For an elective I really wouldn't worry that much about it; I'd give credit if you're confident he's putting in the time and taking it seriously. Maybe a short oral presentation at the end where he talks about the experience and what he's learned from his research? (which is a good skill to work on anyway). I think it's different than if you were designing a non-traditional course meant to be a core class (if he were doing something with computers in place of another science one year, for example). We're doing a history of baseball class this year (starting as soon as the World Series is over ? ). It's mostly going to be reading and watching movies and documentaries, but I think I'll have my kids do a few book reviews and then a final paper or project (after AP and DE exams are over in the spring, when most everything else has wrapped up). I'm giving them half a credit for it. But that's a class that lends itself to written work.

I think technically it is a business, because I file as a sole proprietorship with a schedule C EZ, but I'm going to put the value down as $0 and hope for the best. I imagine the point of it is to tell them if you have assets that you could borrow against or sell to pay for college, and that's clearly not the case here. Thanks everyone!

Yes, I wrote up a paragraph or so for each one (or cut and pasted descriptions from his college's website for DE classes) along with a list of texts and resources used and reading lists. I have no idea if anyone will actually read them, but some colleges he's applying to request something like that from homeschoolers.

do you mean in the homeschool supplement? I'm planning to just use that for some basic information about the places he's done outside classes; the actual course descriptions for those classes I'm putting in the long course descriptions document that I'm uploading as one of the 4 documents allowed under "transcripts."

Aside from dual enrollment (will have college send transcript separately), we only have one hybrid school where my son took two science classes. I'm planning to upload it as one of the 4 transcripts on the common app (along with his main transcript and course descriptions). For our state university with very specific and nitpicky requirements for homeschoolers, I e-mailed and asked them how they wanted it, and they wanted it sent directly from the school. It had taken me about 6 e-mails to get them to make the transcript for me correctly the first time, and it took another 2 to get them to actually send it to the college....so if anyone else requires that it be sent that way I'm going to cry. I'm also not going to ask anyone else; if they need it another way they can tell me.

I finished the FAFSA the first day it opened in less than an hour and was feeling very proud of myself. Then I started the CSS Profile, and it's so awful I want to cry. For example: I have a small self-employment income from blogging, and I have no idea what they want from me in the section on how much my "business" is worth. My "business" is me sitting at my computer; it's not like I could sell it for anything substantial. I was thinking of putting in the fair market value of the stuff I use that I've claimed as deductions (which is basically my computer and my camera/lenses). Does that sound reasonable? Between self-employment taxes and how it will impact DS's financial aid, I think I'm working for about $2/hour at this point, if that. Anyway, anyone BTDT?

For me (a long time ago, but I think my school still has the same basic perks), it meant early registration and first pick of housing, and it also meant I almost never had to take giant lecture courses. I ended up taking one for political science and one art history, but I could have taken the honors equivalents of those if I had wanted to. It can be a way to get a smaller college type experience at a big university; my honors classes were generally seminar style classes with 10-15 students in them. For me that was a big benefit, but for your son it might not sound so great....it just depends what kind of experience you're looking for.

My son has (gulp) 20 on his list right now. He's having a hard time getting rid of any; several are big reaches and several more are safeties or matches where he could potentially get very nice financial aid. For quite a few of them there's either no application fee or he has a fee waiver, and some of THOSE don't have supplemental essays, so there's not much downside to applying. I told him for now he should just prioritize the list--get the ones he's the most interested in done--and then see if he has any energy left for essays and applications by the time the deadlines roll around for the rest. We have a few more visits lined up for the fall, too, so some might get eliminated after he sees them. ETA list: UGA, Williams, Vassar, Bowdoin, Hamilton, Bates, Haverford, Dickinson, Grinnell, Carleton, Rice, Hendrix, St. Olaf, Macalester, Earlham, Oberlin, Knox, Kenyon, Yale, Harvard.

My son just applied to UGA and has been doing dual enrollment at KSU. For KSU I had to submit a portfolio when he applied for DE, but there really wasn't much to it--I had to write up course descriptions and reading lists and list activities, but that's all stuff I'd have had to do for most regular college admissions anyway. For UGA, they're very picky about showing that you've fulfilled the requirements in some way through outside testing or having things listed on a transcript from an accredited school. This wasn't that tricky for us since his test scores are good and he has a lot of AP scores and DE classes, but it could definitely be a stumbling block for some. For my next kid (current 9th grader), I'm going to have him take subject tests as we finish things just to make sure we're covered.

Right? so over it. The one application he's already finished required two essays.....for one of them they used a standard, vague coalition app prompt, so that he could use the essay he'd been working on. Except their word count limit was half what the common app's limit is. So he had to either drastically edit his existing essay or start from scratch with a new one based on essentially the same prompt, just for this one school. It's as if they're just trying to find ways to make things more difficult.

I think DS has summer activities under extracurriculars on the common app. The one school specific app he's done had a separate section for it. His main summer activity is that we travel in our RV for 2 months, and I really wanted to make sure he put that somewhere, both because it's been a big and valuable part of his life and because otherwise it looks like he sat around and played video games all summer every summer ?

We haven't yet, but it's on DS's list. I'm interpreting that section to mean that they want to see the course descriptions that I've already written and will submit with all of his apps through the common app (for dates studied, it's already listed by year and semester; I can't imagine they want more than that). It doesn't sound like they really want graded papers if I'm reading right, although I might have him upload a paper or two and maybe a couple of his lab reports from the chem class he took in 10th grade, since they mention lab work specifically (the chem class was an outside class at an accredited hybrid school, though, so they'll have that transcript plus the one from the state university where he took physics with lab). Incidentally, he's applying to Hamilton and they have a similarly vague "portfolio" section for homeschoolers on their site....he e-mailed admissions to ask what they wanted, and they were just as vague in their response--could be a single paper, could be a bunch of stuff, we're not looking for anything in particular, just show us what you did. I suspect (though I don't know) that kids who have a lot of dual enrollment grades or AP scores or whatever would need to show less in a portfolio than kids who've done all classes at home. Interested to hear any responses from people who's applied recently, though!

