Parents of the Class of 2019

[bjscheel]

Tomorrow is school and a basketball game which I've suggested DD skip cheering so she can be home the night before ACT. However there is snow to be in the area around 7 am tomorrow and some on Saturday too. My ideal thought is to have school/game cancelled Friday so she can be home but NOT have ACT cancelled so we can just get that done. DD is actually free next Saturday if it is postponed to then, but after that we would run into speech contest weekends.

She is super nervous about the ACT. I've tried not to pressure her but she knows I have a number in mind that would really help with merit and she told me she was shooting for one point higher She's just worried about running out of time and also if she doesn't improve over her freshman score, which I think she surely would just by virtue of having had more math classes, etc.

 

[bjscheel]

Ds15 just told me he is taking pre calc and AP statistics next year. Um, ok? He was going to take culinary, but though stat would be fun.

Stats fun?? Actually when I took it in college it did seem kind of interesting but when DD19 took it in HS, it was so tedious. Some problems she spent so long just calculating all the data to use before even getting to the actual question to figure out. DD16 is definitely avoiding that class.

 

[mom2rtk]

Tomorrow is school and a basketball game which I've suggested DD skip cheering so she can be home the night before ACT. However there is snow to be in the area around 7 am tomorrow and some on Saturday too. My ideal thought is to have school/game cancelled Friday so she can be home but NOT have ACT cancelled so we can just get that done. DD is actually free next Saturday if it is postponed to then, but after that we would run into speech contest weekends.

She is super nervous about the ACT. I've tried not to pressure her but she knows I have a number in mind that would really help with merit and she told me she was shooting for one point higher She's just worried about running out of time and also if she doesn't improve over her freshman score, which I think she surely would just by virtue of having had more math classes, etc.

Good luck to her! What a pain to have weather to deal with! I never did talk mine into taking it this month. She plans on April. But I also heard something about them offering it at a reduced price at school one day coming up so we're waiting to find out how that works.

Our son ended up last minute cancelling one of his ACT sessions. He injured his back the night before shooting hoops in the driveway and couldn't even stand up straight. Ugh. They gave a credit for some of the fee, but it wasn't much.

 

[laughinplace199]

All this talk of the ACT reminds me that I have to sign DS up to take it in April. He has taken it once but wants to take it again to see if he can get a higher score.

 

[momz]

All this talk of the ACT reminds me that I have to sign DS up to take it in April. He has taken it once but wants to take it again to see if he can get a higher score.

DD has yet to take either SAT or ACT. How do you sign up for it? Do you have to go through the school, or directly with a testing site. I don't know where to begin.

 

[bjscheel]

DD has yet to take either SAT or ACT. How do you sign up for it? Do you have to go through the school, or directly with a testing site. I don't know where to begin.

I'm only familiar with ACT and it is the popular test here in Iowa. Our school does nothing to promote or help you with ACT. Some schools may offer it to all their students during a school day, but if not, go to actstudent.org and sign up your daughter directly with ACT. You can pick a site convenient to you. Next one you can sign up for is April, then there is June and September. I'd want her to take it in April or June and save September if she needs to try for a higher score.

I think the SAT site is collegeboard?

 

[soccerdad72]

DD has yet to take either SAT or ACT. How do you sign up for it? Do you have to go through the school, or directly with a testing site. I don't know where to begin.

Our son's school has one testing day (in a couple weeks) at the school that's free - otherwise, they can go to act.org and sign up for any of the dates listed. I think my son is going to take the ACT one more time besides the Feb. one (he took it once in the fall). We're thinking of the June test, although we're not sure if that will be difficult for him to prep for with finals around the same time.

SAT is at collegeboard.org - same type of thing, pick a date and register for a test.

 

[mjkacmom]

Dd is taking the ACT for the second time Saturday, SAT second time in March. Act.org/collegeboards.com. They need to set up accounts and download a photo. Dd is babysitting Friday night, the mom promises to be home by 11. She has a 2 day peer leadership retreat this weekend (for dd15 and ds15’s confirmation class), but will get there Saturday afternoon instead of Friday night.

Dd did run out of time with math the first time, is better prepared now (didn’t with the SAT which she took later), and knows to skip and return.

 

[laughinplace199]

Has anyone started touring colleges yet? We've done a couple with DS recently. We toured two small schools and he really liked them both, but now we need to tour some bigger schools for comparison. We also had him tour DD's school when we were there for family weekend in the fall, more for the experience of going on a tour than anything else. He liked her school too but said it's probably a little too small (only 2000 students).

