retiredHSmom
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Posts posted by retiredHSmom
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My son wants a military experience for college and beyond. He is planning on applying to USNA, West Point , Texas A&M and VA Tech. I just scheduled a tour of VATech with the Corps of Cadets and their email confirmation mentioned VMI. I checked and they have an overnight visit planned that would perfectly follow our scheduled visit at VA Tech. We could roll right from one to the other. So we scheduled a visit at VMI too. Does anyone have a child who is going/went there? Feedback on it?
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I am looking at hosting a gaming team through our co-op as a fun "class". I have been doing some reading and have a few questions about MLG vs something like DOTA. If you are on a team/run a team or have a child on a team can you help me out?
I usually each technology classes like electronics, engineering, CyberSecurity competition teams etc so this is a new idea for me.
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I have a daughter who is graduating in May who has a W on her transcript in a class for her major and she already has a job. (mechanical engineering)
My other daughter graduated last May. She has a W on her transcript as well as multiple Pass/Fail classes (the first college she attended as a very small liberal arts college and the culture there was to take 18+ credit hours and then pass/fail a class. EVERYONE did it). She got accepted to multiple grad schools. (Math BS and Math Phd program.
No one ever asked about either of their W's. The pass/fails did raise questions but explaining the culture of the school answered those and the answers seemed to be satisfactory.
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I've heard not more than six.
My son would revolt long before we reached the seventh test.
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My daughter can not say all her R sounds properly (the only ones that she doesn't say properly are er, ir ur). my son had the same problem and at 16 years old he decided to fix it. He began concentrating on how he said his words and a year later you cannot tell that he every pronounced anything incorrectly. I am sure that na accent can be changed too.
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I have found a method that is often as cheap as audible membership without the monthly commitment but is not available for all books.
1. go to amazon and find the kindle book version of the audiobook that you want.
2. under the formats and prices is a small box that lists the length of the books and several program that it can be part of. The one you are looking for is audible narration and it should say "ready".
3. Click on the gray arrow by ready and it will give you the price of adding the audible narration to the kindle book. You can use this feature to flip back and forth between the kindle book and the audible book and they will stay synced up but you can also simply listen to the audio book.
As an example: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins is $28.00 at audible without a membership. It is $14.95 with an audible membership and a commitment to more or you can buy the kindle book for $9.99 and add the audible narration for $7.49 for a total of $17.48. Many books can be purchased this way for less than an audible credit.
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My oldest is in his second year at VT, and we have also been very happy with the Corps and its leadership. DS absolutely loves it there and is thriving.
We are also in NoVA. Two years ago, my son got presidential nominations for both West Point and USAFA, and he was double-nominated by a senator and a representative for USAFA, which is really rare in district 10. He received an appointment to West Point (with just the presidential nom)--and was rejected by USAFA. He would have been a third generation cadet because my dad and grandpa were also grads. So go figure, lol. At the end, you really have to just leave it in the hands of God and trust that your son will end up where he is supposed to be!
My daughter and I were just discussing that my son will end up where God wants him to be.
We have a family friend at VT right now in the corps. He is a freshman- your son may know him, Louis Hatcher. Why did your son end up choosing VT over West Point?
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The mention of a first board convening in late summer/early fall might refer to admissions boards at the academies, rather than nominations boards.
Ahh, this might be my problem. Yes, the boards I mentioned are admissions boards at the academies. I had assumed that you would need to have a nomination before the boards met. Otherwise I figured that you could have a situation where the academy selected you but then you didn't get a nomination.
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-He should investigate the college ROTC scholarship programs for any service he's interested in being commissioned in. This is another commissioning program that can also pay for most of the cost of getting a degree. It is not connected to the high school JROTC program. The selection criteria is similar to that for an academy.
I am sorry, that I didn't mention this but ROTC application is a given. My dad and husband were both ROTC students and we are more familiar with the application process there. Somehow it seems much more clear.
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-If your ds is interested in TAMU, I would suggest he also look at other senior military colleges like Virginia Tech, North Georgia University, Norwich, The Citadel and VMI. They all have some kind of a corps of cadets. I'm partial to Virginia Tech, but understand others may like the program offerings at other schools more.
My husband and I both attended Texas A&M so my son thinks that he is partial to Texas but he has never lived there so...
We do live in VA but I have always joked that my children aren't allowed to attend VA Tech because it is too far to drive (over 4 hours) and too short to fly. We are going to go visit there this spring and he will do an overnight with the corps. Any particular reason you are partial? The corps at VA Tech is about half the size of the corps at A&M. They are about the same age, I guess we really need to visit because I have trouble imagining that the tradition is anywhere as deep as at A&M and yet..
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Thank You Sebastian for the detailed information. My son is doing the research and is in for the long haul. He will be the 4th generation to be a career military officer in our family (though no academy grads yet). Your helps so far have been great. This system is the second most convoluted system I have ever seen (with the first bring Tricare). I do have 2 remaining questions if I haven't worn out your good will yet.