DS got his first application (early action at state U) in Friday night, and he's feeling very good about having one done (and a million? or so to go). We're sitting in a hotel in Little Rock right now; we're about to go out and check out the town, and then we head to Hendrix College this evening; he has an overnight visit (which he's dreading; we have one more scheduled this fall, but I told him we'll cancel that one if this one is as terrible as he thinks it's going to be. I have to come up with an excuse other than, "my kid hates new experiences and people; please admit him to your college." Perhaps something about travel schedules instead ? ).....and then their fall open house with tours and class visits and an interview and all that is tomorrow. The value of the overnight is that he's barely even had the energy to fret about the interview yet!

woot--exciting for her! congratulations!!!

Bossy is good with topics this confusing, but I think I do have a handle on it thanks to a few months of obsessing ? . He's applying to University of Georgia early action; deadline is October 15, and they should send out decisions by December 1 (so I meant his goal for finishing ALL of his apps is December; the early action ones will have to be in earlier). So that would be fine along with early action at a SCEA Ivy....although now he's considering doing early action at a couple of other schools (non restrictive) instead so that, we hope, he'll already have a few good options before he settles in for the long wait until March/April. He's definitely not doing early decision anywhere; he doesn't have a definite favorite and we need to be able to compare financial aid offers. I keep thinking of you, Hoggirl, because we're visiting Hendrix next week!

I couldn't find them when I was ready to use them either! I suspect they intended to keep up with the project more and expand what was on there and didn't get around to it, so they took it down altogether rather than leave it there unfinished.

DS finally let me read his first draft of his essay! He hit send on the e-mail and then immediately ran up to his room so he wouldn't be there when I read it. But I think it's pretty good! He went with funny and slightly self-deprecating, which is his strong suit. Does anyone have any advice on finding good people to read it for him and give him editing advice? My husband teaches high school math and offered to ask the AP English teacher, but I'm not sure just handing it off to some random person is a good idea. Bad advice is worse than no advice, right? I can offer some general guidance but 1. I'm too invested in it, and I want to be very careful not to coach him more than I should and 2. I really don't know any more than he does about what goes into a good college essay. Academic writing I know; personal essays not so much.

Exciting! I'm very nervous about hitting submit on anything. I did for the one school that's not using the common app already, and I sometimes wake up at night worrying that I did something wrong and can't change it!

Recommendations were the part he was the MOST worried about, so I encouraged/forced him to do it early. Until 10th grade we had a Spanish teacher who came to our house and did private lessons for my kids and another family, and she'd already written him a recommendation for dual enrollment, so that one was easy. And then he asked one of his dual enrollment profs from last year, and that one he was absolutely miserable with dread about, but, of course, it was totally fine and he was very happy to have it over with. He'll probably still ask either his piano teacher or his acting teacher for one more for the schools that allow an optional third letter, but that one's very low stakes.

No, the deadlines are in January; our goal is to finish up before December, so he doesn't have to worry about them over the holidays. For the early action school, he should hear in November, if I remember right (he might also apply to an Ivy early action; we'll see). For the others, I think acceptances generally go out late March/early April.

We have a goal to get the early action application at our state flagship finished this week; it should be a pretty sure bet, unless they decide to pull some weird bureaucratic nonsense about the homeschool thing, so he should have one good option nailed down pretty soon. He's dragging his feet on his main essay, and I'm starting to get anxious about it. He has a draft done, but he won't let me read it. Argh! He has an enormous list of places to apply in January, and we're having trouble deciding if he should start eliminating some so it's not so overwhelming, or if it's better to push on through so that we have more financial aid packages to compare. I'm still finishing up the educational philosophy thing on my end, and I think that's the last thing I need to write....I need to get it finished up before I have to start on financial aid forms. Which I'm not looking forward to.

My son only placed out of the first semester of college Spanish when he started dual enrollment in 11th grade, even though he'd worked with a private tutor for many years and had just finished a Spanish 3 book with her. I think he would have done better if he'd studied beforehand and reviewed all the verb tenses, but college foreign language classes move very quickly, and I think having the review and an easy first semester certainly didn't hurt him.

We start at 9 (trying to move that to 8:30, take 45 minutes or so for lunch, and usually finish around 4 or 4:30 if we're home all day. of course, we're often NOT home all day, which throws things off. And that also includes practice on two different instruments for two of my kids, one for my oldest. And they often do more math and reading in the evenings. It feels like too much a lot of the time, but I don't really know how to make it shorter....I just keep reminding myself and them that if they were in public school they'd do the same hours and still have homework and extracurriculars in the evenings. But the pre-high school years spoiled us!

Hmm....now I'm trying to decide where I fall on the spectrum of conservativeness about this. He's reading The Odyssey (and listening to the lectures) right now, so I guess I'm okay with talk about.....relationships with goddesses and whatnot. But I hadn't really considered mixing violence in with that kind of thing, so probably previewing/selectivity is indeed called for.

well, I doubt it's the first thing ? . Seriously, I don't know...there is an honor code, and they have to show their work, and he says the prof said he doesn't care what kind of calculator they use as long as they don't use it for notes and that he emphasized that they'd fail the class if caught cheating....but practically speaking, I don't see how he would catch anyone.