALL his SAT's. Are they gonna accept him into their music department? </p>
<p>I don't THINK so....</p>
<p>For the sake of clarity, let me give a few more details: he attends a small well-regarded private school which gives no grades-- he gets 2 detailed narrative reports per year. Each year the school has several kids accepted to places such as Oberlin, Bard, Wesleyan, Brown, Reed, etc. The school is well known to colleges and has a great reputation. So, with no grades, we obviously can't calculate a gpa or ranking, but his reports have been consistently excellent. He has taken demanding classes. By the end of senior year he will have had 4 years of Spanish and 3 of Chinese. He will have done 3 years of independent science research. He plays with the school jazz ensemble and will have done 4 years of theater tech. He has won a Scholastic Gold Key award in poetry. The school doesn't offer AP's per se, but kids take the tests anyway. He took 2 this year: physics and writing/composition-- we haven't gotten the scores yet.</p>
<p>Musically, he has studied violin for 9 years, but hasn't followed a usual course. At 8 he decided he had to play klezmer music (Eastern European Jewish music), so we werre lucky enough to find him a great teacher. Since then, he has become obsessed with Balkan and Turkish music. He has started his own Balkan band-- they are starting to get gigs and were recently featured on Turkish tv and in a Turkish newspaper printed in the US. He has been in a professional theater production where he got to play music. Over the past couple of years, he has taught himself to play accordion and now has composed several tunes of his own which he has mixed and recorded. He is also interested in circus arts and has performed with a local professional circus.</p>
<p>So--he doesn't exactly fit a usual profile. Given all of this, I really have no idea how much importance to place on test scores. He is kind of an off the grid kind of kid.</p>
<p>In the jump to understanding the implications of a given SATII score for a potential student I think the bigger picture issue has been lost.</p>
<p>The new question seems to me to be- how will you share what you have learned with your mildly oppositional son in a way that does not further impact his trust in you and the help you will give in the process. He might have known the score and been....embarassed or angry with himself or whatever and this might have impacted his willingness to share??? I don't know, of course, just a hypothesis.</p>
<p>While the halfway house world of college seems to have brought my 'easy going guy' part way towards the process of launch, other aspects have not fallen into place. He had a professor freshman year who gave an extra paper to anyone late for class. Son only did that once. His grades are good enough for 'good student' discounts, probably not much more. This past semester (after a tough first semester) he took only 3 classes (didn't start with 4 and drop to 3, he just took 3) one of which was complete fluff--- and yet did not manage to get internship applications in on time- or get all A's. </p>
<p>When he was young I spoke with him often about 'preserving options' - that being timely, doing certain things appropriately helped to do this for him. The conversation this time was very different. I was angry (and I am rarely angry) that he spent our hard earned money on such a pitiful set of classes and medicocre grades- and that in the process of doing do he could not get his act together to get applications in on time. As a result, he has no work experience that relates to the career he professes to be interested in....hmm-but he does have a summer job he has had 2 times before and is making money. </p>
<p>He, with signs of upset that were hard to detect as I was driving at the time, confessed he feels he has good 'short term initiative' but poor 'medium to long term initiative.' I told him that this was nicely coated terminology for being lazy. I reminded him that regardless of the state of his initiative or employment that he was off our payroll the day after he graduates from college. </p>
<p>I have come to the conclusion, as hindsight is always 20-20- that I began going awry with this boy in 5th grade- when I hovered and rescued instead of letting him bomb out when we didn't have the materials he needed for last minute efforts. Fortunately, he has a much younger sibling for whom I have had a chance to apply the lessons I have learned and a not much younger sibling whom I basically never had to rescue to the same extent which reminds me that this kid did indeed just 'hatch.'</p>
<p>My H is convinced he will be fine in the end and that the few years in between June 2008 and 'fine' might be a bit dicey. I am lucky to have a husband who remembers that phase of life better than I did (as i was propelled by intense pre-professional inertia).</p>
<p>My son isn't doing this to torture me. He just needs to learn harder lessons that I have been wiilling to teach him up until now. Some kids need that, and I guess it is only a matter of timing. This boy has interests, passions, is literate, writes beautifully, plays wonderful jazz piano, has a fun sense of humor, is kind, etc. I can go on forever with his strengths. None of them are 'medium term initiative.'</p>
