<p>Thank you. I’m certainly not a star, but I think that if I work out hard year round I’ll have a good chance to start as an upperclassman at a LAC.</p>
<p>Menloparkmom - A good friend of my son’s chose USC over Princeton because of the scholarship. (I’m not sure if it was the full-tuition or half-tuition one.) And USC went from the bottom of my son’s list to almost the top once he visited. Had he not gotten into a top Ivy, I’m sure he would have gone there.</p>
<p>What a crazy week! DS got accepted at Michigan, got deferred from UNC-CH, my alma mater, and nothing from Colorado who was supposed to release decisions on Feb. 1. He has an UW gpa of 3.4 and a 34 ACT. Will this be over soon?</p>
<p>I had no idea UNC was quite so competitive to get into. A friend of my son’s was just deferred there. I don’t know her stats, but she was accepted to Georgetown EA, and has very good ECs and a very rigorous course load.</p>
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<p>Congrats on Michigan. My son applied to both Michigan and UNC-CH. Both at the last possible deadline, so we don’t expect to hear anything for a couple of months.</p>
<p>UNC-CH is very competitive - especially from OOS. With tuition so low at NC schools, a lot of students stay in state and UNC-CH doesn’t take many from OOS.</p>
<p>I know it won’t be over for us any time soon. He has 8 outstanding applications and the last decision won’t be in until Mid-April! Senior year has been more stressful than I ever imagined.</p>
<p>Congrats to Drought and to BMM and son!</p>
<p>S1 went to a professional breakdance competition for the first time last week. He told me it is a local event with a top winning prize of $400, and that he has a good chance to win it. PCM and I dropped him off at a medium size bar/restaurant packed with what PCM thought were “questionable characters” and the room was filled with “questionable music”.</p>
<p>We came back 3 hours later to check on him, hoping we could just take him home. About half the people were gone by now. The announcer was calling the names of contestants still left in the competition. I spotted S1 standing with a small group of people, beaming with excitement. I motioned S1 and he came out. “How did you do?” I asked. “I got eliminated in the third round” he said, with no hint of disappointment. “How many rounds were there?” I asked. “May be seven? It was hard to tell because with so many entries, they had to let three crews compete at the same time on some rounds.”</p>
<p>“I thought you said you could win this thing?” I knew he was holding something back, so I tried my best to extract it out of him. “I did”, he said “I thought it was a local event, but it turns out this event is the regional qualifier for the national team!” He continued “Even Kimutaku is here.” Kimutaku is a world class breakdancer who had just won breakdance move of the year honor. “I saw Kimutaku perform his backflip-to-airchair move live!” He was clearly overwhelmed by the level of performance. Almost all the professional crews in the region were there as well as some pros from out of state. Even the mighty MIT sent in three teams to compete. Given the level of competition, I was very proud that S1 actually won two rounds, but I had to ask this – “Can you update the colleges and tell them that you just competed in the national team qualifier?”</p>
<p>There is one other news on the college front. We checked Drexel’s website over the weekend and discovered S1’s acceptance. We are still waiting for the snail mail to arrive. Hopefully, S1 gets a good FA package. We are also still waiting for the update on his National Merit status.</p>
<p>Congrats to PCP and son, MomLive, Mantori, et al.</p>
<p>PCP - </p>
<p>If I remember correctly, Drexel gives out very competitive FA packages based on merit, but not until March or so. My son was invited down to the campus for a day for an interview/information session for top students, and got his FA offer pretty quickly afterwards, but this was a few years ago and the procedure might have changed. I remember noticing at the time that Drexel had a total number of National Merit Finalists roughly equal to nearby Swarthmore and concluded that regardless of “ranking”, Drexel managed to attract large numbers of very good students.</p>
<p>I predict your son (among others on this thread) is going to have lots of great offers to choose from come April, and some tough decisions to make.</p>
<p>Also - I get the impression that the breakdancing kids always dress up(or down?) for competitions and even practices, regardless of everyday attire and demeanor. Having “the look” is part of the package.</p>
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<p>Yeah, I do this pretty much every other evening. But it’s more of a floor to armchair collapse.</p>
<p>This is a unique thing to send in. You might as well add it on to the notification about Finalist, which I think he is certain to get if he hasn’t heard otherwise yet.</p>
<p>Too bad he can’t get an LOR from this Kimutaku person.</p>
<p>This thread is so relevant for my son - not a slacker, but taking challenging courses at a private school with no grade inflation. His GPA is about 3.5; January SAT scores were 800 Math 750 CR and 800 writing. He wants to retake the SAT because he says every point counts in his situation. I’m wondering if CR scores usually improve the second time around at this level. His errors were most likely in the passage- based questions. If any of you have experience with SAT retakes, I would appreciate the input. He studied alot for the January SAT, and focused on critical reading. I would hate to see him do additional work to no avail.</p>
