kokotg
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Posts posted by kokotg
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23 minutes ago, KSera said:
It sounds like you had a crummy PT. It’s just as likely to get a crummy chiropractor and a bad chiropractor can be dangerous. A good PT will do massage as part of the treatment if it’s applicable to the problem.
Oh, I definitely did. She sort of...pushed on my back for a few minutes each session, but I wouldn't have called it a massage. But mostly she didn't seem the least bit interested in actually solving my problem. She had me mostly doing leg strengthening exercises, and the only explanation I got was "it's all connected." Well, yeah, but my legs have been wimpy forever, and my back suddenly started hurting a month ago, you know? At one point she seemed to have forgotten that back pain was even why I was there. But another reason I mention a chiropractor or massage over PT is that the OP is concerned about cost. I paid over $1000 for 3 PT sessions, and that was the negotiated rate through insurance. I was shocked, even after spending my entire life in the US healthcare system. One of the sessions, I wasn't even the only person she was working with. Even if I'd met my deductible, my part of the cost would still have been nearly $100/session. I.e. even if it HAD been helpful, I couldn't afford it. Chiropractors and massage are generally priced to be affordable OOP. I've never actually been to a chiropractor. I thought PT would be the better route, but mine was worse than worthless. I remain skeptical, but I know a number of smart people who swear by chiropractors, so...who knows?
ETA: also, my Chiro-skepticism would have led me to make a much more careful choice than I did with PT (I just went to the place very near home that the spine place referred me to)...I was collecting a lot of personal recommendations and scouring websites before my back started to get better.
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Just now, Kassia said:
Thank you so much. I do have some of those patches here - maybe I'll try one. I'll look at the link you posted too. I saw some physical therapy stuff on bob and brad's youtube channel so I should try those too.
I love Bob and Brad! They're way better than the real life PT I went to 😂
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When my trigger points were really bad/all over the place, I definitely felt burning. And muscle relaxers (or ibuprofen) didn't really do much of anything for them (those salonpas patches worked better). And they were better with movement and stretching. I kind of hate to throw more stuff out there because I know there are so many things it could be when you're trying to google or whatever...but for me once I started treating my back pain like trigger points (which basically involves massaging the crap out of them), I made a lot more progress. So I also don't want to NOT throw it out there in case it resonates. The checklist here was the most helpful for me: https://www.painscience.com/tutorials/trigger-points.php?id=6470287
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Will your trash pickup people not take it for an extra fee? Our city has bulky trash pick up for $20/item.
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1 minute ago, Kassia said:
ugh - I'm sorry you wasted so much money on a spine doctor and PT sessions. I don't have a PCP. I had a very bad one and tried a new one who was actually worse than the bad one. All the good ones around here aren't taking new patients. DH had a great PCP but he retired last year.
Maybe a chiropractor then? They're pretty inexpensive out of pocket. I'm a skeptic, but in retrospect I'd definitely have done that over the PT, because at least they'd have TRIED to fix my back. Or even just a good massage! If you know it's muscular, I think dealing with it as home is as effective as anything else...the problem is diagnosing it for sure, of course.
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Trigger point/muscle knot? Can you localize it to one spot if you press in the right place (even though it also radiates)? I had sudden onset back pain a couple of months ago, and that seems to be what's going on (it's mostly better now, but new spots keep flaring up--but it's okay as long as I stay on top of them). I understand your hesitation about going to the doctor. I finally did for mine after 3 weeks, and I learned that it's really hard to get anyone to care much about your back pain, but I managed to spend $1500 on a spine doctor followed by a few totally useless PT sessions anyway. But maybe a relatively inexpensive primary care visit to reassure you that there's nothing seriously wrong? I did that first and wish I'd stopped there. The problem with back pain is that it can take FOREVER to get better and still be totally normal (well, not normal exactly, but common and unalarming)!
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19 minutes ago, rzberrymom said:
So, for a spiky kid, if there’s financial need but the family is not Pell Grant eligible, are the options mainly either elites or the state schools that give HUGE grants to OOS? Or will second or third tier schools offer both merit and financial aid?
My kids have been offered combos of merit and need based aid at a number of schools...sometimes it put them close to what they were offered at needs met schools (or better in one case where my oldest was offered a full ride (from a scholarship that had a need-based component). None of them were anywhere particularly beautiful, though!