<p>Momoschki, I would not recommend having your son take the SAT II in math again. Just have him take another SAT II in a different subject. Schools that consider the SAT II are only interested in the top two scores. (I answered your question in more detail on the Oberlin forum.)</p>
<p>Like Mythmom's son, my son will be a music major at an LAC and did no auditions. His performance supplement clearly helped his case, though moreso for some schools than others. He got into a reach school and denied at some matches, so the only thing we know for sure is that every school's admissions process and criteria are different and unpredictable. My son also went to a school without grades from K-10, so he must have been particularly tricky to assess.</p>
<p>I can so relate to this entire thread (though at first glance I optimistically read the title "Tutoring mother as an EC"!). We pushed and prodded S all the way through the application process. He finally took ownership when it was time to choose a school in April, after which he thanked us profusely for getting him that far. It won't surprise one bit me if his backpack is still full of high school papers and gum wrappers when he takes it to college.</p>
<p>Doubleplay, an audition is most definitely not required for music majors at UNC-Chapel Hill. Anyone admitted to UNC can do the music major. (Not all can pass the courses, but that's another story.) What an audition CAN do is get you scholarship money and/or admissions help if you are exceptionally talented, needed by the Music Department, and have the SAT scores and grades to show you can handle the academic work. If you did an audition and got in with crappy SAT's, someone on the music faculty fought hard for your case. </p>
<p>Students who get into UNC who have not auditioned in advance do an audition when they start school. If they are not strong enough for a performance major, they can major in music history/theory/composition.</p>
<p>At Oberlin, a student does not need to audition to be a music major in the College of Arts and Sciences. The College offers a B.A. with an emphasis in music theory/history. To get a performance degree, an audition at the Conservatory is required.</p>
<p>Momomschki:</p>
<p>My gut sense is to go with Blossom -- too many people are overly invested in the college process, many examples of which can be found on CC.</p>
<p>However, you are a psychologist, which leads me to believe that you have more then enough insight into the dynamics of the situation.</p>
<p>You are also sending S to a private high school (I assume fairly expensive), and you are talking about your basic $45 - $50k privates, so I'm guessing not much need based aid.</p>
<p>I think that the private high school needs to take a major role in this. That is one of the things you are paying for, and they often are very good at it. At least for a lot of privates, the college admission list is their report card, and they will provide effective support. I would have a nice long talk with them about this.</p>
<p>Also, and unfortunately, the fact that you are paying for everything makes you a stakeholder in the process, and should get a little less attitude from DS. If there is a State U, then perhaps that is DS's plan B if he messes up Oberlin, Grinell, etc. At least there would be some consequences. I know there is a point at which I would not pay for a private college -- it would have to be clearly worth the extra cost.</p>
<p>Best of luck.</p>
<p>Re: anitaws post and others,</p>
<p>I'm not sure anita if you're saying you should have had this "come to Jesus" talk (sorry for the religious overtone) with your son before college. On the one hand, maybe OP has the money to pay for a year of screwing around. Maybe it doesn't matter if her son lets opportunities to save money go by. I don't know- it would matter to me, but every family is different and I respect that.</p>
<p>In general, I don't leave it to others (and my kids went to private HS, even though it wasn't 40K a year) to look out for our best interests. They look out for theirs. Which means, get some kids into some good schools and they look good.</p>
<p>My best advice, is ASK AT the schools he's interested in. Find out what they require in terms of SAT I's and SAT II's and ACT's. Find out the 25/75 percentiles. And if he's good at music, send in a tape. There is more than ONE way to skin a cat. If the music dept. wants you, you'll get in.</p>
<p>If momo is a psychologist, why have you only recently read that a male's frontal lobes are not fully developed until age 25? This is quite old information, and also pertains to females.</p>
<p>You are also posting contradictory information on multiple threads. Why?</p>
<p>With our son, a committed procrastinator, we contracted in advance for a 30min-1hr meeting re: college planning. We asked what level of involvement he wanted from us (research? reminders of deadlines? assistance in scheduling visits? transportation? just money, etc.). Had he said that he wanted no assistance my husband and I would have found a way to back off (with a lot of using each other for support). Having this meeting allowed us to plop the responsibility directly into my son's lap. Thus our relationship with him no longer revolved around nagging him about college stuff (unless that's what he requested from us). It helped, really. And we came to some peace with the idea that he would get into the college that was on par with his motivation, effort, and achievement. It was a clear statement that this whole process was about him, not us.
