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Post by majorv on Feb 25, 2010 8:42:19 GMT -5
I am going to get him to ask his 10th grade Global Studies teacher (she loves him), his current math teacher (loves him too) or try his English teacher (whom my son says is indifferent to him, LOL!) . My daughter got her letters of recommendation the fall of her senior year. It didn't take the teachers that long to do it. Many of the teachers, especially 11th and 12th grade teachers, have done this many times before. If your son doesn't want to ask his 11th grade English teacher he could just wait and ask his senior English teacher.
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Post by SharonF on Feb 25, 2010 10:29:36 GMT -5
I think the "head in the sand" reaction is far more common than most parents admit. It seems we only hear about high-flying kids who have known since they are 5 that they want to be neo-natal brain surgeons and have been accepted into every one of the Ivy League schools with full-ride scholarships. (Overstating my point, but you understand!)
Uncertain kids...unmotivated kids...or kids motivated for the "wrong" reasons like going to college to get away from mom and dad...are far far more common than society would have us believe.
At the end of 10th grade, our son flat-out refused to go to a college fair. I remember going to one without him--and felt like I was the only parent there without a high school kid!
In 11th and 12th grades, we had to DRAG him to college visits. He huffed, puffed, sighed, grumped, and gave us the silent treatment.
I'll never forget that first college visit with him. It was spring of his Junior year. He said nothing the entire time. He wouldn't make eye contact. He plodded along with the tour, looking at his feet. He kept sighing loudly.
Afterward, we got in the car to go home. He said nothing. Finally, about 20-minutes into the trip home he broke the silence. He said, "I think I'm gonna LOVE college." It took my breath away! Of course, I made the mistake of trying to get him to say more. But that statement was a huge breakthrough for him. And little by little, he got a bit more engaged in the college search process.
He didn't choose to go to that college that we visited first. Interestingly enough, our daughter is going there now! And he still didn't *want* to visit other colleges, but it did get easier over time. It took him at least a year to get more comfortable "trying on" the concept of going to college and envisioning himself there. And some of the things he wanted in a college were not really in his best interest, but we let him make those key decisions.
You may have to force your son to go some college fairs/college tours and endure his grumpies. He may criticize EVERYTHING. Or tell you nothing. But it's all part of the slow process of him envisioning the next stage of his life.
Once he begins envisioning himself at some college somewhere, it should get a little easier for him to start working on college applications, write essays, getting letters of recommendation, etc. But I'll be honest: my son wanted me to sit by his side the ENTIRE time he worked on college apps. I guess he lacked confidence. And it is unlike anything he had done before. dd also wanted me by her side when she did her college apps, too. For both of them, it seems like October of their senior year I spent every spare moment helping them with college apps.
It's all part of the learning process. Not just about colleges, but about themselves.
You will survive this!!
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 25, 2010 11:11:53 GMT -5
Some teachers will actually work on the letter of recommendation with the student. That is what my son's English teacher did. Mayleng-I am a huge supporter of a gap year. College is so expensive these days that it really pays to have a child who has some grounding in the real world and knows why they are there before they go. Also there is little rush to graduate these days since the job market is so poor. jisp, I would love to give him a gap year, but my fear is that if he doesn't go to college now, I will never get him to go later. He is the type of kid who takes the easy route and has the "I can't do it attitude" if not pushed. For eg. His dad told him in elementary school, if you get "A"s it's great, but if you get "B"s that's ok too. BIG MISTAKE. Well! guess what, he has been a B student all his life when with a little bit more effort he could have been an A student like all his friends. I believe in doing your best whether he is a C, B or A student. I am not the type of pushy parent who expects my kids to achieve beyond their abilities. But this kid just always looked for the easy way out. I know what trying hard is because my younger son is the one with ADHD and LD. The older one just wants it easy all the time. Same with his volleyball, ever since he broke his leg, he has not worked hard to rehab it, and so was not as good as he used to be. Instead of working hard to get his spot back, plus he saw how much pressure and yelling his coaches do, he decides he does not want to do it anymore because he does not want his coaches to yell at him or to rise to meet the expectations. That is why he is not going out for Varsity. So if I don't nudge him towards college now, he won't do anything. He is working harder now to bring his GPA up, and is thinking about his SATs etc. There is a glimmer of hope because all his friends will be going to college and he does not want to be left behind. If I had my way, I would send him back to Singapore to do the 2 1/2 yrs in the military service that is required of all Singapore males, then come back and go to college. That would make a man out of him. But he does not want to do that, and wants to give up his Singapore citizenship instead which I think is a shame, (he has dual citizenship for now). This is a whole other issue. I wished he was "tied up with the obsession of getting into the "right school"." That would be progress. He doesn't know what school he wants, he doesn't know the schools, he doesn't want to talk about it with me, he doesn't want to look a the printouts of the schools I printed for him, nor look at the links to the videotours of schools. So I am just giving him little bits of info when he will give me his attention for 5 mins, and his dad and I will be going thru' the schools we think is suitable and which we are willing to pay for. Then hopefully, I can get his dad to make time to go visit some of the schools.
