It was my understanding that it isn't encrypted. I can't argue though. I'm not the techie in the family. I do less research because of division of labor.

It's hard to control too what Facebook can get. I refused putting messenger on my phone but had What'sApp because it's encrypted. Then Facebook buys What's App. Now we are moving to a different messaging system but they could buy that one too. Perhaps we just shouldn't text. Ha ha

I can't really tell you of course but it really sounds like you know what you want. You are worried that there aren't a lot of kids but my kids, especially the one with ASD tendencies, would hate the noisy church and no matter how many kids were there he would be unlikely to find a friend anyway if he is struggling with the atmosphere. I'm afraid your whole church experience might turn into survival. It also sounds like you are both interested in the same church so I don't think you need the board although I understand thinking out loud.

Balderdash

That is a big thing. I can't imagine a kid under the stress of keeping a 3.75. I actually saw that somewhere! though 3.5 seems the most common. I'm thankful my son's choice only requires a 3.0 which seemed fairly reasonable. Even if you are a superstar student, what if you get sick, have diasagreements with your teacher, or have some personal family crisis that makes it hard to focus. It also means my son will probably not risk too much exploring of interesting topics that might be more difficult for him because he can't lose his scholarship. We are taking that risk because in our particular circumstance there are few options.

My son is mostly handling things on his own so I don't know if he discovered the scheduling tool. I think he was checking which classes he could take this semester that would count towards his degree. In other words, he didn't have a transcript yet so they won't have a transcript for those classes until May. I'm not sure about previous transcripts. I will mention it to him. It will just be a huge relief if he can schedule earlier than the orientation.

My son has talked to his advisor a couple times about what classes will transfer and has been making plans. A four year plan doesn't do you much good unless you actually get the classes you need though which is what bothers him. Hopefully they still have the policy RootAnn mentioned. Maybe they just don't mention it so people closer don't complain.

There wasn't anything about that in his email but I will have him call and check RootAnn. He isn't honors but he does have a lot of DE credits so I hate to have him register for classes a few days before. Although, technically I suppose having the earlier calc classes done should make scheduling easier.

So my son just told me he had to attend freshman orientation at UAH before he is allowed to register for classes. This is frustrating because we live in Alaska! Also, because he plans on working, hopefully on a road crew, over the summer. There is usually a hurry to finish projects before winter. They aren't impressed with people who ask for time off and he already has to leave fairly early to get to school and he needs to actually be earning money not flying across the country. It takes 3.5 to 4 hours just for flight time just to get to Seattle. Most our flights are red eye so it is grueling to show up at 1AM and head to work that day. Could be dangerous depending on what he is doing so he may miss about week's work plus travel expenses, by the time he adds together orientation days and travel, not to mention he is hoping for overtime as he has college expenses to pay. They do have a late orientation that is reserved for far away students but we were both wondering if classes would be booked, etc if he waited until he arrived to sign up for classes. Will most classes be full? Is it dangerous to wait until the last minute to register? Other than Chem he won't be taking many of the Freshman classes because of dual enrollment credits but I don't know if that will make a difference because older kids don't have to wait until the last minute either. It might make it worse.

I can't remember why I originally picked frogger but it started in the 90's as a username for something else and it was easy to stick with. I didn't have a special love for the game but it very well could have described my life at the time.

I don't think this is because you are full pay because even for those who aren't full pay the formulas being used expect you to give all so you can't be saving for other kids or retirement or eating meat more than once a week. Ha You have covered a lot of ground but I'll just add what we did. Before my son made his decision I told him what we would gift him each year to get through school and he has to handle the rest. I needed to make it a doable amount because I need to keep my word as his decision was based on it.It wasn't a ton due to our high cost of living so nowhere near our EFC. I think this is a fair way to do it. It is based on what we can afford. He has savings from over the years too. After that it was up to him to make it work though I did help look for options and present them. I don't think there is anything wrong with having different experiences either. Your experiences could end up different than hers. I'm all for a well rounded education and college certainly offers some experiences that you can't get elsewhere but it is crazy expensive and this is a time when there are so many more options for pursuing your own education that really college is not the only way to become educated even if it does have some advantages.