I believe your assessment that your son is deliberately tormenting you. My question is, why is he so angry. It's likely that he won't own the process until you detach. I know, I know, it's very hard...</p>
<p>okay, this kid is away for 5 weeks, and wanted to torture mom and dad, for whatever reason</p>
<p>is there anything mom and dad can do as payback? for instance, my D didn't call me while out with friends, she was gone all day and night and it was, well, myphone ran out of battery</p>
<p>at my next opportunity, when I knew she was safe, I was extra late picking her up and did not answer my phone...she was furious and scared...it was a way of showing her where I was coming from when I expected communication</p>
<p>so, if there is something mom and dad are supposed to do, get tickets for something, that they can just "forget" about doing</p>
<p>it is not playing games, okay maybe a little, but until WE don't do what we are counted on for doing, and they know we always will, until they get a feeling of what its like to have someone not follow through, do they "get it"</p>
<p>If he is being so passive agressive, turn off his internet when he comes back, and take your time getting it working again</p>
<p>some may say that is cruel, but well, sometimes it takes something out of the ordinary that is us basically doing them favors- that shocks them back into reallity, I told my D that she knew she could always count on me holding up my end of the deal, and the least I expected was for her to hold up her end, and if I asked about it, she needed to get over it a bit</p>
<p>I did learn to pick my times and battles</p>
<p>whatever his reasons are, they are not just privacy, they are a power struggle</p>
<p>when I told my D that she HAD a cell phone to mainly contact me, and not her friends, and if she didn't keep me posted, we could find another way to communicate since the phone obviouslly wasn't being used for its main purpose</p>
<p>believe me, she has been very courteious on keeping me posted on her whereabouts, time etc</p>
<p>
Momoschki, my son has just graduated from college so all of this is past tense for me. "Tense" is the operative word here -- as, fortuitously, is "past". Once matriculated his college career was profoundly good and knockwood he's off to a good start in the realworld as well. </p>
<p>During the application process I nagged, begged, cajoled, threatened, bribed, harassed, pleaded. There was a lot of drama and I am not a particularly histrionic person. I'm not talking about the menial labor part of filling out applications, but rather the big issues, like essays, resume, portfolio, contact with admissions. These required focus, energy, concentration, and simply EFFORT!</p>
<p>I was involved because I wanted my son to get what he wanted. The point was not to get what I wanted, because, really, I wanted what *he *wanted. The end, in my opinion, justified the means, but in retrospect,I don't think he would have ended up where he wanted to end up without some extraordinary effort. </p>
<p>Yes, had he ended up at one of his matches or even his safety, I truthfully feel he would have received an excellent education and graduated well qualified to face the world, but there always would have a been a nagging regret of not trying hard enough, not putting his whole heart into the process. Again, the regret would have been his not mine.</p>
<p>Like your son, my son is a creative person -- in art and writing, not music, but the passionate interest is the commonality. He would have been drawing or rhyming instead of playing the accordion or juggling, but the same concept -- charming avoidance of the task at hand. Fear of completion is a common attribute among bright kids. If you don't finish, you won't be judged. Coming to closure on assignments was a challenge that plagued him all the way from kindergarten through college and most likely will be with him as he plunges into his professional life. He has had to live with the consequences of procrastination on many occasions, but, in my opinion the consequences of a substandard college application would have been too severe to use as a " life lesson" .</p>
