My personal feeling is that excellent letter from earlier class trumps recent mediocre letter.

oh, another thought...given the amount of reading, you could add in some kind of rhetoric study and count this as language arts for the year as well?

I always think that the nice thing about planning to do too much (which I usually do) is that it's easy to back off if it's not working and you still have a meaty course. So see how it goes? As far as credit, I'm always leery of giving more than 1 credit for a homegrown course just because it sort of sticks out on the transcript. If you feel like she put in a ton of time and effort on this particular course and you want people to know, you can maybe talk a little more about it in your counselor letter or elsewhere on the common app when the time comes.

My oldest kid is SUPER late for a dental cleaning between college and covid; he's just home this month this summer, and he's going next week (I scheduled it when I had the other kids there in the spring). He needs to go to the eye doctor, too, but we just do the optometrist at Target and I can usually get an appointment within a few days (I can't imagine needing to schedule a year in advance!) I'm not especially worried about a yearly physical at his age (I certainly didn't do them then) given that he doesn't have any particular health issues. He can use the health center at his college as needed or CVS or whatever for stuff like vaccines.

Given that info, I'd definitely go AB this year...much more relaxing intro to calculus and then sounds like it would fit in perfectly with the available DE options for the next two years.

Another option, if he's not a senior, is to do AB this year and BC next year (assuming AB goes well). Some schools break it up this way. My husband teaches calculus and wishes his school offered it this way. BC is a very fast paced course; it covers the equivalent of 2 semesters of college calculus, which is unusual for an AP class (generally they cover in a year what a college course would cover in a semester). My mathiest kid did very well with it, but he spent a lot of time on it; if he hadn't enjoyed math (he's a math major now) it would have been a slog. My next kid did AB in 11th (and then stats senior year) because he was not headed for a STEM major, and we didn't see the point of it. My current 11th grader won't get to calc until 12th grade and will almost certainly just do AB as well (because, again, he almost certainly won't be a STEM major. But he's good enough at math (and has a built in calc teacher) that he should be able to handle AB fine and will likely be applying to selective colleges that like to see calc on a transcript).

Maybe this was what @cintinative was going to say? Lede: buried a bit? ETA: I definitely have concerns about low income kids getting the message that college is too expensive instead of being mentored in ways to make college affordable. Because as far as I can tell it's not wealthy kids who are deciding to forego college, for the most part.

I've been told you should always list grades, even for outside classes where the teacher didn't give a grade. And that it's fine to base your grade on successfully completing the class/finishing all assignments/class participation, etc. This particular school may not mind some classes without grades, but that doesn't mean none of them will.

Tackling AP lang for the first time with my 11th grader this year, and I'm kind of using it as an excuse to read some of the non-fiction I've been meaning to get to. My plan is to break it into two themes by semester: first semester writers on writing (either writing about the process of writing itself or about another work) and then second semester travel writing. Lots of essays and we'll be working through a couple of rhetoric books, and then I want to add in a few full length narrative non fiction texts as well. For writers on writing I might be finished making a list, but if anyone has other suggestions I'm very open to tinkering (always!): *selections from The Writing Life: Writers on How they Think and Work--I had this lying around already; it's essays from the Washington Post Book world *a bunch of Toni Morrison essays (I have two collections of essays on hold at the library right now) *So We Read On--Maureen Corrigan's book about Gatsby; he's a big Gatsby fan. We're doing the audiobook of this, and I think maybe it includes a rereading of the whole book? not sure yet *An Odyssey--Daniel Mendelsohn's book about teaching the Odyssey at Bard and his relationship with his father and stuff (there's travel, too! it can be the segue to second semester!)...He's read the Odyssey but not since Emily Wilson's translation came out, so we'll throw in some extended passages from that as well, I think ETA: I forgot! George Saunders A Swim in a Pond in the Rain And travel! *How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith: pretty much where the travel theme came from; we both want to read this. And I love a theme. And travel. that's the only thing set in stone for travel, though. Other ideas that I'd love feedback on or additions to (generally speaking I'm less familiar with these than with my first semester list): *The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain *The Great Railway Bazaar or another by Paul Theroux *some Bill Bryson or other (maybe audiobook here) *Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation (probably also audiobook) *A Stranger in this Village: Two Centuries of African American Travel Writing--don't know anything about this but came across it last night--travel writing tends to be a white dude's game a lot of the time, so I'm looking to mix up the list for sure

Tech might well weigh DE, but UGA definitely does not. Math past AP calc is relatively common for strong STEM students, but I gather much less common in other areas where it would be tougher to max out ap offerings. Tech offers DE linear algebra and multivariable for GA high school kids in a lot of schools, but it’s done online at the home schools so it’s easy to fit in to their schedules, and it’s very hard to get into because it’s so popular. ETA: Tech has about half as many undergrads as UGA as well. It's still a very big school, but that might make a big difference in how much attention they can pay to an individual application that doesn't fit the mold. Again--I don't really know--just speculating.

