Highschooler With 4.1 GPA Explains Why She Thinks She Was Rejected From 'Every College She Applied To'

What age were you when graduating high school?

Age 16 in June 1973 for high school graduation. I immediately launched into a microbiology class at Southwestern College a week after high school graduation. I signed up to start UCSD in January 1974 and filled the time in the Fall semester at Southwestern with calculus, English, chemistry and judo classes with credits transferable to UCSD. I turned 17 in August 1973.

The first 3 weeks at UCSD were a bit challenging as I still had classes overlapping at Southwestern in Jan 1974 while the Winter quarter was getting underway 40 miles away at UCSD.

I returned to Southwestern College in the Spring semester of 1980 as the instructor for Electronics 51/91 (Embedded Systems). I taught that course until May 1983 when PacBell placed me in a site support role at the computer center in Mira Mesa. It was an on call role 45 miles from the Southwestern campus. Too much traffic to commute and be certain of being on campus by 6:30 PM. I miss teaching, but it was a better career move.

there are 3 scores for the SAT... so she got an 1100 total? not very good. or was she just counting the math and reading? essay is separate. I didnt watch the videos... but if she took so many AP classes what were her scores on the national exams? if she got 4’s and 5’s... she would have gotten in to many schools. GPA’s are weighted to the degree of difficulty of your classes, and hers is only a 4.1 and yet she said she took AP classes. Many states have awful schools in the US, so who knows what caliber of teaching she was receiving.

That was well done. And graduating at 16 implies that you might have skipped a grade at some point. Your dad was USN?

I petitioned the school district to define a "senior" by the number of classes completed (as is done is colleges) rather than by the number of semesters attended. Because I took Summer school classes every year starting after 8th grade, I accrued enough to skip from 10th grade to 12th grade in consecutive years. I moved from class of 74 to class of 73. I retained that behavior at UCSD to accrue credits in physics, organic chemistry, abnormal psychology in the Summer quarters. I wasn't the only beneficiary of the re-definition of a "senior". 15 other people in my class of 74 moved to class of 73.

My dad was in the Navy. Port 5" gunnery officer on the USS Iowa in Korea (his crew destroyed the ammo dump at Wonsan Harbor in Sept 1952), engineering officer on the DeHaven (aircraft carrier), XO on USS Marshall destroyer, XO on USS Prairie destroyer tender, project officer for the patrol gunboat hydrofoil program (USS Tucumcari/Flagstaff), XO of USS Arlington communications ship on station for splashdown when the astronauts returned from the moon, CO of USS Arlington to decommission, XO 32nd St Naval Station, San Diego 1970-1977. He also did 2 years a CincPacFlt in Hawaii 1961 to 1963. We moved every two years.

I had a sort of similar, but different experience. No moving every two years (although my cousins and friends whose fathers were in the military did so, and I was keenly aware of their plights).

My Dad was a “super scientist” and we lived overseas on a scientific exchange program sponsored by the US government during the Cold War. My Dad did great things for our country and for the whole world with his science. For one thing, he invented a way of encapsulating nuclear waste in little gel bubbles so that even if a nuclear waste container was broken open, no radiation would escape to endanger anyone, even if it happened hundreds of years from now. He was teaching allied Western European countries to share and use this technology under the direction of our government at the time (even though at the time, during the Cold War, all this was secret and I did not know that then.)

I took the SAT early and scored high and started college at barely 17. Why? Because the stupid American bureaucratic system would not accept the credits I earned at my Swiss school.

Good for you that you did similar! Our youth is shamefully wasted by our “educational” bureaucracy, and it is worse than ever.

When my family returned from the Pentagon billet to San Diego, my dad had options to be XO of USS Arlington or a billet in Japan where we could move for the duration of the assignment. That's the closest we ever came to a foreign country opportunity. Arlington was the choice, so our family remained in the San Diego area. We never had to move again. That was actually a good development. Condolences on having a problem getting the Swiss school credits recognized. The education garnered there was probably better than what a US public school had to offer in the same context.

