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Post by healthy11 on Mar 12, 2010 20:08:17 GMT -5
You're welcome! (I'm happy to help, since you've helped so many people by maintaining this board...No need to pay for expensive college advising, when you've got so many friends here!)
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Post by Mayleng on Mar 12, 2010 21:37:11 GMT -5
That is so true. I have gotten such valuable advice and it certainly has reduced my stress.
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Post by Mayleng on Mar 13, 2010 7:30:05 GMT -5
And he's off. Goodluck to all our kids taking the SATs this morning.
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Post by caniacfan on Mar 13, 2010 7:35:42 GMT -5
My daughter left about 20 minutes ago! Good luck to all of the kids. And Mayleng, thanks again for starting this threat - I've had many questions answered!
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Post by Mayleng on Mar 13, 2010 7:37:29 GMT -5
I am glad it helped.
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Post by caniacfan on Mar 13, 2010 7:40:54 GMT -5
OOPS! I mean "thread"!!! (was "threat" a hint of how I'm feeling about the SATs?!)
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Post by Mayleng on Mar 13, 2010 7:46:00 GMT -5
LOL! a freudian slip?
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Post by Mayleng on Mar 13, 2010 7:47:11 GMT -5
Oh, you should have seen my son, he was in sweats and comfy t-shirt. Looked like he was ready for bed instead. I guess he took to heart what his prep teacher told him about being comfortable.
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Post by caniacfan on Mar 13, 2010 7:55:32 GMT -5
Yep, a freudian slip!
My daughter looked pretty comfy too, sweats and a tshirt. She was gulping coffee before she left so now I'm worried she's going to need to go to the bathroom all the way through the tests. LOL, do we ever stop worrying?
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Post by Mayleng on Mar 13, 2010 7:56:48 GMT -5
That thought did cross my mind, because my son was drinking coffee too. LOL!
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Post by teacherabc on Mar 13, 2010 7:58:04 GMT -5
Obviously, my daughter is off too...not happy at getting up at 6:15 on Saturday morning...I had her being crabby this morning for that and HP being crabby last night having been up most of the night writing a 3 page paper...can't win either way. And now I have to go grade papers...I am about to become crabby myself...on a weekend with miserable weather and losing an hour's sleep tonight.
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Post by caniacfan on Mar 13, 2010 12:58:50 GMT -5
My dd is done with the test...she just texted me and said it was "terrible"! Oh dear!
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Post by healthy11 on Mar 13, 2010 13:20:18 GMT -5
teacherabc, look at it this way ~ being inside grading papers shouldn't be intolerable if the weather is awful......I'd feel if the weather were nice, you'd probably prefer to go outside! It's cool and rainy by me, so I don't mind being indoors as much.....I'm reorganizing my basement around our furnace, which has to be replaced soon. caniacfan, don't worry about everything your daughter says about today's test.......remember, it was her first time, and also you don't know what other kids thought of it; her scores will be calculated relative to other students taking today's test, too. If many found it difficult, she may still end up with respectable percentages. And encourage her to give the ACT a try, for comparison.
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Post by Mayleng on Mar 13, 2010 13:35:02 GMT -5
Well, my son is back. He thinks he did well, He did say his brain was fried. We shall see if his scores reflects his confidence.
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Post by Mayleng on Mar 13, 2010 13:56:42 GMT -5
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Post by caniacfan on Mar 13, 2010 14:17:21 GMT -5
My daughter said her brain is fried too. She said the writing wasn't as bad as she thought it'd be, but it was last and she said her brain hurt by then. She said there was a whole section of math where she pretty much skipped answering because she had no clue about what it was asking...yikes! From what I remember, though, it's better to skip than guess? At least that's how it was back in the old days when I took the SATs.
Healthy, she takes the ACT in April Any tips? Is it similar to the SAT? I saw what you had written about it having science on it?? Science and math are what my dd struggles in, especially if the science has a lot of math in it, like the chemistry she's taking now. I'm scared after her saying how bad the SAT was (and she may have been exaggerating, you know how teens can be!) she will be nervous about the ACT.
I'll ask her if she had her scores sent thru the internet.
