My oldest did a mix of DE and AP (all his AP was at home on our own, not outsourced), and that worked well. For high school, my strategy is to do things at home that we can do well at home and outsource the rest. My husband's a high school math teacher, so he did all math through calculus at home (DE for two post-calc courses); I have a masters in English, so we did AP lit at home and I felt pretty comfortable tackling other humanities courses with him. Science and foreign languages were my priorities for dual enrollment (although he took some other things, too). I learned early on in our college search that every school is different as far as what they'll accept or not for credit. Some prefer AP; our in-state publics are required to accept his DE; most selective private schools have a cap on how much credit they'll accept. So our first goal was to have him take classes wherever he would have the best experience for that particular subject and secondarily to have him end up with a transcript that showed he had challenged himself and done well and could handle college level coursework. As it turns out, he's going to a school that will give him credit for a total of 5 classes; they don't seem to care if they're AP or DE, although they'll only give him credit for DE classes that weren't used to meet high school graduation requirements. He has way more credits than he'll be able to use, but it gives him the flexibility to choose which classes will be the most helpful to use the credit for. Re: the grades in DE; it's my understanding that they follow you forever--i.e. if you do poorly in DE classes, you'll still need to report those grades if you end up applying to grad school. Probably not a huge issue if you have one random bad experience...but it's something to think about if you have a kid who might or might not be ready to handle college work--tread cautiously! ETA: not to suggest you have to have a masters in something to do it well at home! But science and spanish are the two things I wasn't particularly comfortable doing at home, and English and math were the things I felt like it would be silly NOT to. I finally got to use my grad school education for something!

I think there are lots of ways for schools to guess which kids have significant financial need and which don't without actually looking at their financial aid forms (even if it only factors into their decisions subconsciously). Common app has zip code and parents' professions on it, for example. Not to mention that many, many of things that make kids appealing to top tier colleges are much more readily available to wealthy kids than to poor kids--prep schools (not just for superior education, but for counselors who have personal relationships with admissions counselors at colleges and a low enough workload to actually work individually with each student), test prep classes, private tutors, expensive extracurriculars....these schools can afford to offer financial aid to low income kids because they know that the system is still set up this way and there will be plenty of very wealthy kids vying for spots. And, of course, even top schools that offer excellent financial aid are rarely need blind.

Wouldn't she need to take any tests and write papers to do pass/fail? I wouldn't think History of the Caribbean would be an especially light class--lots of brutal/grim history to deal with and likely a lot of reading/writing expected. With auditing I would guess she'd be free to just sit in on the lectures if she wanted.

This was the case for us--private colleges that meet full financial need were often as cheap or cheaper than our state public schools, even though he'd have full tuition covered through state grants. So those were his choices--highly selective private if you can get in or in-state public. He applied to a ton of schools and wound up with some great options to choose from. It's maybe worth noting that it's not just "lottery schools" that have excellent financial aid. Most private liberal arts colleges in the top 30 or so, for example, meet 100% of demonstrated need. Usually somewhat less generous than the Ivies (they'll expect students to take the federal loans, generally), but still manageable for many families (not to say those schools aren't also tough to get into, but it's a whole different world from the schools with 5-6% acceptance rates).

Just echoing the "not ideal, but better than nothing" sentiment. We did a ton of colleges in the northeast summer before senior year. It was helpful mostly for eliminating schools he liked on paper but not so much in person. He ended up being accepted to and seriously considering one of the ones he'd seen over the summer, and he made a return trip in the spring to see it again (and found he wasn't as crazy about it once he met a lot of actual students/sat in on classes/etc).

First off, don't panic! If you have records of everything you did, you're in fine shape. I kept my course descriptions fairly general and brief, although there were detailed reading lists and lists of texts used (and field trips, where applicable). I gave almost no tests in high school, and no one questioned my grading as far as I know (I would imagine most schools take homeschool grades with a grain of salt anyway). I wasn't worried about it because his test scores and grades from DE and other outside classes matched up with the grades I gave him. Honestly, I would be surprised if anyone did much more than skim the course description document. So my advice is to google some examples, keep it pretty simple, and save your energy for fretting over things like the counselor letter instead. I found that way more stressful!