<p>tryaall, 2350 is a phenomenal score. I’d be very surprised to see if the 2350 vs 2400 makes any real difference in admissions. My two cents would be that he’d be better off spending the time prepping for his classes rather than another standardized test run. </p>
<p>Does his school have Naviance? The only way I’d believe that more points on top of a 2350 really makes a difference is if his school has seen that effect on admissions.</p>
<p>A 2350?!?! I wouldn’t let my kid retake that kind of score. At this point, it is more profitable to work on the GPA and to make sure that AP and SAT-IIs scores correspond to the SAT scores, which will help validate the difficulty of his courseload. I hope your S has some ECs that he enjoys and can mention in his essays. Those things can really help.</p>
<p>Colleges are not crazy about kids retaking scores that are already at/above the 75th %tile for virtually every college in the country. What schools are on your S’s list?</p>
<p>Might be worth checking Naviance, if your school has it, or asking the GC for a copy of the school profile, so you can see how the school represents itself in terms of difficulty, grades and what the average scores are. You may be pleasantly surprised.</p>
<p>I have two kids who had decent but not stellar GPAs (neither were top 10%) from extremely tough selective admit programs, coupled with excellent test scores, many AP/IB/post-APs and interesting ECs. They have done very well in T-20 admissions.</p>
<p>Don’t forget that the higher your first score, the more likely your second score will be lower, not higher. Just one unexpectedly tough question, just one careless mistake, and you’ve wasted your time retaking the test. Colleges know that there is no appreciable difference between 2350 and 2400, so just forget about it.</p>
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<p>UNC is a very tough admit for OOS students. State legislation caps OOS enrollment at 18%. Last year they had over 13,500 OOS applicants for roughly 700 spots. OOS Kids are routinely accepted at Duke, Vandy, Georgetown, and Ivies yet are deferred or rejected at UNC. The OOS pool of students accepted can rival that at most any top private school.</p>
<p>With a 2350 score, better to spend the time working and polishing essays, and getting that GPA as high as possible in the academic core subjects.</p>
<p>tryaall74— Your S sounds like mine. Top private school with no grade inflation, high SAT scores. Just wondering is his GPA W or UW and does it include all classes or just academic? countingdown… also what about your kids? I’m very happy to hear your post. I have been worried about my S and his high SAT scores but lower relatively low GPA.</p>
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<p>S1 brought home the NMF certificate today!</p>
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<p>He did take a picture with the man :).</p>
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<p>My understanding is that “the look” matters more in the amateur circle because judging is done by peers who may be influenced by the attire, but at the competitive pro level, skill and artisitic expression rule.</p>
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<p>Every band of scores count, not every point. 2350 is virtually at the highest band, so don’t worry about the scores. As I posted in another thread, the only reason I would permit/encourage a retake is in the case of competing for the National Scholar Honor, whereby to qualify in some states, one needs to have a perfect CR+M score. Otoh, if it is your son’s goal to get a perfect score, then go for it; otherwise, I agree with many here that time would be better spent elsewhere.</p>
<p>5boys, both of my guys are/were in public specialized programs for which they had to test, write essays, get recs and submit transcripts in order. Generally 1 in 7 applicants are accepted. Each program is a small part of a regular high school. GPA included all classes, including HS courses taken in middle school. The advice we got from veterans of the programs is that the kids are tremendously prepared for college, and we have certainly found that to be the case with S1. S2 is my current senior and we expect that he’ll find himself capable of managing the workload.</p>
<p>countingdown-- Thank you!! I think it’s hard sometimes to get information on this forum when it comes to kids from top college prep schools. The curriculum is so much harder and intense… and I know because I have had kids go through the public system too. OMG!! In Calif. it’s not even a close comparison. The public HS’s are horrible. Anyway, our HS only computes academic classes from 10th-12th grade in their GPA’s. So no electives. Actually not counting Freshman grades is a god send for my S. The top 70% of kids go onto top 20 schools and about 20% to Ivies. I just can’t stop worrying about my B+ kid. I think it will end up okay. He has GREAT EC’s. I was encouraged by your post.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, our Headmaster said that after 20 years at the school, he has never had 1 kid come back and say that they were not prepared for college. Most kids said it was cake walk compared to HS.</p>
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<p>Is your kid in the bottom 30% of his class? If not, then isn’t he all set for a top 20?</p>