We usually only start our woodstove for the colder weeks of the year now. When we used to full time I'd make sure to have a load or 2 of laundry hanging up in the library. Before that the pages in my books started falling out because the glue in the bindings got so dried out. When it was really cold out, the laundry could sometimes dry faster than the washer could do another load depending on the type of material.

We were super excited about The Lord of the Rings Study because we are all big fans but have never finished because we found it boring. I just want you to know it is mostly fill in the blank facts for each chapter. Then there are lots and lots of vocab words, pages of vocab words. It does cover some literary terms in the additional notes sections which was good. I'm thinking of trying again with the 11 year old and doing just the Unit Studies which so far we have found very interesting. The 13 Unit studies look good but we have only finished 2: one on the authors background and one on linguistics. I just need to give up doing all the in between stuff that feels like busy work. Perhaps the Unit Studies alone may be worth the price.

. I didn't mean the scholarship prices were the same but the COA always seemed within a $5000 range and this was only for someone OOS. The more expensive schools giving bigger scholarships. This does not include any scholarships of which there is only 1 or a few winners (which feels like a lottery ticket). But perhaps that's because we narrowed our pool of schools more than you. I guess if I narrowed by price to begin with I was self selecting to schools that WOULD give us the lowest available price. No little private LACs where he would need a 3-2 program and have to go another year. We also gave up on Rennsselaer and Worcester because of cost. I know some people say you can talk privates down but from people who've attended I think they are in such high demand you have less leeway. They were about 20k over priced per year for our target AFTER need was factored in. The cheapest OOS tuition at schools was closer to 8-10k over our target but once we started finding these closer to the target schools they were all over the country and they all ended up close to the same price. But now I see that's because I'd already narrowed my pool.

Yes. The rankings game means the best way to do better is not just teach well but to recruit the best students. Honestly, I complain about costs but my son isn't going to pay full price no matter where he goes. State schools have all given him merit and private schools would give need based aid. We don't qualify for enough need based aid but even all the state schools seem to offer somewhat similar deductions so my son seems to have a cost assigned to him specifically. We have ran numbers for a large number of schools and he has recieved similar merit awards at each school that he has already been accepted to. In other words, there is a price for school but it's his specific price. Kids with his income level, scores, and grades get a specific price. Other kids get a specific price and the prices seem to be competitive which I found interesting. It makes sense though as schools have to compete for students. WUE schools are higher priced and will come out similar to mid-west schools once automatic merit is applied. He did get a good enough score to be tuition free in Huntsville, AL and that finally brought it lower. I realize the need based versus merit may work differently for someone with less income compared to test scores but it really looked like we would pay the same price regardless and it wasn't going to be the same price as other kids.

We could have been in Norway's shoes. There is no excuse other than low information voting. Every Governor who decides to be a responsible adult gets booted for one who promises bigger hand outs so people can buy alcohol and big screen t.v.s and tickets to Hawaii. It makes me want to cry because it will just make things more difficult for the next generation. Meanwhile education is thrown out the window. But still, I have to remember all the good that came. I also know it took us decades to really integrate into our community. It is unlikely my children (now teens) would have time to build the friendships and networks they need before moving where ever.

I have been toying with the idea of leaving my home but I don't know that I would be happy. When I look at your reasons, they are so very similar. The politics and the economic opportunities are almost ridiculous but the community and the land and the beauty and the lack of snakes and pests is amazing. We took a big financial hit to move up here because it was close to family and it was home. Sometimes it's hard and sometimes I worry about the lack of opportunity for the kids but when I really really ask myself if I can move the answer is no. I remind myself, there are problems everywhere.

The parents I actually lived with hadn't went to college and my father never graduated high school and had no idea themselves. I thought that high school counselors were just for troubled kids so I never asked them anything. I never visited a college. I applied to a few and went to the cheapest. I had worked summers but had almost no money and was out on my own at 17. I took the ACT and SAT once cold turkey. There wasn't a college in town. The testing was done at my high school. I did have some AP credits. I didn't even know college advisors existed. And yes I walked into the school and payed in cash. Now days they'd think it was drug money. I was clueless. I also didn't finish and ended up in a different state but I did end up making decent pay at my job and have had a great life but I have no degree.

