Similar experience here. My oldest dd had taken four SAT II's by May of her junior year, and ds will have taken three or maybe four (not sure yet what he'll take in June!) by about the same time. For us, it was nice to be able to spend time focusing just on the applications and essays, which were more time consuming than I had anticipated. If we had needed to do anything, it would have "just" been a subject test or two fall of senior year, which wouldn't add too much stress to things.

Ds is on a nuts-seeds-fruit breakfast kick right now; drives me crazy, and makes me REALLY NERVOUS on test mornings! :toetap05: So I made sure to give him salmon for dinner the night before. :D

Ds took both the SAT (March) and the ACT (April). He actually prepped more for the SAT, and worked probably 4 or 5 full-length practice tests on Saturday mornings, but he spread that out over ~3 months instead of just the month before the test. He used a few things for his SAT prep: the "Big Blue Book" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Official-SAT-Study-Guide/dp/0874478529) along with these sites: http://blog.pwnthesat.com http://perfectscoreproject.com http://thecriticalreader.com Something that I think was really important for my dc (I also have an older daughter at a 4-year college right now, and I do think her strong test scores were a factor in the merit $ she was awarded) was that after taking a practice test, they would spend some time going over the questions they had missed a few days later until they understood why they missed them and why the right answer was right. Also, other than when they were taking full-length practice tests, I told them it was better to spend 30 min/day every day on test prep instead of big blocks of time just once/week. I feel like they prepped well, and for us, it was great to be happy with the scores so that they didn't feel the need to retake the tests multiple times over the jr/sr years for admissions. Hope that helps! Good luck with your test prep efforts there!!

Oh, the college search... Aaacck! :eek: We have visited a handful of schools already, and he likes just about everywhere. Not helpful!! But the college tours are fun and exciting for teens at this point, so it's all good. I feel fortunate to be in an area with a lot of strong school choices within a reasonable drive (a few hours) of home.

:) I have another brother who has a son just one year younger than mine. He simply said, "Congratulations!" Also, thank you for commenting on the hard work ds has done to get to this point. He has worked hard to get to this point, and I am happy for him that it has paid off in this instance.

That's so close to the response I wanted to give that it's a little bit scary! :D

Isn't that the truth!! Most of the time, I know enough now to know that I am clueless!! I am not being nearly as sarcastic as that sounds... Really, just trying to survive things most days.

:hurray: Virtual THANK YOU for your test prep plan! This is exactly what I had ds follow to prep, and he just got his score today. I knew he was well prepared, and I expected/hoped for a strong score, but he exceeded our expectations. Brag alert - he actually got a 36 on the test. I feel like a huge amount of credit goes to you and your prep plan. Thank you so much!! If I could write a letter of recommendation for you, I would. ;)

Interesting. Funny thing, ds scored consistently higher on his practice SAT tests than the actual test on the critical reading section; the difference was measurable at nearly 100 points. But he scored lower on the practice ACT than the actual test. Not sure how to analyze that! :huh:

I understand that perspective, I really do. It's a fine line between bragging and sharing success sometimes.

Thank you; I feel the same way. Pass-the-bean-dip only from this point forward. :001_cool:

:iagree: Good points. Advice only from those who have been-there-done-that is probably best in many, many situations!!

:laugh: Well put!

Thanks for that! :lol:

No, actually, I didn't. I posted the following to my parents, my inlaws, and my siblings: "It's a good day here! (Son's name) got his ACT score and he is happy enough with it to not have to retake it!" I didn't feel like it was bragging, but I also would not have felt that it was wrong to share success with family. Much the same way I would feel like I could share news about the things that are important to my brother, like apparently winning a student council office or being named MVP of a sports team. I know I would like to hear about those successes on the part of my nieces and nephews, especially as our extended family lives in the midwest while we are in the southeast, so, unfortunately, we don't hear about these things on a regular basis because we only see family once or twice per year.

It's hard. But you're doing the right thing by recognizing that it is time for them to take this step, instead of preventing it from happening. No good advice for you, I'm afraid; I'm plowing ahead here with a mix of denial and acceptance. I'm sure I could/should be doing a better job there. But I wanted to let you know that you aren't the only one going through this. :grouphug:

