Wow, what struck me is, how on earth is that mother going to be able to live with herself and what she’s done to her child? And how is he going to now be impacted for the rest of his life? Because I don’t think “just” surgically removing his breasts is going to eradicate the impact of the estrogen. It seems we are now sacrificing the health and well-being of very large groups of children all in an effort to be sensitive to what was a very small group of children.

Yes, I’ve been surprised at all Khan has to offer now as well. I discovered all of his wonderful material when I was looking for a way to help my ds prep for the calculus CLEP. I am planning on having my dd use it to prep for the AP US Govt exam year. Free is nice!

I took the competitive comment to mean it’s not a cut-throat atmosphere among the students that are attending, rather than meaning it’s not competitive to get into the school.

Yes, most of the schools she is interested in have about a 30% acceptance rate or less. While private schools are not out of the realm of possibility, I also realize we may be priced out of them. That’s why I am trying to cast a wide net and have a number of options that she would be happy with as well as some financial safeties, The hardest combination to come up with so far is financial safeties that she will also be excited about.🙂. But, I do understand the situation.

Great for him!

Maybe look at Khan Academy and spend a few months going through the algebra I and algebra II material until he feels solid on it?

Thanks. It may not be cheap, but it sounds very reasonable.

What does he charge for his classes?

There is a surprisingly small amount of new material in calculus BC beyond what is covered in calculus AB. My daughter did calculus AB with Derek Owens last year. This year, she took a statistics class at the community college and covered the BC material through Khan Academy. It is only the last two or three modules of Khan Academy BC that she needed to cover. She’s prepping for the BC and statistics exams now. So, that is one option.

I was just there with my two and their favorite thing that we did was the NBC Studios tour. We also have done two tenement museum tours on two different trips, the shopkeeper’s home and a two-hour walking tour, and both of them were pretty meh for us. We have also really enjoyed going to Grand Central Terminal, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, seeing a Broadway musical, skating at Rockefeller Center and just walking all day through the city. The High Line looks neat and is on my list for next time.

Thank you. I think the main reason I’m asking whether she needs math is to determine whether it might have a negative impact on her during the college application process. I don’t think she’s going to want a degree that requires math beyond calculus BC and statistics, unless it is actuary work, which she is realizing probably isn’t the right route for her if she doesn’t want to continue with math, lol. She was drawn to that field because of the high level of job satisfaction reported for actuaries and she really likes analysis. She is going to be taking AP Chem through PAHS. I think it’s pretty math-heavy. She also wants to take accounting at the cc. Not really math, but that’s the class that’s likely to get axed if she does math next year.

That’s a great idea if we do go with prepping for the actuary exam. Thank you!

I really hope it works out for you! I have that quote on my refrigerator. It jumped out at me when I was reading the re-reading The Scarlett Letter a couple of years ago, so I wrote it on an index card so I could see it all the time. Never thought of getting a tattoo though!🙂

I think it does include homeschoolers. I just went into my college for account and they have a 2019–20 AP course audit homeschool teacher calendar. So on that calendar it says on May 20, 2019 teachers can start submitting materials for courses for the upcoming school year. And then it says on August 1 AP classroom systems open and access will be granted to teachers with approved course audit forms. It looks like maybe it all has to be done before August 1 this year though. I think in the past we had till January. ETA: I just read further down and it looks like the deadline to complete the course materials for next year is still January 31 of 2020.

I find it pretty aggravating that these exams aren’t widely available for practice. They treat them as if they are top-secret information and they are only made available to students taking the AP classes through their teachers. So even if you’ve signed up for one of the AP classes, if you wind up with a crappy teacher, you won’t get the practice you might need for the exam. I have done the course audit thing for a number of classes and the other thing I’ve noticed Is that the first year I signed up for a particular class, I received a very minimal amount of practice materials but then each year they give me more and more. So if you have a first-year teacher and you’re taking an AP class you may not have access to the amount of practice materials that a student who is taking it with a more seasoned teacher has. I don’t understand the idea behind this.

My daughter has already taken AP calculus AB with Derek Owens (but no AP exam) and statistics 250 at the community college. She is self-preparing for the AP calculus BC exam which she will take this spring and likely (hopefully?) do well on. She’ll also take the AP statistics exam this spring. For next year, her senior year, we are trying to decide if math is something she really needs to take. She is unlikely to go into a math field. Though, she has looked a little at actuarial work, so one thing she was considering doing was just preparing for the first actuarial exam, which is on probability. Frankly, I doubt she’s going to be an actuary because she doesn’t really love math, but preparing for that exam sounds more interesting to her than taking calculus III or another math class at the community college. I’d like to see her just skip math since she will be taking eight solid academic credits her senior year without any math. She already has 6.5 or seven credits of math and she will have about 40 credits overall by the time she is done with high school, so she has challenged herself every step of the way. However, I remember people saying that if you accelerate math, you need to keep going with it all the way through high school and am slightly concerned about her stopping at the end of this year. I’d appreciate any thoughts people have on whether she should continue with math. ETA: Just to clarify — She would prefer to be done with math at this point but if she is going to do math next year she would like to prepare for actuary exam P for her math credit.