At the university where my son did dual enrollment, calc was listed as a co-requisite for calc based physics, BUT they wouldn't let him take it the year he was taking calculus because he was doing it at home as opposed to at a public school or DE. They required an AP score before they'd let him enroll.

Thanks everyone--I'm doing a lot of bookmarking!! Re: Romeo and Juliet...I did it with my oldest (and a friend who was joining in for lit that year) in 9th grade; they both thought Romeo himself was pretty lame, but enjoyed the play overall. I hate to include it just because everyone reads it, but....I do kind of think they need to read it because everyone reads it 🙂 . It's also fairly accessible, and there's a Crash Course about it, and, of course, the Claire Danes/Leo DiCaprio movie is an important Gen X touchstone 😉 .

I'm planning on doing a year of Shakespeare with my 10th and 8th graders this year, so I'm frantically trying to pull together resources and figure out what we're doing. We're going to start with A Midsummer Night's Dream (there's a performance of it happening next month near us, so that works out well), but I'm not positive where to go from there. Which plays would you do or have you had success with with your kids? And how many is it realistic to try to read in a year? I'm thinking of 5, with breaks in between to do sonnets and to read some non-fiction about Shakespeare and England at the time and/or some contemporary works based on or inspired by Shakespeare. My tentative list is Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and....probably not another tragedy. The Tempest? Merchant of Venice? Whichever Richard it is who's a cartoon villain--I can never remember? I'm saving Hamlet for when they're older, I think. And does anyone have suggestions for either non-fiction about Shakespeare or contemporary works based on Shakespeare? I've found some lists, but I haven't read any of them, so I don't know what's good and/or appropriate for late middle school/early high school. Ideas for movies (either the actual plays or modern retellings like My Own Private Idaho, but not My Own Private Idaho) or anything else you've got also appreciated!

Thanks! I already came across it in my preliminary googling and bookmarked it 🙂

Yeah, definitely. I'm pretty sure it's generally a full year course in public schools, and I also think it would be really difficult to cover all the material in less time.

My then 10th grader did it a couple of years ago (on our own). It was a really fun year; it's one of the more straightforward APs to prep for, as it's mostly about knowing the material rather than any specific kind of analysis....but there's a LOT of material to cover. DS got a 4, and blames not getting a 5 on how we ran short on time and rushed through African art at the end 🙂 . Khan Academy has a lot of great material, and there are a few other websites out there that we used a lot, too. I'm thinking of doing it again next year with my next kid.

Thinking of this for next year with my 10th grader. We did AP world this year, and I did US with my oldest a couple of years ago, so I'm pretty familiar with AP history testing. Has anyone done AP euro at home (not with an online class)? How did it go? What resources do you recommend? I want to be more organized about this than we were with world history this past year!

Good luck, all! My oldest has his last ever exam tomorrow (lit) and my 9th grader has his first (world history) next week.

My son has all As. Sometimes I feel funny about it, but he also has all As in the classes someone else has graded, so I figure it makes sense.

Another Vejas Gabriel Liulevicious recommendation: we're listening to his Turning Points in Modern History, and it's excellent and is a great complement to a World History course.

Mine really liked the (older) Jacobs. Particularly my now 12th grader (geometry is what really made him fall in math--he's now planning to major in it)....but he was NOT a fan of AOPS when we tried it in middle school. He didn't deal well with anything where he couldn't get everything right 😉

When DS15 was in middle school I decided to give him an extra year before starting high school (summer birthday), so he's 9th instead of 10th right now. I had no idea when I did it that the best reason for the decision would be to give ME an extra year before doing college apps again! (Of course, it means the NEXT brother is 2 years after instead of 3, so it really all comes out the same....but I don't have to think about that yet!)