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Post by teacherabc on Mar 13, 2010 14:21:46 GMT -5
Caniacfan, that would be true except that I promised to go with my husband to his father's house and that is where I graded my papers. It entailed going out in this miserable weather. I am happy to report that one of my students who has LD and may have ADD got the highest grade in the batch of stories I graded. This girl has a real gift for fiction writing...I had never seen any of it before.
My daughter called about an hour ago. She was tired...She did not finish the essay...we will see.
The College Board said results would be out on April 1, not 2. My husband said: April Fool's Day? Really?
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Post by Mayleng on Mar 13, 2010 14:22:06 GMT -5
Yes, better to skip the questions she doesn't know, points will be taken off for wrong answers but not skipped answers. Math is not really math my son told me, it is more critical thinking and understanding of the questions more so than real math.
The site said scores available to Colleges and higher education April 1, and High School on April 2. So who knows when WE get it.
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Post by Mayleng on Mar 13, 2010 14:25:58 GMT -5
teacherabc, I think it was Healthy who mentioned about grading papers in the miserable weather not caniacfan.
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Post by Mayleng on Mar 13, 2010 15:54:44 GMT -5
Wow! the test must have really fried their brains, my son and his friend fell asleep in the living on the couch and in the most uncomfortable positions. They must have been chatting when they both fell asleep. LOL! They have been sleeping for over an hour now.
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Post by teacherabc on Mar 13, 2010 16:01:21 GMT -5
You're right...Mine is doing okay--hanging with her teenage boy cousin who has ADHD. He is the one bouncing all over the place after a long car ride.
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Post by healthy11 on Mar 13, 2010 16:19:49 GMT -5
The best advice I heard on the ACT is to be aware of how much time is left, and if you find time running out but you have lots of unanswered questions, at least fill something in....Unlike on the SAT, you DON'T get penalized for wrong answers. (Even if you fill in all B's or all C's down a page, you should get credit for at least some of them being right. A blank is definitely no credit.)
Most people I've talked to say the science part of the ACT is tough to finish on time, but it's mostly just reading and looking at graphs/bar charts.
As I mentioned earlier, you should be able to get a copy of "The Real ACT" Test Prep book at the library, and it shows what some actual previous ACT tests are like. My son really seemed to relax after having taken it the first time, and his scores improved on subsequent exams.
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Post by jisp on Mar 13, 2010 21:35:01 GMT -5
The day my son took the SAT was awful and quite memorable. He took at his school during the week as part of his accommodations. My husband and I were at an appointment with his doctor when our phone rang. Our son was having a complete panic-anxiety attack and wanted us to come and pick him up. He had a similar thing happen when he took the MCAS test. We left the doctor's office and drove to his school, which was on the way home. He was sitting with one of the counselors in the main entry area. We gave him an aadvil and suggested he just try to finish the test. He did. His scores were not awful but they were not commensurate with his abilities or intelligence. He was very upset with his scores and REFUSED outright to ever take another college board test. I only hope he never has to take one for graduate school.
The craziness is this same kid has taken several blue-book college final exams at Harvard Extension. Every time I have driven him to an exam I worry that he is not prepared because he seems totally relaxed and not nervous. And he ends up doing well. For what ever reason there is something about the standardized test thing that triggers something in him. I suspect it is the way the tests are structured so that there are inevitably questions that you can not answer.
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Post by aterry on Mar 17, 2010 13:51:47 GMT -5
As I've been sending off test scores for Dd's applications, I've been wondering how it is that we (as a culture) have let this entity, the College Board, gain so much power over our childrens' lives? They are just a for-profit outfit that is squeezing as much $ out of us as it can--with the practice tests and the re-testing and the fees to send reports, etc., etc. Did any of you see the movie, "The Perfect Score"?
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Post by Mayleng on Mar 17, 2010 14:02:25 GMT -5
Not originally from this country, I have asked myself that question too. Why is so much placed on a test that is from a for profit agency, so much power and so much money into this process.