We are visiting the DC area in April for a family trip, so we will look at a few schools while we are there. It's really hard because he has no idea what he wants to study or what he wants in a school. At least DD knew she wanted a small liberal arts school - that made making a list of schools a bit easier.

 

[bjscheel]

We haven’t visited yet but DD would like to start this spring. But not miss any soccer so idk when! She went along on one visit with DD19. I do want to go on weekdays during school so that students and professors are there.

So today was something. There was no school due to ice. But basketball playoffs were still on. So DD drove in for cheer. It’s 11 miles but she got all the way to nearly the School drive when she slid off the road, hit a wooden street light and broke it. Both airbags deployed but didn’t hit her face. She called me in hysterics and fortunately I was four blocks away at work. Had to call 911 and get the police and utilities there. DH was also fortunately working in town so was there shortly and could drive her Jeep home. They had to chainsaw the pole stump out from under. To top it all off the basketball bus drove right by so everyone saw. Jeep fared pretty well though and DD is fine physically.

Now there is a two hour delay tomorrow so I guess she may ride with me and spend two hours at the office. And our team won so there’s another game Thursday. We’re ready for this season to be over.

 

[MerissaAndMomLoveDis]

We haven’t visited yet but DD would like to start this spring. But not miss any soccer so idk when! She went along on one visit with DD19. I do want to go on weekdays during school so that students and professors are there.

So today was something. There was no school due to ice. But basketball playoffs were still on. So DD drove in for cheer. It’s 11 miles but she got all the way to nearly the School drive when she slid off the road, hit a wooden street light and broke it. Both airbags deployed but didn’t hit her face. She called me in hysterics and fortunately I was four blocks away at work. Had to call 911 and get the police and utilities there. DH was also fortunately working in town so was there shortly and could drive her Jeep home. They had to chainsaw the pole stump out from under. To top it all off the basketball bus drove right by so everyone saw. Jeep fared pretty well though and DD is fine physically.

Now there is a two hour delay tomorrow so I guess she may ride with me and spend two hours at the office. And our team won so there’s another game Thursday. We’re ready for this season to be over.

I am so sorry that happened to your DD. That had to be scary for her. I'm glad she is ok!!

 

[Colleen27]

Has anyone started touring colleges yet? We've done a couple with DS recently. We toured two small schools and he really liked them both, but now we need to tour some bigger schools for comparison. We also had him tour DD's school when we were there for family weekend in the fall, more for the experience of going on a tour than anything else. He liked her school too but said it's probably a little too small (only 2000 students).

We are visiting the DC area in April for a family trip, so we will look at a few schools while we are there. It's really hard because he has no idea what he wants to study or what he wants in a school. At least DD knew she wanted a small liberal arts school - that made making a list of schools a bit easier.

We've done some. It is tough because nothing on DD's list is in state so every tour requires a trip (talk about #firstworldproblems! ), but we're slowly but surely working through her list and getting a better sense of what she does and does not like. Fortunately she's spent time at both of our state flagships in the course of simply being the over-involved kid she is, so she started out with a strong sense of not wanting the huge, traditional public university setting. We've got it narrowed to a handful of choices, fewer than I'm comfortable with actually, and they're all small, mostly Catholic/Jesuit, liberal arts schools without much Greek or athletic culture.

We're visiting U of Tampa next week on our FL trip, and Tulane & Loyola New Orleans over Easter break. I think that'll be the end of spring tours for us because softball will get in the way of doing anything else in April/May, and she'll be in Japan in June/July. I'd like to get to Wellesley as early in the fall as possible, because on paper she absolutely loves it. Maybe even more than Georgetown, which has been her top choice ever since we visited the campus last January.

So today was something. There was no school due to ice. But basketball playoffs were still on. So DD drove in for cheer. It’s 11 miles but she got all the way to nearly the School drive when she slid off the road, hit a wooden street light and broke it. Both airbags deployed but didn’t hit her face. She called me in hysterics and fortunately I was four blocks away at work. Had to call 911 and get the police and utilities there. DH was also fortunately working in town so was there shortly and could drive her Jeep home. They had to chainsaw the pole stump out from under. To top it all off the basketball bus drove right by so everyone saw. Jeep fared pretty well though and DD is fine physically.

Now there is a two hour delay tomorrow so I guess she may ride with me and spend two hours at the office. And our team won so there’s another game Thursday. We’re ready for this season to be over.

Scary! I'm glad she wasn't hurt.

I hate that about playoff season, the games go on regardless of the weather even if it means making the kids or buses drive in unsafe conditions. We had one football playoff game that was almost an hour from here (semi-finals) in the middle of an ice storm. Fortunately it was a Saturday game so we could just leave REALLY early and take our time, but I thought it was crazy that there's no plan B so that if the weather is such that it would cancel school, the game could be rescheduled.