<p>I think colleges, even the most selective, greatly appreciate creativity talent and accomplishment in the arts and that this is a major hook if it is presented properly in the application. By this I mean the supplemental materials, essays, recommendations, activities packages, resumes etc. These are not always traditional ECs and take some creativity in making an affective presentation. [I'd also recommend that he take a look at Williams -- excellent music department, wonderful performance opportunities and a lot more hospitable to creative types than rumored.]</p>
<p>I'd stress less about the SATII math score if I were you. Obviously your son is not going to pursue a career in math and presumably his SATI math was presentable as are his math grades. Right? If yes, let it go, and take some more SATII's in areas in which he'll shine.</p>
<p>anitaw ... great post. This is a great string ... CC is a great place and a tough place at the same time. </p>
<p>A bunch of us are jumping in and adding thoughts which are fine in the abstract without having the finer details of anyone elses situation that really are needed to make an informed decision of what a reasonable approach would be in a specific situation. I may be pretty much in the "let them sink or swim on their own" camp in the abstract but lots of specifics could easily override that approach (ADD for example). Hopefully enough of us throw up ideas and thoughts so some of them might help the OP with her specific situation which only she truly understands.</p>
<p>(and maybe help the rest of us). For me personally Firsttogo, who is my only kid in this process so far, will be the easiest one to go through the process ... so my sink or swim comments are abstract; I haven't had to put my kids choices at risk yet. Secondtogo, on the other hand, will test my approach ... and I've learned a lot on CC that I think will help me shape a modified sink or swim approach that will hopefully work.</p>
<p>"He has had to live with the consequences of procrastination on many occasions, but, in my opinion the consequences of a substandard college application would have been too severe to use as a " life lesson" "</p>
<p>Momrath--
yes, you have hit the nail on the head... I really need to get him to see that we are on the same side through all of this; that we want what he wants. Somehow I have been cast into the enemy role (NOT where I want to stay!)</p>
<p>Again-- some very helpful suggestions here. I am especially liking the notion of the scheduled college meeting for the 3 of us to set guidelines and expectations for all at the outset. I am also thinking that perhaps something that needs to be spelled out explicitly is our expectation that he will share certain info with us (test scores)in a timely manner in return for help that he expects (our footing the bill.) It needs to be a kind of contractual agreement.</p>
<p>So let me assess the bidding..... about half the parents counsel backing off-- and they seem to have healthy relationships with their adult or almost adult kid. About half insist on "hover and rescue"; invade their kids privacy with cybersnooping, claim that "it's for you, not for me" and seem locked in a passive/aggressive battle for control.</p>
<p>Up to the OP which way to go; I still insist that at the end of the day there are more important aspects to the parent /child relationship than if the kid gets in to their top choice college. You are on a slippery slope to the dysfunction junction when you start demonstrating a lack of trust in your kid which would lead you to log on to someone else's computerized scores without their permission. I'm starting to understand why the OP's kid has dug in his heels here.</p>
<p>And no, my kid didn't do everything on his own, on time, properly motivated. If I had the HS years to re-live I would have nagged 80% less, and watched him step up to the plate several years sooner. He's now graduated; he works; he files his taxes; he pays rent; wears clean clothes to work and makes his teammates happy by getting his projects done on time. He didn't need "hover and rescue" even when we thought he did.... he needed to fail a couple of times, face the consequences, come up with a plan to fix it, and move on. We never let him fail in HS.... we nagged, we got angry, we bailed him out. Once he got to college and found out that professors didn't care if he overslept-- problem solved.</p>