I hope this doesn’t sound paranoid, lol, but when I linked it, it did have 89 5-star reviews. It caught my attention because there was one with 88 reviews and another with 89, which seemed weird. Now, the one with 89 is *gone*.

Yes, Jeff! Get with the program! Lol. But, really, you’d think it would be in amazon’s best interest to do something about the reviews and the fake product sales. It has actually pushed me back into going to the store for a few things lately that I wanted to buy online. Like sheets and shampoo and cosmetics. If amazon is still planning on taking over the world, I hope they start putting a little effort into quality control.

That’s pretty bad! I have been seeing this more and more and you’d think if there are 88 5-star reviews, it must be a good product, but I’m finding the reviews almost worthless anymore. Almost everything now has at least a 4-star rating, so I started making purchases only based on the negative reviews. If there were 5% or less negative reviews, and there were a fair amount of reviews overall, I’d buy. Now, this product, and others recently, have had 0 negative reviews, but clearly, that’s false, so I need to find a new system.

Why do you think the reviews are so extreme one way or another on this product? Here, 100% positive reviews by 88 people: https://www.amazon.com/Scrubber-Cordless-Multi-Purpose-Replaceable-Extension/dp/B07MHKSKWQ/ref=sr_1_33?hvadid=232518652482&hvdev=t&hvlocphy=9007567&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=12594674432985286760&hvtargid=kwd-385010246864&keywords=tool+for+cleaning+baseboards&qid=1551306530&s=gateway&sr=8-33&tag=googhydr-20 Again, 100% positive reviews by 89 people: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MSC1J8K/ref=sspa_dk_detail_1?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B07MSC1J8K Then, abysmal reviews by many: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FMV69NG/ref=sspa_dk_detail_0?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B07FMV69NG#customerReviews And there are other just like the last one with as many as 60% of the reviews being a 1 star. I’m assuming it is a piece of j7nk and they have just found some way to scam the reviews, but how?

Another thing about pre-med stats — for smaller schools especially, I would want a rough idea of how many students got into med school vs just a percentage. At some of the schools we have looked at, it was advertised that ___% of their students were admitted to med school, “ ____ % better than the national average”. It dawned on us that meant just a few students in total. Also, from what I understand, some schools base the percentage of admittance only on the students they endorse for medical school applications. They don’t include all the other kids that wanted to go but didn’t get their endorsement. That’s something I was just reading recently. There is so much information out there, but it is very time-consuming and difficult to weed through it all.

We are weighing some of these decisions right now with our dd. There are a number of private universities she would really love, but because of how we saved for college — prepaid tuition 529 — and our income level we could be looking at paying anywhere from practically nothing to $70,000 a year if we gave her free reign. We won’t/can’t pay on the higher half of that range just because that starts to feel really uncomfortable for us. Plus, when I start thinking about paying anything beyond a certain dollar amount, it starts to feel a bit ridiculous. Especially when we do have more affordable options that seem just as likely to lead to a good outcome for her.

It can be such a hard call with math. I don’t think 1.5 - 2 hours a day is unreasonable for math, but it can be hard to fit in. I like your idea of revisiting VT for trig if you think that was a better fit and then filling in with another text.

Both of my kids have lots of allergies. My son was blessed with food allergies in addition to environmental ones. My dd just has the environmental ones, (including mold) but they are pretty bad. Dd was on and off Zyrtec when she was little and it never seemed to do anything. I began using a Nettie pot on her a couple of times a day because she was having so many issues with headaches and ear infections. When she was on Zyrtec, she would still have tons of mucus come out every time we did the rinse. Her allergist then prescribed a nasal spray for her —astepro— and it cleared everything up for her. Nothing came out with the Nettie pot as soon as she started the spray, so we were able to quit doing the rinses. We quit the Zyrtec and have pretty much stuck with nasal sprays for allergies since then. My dd tends to get headaches when there are mold issues. Camping in the woods has been a real problem for her with all the dead leaves. She’s also had trouble when we’ve gone to the beach. The only food I am aware of that causes her issues due to the mold allergy is the natural peanut butter you can get at the health food store that they grind themselves. When she was about 7 or 8, she went through a period of losing control of her bladder even though she potty trained before she was two. I read something that mentioned that the hfs pb could be loaded with mold, eliminated it, and she never had another accident.

My son is in his freshman year of college and doing well. Academics are not super easy for him, but like your daughter, he is a hard worker and will reach out for help, and this serves him well. He also thrives on relationships and community and he is starting to really get that at college. He didn’t research any colleges. It’s not that he didn’t want to go, I think the whole process was just kind of overwhelming for him and, while he did want to go to college, he was also very anxious about all the changes that would come along with it. So, I did the research, dragged him to schools, signed him up for a college application essay class, told him which ones seemed like they would be a good fit for him, and then told him it was his decision where he went. 😉 And I’m so glad I did all that because he is growing and maturing and becoming more independent while at school. Maybe your dd does need another gap year, or should start out at the cc. There’s nothing wrong with that. I just wouldn’t base that decision upon her not enjoying researching colleges. Also, she may get more interested if you take her to visit a few. It may help her decide what she does and doesn’t like.