My dd has taken both PAHS AP courses and CC DE classes. They have been completely different experiences, Most of the PAHS classes are good, but very involved and time consuming. Ridiculously so in some cases, IMO. Some of their courses are really great, but others seem to have massive amounts of extra work. We audited one of the PAHS classes because of this. My dd has taken a few classes at the CC and it takes her about 2 hours a week to do the homework, even for upper level classes. And yet, she still masters the material. She didn’t wind up taking the AP Stats exam, but after completing the cc course, she took a practice exam and did well on it. If she had taken the PAHS AP class, it would have been 2 hours of work a day from what I’ve heard. So, I’d make a decision depending on the topic and the student’s level of interest, I think. If this is a class they’d enjoy completely delving into and they have the time to spend 2 hours a day for a full year, I’d go with PAHS. If it’s a class where they want to learn the material but want to to do it more efficiently, I’d go with the cc. At least, that has been our experience. Another plus for the cc is that my dd enjoys being out and having live interaction with the teacher and other students.

Yes on the reversible thing. I recently discovered that even after you have submitted the CA, you can make changes. The colleges you have submitted it to will get the original version, but the ones you submit to after the changes will get the updated version. I’m thinking that could be used strategically if you wanted to highlight certain scores or activities for one college but need to report all scores for another and/or want to use different activities. That’s not something I’m going to mess with, but it’s nice to know that we can add things for colleges that we will wait until later in the year to apply to.

One thing that I wished I had done the first time I used the CA was print out a preview after I had typed in some of the basic info. That would have helped me to better understand everything that was included and how it would be presented. Without doing that, it kind of felt like a never ending path of questions. Once I printed it and saw the end format, it seemed very simple and basic.

I do agree with this and it is the reason that ultimately made me go forward with writing documentation that isn’t likely to truly be read. A quick glance at how thorough my paperwork is and the effort that it took, speaks volumes about the care and dedication I put into educating my student.

You are welcome! I don’t think the symbolic logic is similar to classical logic. The logic classes my kids took at a classical coop were more focused on argumentation flaws/fallacies. Symbolic logic in college is one of three classes I remember having to work really hard on to figure out in college! I couldn’t follow it at first, but I kept working on it and then had a sudden understanding and it was easy after that.

I have spent many hours working on my dd’s course descriptions, always wondering if anyone is actually going to read this document. (I suspect few, if any, will, tbh.) But, I hear that, yes, they may. So I am trying to make them as accurate as possible, which has been extremely time-consuming since I tend to have perfectionistic tendencies when it comes to projects like this. I did them for my ds two years ago. He applied to colleges that had no less than 50% acceptance rates and I highly, highly doubt even one person read them other than myself. Because, why would they? But, of course, I don’t know that for a fact.

I think the solution is to return college classes to the way they were when I was in college and make the student responsible for their learning and the professor responsible for teaching, rather than attendance, So, as long as students show up for exams, who cares if they miss the class as long as they arrange to get notes from another student. That’s how it worked “back in the day”. There was no “class participation” grade. And if a student failed, it was on them, not the professor.

Are you able to share more information about this type of program and where it is held?

Sorry to hear about how two of your kids have been hurt in ROTC. That is not something I would have expected to be a big risk, so that is very good information to have. Wow.

