Well, I was assuming the adversity score would be sent with the official score after the student has already been admitted. So, at least for now, the score wouldn’t play into admissions. Or, am I missing something? According to this article: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/college-board-introduces-adversity-score-to-control-for-privilege-in-admissions/ “The purpose is to get to race without using race,” Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, told the Journal. The use of an adversity score did in fact lead to greater racial diversity in the case of Florida State University, which successfully increased its non-white enrollment from 37 percent to 42 percent among its incoming freshman class. “If I am going to make room for more of the [poor and minority] students we want to admit and I have a finite number of spaces, then someone has to suffer and that will be privileged kids on the bubble,” John Barnhill, assistant vice president for academic affairs at Florida State University, told the Journal.

Thank you for sharing that info about the writing portion.

I wonder if this will put an end to self reporting scores? Or, am I mistaken and official SAT scores have to generally be sent before admissions decisions are made? I know AP scores are self-reported at most schools.

I hope this is the beginning of the end of the CB.

Another very simple meal that I make that everyone enjoys is boneless country style ribs. They go on sale often. I cook them in the oven covered with foil at 325. Then I uncover and squirt on a bunch of gf bbq and cook for another 20 minutes. You could serve with rice or tater tots. Oh, and Perdue makes gf chicken tenders that my ds really likes. I get the regular Perdue tenders for my dd and the gf ones for my ds. Sometimes I will make chicken tenders with tater tots or fries for a quick meal. You can buy Chick-fil-A sauce by the tub for a couple of dollars and, if I have that, my kids are pretty excited about it.

Amy’s makes a roasted veggie pizza without cheese that always looked interesting to me, but I’ve never tried it.

My dd has had issues with dairy, but tolerates goat dairy without any problem. I buy her mozzarella cheese made with goat’s milk at the HFS and make pizza with a store bought pizza crust or bagel. My dh and dd enjoy Trader Joe’s orange chicken. It is $5 a bag and feeds them both. Sometimes I make that for them with some rice and then put in a gf pizza for my ds. I have an old Daiya pizza in my freezer that I need to toss because no one is ever going to eat it. Dairy is the hardest thing to avoid, imo.

My ds is starting work at a car wash this week because he’s heard the pay winds up being about $18/hour once tips are included and they are offering him regular hours. What about waiting tables in a nice restaurant where tips should be good? The next town over from us was recently advertising for summer clerks at the library and paying $15/hour, so check your town and county employment websites. Is he good with children? Some people need full time childcare over the summer and will pay well for it. Though I’ve noticed people will pay even better for pet sitting/walking, lol. You can find childcare and pet sitting jobs on indeed.com and maybe care.com would be better, but I’ve never tried it, I was encouraging my nephew and my dd to make flyers for lawn mowing services. I suspect that would be pretty lucrative in my area. Oh, and one of my son’s friends works for a junk removal business. He is allowed to keep anything the owners ask to have removed and he adds quite a bit to his income by selling other people’s junk on eBay.

Miss: Lukeion’s self-paced post-AP Latin class. Little useful feedback given on a very delayed schedule. No constructive feedback given on essays and what was given was so late as to be useless. Latin is/was my dd’s favorite subject and the lack of responsiveness was really discouraging to her. I have noticed Lukeion is rapidly expanding their course selections and maybe they are just overwhelmed, but I am not really sure what I paid for with this class other than strict deadlines, lol. Very disappointing. Next year, she will continue with her Latin translations independently, unless we can find something better.

I wonder if the school has info about other students in your area that might be interested in carpooling? I wouldn’t be okay with driving for 3 hours a day, but would probably be willing to do an hour and a half.

I had been told years ago that anything in the 600s was good and I would think that would still hold true for schools just looking for outside verification of coursework. I know many, many homeschoolers locally who have taken SAT subject tests and very few of them get scores well into the 600s. And this was for subjects that our local coop prides itself on being really strong in. Maybe contact the schools that are requesting subject tests from homeschoolers and see what they are looking for? Though, honestly, now that I think about it, I would think that if the median sat scores of their students would be the biggest clue. So if the middle 50th percentile gets a 1200 SAT, which would be about a 600 in reading and a 600 in math, that is probably about what they will hope to see on the subject test as well — a 600. That’s just my guess, though. Honestly, I haven’t come across any schools that aren’t more selective and require an SAT score.

Do you think your student might just feel too embarrassed about returning to class after her mom reacted so strongly to you? I would wonder if that is the case if the mom initially seemed appreciative of your reply to her. It would really upset me to be written off so quickly after years of teaching this student, but the mom obviously has a maturity issue and I wonder if she hasn’t mortified her daughter by shooting off such an angry reply. Just mentioning that because maybe the dd isn’t even upset with you at this point, but just embarrassed by what her mom did.

Vent away, op. 🙂 What brought this on though, may I ask? Just curious.

My dd recently did a clinical rotation at the hospital and had to be up-to-date on all vaccines. Even though we had all her vaccine records, the organization she did this through took bloodwork and was able to see what she did not have immunity for so that she could get boosters. Based on the bloodwork, she needed three shots. One was for something she’d already been fully vaccinated for but must not have had titers for. If the doctor wanted to work with you, I would think they could do something like this easily enough. It sounds like they are not interested in being helpful, so I would find another practice.

Yes! My dd will be done with almost everything in 13 days. Things have already lightened up considerably. I am looking forward to doing some hiking and shopping with her.