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 25, 2010 11:26:20 GMT -5
Sharon, I am sure I will be doing the college apps. LOL! Hell! I might be writing the essay too. LOL! By the way, talking about essays, do colleges tell you what it should be about, or it's up to the kids?
Yup, I will be dragging him to tour some colleges this Spring, I guess I will be dragging his dad and while I'm at it, I am also going to drag my 14 yr old along. Might as well get my 14 yr old exposed to colleges so that when his time comes, he would be able to visualize what a college is like and hopefully won't give me as hard a time as his brother.
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 25, 2010 11:29:00 GMT -5
Thanks majorv, I did consider that but by the time he starts his senior and some applications have to go out in December, the school we really want has early decision date submission of November 1. His 12th grade English teacher wouldn't have really gotten to know him. It is worth trying though.
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Post by SharonF on Feb 25, 2010 12:43:51 GMT -5
Essay topics: depends on the college. Some colleges have one specific prompt for all applicants. Some let the applicant pick from several topics. Others don't require an essay at all.
Probably the hardest for ds was: Why do you want to attend this college?
The essay provides the college with two things: information about the applicant they cannot discern from the SAT, GPA and reference letters...and a sense of how well the student writes. (But one reason some colleges stopped requiring essays is because too many of them were written by parents.)
The best prompts give the applicant a chance to describe themselves. Often, that's by describing an experience that changed them, or taught them something important about themselves or life. But the applicant has to be careful not to make their essay overly dramatic or sappy.
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 25, 2010 12:50:14 GMT -5
Thanks Sharon.
I really want to thank all of you for your help in this. It is reassuring to me that I have you guys to come to and guide me in this process. I am sure I am going to have more questions to come.
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 25, 2010 12:58:07 GMT -5
The University which is probably our first choice actually has a teacher/counselor recommendation form that we have to use. Makes it soooo much easier. The form prompts the teachers/counselor with questions and rating scales.
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Post by bros on Feb 25, 2010 15:35:08 GMT -5
I am reading this thread with interest...My dd (the one without ADHD) is a junior and like your son, Mayleng, wants to hide her head in the sand when it comes to college. She is afraid of the whole thing. She only knows that she wants to go far, far away from mom and dad, or at least from home. She doesn't know whether she wants big or small, country or city...She has the prerequisites to get into most places but she is so afrais she doesn't want to talk about any of the materials she brings home from the counselor. That is about all they do, hand out papers. So it will be up to me to guide her through the process--not the school's strong suite--too big and busy. I am nudging her toward going on a couple tours this spring break. She says most of her friends are going to just be applying to SUNYs (money issues, I guess) so why does she need to tour others--I tell her she is not eliminating anything yet. The way I am selling her now on looking at a few is that we get away and get to stay at a hotel for a night or two...We are going to look at Princeton (a stretch, but possible) and perhaps a school or two in the Philadelphia are. I hoped to get a friend to come to make it fun but... You could try some ones in NJ like Kean University or Rutgers, depending on her interests. Collegeboard.com has a decent college search wizard.