Finally! Where: Macalester College Why? free bagpipe lessons! Just kidding. It came down to a few great LACs with more similarities than differences (Oberlin and Hamilton were the others in the top 3), but Macalester just seemed like the best fit for him. Strong math department with lots of new hires lately. Urban location set it apart from most LACs. Kids there seem quirky and kinda nerdy, but unpretentious and not overly sporty. Not the best financial aid package he got, but fairly close, and still manageable. Major: likely math (depending on the day, he adds "and maybe physics")

Totally anecdotal, but DS didn't have the 3 subject tests Emory and Oxford want from homeschoolers (he had 2), and he was waitlisted at both. We didn't ask if they'd make an exception; he just applied and waited to see what happened (we did ask an admissions person at Oxford when we toured there--specifically we asked if they'd accept AP tests in place of subject tests (I still don't understand why schools don't do this, since AP tests are far more involved than subject tests and in many cases cover the same subjects)--and were told no). So I can say that they didn't just toss his app out because he didn't have the third test, at any rate. Incidentally, his portal showed the whole time that he had submitted all 3 tests even though he hadn't. I don't know if it's because they looked at his app and decided to ignore the lack of a third test or if that was just a mistake.

Agreeing that meeting with someone (or multiple someones) in a specific department is enormously helpful. I really regret that we didn't set up something like this at Macalester like we have at all the other top contenders. He does have an e-mail in to a math prof there, at least, to try to get a feel for the department. Of course, a lot of kids have no idea which departments they're interested in before they start college. Hamilton visit sounds like it went well. Although I think it sold my father-in-law on Hamilton more than DS 😂. FIL spent his whole career teaching at universities; he was super impressed by the close connections between profs and students at Hamilton. But I suspect DS would find something similar at most small LACs. So he liked Hamilton, but wasn't wowed enough to immediately decide it's The One, which I think is what he was hoping would happen. He texted me at one point, "everyone here is from Massachusetts and plays a sport." And the math prof he talked to said that most of the math graduates go into finance. These are all things he sort of suspected would be true of Hamilton and reasons why it might not be the best fit for him. I mean, he doesn't have anything against people from Massachusetts (he was actually born in Boston!) but either Macalester or Oberlin would be a lot less regional than Hamilton, and I think he'd like that. He's visiting the math department at UGA later this week to go completely in the opposite direction...and then he's going to have to pick a name out of a hat if he still can't decide, because time will be just about up!

jeans or shorts are fine. The one or two times DS was wearing khakis and a button up shirt because the tour was after an interview, he felt conspicuously overdressed.

Glad she had a good visit @Arch at Home! Overnight hosts are so hit or miss--it's frustrating, because I really do think when they're good they're the best way to get a feel for what going to school there would be like. Hamilton won't give DS an overnight while he's there 😞 . He does have two classes picked out to sit in on, the regular campus tour plus the "first year favorites" tour that shows them some different stuff, a meeting with a math professor, tickets to Hamilton's production of West Side Story, and an invitation to "Prime Friday" where the math department gets together at the campus pub whenever Friday falls on a date that's a prime number 🙂 . So he might be too exhausted for an overnight anyway. I'm jealous that his grandfather is going with him instead of me (although he's a much better pick for hanging out with the math department than I would be!)....they're also going to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I think Hamilton might be getting an unfair advantage with all this fun stuff booked.

How soon in the process do you find out for sure if you qualify financially? I didn't bother with Questbridge, because we looked to be borderline for qualifying, but in retrospect I think I probably should have investigated more closely.

no. very few needs met schools are these days. FWIW, we couldn't discern a pattern in where my son was admitted and not based on which schools were need blind and need aware.....which is certainly not to say it wasn't a factor at the schools where he was rejected (I have no idea if it was or not).