Have you run net price calculators for each of the schools? That is the first thing I would do. Is your ds a strong student and, if so, is there any merit aid available at these schools? If you run the npc and you do not think merit awards will happen, then I would find some other schools to add to the list. I would also add in other schools if the acceptance rates are below 50 or 60% and/or your son is not in the top quartile with his stats. My ds applied to 5 schools. All of them had a 50% or higher acceptance rate and his stats were in their top 25%. We knew we could afford all except one. A couple offered automatic merit aid for certain scores/grades and/or for participation in certain programs (like honors). He was accepted to all the schools he applied to, but one was not affordable for us and two were particularly affordable because of merit aid. My dd will probably apply to 10 schools, many of which will have a 30% or less acceptance rate and some which affordability will depend on financial aid. I have done npc’s but we have an unusual financial situation which makes it unclear which schools will be affordable and which will not. She will be applying to 2 schools that her stats are very high for and that offer automatic merit aid (safeties). Then, she will be applying to a couple that have 30% or below acceptance rates that are in-state public universities that we can definitely afford (financial safety, but no guarantee of acceptance). The remaining six applications will be for private schools with low acceptance rates that *may* offer her very good financial aid if she gets in. Many of these require extra essays/hoops, so we are limiting her total applications to 10.

If you want to do a little work on writing skills, the two things that have helped both of my kids with theirs and which I wished I had understood better from when they were younger are: 1) structure - making an outline before beginning the writing process and understanding that you are going to be addressing something specific in each paragraph. So each paragraph will include a topic sentence and then information supporting and discussing that idea and then there will be a transition sentence to smoothly introduce the idea of the next paragraph. It seems like a simple idea, but focusing on this has greatly improved writing skills at our house. It can be an annoyance to make an outline, but doing so greatly increases the quality of the writing for both of mine. 2) The structure within each paragraph of a) making a claim, b) giving supporting evidence for the claim (quotes from research or reading or other types of examples depending on what the paper is about) and then c) explanation/analysis of that example/quote. I feel like this little piece gets buried in all the other writing instruction, but is extremely important — Claim, example, explanation/analysis

This is my first Mother’s Day without my mom and I have been thinking about her a lot this week. She was my best friend and I miss her so much, but I feel so fortunate to have had her for all the years that I did. I try to keep that as my focus, though I am not always successful. I am also thinking of all the joy my own children have brought me and how lucky I have been to be able to homeschool them from beginning to end. I am not doing anything special for Mother’s Day, but being lazy without guilt. So wonderful! I usually host a big brunch for my entire extended family, but I am not doing it this year. We did go to dinner with my ILs on Friday and my dh is over visiting with his mom today, which is great. Happy Mother’s Day!

Yes, I think something like 40% of the students at our local high school have a 4.0 or above. A bunch of the teachers formally complained that they were being pressured by the administration to inflate grades and an investigation was done and, apparently, the teachers were wrong. It was found that they were not being pressured to inflate grades, lol. My ds has finished his first year of school and has done very well, but he does have some Bs and B+s. He said he had some anxiety at the beginning of the year about getting anything below an A, but he seems to have let that go. He was a bit of a wreck during his first semester midterms and finals and every time he called me, I just reiterated that as long as he had done his best, that all was good. Then, the second semester, he was so relaxed about it, I have to admit I was a little worried he wasn’t putting in a full effort, but he was and he did just as well as the first semester. He was just completely relaxed about it, which is wonderful. I don’t think he really stressed at all. He wasn’t shooting for a 99 in every class and I have tried to communicate to him that while I want him to do well, I also want him to have a life. School is important, but so are other things. Someone on the boards recently shared a quote that was something like “The difference between a 99 and a 91 is a life.” So true! I’ve really worked hard on moving toward this mindset with both of mine over the last couple of years. Because of homeschooling, they both really engage with the material in their classes and enjoy learning, but I think I put too much of a focus on grades at times because of all the pressures about college these days. I have worked hard to rectify that error.

CLRC’s Great Books class was our big hit this semester. There was a strong focus on writing and analysis skills which is what we were looking for. My dd greatly enjoyed the class discussion and felt she learned so much from the reading and lectures as well as from the other students, who were as highly engaged as she was. She is looking forward to continuing next year.

I don’t think most people who are against gun control would dispute the higher rate of shootings in the US. I think people against gun control just don’t see the guns as the issue. They see it as a societal or mental health issue. Of course, they care. They just do not agree with the solution being offered. There are violence problems in other countries that are expressed with knives and acid attacks. We do not seem to hear about those here in this country in the way our shootings are widely publicized in other countries. I hear people on these boards from other countries express fear about coming to the US because of the shootings, but my dd had the opportunity to go to the UK this summer and we chose to have her do something different, in part because of fear about the knifing and acid attacks that are occurring there. I haven’t kept up with all of this, but I believe the UK has started enacting knife bans. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/04/27/knife-crime-britain-wales-national-emergency-record-stabbing-homicides/3470942002/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/5d38c003-c54a-4513-a369-f9eae0d52f91

My dd has a similar situation. I was kicking myself because none of the colleges she is interested in require the essay, so she didn’t even need to take that part of the exam. Anyway, we’ve decided to just not worry about it. She’s happy with her overall score and she doesn’t want to retest. Everything I’ve read makes me believe it won’t have an impact.

Are you looking for a class or materials to use at home? My dd is going to be taking CLRC’s Japanese I with Todd Godwin this fall. http://www.clrconline.com/japanese-home/

I think my dd is going to take the SAT Lit test in June. She’ll do as others have suggested — take a practice test and if it seems like she is going to do well, she’ll take the subject test. She was going to take the SAT History one, and I had already signed her up, but she is getting a bit burnt out so she’s going to take Lit instead because she can probably do that without any prep. ETA: My dd has done a lot of lit analysis and taken many years of Omnibus classes.

I’m so glad for your dd! That’s really not right that the teacher did that. My dd has an online class right now where the grading is so far behind, she feels it’s worthless to her. She’s got to turn in her second essay without ever receiving feedback on the first. In her words, “That sucketh!”🙂