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Post by Mayleng on Apr 27, 2010 9:13:44 GMT -5
Do you guys think it is weird that my son is quite happy to leave the selection of all his other college applications to me? I told him I had a list of 24 names and he should sit down with me to go thru them to see which ones he wanted to apply to. He said he will leave the decision up to me except to make sure they are not party schools. He doesn't care where he ends up as long as it is for creative writing, and Emerson is his first choice. He says I know a lot more about the colleges anyway because I did the research and is happy to leave it up to me. I guess, the decision will ultimately be up to myself and my hubby depending on finance etc. But I thought my son might want to have some input. We will take him to tour some of the NY state colleges at some point.
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Post by healthy11 on Apr 27, 2010 9:59:50 GMT -5
I don't think it's too unusual for guys, especially guys who aren't sports fanatics, to leave the choice of where to apply to their school counselor and/or their families. (We have some neighbors who said their sons just wanted to go to colleges with good football or basketball teams so they could watch games; past that, they didn't care where they went.) Girls seem much more likely to "talk among peers" and compare notes/do research, etc. and they have a stronger desire to go where their friends are. They talk about who they'll room with, how they'll color-coordinate their dorms, etc. They like to plan ahead. Guys tend to "live in the moment" and most are happy to have someone else do the "legwork" for them.
I would imagine it's especially difficult since your son hasn't seen many other colleges, to be able to compare them to Emerson. I believe he can take "virtual tours" through sites that link to schools like Fastweb.com, but it's not the same. In my son's case, I started compiling a list of prospective colleges for us to visit based in part on them offering engineering majors, but I also tried to show him a wide variety of universities, so he could better compare. (We toured big, medium sized, and smaller ones; we looked at some in urban areas as well as rural communities, public and private.) After your son sees more schools, he may be more vocal about his preferences, as well as his dislikes. For now, just pick out schools that you think would be good matches, and plan a few summer visits...
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Post by Mayleng on Apr 27, 2010 10:03:24 GMT -5
Thanks Healthy, that is what I intend to do, ie. let him see some of the colleges to compare.
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Post by jisp on Apr 27, 2010 13:54:41 GMT -5
A lot of kids don't realize how much colleges vary. Our son was very resistant to visiting colleges and said, "It's silly we can read up about them online, see what courses they offer and just apply to see if I get in." But visiting really helped a lot. The first thing that happened was that my son's whole notion of what was a good school (a school either in the Ivy League or a competitor to the Ivy League) was turned upside down when he visited Clark University immediately after visiting Brandeis University. Sitting in on the info session he overheard kids ask questions and realized that there were many kids not just applying to the hardest school they could get into, but also applying looking for merit money and specific programs. He saw that the academic rigor, quality of facilities, status of professors, did not necessarily correlate with how hard a school was to get into as well. And the visits helped him sort out exactly what he wanted. By the end of last summer he realized that he wanted a small college/university that would allow him to do research right from the beginning. And that is what he got.
Mayleng I don't know your son or his abilities. But one thing to consider is whether it makes sense for him to attend a school that is the top in the field he wants to go into. Why? Well for one thing there will be many kids aspiring to be creative writers and much competition. For some kids that is a really good thing and they get off on it and it pushes them to excel even more. For other kids it is better to attend a lesser known college that has a good solid program in the field where your son will get a lot of attention and then aim for a place like Emerson for graduate school. Your son needs to be ready for a place like Emerson and to be ready he needs to be the type to seize upon opportunities, be proactive, engage socially, take risks etc etc.....If he is not ready for that then he might do better at a smaller more nurturing school.
One good way to judge a college/university and the how successful they are is to look at their Alumni and see what they are doing. Compare that number to the overall enrollment of the school or number of students in that particular major.
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Post by Mayleng on Apr 27, 2010 15:13:35 GMT -5
Jisp, I thought when my son heard Emerson's current students answer questions etc. during our visit, it would scare him off Emerson. These kids are very driven. But it had the opposite effect on him, which surprised me. He was able to come out with the impression that the opportunities are there for him, not only in creative writing, but the other fields that Emerson had to offer which he would be exposed to. He is the type of kid that if you raise the bar he will meet it, if you lower it, he will meet that too. So I am hoping that being with a group of kids who are passionate and driven in what they love will help him. I see him in a smaller type school and those are the ones I have on my list both private and public. Suffolk is still on my list as they do have a creative writing curriculum. Did you manage to talk to your friend whose son is attending Suffolk?
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