Questions for my Amerifriends...

[kellifer]

I swear these aren't for my SPN/HP story that I'm not writing because I have dozens of other things I should be writing.

*looks shifty*

So:

What age do you (approximately):-
- sit your SATs
- Apply for college
- Get accepted for college
- Are a senior in high school

I'm not really sure because in Australia people can be a year older/younger depending on when they started school and I also started thinking that maybe you guys get all your college stuff before you finish your senior year unlike us who apply after we get our results and then apply to Uni. I was always a little confused because it seemed like people had their college acceptances and were still going to classes?

ETA: Wow - you are all very awesome. I'm going to mem this as a reference for US school stuff because there is a *LOT* of info here.

Comments

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

Speaking from the deep personal pain of somebody who has, so far, gone through this rigmarole three times already, four if you count my own long-ago high school days:

SATs: either the spring of one's junior year of high school (grade 11) or the early fall of one's senior year (grade 12) -- sometimes people will take the SAT once in their junior year for practice and then again in their senior year; most schools will take the better of the two scores. (Also, one doesn't "sit" the SATs, one "takes" them.)

apply for college: generally, the application deadline is sometime around the middle of one's senior year -- early decision deadlines are usually in mid-autumn, and regular decision sometime in early January. After that, it's nail-biting time until the envelopes start coming back, which can be before Christmas for early decision acceptances/rejections, or March or April for regular decision. Generally speaking, thin envelopes=bad news, but thick envelopes (containing all sorts of necessary forms and information)=good.

The age of a particular student while all this is going on varies. Different states have different rules for what age children can or must start first grade -- I was 16 when I began my senior year in high school and 17 when I started college, because the state of Florida, where I started out, said at the time that in order to begin first grade a student had to be 6 years old before the end of December of that year, and my birthday is the 30th of November. On the other hand, in states where the requirement is that the student be 6 years old before the beginning of the school year, a student with a 6th birthday just after that date is going to end up being 18 for almost all of their senior year and 19 during their first year in college.

So there's a window there, and more than a little wiggle room depending upon birthdays and place of residence at the beginning.

(And you don't even want to get into the madness that is the financial aid application process.)