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Incidentally, this has made me message my SIL, who lives in CA and has an 11th grader, to try to convince her to send him to Missoula.
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Just now, rzberrymom said:
Ok, got it. They likely would qualify for financial aid. I don’t know why but I just assumed a WUE school wouldn’t meet that financial need, on top of the WUE discount. But, am I making the wrong assumption there?
So yes, he would need merit plus financial aid.
It really just depends on how low their income is what the best bet is for financial aid. It looks like with the top automatic merit at Missoula for WUE students, out of pocket would be just room and board, which they estimate at around $12,000. Then he could take the federal loans on top of that and possibly a pell grant if he's eligible; at that point he'd be looking at maybe $4-5000/yr or less. Just as an example (I might have gotten a little fixated on Missoula and decided I wish I could go to college there 😉 ). But if his family is in that income range, private colleges that meet need would be just as good (or better if it's a school that doesn't include loans in FA packages, but those are few and far between and generally VERY difficult to get into--though sounds like the photography could be a hook). So they probably need to run some net price calculators to see where they stand. And if he's eligible for a lot of need based aid and has a shot at super selective schools, Williams or Amherst come to mind as mountainy ones.
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3 hours ago, Plagefille said:
We used the old versions of Jacob's Algebra
Buy used
Yes, we used Jacob's Algebra followed by Jacobs geometry and then foersters algebra 2 and trig; all of them are inexpensive used. we didn't have solutions books because my husband's a math teacher, but it looks like they're available as well.
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4 minutes ago, rzberrymom said:
I’ve been hunting around for info on the mountain state schools, and University of New Mexico is the only one I’ve seen so far that has good merit aid for OOS. I’ll check if Missoula is one of the WUE schools—hadn’t thought of that one!
It is! I was poking around on their scholarship page, but I didn't know if that was relevant. That would get it a good bit lower (the top award is full tuition for WUE, I think it said--all based on GPA) ETA: https://www.umt.edu/finaid/scholarships/new-freshman-scholarships/default.php
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I just checked University of Montana, because we were just in Missoula last summer, so I know there are lovely mountain hikes right next to the campus...looks like their top automatic merit would get cost of attendance down to around $30,000 (including room and board). I'm guessing some other mountain west states might be similar.
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I don't know exact amounts but a friend's daughter got a good bit of merit at UNC Asheville.
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1 minute ago, Sneezyone said:
Which is also why I see this as an opportunity for kids to get a real bargain in the NE and Midwest. That doesn’t help those who want to remain in state or close to home but for those who can/will travel, there’s going to be a lot of opportunity at some great schools with a lot of merit money attached.
I think you already see LACs in the midwest using merit money in ways coastal schools haven't had to yet. Just based on where my first kid applied--schools like Grinnell, Macalester, Oberlin use merit money to appeal to kids who would otherwise be going to Bowdoin, Vassar, et. al. that only do need based aid.
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20 minutes ago, SeaConquest said:
I have the same perspective, here in California. When CSUs like San Diego State (which used to be on Playboy's top party school list) now reject incredible kids, it blows my mind. I can only pray that these kids begin to see an easing of the admissions nightmare here.
And maybe our experiences/observations are reflecting the trends they mention in the article--that the issues are going to be dependent on where population is growing and shrinking, and it's the midwest and northeast that will feel the effects most strongly.
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53 minutes ago, Lori D. said:
re: increasing # of AP tests taken by students for competitive admissions
Just curious -- if everyone is taking that many APs, and amount of scholarship $$ being handed out by UGA is unlikely to have increased, does that mean those students are getting admitted, but not getting much in the way of scholarship $$, even with all of their APs?
Is there a reason why these students you are seeing can't apply to other schools (in state or out of state) where their stats would make them a "big fish in a small pond" for big $$ awards? Or willingness to apply to schools in other states with automatic aid based on SAT/ACT test scores?