My son has read the academy nomination information pages for both our senators and our representative. To be honest that have made the process less rather than more clear. Their applications open in May and they say that their letters will usually go out around December but the first board meets in late summer/early fall, so how does that work? Also according to one of our Senator' pages they need us to submit the blue, yellow or green card from the medical screening to the senators office but according to the USNA admissions site that physical occurs after you have been accepted as a candidate. I am having trouble figuring out where to get on and off the merry-go-round. A spreadsheet to track submissions is a brilliant idea
Secondly, I can not find any information about how many recommendation from who are required. I realize that that information will come when we reach the right step in the process but we, like you, are independent homeschoolers and understanding what paperwork we need to come up with will help because we may have to stretch to fill the public school boxes. You mentioned a math and english teacher. My son takes chemistry at the community college but does math and english at home with me. (he will take calculus at the community college but that won't be until the fall) If the chemistry teacher could fill out a recommendation I would like my son to explain that he will be contacting him about that in the summer so that when the prof gets the request he is clear about who it is coming from and hopefully will be noting things to say during the semester instead of being caught off guard in July with a three-week deadline or something.
My sons original plan was to apply to Texas A&M for the corps of cadets and if he didn't get in he was going to enlist in the Marines for four years and then go to A&M on his GI Bill. A family friend who was in admissions at USNA in the mid-late 90's and a guy from his scout troop who is a plebe at USNA right now sparked my son's interest and at times I think that we should have stuck with the first, easier plan.
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yes, he is a current junior. He has already submitted application for summer seminar at USNA and Westpoint. He is working on Coast Guard Academy now.
I was going to call admissions about the Counselor letter tomorrow. So the parent writes that?
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I live in a HCOL area (Washing DC suburbs in Northern VA) and our neighbors got quotes of $10,000- $12,000 for a deck of that size. My husband and I built the deck at our previous home and built this one as well. We paid $3500 for materials and used composite decking and rails.
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Thank You both for your assistance. I had hoped to hear from you. I remembered Margaret in CO username so I was confident that I could PM her f necessary but I had forgotten Sebastians username.
Okay question 2, my previous two college students were in situations where there was no need to submit class descriptions or book lists or even lists of extracurriculars. Obviously those things will matter this time. What kind of detail should I be including especially for extracurriculars? Classes I am assuming class title, teacher, textbook and description along with a book list. Extracurriculars? Should I list them by year or activity? He has 405 assorted community service hours. Do I highlight some of the big activities out of that total?
Does this look like a good overview of one activity?
CyberPatriot VI CyberSecurity Competition team. Met weekly from June 2015-February 2016, average 2 hours per week during this period. Team scored in the 50th percentile in open division competition.
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Also the nom for children of "career*" military is the Presidential nom.
*Defined as >8 years if I remember correctly.
Okay, that is what I thought but when googled it, I swear that form said VP. My husband served 10 years in the Marine Corps reserves and 20 years in the AF so presidential it is.
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tbh: you still need to file a police report.
this was probably not the first time there was such a theft at the church if the priest was warning women to keep their purses with them.
I probably should, just so that there is a record that it happens that the offender likes to target the church hall.
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I got my iPad back a year after it was stolen with that app! The thief sold it (from what I could gather) and when the buyer turned it on and hooked it up to wifi it alerted me.
I called the police in that town (halfway across the country) and they visited the house for me. Whatever they said either scared the people or they had a guilty conscience and handed it over. It was locked at that point so they could never use it anyway. So I mailed a check and the police mailed me my iPad 🎉
I was sure it was gone forever.
That is great. While we were waiting for the police a friend at church told me that her daughters iPhone was taken by a kids at school. "find my iPhone" showed it was at his house. The police were called and the mom denied that her son would do that and the police told my friend that nothing could be done. They never got the phone back.
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Thank You everyone. I am going to move forward with the March test regardless of anything else. I will probably register him for June and then we will decide what to do about the fall. If he is terribly close to a "magic" score and practice tests are still showing improvement we will go for it. If not we will skip it.
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My daughter will have taken the ACT at least 4 times, possibly 5 if we feel it's warranted, in high school because we use it to cover our state yearly testing requirements (this doesn't count the two times she took it in middle school since I think those are dropped from the record).
For those who've seen 3 listed as a cap for the SAT, can you give an example of the reasons people are citing?
I'd also go ahead with the March date to get it out of the way and in case anything else comes up.
We are also in a state that requires annual testing and we used it as our yearly test at the end of his sophomore year. I didn't think about the fact that there might be some kind of unspoken limit on how many times you should take it.
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The "collective wisdom" (for whatever that is worth) that I have seen is no more than three times.
Thank You, I was hoping that someone had some theory that I was unaware of.
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On Saturday my mother, my daughter and I attended a one day women's retreat at our church. When we went up from the parish hall for adoration, the parish priest told us all to take our purses. Most women did. A few hours later when we went up to the church a second time for Mass many of us (including my daughter and I) left our purses in the parish hall. Retreat staff was to be there the whole time.
