<p>Okay. I found this little booklet that's intended to give advice to kids who want to get into top-rated colleges, and for freshman year of high school (which currently applies to me), it's recommended that I take three SAT IIs. I never heard that you had to do them in your freshman year, nor do I plan on taking them so early (suggests that I register in May and take these tests in June. This is crazy. One month of studying for three big exams is not enough, in my opinion). What do you think about this? Is it good to take these things in your freshman year? I don't want to.</p>
<p>I wouldnt recommend it. You'd probably be alright on Math, but you'd actually have to study if you haven't taken the classes that coincide with the SAT II's. I'd wait a while (jr. year, preferably).</p>
<p>Yeah, that's what I thought. This thing is crazy. It even has this list of novels to read if you plan on being successful in college, as well as the belief that you should take your PSAT in your freshman year and you're nothing without a perfect SAT score. People are so irrational.</p>
<p>wow. wth booklet is this?</p>
<p>It's this thing from EdiFi (which my dad tried to get a refund but can't because he passed the deadline for a request. He's very angry about it), which is a program that's supposed to help you fill out your financial aid forms and help you get into a good college (even though my dad has hinted that if he is ever going to put a penny into my college, it would be at some low-rated one in San Antonio). Looking back, I'll say that for the price of 1000 bucks, they're a rip-off, and if you were really wise, you could do that stuff all on your own. </p>
<p>During the introductory conference I was invited to attend, they almost made college synonymous to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Cornell. It was ridiculous. And the lady speaking seemed to look down on all of us, repeatedly saying, "If you have a 2.0 GPA [and she looked at us like we all had 2.0 GPAs], don't even waste your time and money applying to Harvard". It was so condescending. I wanted to cry.</p>
<p>Haha, which low-rated one in San Antonio? I'm slightly curious...we've got so many.</p>
<p>And yes, just to confirm what you already know: three SAT IIs is absurd for freshman year - I'm a sophomore and I'm saving them all for next October. Better to score high the first time than to be clueless and have to retake.</p>
<p>exactly.</p>
<p>also, i want to add that when i saw this thread title for the first time I thought it was about losing one's virginity haha. "When's the right time to...".</p>
<p>anyway, yeah.</p>
<p>no way am i taking ANY sort of sats in freshman year--- eww!</p>
<p>good decision.</p>
<p>A single college admissions book for $1000? Disgusting. Although some of what is said is probably true and fills the bill for overanxious parents. May I ask if the guide is even very comprehensive?</p>
<p>What are the novels that it says you should read?</p>
<p>I would not mind seeing the list-probably includes Heart of Darkness among other dense works for SAT and AP prep.
Of course, our guidance counselors recommended that we take SAT IIs starting sophomore year with US History and Biology.</p>
<p>I wonder how many I have already read or plan to read... probably not enough.</p>
<p>I am sure that we have read some of the novels in school given the content of the AP track classes, but not all of them. However, we still must recieve AP Literature practice exercises as exams, as we have been and will be next week in preparation for next year.</p>
<p>Silentsailor, my dad asked one of those counselors about the financial aid policy for Our Lady of the Lake University. So it's not a really low-rated college, but I think I could do better than apply to a school with a 72% admission rate. He also keeps telling me that no matter what I'm going to UTSA, which has a 99% admission rate. Hell no. Besides Rice, there are no colleges in Texas that I am interested in, and that's mainly because I just don't like Texas. </p>
<p>Kman, you get a "comprehensive" booklet for each year in high school. It even offers you the opportunity to get in touch with an actual admissions counselor, but really, I don't see the point in it. Then you can just hand them your financial aid papers and they'll do all the work for you. For $1,000. </p>
<p>The freshman booklet (which is all I have, because they don't give out the others in advance) delivers the message that you are a special person and the world wants you for your abilities. How corny. It also has this long cliche article about why volunteer work is a wonderful way to go. You can see where this is getting.</p>
<p>Oh, and it says that in April, freshmen should come up with a thorough list of prospective colleges</p>
<p>And it even tells us the cheery fable fo the two morons who used "playing the kazoo" as their hook, as well as held a desire for a major in basketweaving. Lovely, don't you think? </p>
<p>Complete BS.</p>
<p>Now I'll take the time to type all of this out:</p>
<p>COLLEGE PREPARATORY READING LIST
*Based upon extensive surveys of high school and college teachers, the following is a list of books they recommend most highly.</p>
<p>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Caroll
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
*Animal Farm - George Orwell
*Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
Babbit - Sinclair Lewis
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
*The Bible (hahaha, yeah, I read some of it)
Billy Budd - Herman Melville
Black Boy - Richard Wright
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Call of the Wild - Jack London
The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Crucible - Arthur Miller
Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
Cyrano De Bergerac - Edmond Rostand
Daisy Miller - Henry James
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather
A Death in the Family - James Agee
*Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
The Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen
Emma - Jane Austen
Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
*Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Go Tell It On the Mountain - James Baldwin
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Hound of the Baskervilles - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden - Joanne Greenberg
The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
King Lear - William Shakespeare
Laughing Boy - Oliver LaFarge
Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Macbeth - William Shakespeare
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
My Antonia - Willa Cather
Mythology - Edith Hamilton
The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer
1984 - George Orwell
*The Odyssey - Homer
Of Human Bondage (ooh!) - Somerset Maugham
*Of Mice and Men (made me cry) - John Steinbeck
The Old Curiosity Shop - Charles Dickens
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
Our Town - Thornton Wilder
A Portrait of the ARtist as a Young Man - James Joyce
The Power and the Glory - Graham Green
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Rebecca - Daphne DuMaurier
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephan Crane
The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
*Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare
Roots - Alex Haley
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Separate Peace - John Knowles
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
Silas Marner - George Eliot
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse
The STranger - Albert Camus
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Ten Great Mysteries - Edgar Allen Poe
Tess of the D'urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
*To Kill a Mockingbird - Haper Lee
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Wuthuring Heights - Emily Bronte</p>
<ul>
<li>- indicates that I have read that book.
Someone hug me.</li>
</ul>