Georgia is a bit of a special case in that the lottery funded HOPE scholarship covers in-state tuition for a lot of students (there's more nuance than that, in that there are cut-offs according to grades and test scores, but for practical purposes pretty much anyone accepted to UGA or Tech is going to have their full tuition covered if they're coming from Georgia). But, yes, for OOS students, I think it's certainly true that the students who would have been accepted with big $$$ 20 years ago might get in but not be offered anything today. I mean, that's true at most selective colleges (I remember a quote from an admissions person at Vanderbilt from a year or two ago saying that every kid they're admitting now would have been a Cornelius Vanderbilt Scholar a few years ago)--I'm pointing to UGA just to show that it's not just the top 20 that are seeing this: a state flagship that used to serve pretty average (or slightly but not hugely above average) students from Georgia is no longer accessible to those same students. And, yes, of course they can go to less selective colleges...but a lot of them don't want to. What I see is that very often STEM kids want Tech and lots and lots of kids want UGA for all sorts of reasons (football, college town, not staying close to home, and, yeah, some of them even because they think the academics are stronger 😉 ). Not everyone can have what they want of course, and that's okay. I'm just saying that I see lots and lots of kids putting enormous pressure on themselves to get into these schools, and I don't know that a demographic shift that takes a bit of that pressure off will be all bad. For struggling small LACs...it will be bad. For the A/B kid who wants a certain college experience...not so bad.
Incidentally--I had one kid apply and be accepted to UGA and another apply and be accepted to the music program at a much less competitive in-state University. They were very, very similar academically (and both very strong), and neither was offered much scholarship money above the HOPE (music kid was offered a small music scholarship). Our OOP costs would have been very similar at the state flagship and at the much less selective school without a national reputation. (And both went elsewhere, to schools that meet demonstrated need, where our OOP costs are lower than either public school, even with the free tuition at the publics).-
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15 minutes ago, Lori D. said:
Well, the SAT test of the early 1990s when you took was very different from the SAT that students take today (a number of big revisions to the test between then and now), so I don't think that's fair to yourself to compare. 😉
That's why I used my ACT score 😉 It makes my former self look better than my SAT and doesn't seem to have changed over the years the way SAT scores have. As far as the pressure kids today are under, though, there's no comparison whatsoever between my 2 AP classes (which was a pretty standard load for a good student back then) and the 7-12 the middle 50% have today. That means 25% of admitted students at UGA are taking MORE than 12 AP/DE classes! ETA: and again, this isn't kids who won't be happy if they're not an Ivy, this is the state flagship that used to be very easy to get into if you were a halfway decent student.
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I agree that it's the smaller colleges that are already struggling that will have the hardest time. I do wonder how this will be different from the 90s when demographics also weren't kind to colleges. It was MUCH easier to get in to top colleges then than it is now. For those predicting sliding standards, are you seeing things as vastly different at highly selective colleges than everywhere else? Because from my perspective, kids trying to get into selective colleges have to do much more now to accomplish that (and I'm talking not just top 20 colleges, but a lot of state flagships) than they did when I was applying. In 1993 I got in to my state flagship with the top automatic academic scholarship with a 31 ACT and 2 AP classes. Today a 31 is the bottom of their middle 50% admitted and the middle 50% of DE/AP classes is 7-12. My 1993 self almost certainly wouldn't get in, much less be in the honors program with a scholarship. So what I'm seeing right now in helping my kids navigate this world and watching my husband teach high school math is that there's a LOT of pressure on students to push themselves to take sort of crazy academic schedules (and make sure they have impressive ECs on top of that!) and that pressure being reduced a bit wouldn't be a bad thing. But perhaps I'm just too immersed in a world where every kid seems to want to go to Georgia Tech or UGA.
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15 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:
There's long been a connection between thyroid issues and cancer. I read through the above study and I don't think there's enough distinction made between the use of levothyroxine as a supplement versus the pathways that that particular thyroid hormone activates which are connected to cancer growth. Correlation versus causation, iykwim. There are other recently published studies that point to not treating subclinical hypothyroidism with an increase in certain types of cancer. Plus, there are increases in cardiac risk and other complications from not treating subclinical hypothyroidism. Interesting study--worth noting for sure--but I don't want people to jump to levothyroxine = bad.
Thanks! It's something I keep meaning to look into more but also sort of not wanting to look into more because I don't think there's anything I can do about it in my situation anyway. But I'm always hesitant to start up a medication that it's hard to stop taking without fulling researching it...or at least I usually am, but in this case I was exhausted and pregnant and it seemed so benign that I didn't really give it much thought.