 

[MerissaAndMomLoveDis]

Has anyone started touring colleges yet? We've done a couple with DS recently. We toured two small schools and he really liked them both, but now we need to tour some bigger schools for comparison. We also had him tour DD's school when we were there for family weekend in the fall, more for the experience of going on a tour than anything else. He liked her school too but said it's probably a little too small (only 2000 students).

We are visiting the DC area in April for a family trip, so we will look at a few schools while we are there. It's really hard because he has no idea what he wants to study or what he wants in a school. At least DD knew she wanted a small liberal arts school - that made making a list of schools a bit easier.

Yes, we started visiting the summer before freshman year. At first, it was typically an "add on" to a vacation. Last summer we visited several on a college tour loop after she attended a summer program at Brown. This year we've tried to go whenever her school has a random teacher workday. She is using one of those in a few weeks to visit University of Texas during a weekday when school is in session, which I have discovered to be important. She still wants to visit Johns Hopkins and Georgia Tech. I am thinking two more out of state trips and then I think we are done with campus tours. I am hoping she can do overnight visits during senior year at some universities she gets accepted into to help make her final decision, so trying to save money for airfare for that.

 

[laughinplace199]

We haven’t visited yet but DD would like to start this spring. But not miss any soccer so idk when! She went along on one visit with DD19. I do want to go on weekdays during school so that students and professors are there.

So today was something. There was no school due to ice. But basketball playoffs were still on. So DD drove in for cheer. It’s 11 miles but she got all the way to nearly the School drive when she slid off the road, hit a wooden street light and broke it. Both airbags deployed but didn’t hit her face. She called me in hysterics and fortunately I was four blocks away at work. Had to call 911 and get the police and utilities there. DH was also fortunately working in town so was there shortly and could drive her Jeep home. They had to chainsaw the pole stump out from under. To top it all off the basketball bus drove right by so everyone saw. Jeep fared pretty well though and DD is fine physically.

Now there is a two hour delay tomorrow so I guess she may ride with me and spend two hours at the office. And our team won so there’s another game Thursday. We’re ready for this season to be over.

So scary! Glad your DD is ok though!

 

[bjscheel]

So I was hoping to get great news from ACT to brighten our week but her score is 2 points below what she was shooting for. She'll probably try again in June but we'll see.

 

[mjkacmom]

I didn’t even know the ACT scores were in, dd got them up to 34, so she might be done (although she takes the SAT again next month. She is heading to Udel right now with a friend, and fell in love with a private school in CT on Monday (over $62,000 a year, but her stats would probably give her a lot ofmerit money, based on those we know who attended). Even if she gets accepted into her reach schools, we can’t afford them.

^^ and so sorry about the accident, it’s a horrible call to get, glad she’s ok.

 

[MerissaAndMomLoveDis]

So I was hoping to get great news from ACT to brighten our week but her score is 2 points below what she was shooting for. She'll probably try again in June but we'll see.[/QUO

I'm really sorry she did not make her goal. She's had a tough week

 

[mjkacmom]

Yes, we started visiting the summer before freshman year. At first, it was typically an "add on" to a vacation. Last summer we visited several on a college tour loop after she attended a summer program at Brown. This year we've tried to go whenever her school has a random teacher workday. She is using one of those in a few weeks to visit University of Texas during a weekday when school is in session, which I have discovered to be important. She still wants to visit Johns Hopkins and Georgia Tech. I am thinking two more out of state trips and then I think we are done with campus tours. I am hoping she can do overnight visits during senior year at some universities she gets accepted into to help make her final decision, so trying to save money for airfare for that.

Johns Hopkins is on dd’s list too.

 

[mjkacmom]

So I was hoping to get great news from ACT to brighten our week but her score is 2 points below what she was shooting for. She'll probably try again in June but we'll see.

Dd’s went up 3 points since October, it seems like the more comfortable they get, the better they do. My older two felt the same, had a lot more confidence the second time around (especially with timing).

 

[MerissaAndMomLoveDis]

[QUOTE="
It's really hard because he has no idea what he wants to study or what he wants in a school. At least DD knew she wanted a small liberal arts school - that made making a list of schools a bit easier.[/QUOTE]

You might have him play around on College Board's planning for college site called Big Future. They have a number of quizzes and assessments that might be a good starting point for someone who has no idea yet for a major. I think this one is a good practical starting point:

https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/.../answer-10-questions-and-discover-your-future

I hope this helps!!!!