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 25, 2010 15:43:09 GMT -5
Yup, Collegeboard.com has been very helpful to me in terms of looking schools.
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Post by healthy11 on Feb 25, 2010 17:33:26 GMT -5
Mayleng, I think it's a good idea to bring your younger son along when you do some day tours with your older son. Another thing that may help your older son is if you can chat with some of his friends, and find out what colleges they're thinking about. Either find out from their parents when they're going to visit, and carpool with them for the tour, or see if one of the friends might be interested in coming along when you take your son to a school of your choice.
Once my son got to see a few schools via their "open house tours" and he started to eliminate ones (it was easier for him to say what he didn't like about a college, than what he did like) then we made arrangements for him to do overnight visits. Many universities will allow seniors who have applied to "shadow" an existing student and attend classes, and spend a night. They don't usually let jumiors or kids who haven't applied to do that, but they will arrange for "kids who want more information before they make a final decision" to do it.
My son did overnight stays at 4 of the 6 schools he applied to, and eliminated 2 of the 4 he saw based on the kids he was "shadowing" (He said all the one kid wanted to do was play "Dungeons and Dragons" in a dorm tournament, and the kid at the other college had a roommate who spent the night "smoking up.") Of course, my son was too short-sighted to realize that just because one kid does something, it doesn't mean they all do it, or that he has to do it. And guess what? My son decided to attend a different university, but lives in an apartment with two guys, one of whom frequently gets high! Where is the logic?)
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 25, 2010 17:41:26 GMT -5
healthy, most of the schools are around here, the furthest 2 are about 4 hours drive away in different directions. 2 are a little more than an hour away and the rest around here.
His friends have no idea where they are going yet but I will continue to check with them to see what schools they are thinking of. They are all majoring in different things. One definitely wants to go to an Ivy (with a drama/performance component), one wants to do Engineering maybe, another said dentistry but changed his mind and now has no idea. LOL!
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Post by healthy11 on Feb 25, 2010 17:46:11 GMT -5
And you can be sure, even after they get into college, they will continue to change their majors!!!!
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 25, 2010 17:54:25 GMT -5
Oh my son just this minute told me that the one who wants to be an engineer wants to be a doctor too. LOL! but his science grades aren't that good.
I think it is better he does not go to school with his friends, they will probably be bad influences on him. Believe it or not, my son is the responsible one. The one who changed his mind about dentistry likes to party. These are smart kids, doesn't mean they are hardworking and what kills me is they get good grades without any effort but I am sure all that will come to bite them once they are in college. Their HS is one of the top 4 HS around here, so it is not like they are in a low performing district.
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Post by healthy11 on Feb 25, 2010 18:01:16 GMT -5
My son still "waffles" between saying if he doesn't become an engineer, he thinks he would like law enforcement/to become a police officer, "because you don't sit behind a desk, and every day is different." Maybe so, but he's not interested in passing physical fitness tests, or writing reports, and can't even figure out how to discourage his one roommate from getting high all the time.... I STILL think he's going to end up as an electrician or mechanic, not an electrical or mechanical engineer, but I guess time will tell. (And not that there's anything wrong with being an electrician or mechanic, it's just that he's wasting a lot of $$ in college now.)
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Post by teacherabc on Feb 25, 2010 18:01:43 GMT -5
I will be comismerating with you on this...My dd, though very well-credentialed, is terrified and audibly groans about the essays because although she is great at essays, she is not good at writing about herself or being self reflective. Then, after we go through this with her and get her settled in, we will then have to be ready to do it all over again with HP who will then having to transfer to a 4 year college. It will be two totally different, yet, I am sure, aggravating experiences, pretty much consecutive.