I keep thinking about this thread...and I'm wondering if we should separate out large public colleges from smaller privates (or smaller publics, too, I guess) when talking about the value of a long list of APs? Not necessarily for the OP, but just in general with this particular issue. Like looking at big state flagships that have become increasingly selective over the past few years...I follow the University of Georgia fairly closely since it's my state and I had a kid apply there (I don't know that I will again, though); on their class of 2026 admissions stats page, they list the middle 50% of number of AP/DE/IB classes taken as 7-12. Which means a quarter of their admitted students are taking more than a dozen of these classes. That includes DE, of course, but my perception is that APs are much more popular than DE classes for most students whose schools offer a lot of APs. Like at my husband's suburban high school where most of the strongest students will be applying to Tech or UGA or both, they might try to take online DE math classes through Ga Tech if they finish calc before 12th grade, but other than that they'll likely take 4-5 APs junior and senior year. The middle 50% GPA for class of 2026 is 4.0-4.3 (as they weight the grades, which of course also favors taking as many APs as possible. They don't weight DE grades, only AP). So there's really not much room to make distinctions there...when you have more than enough applicants with great grades and test scores, you have to have some other way to distinguish them. Smaller colleges can look deeply at extracurriculars, essays, recs, etc, (and course descriptions, in the case of homeschoolers), but a huge state school is less likely to take that time. Last I checked UGA flat out said they don't look at anything other than grades, test scores, and rigor in the early action round...people who get deferred will get a closer look in regular decision. But when a school is telling you that you're below their 25th percentile if you don't have at least 7 APs, it certainly comes across like they're emphasizing number of AP classes, no? I don't know...just kind of thinking aloud. My oldest kid had an application custom made for a school that needed to make a quick decision based on numbers, and he was admitted to UGA early action and auto admitted to the honors program. But I'm pretty sure having stronger extracurriculars that stood out more (even with a slightly weaker transcript/test scores) would have served him better at smaller LACs, which is mostly what he applied to.

It covers all those things. I mean, there are TONS of kids going straight into multivariable calc in college with credit from BC; colleges wouldn't be granting that credit if they didn't think BC prepared students for their calc 3 classes (there are plenty of very selective schools that require a 5 for credit, but BC has one of the highest rates of 5s because it's generally the strongest math students who take it).

I found someone on outschool with good reviews/qualifications for my last college applicant. He's a good writer but VERY prone to writer's block and needed someone who wasn't me to just sort of nudge him into getting something down on paper, I think. He did one pre-writing session with her and then another one after he had a rough draft. For my next kid I'll probably look into an actual online class the summer before senior year, but it was too late by the time I realized outside help would be a good thing last go round. Anyway, he ended up with a good solid essay and I didn't have to harass him about it, so it worked out well.

I should say that my two kids who have done it have really enjoyed art history, and it's a great introduction to the ENTIRE history of art; there's just not a lot of time to delve deeply into any of it...but that's not necessarily the worst thing in the world if you're looking for a good overview/intro to the subject. My kids love tracking down some of the 250 works when we're on trips. khan academy has really good videos and/or articles for all of the works (my kids have talked to several public school kids taking the class and it sounds like many/most teachers use the khan stuff more than textbooks), so it's very nice laid out for you...it's just so much material!

It sounds like an awful lot to me, but not terribly out of line with what a lot of kids are doing in rigorous public schools these days. We've done a lot of APs on our own and had a lot of success with them, but my kids find more than 3 in a year overwhelming. There's a big difference between prepping for two exams and prepping for 5 or 6...but of course it depends on the kid. We've found a combo of DE and AP to be the least stressful/most effective way to go. And there's a big variation in AP courses and tests as well, of course. Some of them we've found we can pretty much just do the subject how we'd do it anyway and be prepared for the exam (sometimes with a few weeks going through a test prep book near the end)....my 11th grader did a non-AP human geography class at a co-op last year (2 hours a week plus homework) and got a 5 with just that and a few hours with the prep book. My own background is in literature, and so far my kids have been well prepared for the AP lit exam just doing what we would do anyway. But then something like art history has a very specific curriculum that you have to stick to to be prepared (and it's a TON of material...it's not a HARD test really, but there's so much material to cover that it's tough to fit it all in). The history exams require learning a specific kind of analysis in addition to covering the material. So I guess what I'm getting at is that there are some exams where it's sort of like, "might as well give the test a try since we're covering the subject anyway!" and others where you very much have to teach to the test and that can be limiting (not always bad, but limiting).

my understanding is that MOST schools cap how much home equity they consider in their formulas...usually it's something like 2x income. There are also schools that don't consider home equity at all. And then there are schools that are notorious for hitting it really hard (Boston College, I think? or maybe it's BU. One of those). And schools aren't very transparent about their CSS formulas, so you pretty much have to run NPCs. We also have a lot of home equity (from buying when the market crashed), and we've gotten good FA for 2 kids now...but there was a lot of variation in FA packages with my first that may or may not have had a lot to do with home equity.