The Idaho National Lab is 90 miles from my current home. Lots of neighbors have jobs there. A bus leaves the local parking lot at 5:30 AM and returns by 5:30 PM. Lots of bright people doing important research and putting on the Idaho hayseed persona at home. It's a necessary alter ego as work isn't a topic of conversation outside of the office spaces.

I learned a bit about nuclear waste disposal in the time frame of the post tidal wave disaster in Japan. The use of concrete encasement isn't as permanent as hoped. At the atomic level, the waste is undergoing decomposition with the emission of high energy particles. The particles pummel the concrete and covert it to a fine powder over time. Worse, some of the "greenies" forced "sustainable" material substitution for the concrete. An organic substance was substituted. It broke down faster and generated explosive gases. Many of the containment barrels have exploded in the underground storage areas. Oops. Letting politics (green policies) override competent scientists like your dad leads to disastrous consequences.

I started "petitioning" the school board in junior high school. The burgers sold at the cafeteria were just plain bland. No condiments. I pointed out that deficiency to the school board. Inside of a week, there were condiments. Catsup, mustard, pickle relish, chopped onions. In exchange for a small expense to put the condiments out, the cafeteria sales increased. The extra sales more than offset of cost of the condiments and the students were happier.

The petition to redefine a "senior" by credits earned vs semesters attended took more effort. What started out with my petition continued like wildfire among the student body. It just took lighting the fuse and the school board realized it was a good move.

My middle son caught on to the approach as well. His high school was going to force a "service project" on each senior as a prerequisite to graduate. His initial petition to the school board fell on deaf ears. The collectivists on the board liked the idea of compelled service to graduate. My son bumped it up to a more public discussion with an on air interview with Roger Hedgecock on KSDO. That lit a fire. The students and parents descended on the school board and eliminated that stupidity.

To be honest, I didn't enjoy moving every two years. Watching the movers dump my stuff into boxes. Sometimes a box did't arrive at the other end. My carefully sorted electronics components were dumped in a box. It arrived at the destination and took a week to re-sort. Starting at age 4, we moved from Imperial Beach, CA to Honolulu, HI. It was a ship voyage. I turned 5 on the ship between San Francisco and Honolulu. Age 6, we flew a 707 to San Diego and stayed with friends for weeks waiting for our house to become available. Just a year, second grade, then a drive to Federal Way, WA. 3rd grade. Just a year and a drive back to San Diego. 4th grade. Just a year and off to VA. Half of 5th grade in Norfolk, VA living with grand parents. 2nd half of 5th grade in Springfield, VA. 6th grade..new elementary school. Enjoyed a whole year in one spot. First half of 7th grade at the intermediate school in Springfield, VA. Just after Christmas, we drove from VA to San Diego, CA visiting friends along the way. 2nd half of 7th grade at the junior high in Chula Vista. At last, no more moves. Stability. Amidst all the movement, I had time to become an Eagle Scout. The moves generated the ability to be flexible. Not a great experience, but useful.

That petitioning was a novel idea. Some students in the class ahead of me were allowed to take classes at the local JC but that didn’t happen for my year. We remained prisoners at the high school.

Your multiple moves at least rotated you back to San Diego a few times. Maybe a bit of famliarity. Springfield VA is not far from my old “hometown” of Arlington. I had gone to kindergarten in Ft Leavenworth KS. The next year when I moved to Arlington one of my Kansas classmates showed up in my first grade class. My first girlfriend, I wonder where she is now...

Likewise, I had friends from other locations land in the same place. A friend in Hawaii showed up 6 blocks away from my home in Chula Vista, CA. We had some classes together at the junior high school. While in Springfield, VA, we went to a movie in Falls Church, VA. A very annoying person kept putting feet on the back of my seat during the movie. I turned around to see my old next door neighbor from Honolulu, HI. Still as obnoxious as ever. A friend up the street in Springfield, VA was also a member of the band. We exchanged trumpet sheet music often. As I was prepping to move back to Chula Vista from Springfield, I carried the borrowed music to my friend's house. It was vacant. A few weeks later, I was sitting in my PE class in Chula Vista. The teacher called the roll. I heard my friend's name. Yup. Two rows behind me in the same junior high PE class. I returned the borrowed sheet music to him at lunch.

