rzberrymom
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Selling classes at UCLA- Have you heard of this?
rzberrymom replied to Nart's topic in The College Board
The students at UCLA sell everything to each other. Freshman and sophomores are in triple rooms that were built as doubles—have a spare $2000 and you can find someone to switch with you. Need someone to hold a spot in a class for you? That’s another $500. It makes me sick. It’s all over Reddit and I’ve been waiting for someone to get them in a sting operation. On the other hand, my kid is THRILLED she’s at a school where no one bought their way in, either with donations, fancy private high schools, or even well-funded public schools (most kids there are ELC, which means they’re top of their high school rather than top overall across the state, to TRY to maintain some equity). The egalitarianism is strong there. -
1000% agree with this. ❤️❤️ Honestly, this could be a very good thing for her—learning to take more control now will mean she’ll be much more equipped when she gets to college. The one thing I wish we had done was get a much better start on the essays during the summer after junior year. This helped my DD tremendously: Hack the College Essay
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The Class of 2024 College Acceptance Thread
rzberrymom replied to JennyD's topic in The College Board
😀👍 -
My college kiddo has also thanked me several time for making her do AOPS. Says she can always reason backwards and figure out whatever math is in front of her.
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My DD got a research job on campus at the beginning of the school year, and she’ll be able to keep doing that over the summer. Her professor gave her a fantastic research project, but it’s totally unstructured—this will be her introduction to the ‘it’s up to you to get it done’ life of a grad student. I have no idea how it will go. I’m crossing my fingers for some big jumps in maturity over the summer. Her voice teacher is on campus all summer too, so hopefully she can make real strides there too. For next year, she’s stuck in a triple room again—I thought she was going to cry when she found out. Her school guarantees housing for all 4 years, but the options aren’t great. Off-campus is extraordinarily expensive, so she’ll have to bear it another year. 🤷♀️
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The Class of 2024 College Acceptance Thread
rzberrymom replied to JennyD's topic in The College Board
Congrats!!!!!! 🎉🎊🎈 -
I don’t track her phone either. You’re not alone.
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I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I kind of, maybe agree with your kiddo. I’ve wondered how in the world universities are keeping up with the changes going on in CS right now, with all the upheaval and progress AI is bringing. Everything is changing so so fast!! And I don’t buy that these professors are able to keep up. My DH is an engineering professor, and he has to train his students in Matlab, Python, Excel, etc. as part of that—with all the other pressures (publish or perish, department meetings, office hours, editing journal articles, politics, etc.), there’s NO WAY he can keep up with all the changes happening with regards to programming. Things are changing weekly! So, if I were a really smart kid with tons of coding experience, I may be tempted to do a coding boot camp and just try to go for it. Even a year ago, I never would have thought that. But for the right kid, it feels to me like things are evolving too quickly to waste time on a 4 year degree right now. 🤷♀️ I am super risk averse, so this is out of character for me.
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I wouldn’t discount the UCs. DD started at UCLA over the summer and nothing feels sink-or-swim so far. The pre-med students are intense and competitive, but I think that can be true at any university. I think Caltech or Stanford would be WAY more sink or swim than anything I’ve seen so far. The only hard part is staying on top of bureaucratic deadlines (registration, housing) since there’s not a lot of hand holding. But that has felt worth it to me since the price is low and the resources are absolutely tremendous, especially for a kid who eventually wants to go to grad school. (there’s also a pretty widely available middle-class scholarship)
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Two musical, science-y homeschoolers running around in the non-stop California sunshine!! 😃
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Foreign Language progression and opportunities
rzberrymom replied to Soror's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
My kids have had great luck starting with Duolingo and then moving to audiobooks in the new language, ideally with books they already know very well. Then movies/tv in the new language. I find the audiobooks help them get completely immersed in the language, without the distraction of what’s happening onscreen. -
When they’re calling home/texting too much…
rzberrymom replied to rzberrymom's topic in The College Board
Hmmm, what you describe does seem like way too much to me. I guess this is generational. A new era.