My dd is taking a discrete math class and the instructor assigned 4 texts, 3 of which are free online. The only one we had to buy was the Schaum’s Outlines and that does have hundreds of solved problems in it. The second text he lists is a workbook, though, so maybe there is something in there that will be helpful? Textbook and Materials There are four textbooks required for this course. The first three are free OER books which can be downloaded. The fourth can be purchased in either electronic or hard copy for around $20. There is much overlap between textbooks, but each has gaps which are filled by others. The Doerr textbook contains all the required topics, but some of its explanations are not ideal and the exercise sets are limited. The Kwong textbook does not contain all the required topics, but it gives a clear overview of discrete mathematics and contains clear motivations for proofs. The Levin textbook does not contain all the required topics, but it gives clear explanations of several proof techniques and motivates the topics that it does contain. The Lipschutz textbook contains all required topics, with concise and clear definitions and theorems, many solved problems, and many supplementary problems with answers. It does not emphasize proofs and the theoretical discussions are brief. In each unit, you will be pointed to the relevant sections, if needed, for each text. The links and bibliographic information for each text are listed below. Doerr, Alan and Levasseur, Kenneth Applied Discrete Structures Department of Mathematical Sciences University of Massachusetts Lowell Version 3.3 Edition: 3rd Edition - version 4 Website:faculty.uml.edu/klevasseur/ADS2 © 2017 Al Doerr, Ken Levasseur Applied Discrete Structures by Alan Doerr and Kenneth Levasseur is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. You are free to Share: copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format; Adapt: remix, transform, and build upon the material. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. To download the free PDF version of the textbook, go to the following web page: http://faculty.uml.edu/klevasseur/ads2/ Kwong, Harris A Spiral Workbook for Discrete Mathematics © 2015 Harris Kwong ISBN: 978-1-942341-16-1 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free to: Share-copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt-remix, transform, and build upon the material Here is the link to MERLOT to download the PDF version https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1083133&hitlist=keywords%3DDiscrete%2520Mathematics%2520textbook&fromUnified=true Levin, Oscar Discrete Mathematics: An Open Introduction © 2013-2016 by Oscar Levin This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Fall 2015 Edition ISBN-10: 1516921186 ISBN-13: 978-1516921188 Here is the link to MERLOT to download the PDF version https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1209141&hitlist=keywords%3DDiscrete%2520Mathematics%2520textbook&fromUnified=true Lipschutz, Seymour Schaum's Outline of Discrete Mathematics, Revised Third Edition, 3rd Edition. McGraw-Hill

Thanks for all the great information and for sharing your children’s experiences. If my dd went this route, it would not be for the scholarship money. Honestly, her real passion is for volunteering as a first responder. When she joined in with the fire division for their physical training, it just really struck me how much she enjoyed that type of thing. She always has. She had briefly considered attending VMI in her father’s footsteps, but ruled that out. I am going to have her take a look at the program JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst mentioned. That is something I could really see her enjoying.

Now my next question is — when should I send official scores? My dd will be submitting the bulk of her applications at the end of the week. Should I wait until they are submitted to send the scores or does it not matter?

Thank you. I will check out the Compass Prep site. I thought (hoped) maybe they had all moved to self-reporting. There are a few that state outright that self reporting is fine until you are admitted, but there are a number of schools where I don’t see any comments about what they want.

Maybe I’m missing it but I am not seeing anywhere on the common app where it is indicated which schools require official scores prior to admission. I am getting the impression that most schools allow self reporting at this point but I am not finding that information in one easy location. Also I know there can sometimes be special requirements for homeschoolers. Have you found that most schools do allow self reporting on the common app. How did you find out which schools want an official score? Will they let me know the application is not complete if they require an official score and I do not send one? I have been looking at individual college websites but not all of them address this issue.

Oh, not what I thought, but I guess not surprising. I feel a bit better about this from the standpoint that the student can see their score and address any outlier issues and from the standpoint that they are being more transparent about how the score is calculated. And the dropping of the term “adversity score”. In my mind, this is info colleges already had, but transparency and dropping that label makes it less politicized. The jaded part of me wonders if they publicized their plan of labeling students with an anonymous adversity score calculated by secret means just to get us to more easily accept the idea of Landscape, lol.

I am glad to see this. They must have gotten a ton of backlash. https://www.nationalreview.com/news/college-board-abandons-plan-sat-adversity-scores/ “The College Board has abandoned its plan to augment students’ SAT scores with an adversity score, a metric designed to control for privilege in the admissions process, after enduring months of criticism from educators and parents.”

Yes, thank you for pointing out the seriousness of the commitment and the risks involved.

Well, not much has changed it seems since you were in the program, because you pretty much summarized the structure of the current program based on what I read in the link you sent me. It sounds pretty great and I’m sure my dd would love it. It would totally suit her personality. And I see they have Japanese on the list of highly desired majors. My dd loves Latin and is proficient in Spanish but has been dying to take Japanese for a couple of years and is getting ready to start that language class tomorrow. I will pass on all the info and the links to her. Lots of food for thought. Thank you!