No one's ever said anything to me about my mask, but I have two planned responses if anyone ever does (which I probably won't actually use, but they're fun to do in my head anyway): either laugh a little and say, "why would I care what YOU think?!" or say, "oh, I'm just wearing this because I have covid."

I figure I'll start treating covid "like the flu" when the burden from it is similar to the flu. Right now, with a "low" number of deaths with this variant in the US, there are 3x as many deaths as during a very bad flu year (if you assume deaths consistent throughout the year, which is a fairly rosy assumption since it's summer right now). And a very bad flu year is a whole lot of deaths. Personally, I'd prefer that we look at covid and think, "huh--we've figured out some fairly easy precautions we can take when a respiratory virus is going around that could ALSO prevent a lot of flu deaths going forward" instead of thinking, "meh. there are only 3x as many people dying from covid as from flu in a bad year, so why do anything?" I tend to think of masking right now as being mostly for me and my family, since so few other people are masking (i.e. if they don't care about protecting themselves, there's not much I can do for them)...but then I always have to remind myself that the people who are still being extremely cautious because they are high risk are often the people I don't see out in public. The fact that most people have decided to take no precautions at all forces those people to withdraw from society even more (one of the primary reasons our homeschool coop still requires masks is to protect high risk kids/parents and give them a safe place to go with their kids).

we have one in our RV that gets a lot of traffic and has been washed a bunch of times; happy enough with it that we bought a HUGE one for our sunroom...just a couple of months ago, so that one hasn't been washed yet, but so far so good.

I'm still masking because I prefer not being sick to being sick. I'm continually mystified that this is such a minority position these days, particularly since people are getting covid for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc time...i.e. even if I get covid now despite being cautious, having avoided it up until now still had value (and there is no such thing as "getting it over with"). I'm fortunate in having my family on the same page; if they weren't, that would be very frustrating, but I would likely still wear a mask myself because, as has been pointed out, that would still be reducing the chances of covid being introduced into my household.

what kind of van? minivan or van van? we have a ford e350 that's been having lots of AC troubles, and we're having a very hard time getting it properly diagnosed. It runs fine but then will cut out and air will come out the defrost for awhile, mostly when we're accelerating, going up hills, etc. So sounds similar. Googling tells me it's common in Ford econolines, and so far my theories are that it's the blend doors (which control where air goes, and which we've already had some part of fixed in the past), the vacuum check valve (replaced it; didn't fix the problem), or, most likely, a vacuum leak somewhere.

oh, interesting! I've never thought of doing this (I mean, I've only had one chance so far, since my second is about to start college), but maybe it's a good idea--my oldest will have graduated (knock wood) by the time my next kid applies...I always wonder if admissions people (particularly ones that don't see a ton of homeschool applicants) worry that homeschooled kids are less likely to be able to hack it away from home, particularly at a non-local college.

He did take both. He says she went over what they were going to do beforehand during the lab day and then there were lectures and going over homework. And that sometimes they did lab simulations in class. But the physical labs themselves he did on his own outside of class.

He's just going into 11th grade, so I haven't done all the course descriptions/transcript yet, but I'm planning to give him 1 credit and call it chemistry with lab. WTMA seems to suggest you can give 1.5 credits for chem with one semester of lab or 2 credits for the full year of lab, but that seems kind of wonky to me, so I'm planning to just do the one credit. But I feel totally fine about that. My husband teaches high school math, and he showed a science teacher at his school what DS was doing in chemistry, and he was impressed and said it looked like a really solid class. I don't think they talked about the lab component specifically, but he was very impressed that they did 2 research papers in the lecture part of the class (1 each semester). I was really impressed overall; like I said, this isn't a science-y kid, but he learned a ton and I think enjoyed it as much as he could given that it was chemistry. I do think that, aside from guidance/experience writing the lab reports, he probably got more out of the lecture part than the lab. But he enjoyed the lab part more (although probably because it was easier!) ETA: he also definitely put enough time into the class to justify the 1.5 credits they suggest. It wasn't overwhelming or anything, but he put in a good bit of time working outside of the live classes every week.

I like the first video from John Green's Crash Course literature as a good intro to why we study literature (I really like the whole series, too)