So I'm looking at a bill right now from 12/1996. Housing $975 for a double room. Meals $895 for 14 meals a week. Course fees $75 Student fees $105. Insurance $235. Tuition $1050 Health Center fee $65 Same college today per semester. I can only get info from the website so it's more generic for todays cost. This is a state college and really I don't think they have added a ton of fancy buildings although I know of one. Most of them are the same as when I attended. Tuition and fees $3989 Housing and meals are lumped also $4487 Books and supplies are estimated at $2k and I sure I paid in hundreds not thousands but don't have a receipt.

For us, the best fit was quite simply the one he could afford. Period.

For DS 1 we saved but really we do not have enough to cover the EFC for 1 year. He alsohas saved from his own work too. When he was young we actually lived below the poverty line. Now we have good income but it's not like we've had it for years to save up plus we live in a HCOL area. He was able to pull off a good enough testing score for an automatic merit scholarship and we will try to help with half his room and board. Last child has a 529 but since we are also paying for child 1 to go to school we can only contribute so much with 3 other children. Children 2 and 3 may not attend university. They don't really want to and at if the Governor has his way the university system will lose 41% of its state funding. There aren't many other options as far as college goes where I live. Tech school or apprenticeships may work out or they will just have to get a job or I might advise them to choose a different state to live in that has more options and just work for awhile to establish residency. I would help them as much as I can but it really doesn't look promising. My husband and I have even discussed moving before they graduate so there will be more options.

My daughter tried it a couple times and was unable to keep a single thing though I had her go through lots of extra pictures to say what she liked and put in extra notes. I think it works if you body shape and sense of style is more normal or common.

I wouldn't worry too much about the lack of previous science instruction. Most elementary science is information based not skill based so you can jump in later. Any previous vocab is reviewed and if not you can just explain it or show her how to look it up. I would base which level I chose off of her interest level. Will it seem tedious if it is too long or packed with too much info. How abstract is it? If it is abstract do they explain in a way that makes sense to a child? Magic School Bus is a good example of a way to make some fairly abstract stuff fun and at least make a lot of vocab memorable to really young children. Reading level would be the only other important thing if she is expected to read on her own at all. I would have 0 issues though starting at whatever grade level my child is the age for regardless of the fact I've never done science with them before. I would not say the same for math or LA.

I have to confess, I never could teach all that my children learned. I could never in a million years give my children what the community gave my children. The martial arts instructor who gave my son opportunities to lead and teach. The violin teacher who spent 90 minutes on a 30 minute lesson. The harp teacher who battled to get the youth symphonies pedal harp into our home since we can't afford one. The Grandfather who taught building skills to a son while working on his cabin. The Grandmother who taught my daughter to quilt and sew clothes. The homeschooling mom that has more time than me giving rides to swim lessons for some children while I taught older children. The friends who gave rides and brought meals when I had to ditch my immediate family to take care of an elderly grandmother. I do most core classes, well, some have aged out. Well, 3 online classes total so far for 4 kids over 14 years. I also deal with learning disabilities and some therapies and cook and clean from scratch because I'm not wealthy. I know some people on here say they can do everything but personally I guess I'm just not that smart and efficient. That being said the community I'm thinking of is filled with all sorts of people and ages doing all sorts of things. It isn't a business and it isn't filled with people all the same age studying all the same stuff. It's the sales person at the bike shop sharing info. The volunteers on the trail digging sign post holes with us. And the people who come over to work on our house with us after an earthquake does major damage. I don't see how Classical Conversations could provide that. We get lonely at times but I have begun to realize we don't need to find people just like us and honestly, in the old days the community that I'm describing above was supposed to be more real than a fake school community. At least that was what I heard many older homeschoolers argue when told their children weren't socialized.

So I've learned a bit about sports here. I don't have much to add, except for the fact that it really didn't make a pretty picture (actually had me somewhat laughing) when someone's post had me envisioning a male in a female gymnast's leotard. Carry on.