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Post by majorv on Feb 26, 2010 0:01:30 GMT -5
After listening to all of you, I guess our experience with the college process wasn't the norm. My daughter looked at a number of colleges online but because she didn't want to go so far away that she couldn't easily come home once in a while, she narrowed it down to two that were strong in agriculture (she wants to be a vet). The large, well-known, university was more expensive and a little harder to get into. The medium size university was a little closer to us, cheaper, and a little easier to be admitted to. We went to an Open House one weekend, she filled out the college application, no essay required, sent in her test scores and transcript and was admitted. She doesn't regret her decision, and it was easy on us.
By her going to this university we have been able to stretch the money we had set aside for college, and it should cover 3 years. We bought savings bonds and a mutual fund when she was little, and she also got a nice amount of money from selling her FFA projects in HS. Now vet school? We can't cover that...she'll have to take out student loans.
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 26, 2010 8:45:51 GMT -5
majorv, I think the process might have been easier for you because your dd knew she wanted to be a Vet and what she wanted ie stay close to home etc.
My son, however, has not clue. He waffles and don't know where he wants to go. One day he wants to stay close to home, next day he wants to go far far away.
So it is left up to me to make the "decision" based on the little and contradicting criterias or "clues" he gives me. I think we are probably going to keep him close to home ie. the furthers is 4 hours away is not to far for him to come home on long weekends and short breaks and we are also looking at costs which is why we are looking at States schools and privates that will give good grants/aid, unfortunately the two better state schools that have the writing components he wants are very competitive and very difficult to get into but who knows, he might just get in. There is always plan B. Get into any school, then transfer the following year to the school he really wants.
But with the help of everybody here, I am not as freaked out.
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Post by healthy11 on Feb 26, 2010 9:06:31 GMT -5
Majorv, your daughter's experience sounds a lot like mine, but it's NOT typical of most of today's college students. (I knew I wanted to stay near home, and there weren't many nearby that offered strong technical programs, so we went to an Open House, I filled out the application, got admitted, and don't regret my decision to have gone there. I did switch my major from math to engineering with a math minor, but I didn't lose any credits because of the similarity in the program requirements during the first year or two.) It's much more difficult when young adults have no clear career path/goals, and they just "live in the moment," enjoying the social aspects of college life, while academics are a lower priority.
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 26, 2010 10:12:09 GMT -5
Healthy, with regards to an Engineering major, how much do you really have to like math (particularly algebra)? My younger one (the one with adhd/ld in written expression) is ok in math (will get better if I push him lol!), but even though he is ok with it, he tells me he does not like algebra. I told him with his ld in writing, Liberal arts is not the way to go for him since there is a lot of writing. So I am thinking of what options there are for him now, so he can take electives in HS to see if he likes them. The good thing about their HS is that there are a lot of electives that is available. I told him to try them in HS while he has a chance even the ones he does not think he will like because he might find out that he really likes them.
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 26, 2010 10:16:06 GMT -5
Here's another question about GPA. When the schools calculate the GPA do they take in the grades for elective classes? My son took psychology as an elective, his volleyball coach taught that class, he was a very bad teacher. All the students complained that he spent more time talking about his son than actually teaching the class. So no one did well in that class, my son got a 76. So I was concerned that this stupid elective that he did not have to take but wanted to try, would bring his GPA down. Likewise does scoring 100 in PE get counted?
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Post by momfromma on Feb 26, 2010 10:24:08 GMT -5
I would not worry too much about electives this year. In my experience with ds, colleges mostly look at junior and senior year grades.
Also, they recalculate GPAs according to their own criteria, in order to get everybody on the same scale. For example, your school can grade honor classes on 5, and a given college on 4.5. Also, all colleges my son applied to were not considering PE because too many schools do that on a P/F basis.
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 26, 2010 10:28:17 GMT -5
So the college gets the transcript with all the grades listed for each subject (each year?), then they use their own formula to calculate the GPA not the school?
I was trying to fill in the collegeboard college search and it asked what the GPA was, I just used what the school gave in the report cards (electives, PE, AP included but they are weighted and you need to be a math major to figure out their formula).
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 26, 2010 10:37:05 GMT -5
momfromma, I wanted younger son to try electives to figure out what he likes, so when it comes time for college he will have some idea of what he would like to go for.