When we came back down an hour later for lunch, my daughters purse was not on her chair where she left it. Mine was under the table where I left it. We just assumed that someone had moved it. So we called it and heard nothing but my daughter was pretty sure the ringer was off. One of the features of "find my iPhone" is that it plays a very sound beeping use even if the ringer is off so we pulled it up on my phone and to our shock and dismay her phone reported that it was in a shopping center about 11 minutes away.
Shocked we called the police, they said they would send someone out to take a report. We went outside to with for the police and proceeded to call and cancel her debt and credit card, neither of which had any new charges on them. She is graduate student and poor so she had no cash in her purse. The main losses were her credit and debit card, student ID, drivers license, military ID, phone and the purse itself which was a birthday gift last month. Plus a bible, a chapel veil, a bunch of receipts and the usual paper trash that accumulates in a purse.
An hour late the phone had not moved and the police had not shown up. The phone showed it being in the parking lot in front of the post office in a shopping center that we were familiar with. We were sure that the thief, upon discovering that the purse had no cash and stolen the cards and dumped the purse. So we did what all good women in our family would do and called the police and cancelled their visit and took off to go dumpster diving. As I told my daughter, if there was ever a woman that you would choose to go chasing down a stolen phone using the built-in GPS and then probably have to dumpster dive to retrieve it, it would be my mother.
When we arrived at the shopping center we went straight to the dumpsters in the parking lot and triggered the loud "find my iPhone" beeping. No sound came from the dumpsters although they were very clean and everything was bagged which gave me hope. At this point the location pin was jumping between the parking lot and the post office so we headed to the post office.
It was a busy Saturday afternoon in the post office. We kept triggering the beeping and didn't hear anything in the first bay of PO Boxes. In the second bay we could faintly hear the beeping. We entered the service counter area and the beeping was loud, I kept triggering it. My daughter thought that it was coming from the purse of the lady in front of us and so did the lady as she reached for her purse. My daughter later told me that she was totally ready to jump the lady. I looked up and saw the purse on the shelves behind the counter. I am not kidding when I say that I pointed at it and practically yelled, "there it is, thats our purse". The postman behind the counter looked up and said "this belongs to you", as he handed it to my daughter. I told him that it was stolen one hour ago from a church a few miles up the road. He added and told us that they dumped it in the outer bay of the post office and the only thing that they did was to remove my daughters drivers license fro the very outside pocket of her purse and drop it back in the main body, that is how he recognized her.
After many thanks we returned to the car and searched her purse. Every single thing was in it including both her credit and debit cards, her IDs and her phone. Oddly enough whoever stole it removed her drivers license from her wallet and put it in the very outside pocket of the purse before they dropped it at at the post office.
We think that someone entered the parish hall thinking that it was empty and probably began thinking about taking purse or cash. When they heard the woman come out of the kitchen they were startled and grabbed my daughters purse off her chair and ran. Later an attack of conscience caused them to drop it at the post office with ID easily accessible so that it could be returned. It probably would have reached us eventually but because of the "find my iPhone" feature and the fact that my mother and I and my daughter have never met a challenge that we couldn't attack together we had it back within two hours of it being stolen. It was quite a day.
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My son took the SAT at the end of 10th grade to fulfill state testing requirements and also to see how he would do. We did no prep at all and he didn't take it seriously. His scores were ok but not what I know that he is capable of. This fall he decided to apply to some fairly to very selective schools. (Academies and Texas A&M as an out-of-state student). He began studying very hard for the SAT and ACT, the plan was to take them in march and April and see which he did better at and then move forward with that one.
It appears that he will do much better at the SAT his practice test scores are 100 points higher than his sophomore test and his ACT practice tests are just not great.
I can't decide between having him take the SAT in March to see improvement and then continue studying and take it again in June for scores to submit for Academy and ROTC scholarship applications that will be submitted in July and then take one last time in September to try to get automatic admission at Texas A&M (which I think is within his reach, both his sisters scored at that level) or whether we should just skip March and take it June and September.
So is 4 times too many times to take the SAT and I should have him skip the March test or is 4 okay?
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My son has decided to apply for Westpoint and USNA. I have a few questions for anyone knowledgeable with the process.
1. He is eligible for a Vice-Presidential nomination as my husband is retired USAF. I have two friends with children at one of the academies. One told me that he should not apply for any other nominations as that leaves them available for kids who do not have a VP nomination. The other told me that he should definitely apply for other nominations as they will make him more competitive. Thoughts? We live in Northern VA so many military members around us and a very competitive atmosphere.
2. A co-worker told my husband that if Senator #1 gives my son a nomination for Westpoint that it is only good for Westpoint and that he will need to apply to another senator for a nomination to USNA. Is this correct? How many senators and representatives should he apply to?
Thank You for any help you can give me.
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I have used macgourmet which is a computer based program (you pay for it once) and plan to eat which is a web-based program (you buy an annual subscription). Both allow weekly meal planning and make shopping lists for you. Right now I am leaning toward plan to eat because my daughters are moving out and calling me for recipes and it is easier to share them using plan to eat.
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Just so y'all are ready - TOMORROW IS PI DAY!!
in The Chat Board
Posted
We chose the exact same menu! Maybe it's the math grad student in the house, but we will definitely be celebrating pi day.