I observed a similar pattern professionally. On a fairly regular basis I would be summoned to help fix some terrible problem caused by poor software/systems engineering. Very often, some of the same people we also summoned to the meeting. I referred to it as the SWAT team. It became an employment pattern as well. Regular recruitment to rescue a program in trouble. A good track record of rescues. I'm thinking about retiring this year. Time to put the 60 hour weeks down and enjoy some of the time remaining.

My Dad used to travel to the Idaho lab from time to time to time and had colleagues who were friends there. He talked about the great fishing up there.

Yes, no talking about it at home,especially during the Cold War. Back then, it was a custom to stand up and tell the class what your Daddy did for a living near the beginning of second grade. When I was in Kindergarten, I asked my Dad what he did at work and he said be made “big piles of paper” so I believed he worked in a paper factory. So guess what I told my second grade class? The teacher knew what my Dad did and told my parents and the three had a good laugh over it. When my little brother was in second grade, he said my Dad “cut bushes for people”. Well, my Dad did trim the bushes of our elderly widowed neighbor, a sweet old lady, as a kindness.

The Swiss school was interesting. I did not speak a word of German when I started, and classes were in High German, but outside of class, the kids spoke Swiss German, and I got them all tangled up at first. I went to a Bezirchsschule, which was like a middle school for kids destined to go to university.

At the time, I thought it was horrible that your life was sort of determined for you in 5th grade: top students went to the type of middle school I attended, then academic high school, then uni. Next tier down, kids were destined for vocations and applied sciences, next down, trades. Now I realize it was smart. Why imprison kids in an academic high school who are not suited for it? Why not let them get started on their vocations and trades? Why waste their youth and enthusiasm?

Oh my! What happened to the nuclear waste in Japan is horrifying! They needed my Dad’s teensy weensy spheres! They are so cool. And too bad the Soviets did not have another thing my Dad invented that would have prevented the Chernobyl meltdown. I had no idea what my Dad did except for a few things that went public, like the spheres and that meltdown prevention thingie he won an R&D 100 Award for.

Yes, greenies overriding and corrupting real science is an abomination.

I wanted to learn German in 5th grade, but my elementary school in West Springfield, VA was compelled to teach French. I came very late to the party and didn't learn much French. Frankly, the school didn't try very hard. My dad wanted me to take Spanish. I started that in Irving Intermediate. It was a Castilian variant. I was making progress, then we moved to San Diego. Spanish was compulsory. Mexican Spanish. The teacher literally put his head on his desk and slept through classes. More time wasted. I finally got into the German classes in high school and took it both years (10th & 12th grade). At UCSD, it was required to have written and oral proficiency in one foreign language. Had I arrived a year sooner, it was TWO. The German classes at UCSD were good enough to allow me to pass the written SATII in German, then do the oral proficiency with a native speaker. I was handed a recent copy of Das Bild and assigned and article to read. Having read it, I spent 20 minutes discussing in German, then on to idle chit chat about school and life. Today, I use Duolingo. German, Welsh, Spanish, Italian, Gaelic, French. It's fun to switch up languages. I finished the Welsh course, but that is just a starting point to proficiency.

I can appreciate being dropped into a school and having to battle to acquire adequate proficiency to function. My high school German teacher was raised in Karlsruhe. To this day, Germans in Germany can pick up the linguistic patterns I learned from her.

The Fukushima disaster continues to play out. Lots of radioactive material dribbling into the sea. Radiation intensities so high that 60 seconds is lethal to a human. Even rad hardened robots used to inspect the site are failing in a fairly short time. The unsettling news is that we have similar design reactors in service in the US. A grid down would put them in jeopardy of a meltdown in days. The spent rods depend on cooling pools that are run from commercial power. There is limited emergency backup power. Many are sited along rivers that supply drinking/agricultural water. Those will be polluted on failure.

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