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I've been reading a lot of things lately about how subclinical hypothyroidism is overtreated, and there's a newer study showing a significant association between long term levothyroxine use and cancer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33793038/
I say this as someone who's been on levothyroxine for 10+ years, never had any problems with it, and feel like it's made a big difference for me, largely in terms of energy levels (not ease of weight loss as I'd originally hoped, sadly). If I had it do over again, I'd do more research before jumping on meds long term. I don't know if the more research would have brought me to a different result (I wasn't subclinical), but it's much harder to stop once you've been taking it for a long time, and I feel like I don't have much choice at this point.
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A mistake seems like the most likely explanation. Unless they're defining "minority" more broadly (I've seen some scholarship opportunities that are targeted at "underrepresented groups" or something along those lines and can include stuff like first gen students or low income students (or women, particularly in STEM)
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12 hours ago, Sneezyone said:
The lede is buried…“What we found really surprising is other schools have outcomes nearly as good as Ivy League schools, but [they] admit many, many more poor students,” Friedman said.”
Yes...it would be interesting if someone would tackle identifying why some less elite schools are better for social mobility than others. I don't think that's actually the study I was looking for...there's one I see pop up (but can never find when I'm looking for it) that talks about how poor kids benefit more from going to elite schools than wealthy kids because, IIRC, they get a bigger boost from the connections they make there, whereas wealthy kids already have those connections through family regardless of where they go to college. I also always think about how it's absolutely true that there are relatively few low income kids at elite schools, but those schools are MUCH cheaper for low income families than nearly any other option if their kids can get in to them. Low income families can very easily get into massive debt (relative to their income) paying in state public school costs when an MIT or Stanford or Vanderbilt or whatever would cost them little to nothing and allow their kids to graduate debt free (or an Oberlin or a Vassar would allow them to graduate with just the federal loans). But it's a system that benefits only a small number of low income students. But it DOES benefit those students, and I think too many of them don't know it's out there and don't think beyond in state publics.
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1 hour ago, Sneezyone said:
It's here:
The longer talk is also on YouTube. He's done several with more detailed explanations and follow up. My biggest takeaway was that it really doesn't matter what my kids' test scores are. Whether they're at the top or the bottom, it makes no sense to be chasing names vs. ensuring solid teaching and relative privilege.
There's also the study about how going to an elite college disproportionately benefits lower income kids, though: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/01/19/rich-students-flock-elite-colleges-study-finds-graduating-college-levels-playing
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44 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:
And musing on costs - how anybody could ever be conservatory ready without significant resources is mind boggling.
We do it by having grandparents who can help out with EC costs. My kids are Pell eligible, but I'm very aware that they're a special kind of pell-eligible in that they have college educated parents who can help them navigate the system and a strong safety net with extended family--they just happen to have a Dad who decided to teach math and a family with just one full time income thanks to homeschooling. I mean, we also prioritize and make sacrifices so the kids can have lessons and all that..but there are plenty of people for whom no amount of sacrifice would make private lessons and orchestra fees possible.
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Enrollment Cliff ???
in The College Board
Posted · Edited by kokotg
Is that hard to find in the US, though? My oldest kid went to a liberal arts college thinking he wanted to take a big variety of classes, but he ended up taking almost all math and geography (and computer science and statistics, which are in the same department as math). It's fairly easy to get most core requirements for most schools out of the way in high school these days, between DE and AP credit. There are still some colleges that are very committed to a certain academic experience and that won't let you opt out of a broad core with credit from high school, but those are easy to avoid if that's not what you want (though the ones that come to mind are definitely not schools that are hurting for applicants...like UChicago springs to mind immediately as having a pretty rigid curriculum, from what I understand. My next kid is at Vanderbilt in the music school, so he's VERY specialized, but arts and sciences has fairly broad core requirements that you can't use AP credit to get out of (though you can use DE, interestingly). But at almost all of the LACs my oldest got into, there are either no requirements or the requirements are so broad that by the time you transfer in AP credit there's very little you'd HAVE to take outside your area of interest and in closely related departments. Like in theory the liberal arts experience is about a broad range of experiences, and you certainly CAN have that, but it's also, in my experience, about pretty loose requirements that give you the freedom to EITHER explore or specialize.