If it is hard with my older son now, who at least has some interests besides computer games and video playing, it will be harder for younger son who has the ld. Older one at least likes writing, reading and music (composing songs). Younger one's choices might be limited because he hates reading and writing and has no other interests besides video playing.
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 26, 2010 10:40:33 GMT -5
Also if they look at senior year grades too, how is that possible when applications has to be out at the start of their senior year (fall)?
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Post by momfromma on Feb 26, 2010 10:55:31 GMT -5
Mayleng,
The school sends the student transcript with the class, level (CP.H,AP), and the grades and then use their own formula to recalculate the GPA for each kids (at least it was the case in each college my son applied to).
For the initial admission process and particularly early admission, they look at the junior year, and the first term of senior year (that the school sends to them as it becomes available) to make determinations, but admission is not final before they receive all senior grades. There have been cases (though rare) where a kid was refused because of his final grades while he was accepted early on.
I think it is a good idea to get your son to explore what he likes, if the selection is large enough in your high school. Ours is a small high school and most selections are either Honors or AP classes, highly unsuitable for ds. He may also consider extra-curricular activities. My ds ignored them until the last year and it was great he got such good recommendation letters because he did not really get anything that showed he had some life out of HS.
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Post by SharonF on Feb 26, 2010 11:56:58 GMT -5
Mayleng--
momfromma is correct. The high school actually sends the student's transcripts twice: once in the fall of 12th grade and again after the student graduates.
Colleges look at the student's GPA as of the fall of 12th grade knowing the student has not finished high school yet. They also look at how rigorous the student's course load is in 12th grade. If a higher-performing kid suddenly decides to slack off in 12th grade and take only easy courses, it may hurt their chances for admittance--especially into competitive colleges.
Colleges realize that kids who've spent three years taking a slew of required courses might want to take a few fun electives in 12th grade. That's fine--as long as the college-bound student is still taking some rigorous courses, too. Or if they are taking courses that might help them prepare for their intended major. But most colleges emphasize "rigor" when looking at the 12th grader's course load.
As momfromma pointed out, if a kid's GPA tanks in 12th grade or if they fail a course in 12th grade, the college gets that info on the final transcript in June and can rescind its letter of admission. Not common, but it does happen.
When comparing students, colleges take into account the school's grading policy. Most colleges want to know if the high school uses a 10-point scale or a 7-point scale. At some high schools, a 90 is a low A. At other high schools, it's a mid-range B. And they want to know how Honors and AP courses are weighted when the high school determines GPA. The college will then use its own calculation formula to create its own version of each student's GPA--to make sure all applicants' grades are compared as equally as possible.
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 26, 2010 12:06:30 GMT -5
Thank you momfromma for the explanation.
Yes my sons' HS has lots of electives ie. Music tech, music composition, music theory, of course they have orchestra, band, jazz ensemble, lots of art classes from painting to ceramics to interior design, lots of computer classes, technical class, photography, meteorology/astronomy, oceanography, socialogy, psychology, manufacturing technology, landscape/greenhouse management, a Business Finance Academy, journalism, creative writing, drama, wood working, furniture, architecture, auto maintenance, engine tech.... etc. etc. these are just some of them. They can also do animal care, culinary arts, automatic repair, cosmetology, criminal justice, agriculture science and technology. There are plenty more, too many to list, besides honors and AP classes.
So I am making sure my sons take advantage of them to see what they like.
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 26, 2010 12:13:39 GMT -5
So the school will actually have to give the college their grading system. Well it is a good thing my son is taking Creative writing and composition in his senior year, since he wants to major in Writing. And he is taking his Algebra II/Trig since he only took intermediate Algebra this year (it's the same course as Alg II/Trig except at a slower pace). But I wanted him to take the AlgII/Trig in case the colleges don't recognize the intermediate algebra course.
When does one normally hear from the colleges whether one has been accepted or not?
What does early decision mean, and when do we hear from them?
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Post by Mayleng on Feb 26, 2010 12:18:22 GMT -5
Thanks for your patience and answering my endless questions.
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