Thank you. So, it looks like you can participate in ROTC for two years without making a service commitment as long as you don’t accept scholarship money? I would support my dd in whatever she chooses to do, but I would want to make sure she fully understands the commitment and I’d want her to take that first two years to get a better understanding of what she would be committing to. Are there particular majors that are required? Right now my dd is planning to major in the classics with an eye toward medical/physician assistant school or speech and language pathology.

I’m going to research this thoroughly, but if anyone has any info to share about how ROTC programs work, I’d love to hear it. My dd thrives on physical activity and would enjoy military type drills and physical training exercises. She recently had the opportunity to participate in physical training with the firemen/women in our town and this really brought this *weird* love for those type of activities home to us. My initial thoughts about ROTC are all negative because I don’t want her in combat or even having to serve in a safe capacity shortly after having a child. So, what are the actual commitments — both while at college and afterwards?

Yes! I started freaking out a couple of months ago because I was talking to a mom whose son got into 3 Ivy League schools and some of the things she wanted my dd to do this summer would have really created a lot of stress and hardship. Then, I realized most of the things she was suggesting were standard things that are all part of the normal profile for kids that attend pricey private schools and would not make my dd stand out in any way and might actually hurt her, IMO. For example, she wanted her to travel overseas this summer. It was incredibly nice of her to try to help me and I had a lot of fun talking with her, but I really think some of her suggestions were dead wrong for my dd. The other thing that has helped me through this process is finding a couple of academic and financial safeties that my dd feels good about, So, she can reach for the stars, but if those *dream* schools don’t work out for us either because she doesn’t get accepted or she doesn’t get enough financial aid, we have other nice options for her that we know will work.

My dd interviewed and attended an info session at W&M a couple of weeks ago. W&M seems a bit unusual in that they say that their optional essay truly is optional. During the info session, they made a pretty big deal about this and said they have many students who are currently at the college who have not written the essay. I mention this because it looks like letters of recommendation are optional for them as well, which is something I have not seen at any other colleges. On the common app, there is space for three optional letters of recommendation. A number of the colleges my dd is applying to only allow one teacher recommendation. Most only allow two. Also, from what I’ve read about more selective colleges and recommendation letters, a letter from someone who does not know the student on a personal level and who doesn’t get into specific examples isn’t going to be much of a help anyway. So, taking a class at the CC just for that purpose may not really be worth it. We used a teacher my dd had from 7th through 10th grade for one of her recs because he knows her well and he was one of her favorite teachers even though I’ve had people tell me it should be someone from 11th grade.

You can have your student take the SAT and the SAT subject tests at a college instead of a high school. Someone told me about that a couple of months ago and my dd took a subject test this weekend at a college. What a positive difference that was! She had to be there by 8:00 and was out by 9:30, which is as it should be for a one hour test. Whenever she’s taken a subject test at the high school, she never gets out before 12:30 or even later. For a one hour test! Also, it was much more comfortable for her to take it at the college. It always makes her nervous to go into the high school near us and there have often been kids who are disruptive. She said everything was just calm and quiet during the testing. This was the best standardized test taking experience she’s ever had. Just thought this info might help someone.

It’s been many years since I’ve done things alone. Before I got married, I lived alone for a number of years and really enjoyed it. I spent time with friends and family, but I liked doing things by myself and it was a big adjustment to never be alone once I was married with children. Now, it has been 20 years of almost always being around others between my dh working at home for many years (which he recently had to discontinue) and home schooling. Now, I really dislike going to the mall or shopping by myself! I’ve been working on revitalizing old friendships and forming new ones over the last year or so because I am going to have a lot more time for others soon and I don’t want to be alone. I’m also looking for some sort of work, either volunteer or paid that I think I would enjoy doing. I was just saying to my dd this morning that I am going to see if there is a hiking group on meetup.com so that I can continue doing that regularly when she goes to school.

Okay, I think I will just go with unranked because doing anything else is going to drive me crazy.