Venting here! We have been homeschooling for 13 years now. We started when my oldest was in 1st grade (she is now a freshman in college), and she is actually the only one of my kids to have attended a brick-and-mortar school for any part of K-12 (she went to K and half of first grade). So this is not exactly news to my extended family. It's been a long time that this has been our family's choice. Ds (high school junior) got his ACT score today. He did really, really well. As in, he surprised us all by getting a 36. Not that I didn't think he was academically capable, but the score was still something of a surprise! Here comes the venting part. My youngest brother responded by texting me with a diatribe about how he has never doubted that my kids were academically prepared, but he just wanted to "let me know" that in his opinion, school is as much about learning to interact with other people, get cut from teams, run for office, etc. than school, and that those things can't be replicated at home. He followed that up with asking if dh or I had some horrible experience in our schooling past that made us not want our kids to have that experience. :confused1: That had actually never occurred to me as a reason to homeschool until he asked me today! OK. So, first of all, the whole point is that I'm NOT trying to replicate that at home! B/c if I was, public school would be easier, cheaper, and a lot less stressful for me. :laugh: But I am disappointed that this was his reaction to good news for my son; jealousy on his part, maybe? On top of that, I am ticked because not only is he holding on to stereotypes about home schooling (that is, he clearly thinks my kids are sitting around with me all day, not getting to experience social settings, missing out on extracurriculars, etc.), but he's too lazy to get even slightly educated on the reality of homeschooling before condemning it to me. I'm mad, and I'm hurt; but mostly I'm mad!! On top of that, this from someone whose oldest child is 4. Four!! I've watched my kids try out for things, and make some teams and get cut from others. I've watched my kids take leadership roles, and I've watched them work under leaders, sometimes leaders in roles they wanted but failed to get. I've watched the teens have crushes, sometimes reciprocated, most often not. I have actually had these parenting experiences, whereas my brother has not. And I'm frustrated that he is feeling so judgmental that he has the nerve to tell me where I've made bad choices, without asking me about those situations that are apparently critical to him, and when he hasn't even faced a decision on where to send his kids to preschool! (Both he and his wife work full-time, and their kids go to a sitter's house, so they have yet to encounter a single sports team, school setting, etc. with their kids.) I'm seething. And trying really hard not to text back. But at the same time, I feel slandered, and I want to defend my position. Not to try to sway him, b/c I don't honestly think homeschooling would be the right choice for them (especially after his text - haha!), and I'm fine with that. I think it's great that people have choices. Always a position of strength to have a choice. So while I respect that for them, I don't think it's too much to ask that they do a little tiny bit of learning what homeschooling actually looks like before judging that my choice is inferior. It probably goes without saying at this point that my brother and his wife have never asked what our homeschool day looks like, what groups or activities the kids are in, etc. I just think that everyone's school experience is unique, in every school setting, every year, for every kid. The kids who are going to be active and involved will do that whether they are in a large public school, a small public school, a private school, or a homeschool. There is no magic involved in public school so that all those kids are student leaders and social magnets, just like homeschooled kids aren't actually locked away from the world. I really think it's rude to judge someone without trying to find out first what their experience actually is. This post probably isn't even coherent because I'm so very frustrated!! Thanks for e-listening. :001_cool:

Dd is very happy where she is. Bit of a rough start, because her roommate just never showed up for school, then she had a roommate part of the first semester who ended up dropping out. But she's happy with her new roommate, she LOVES living in the honors dorm, and her grades were good first semester. I'm worried she's having a little too much fun on campus - haha! - but as long as she is keeping her grades up, I guess she's balancing things just fine. Although she's happy when she's home (mostly b/c she catches up on sleep!), she's actually a little homesick for the school when she's not there. So far, so good!

Good points that I had not considered. On the topic of where ds starts his college level work, I don't know what to do. He is currently about halfway through AoPS Calculus. I thought about having him dual enroll in some calc classes to get the college credit starting this fall (his senior year; this summer he is taking College Composition I dual enrolled, and one class is enough with other things he has going on), but I'm not sure what the best plan is. Should I just let him continue with AoPS on his own and dual enroll in something like statistics now, then let him take the regular calc sequence in college where those classes will be slightly easier while he's transitioning to overall college academics? Or would it be best to let him take at least Calc I and II to get them out of the way? So. Many. Decisions. Aaacckk! :001_smile:

I'll be in Williamsburg this week with ds touring William & Mary. I'll mentally wave while I'm there! :seeya:

The school dh and I graduated from (Missouri) is on the list! That made me happy tonight. :hurray:

You're so close to us! Waving back from just east of Charlottesville.

Ds (junior) wants to major in math. The initial reaction dh and I had was, "What does one do with a math major? Why not just get an engineering degree, or a finance degree, or some such thing?" :huh: But we've talked with enough people that we're past that hurdle; haha. Now our issue is narrowing a list of schools. We are on the east coast in VA, which has strong universities, but just about everyone has a math program, and most schools will actually award some sort of math degree. We've met with math professors at two schools, who have told us about the strength of their programs, but that hasn't really helped us clarify what to look for. We've even tried googling for information, but we really aren't finding good guidelines on questions to ask or things to look for. It was much easier to assess programs with dd19, who wants to go into nursing! Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!!

Both my teens enjoyed Windows to the World, and they felt like they learned a lot. Ds (now 17) still lists one of the short story selections as one of his favorite high school reads.

I did something like this with oldest dd's transcript. She is currently at a 4-yr university, largely on merit scholarship. The front of her transcript was "traditional" with nothing but grades. The back listed "extras" like volunteer hours, extracurriculars, SAT/ACT scores. Not sure if it was good or bad, but she did get accepted to every college she applied to, some of them highly selective. I think you're right, and that it is largely semantics. I imagine admissions people see transcripts in 1,000,000 different formats! I do recommend keeping a log of volunteer hours, as someone else suggested, b/c all of the resume/transcript info can be requested in different formats by different schools during the application process.