We do not look at the writing score in the university admissions office I work in.

Volume 3 is where American History begins. There are TONS of books out there on US history topics written for early grade levels. What I would do in your place is have my younger child listen in on the chapter with big sister and maybe do the corresponding coloring page. Then go back and read a picture book on the same topic with the youngest, and then get a narration from the child on THAT book. I would skip the world history topics that there probably aren't any first grade picture books on. Or, hit a related topic - "Russia" instead of "Peter the Great", for example. The thing about SOTW is that you can still use it again when he is ready to cycle through again. You can use the printed comprehension questions for him to fill in by hand, read more advanced corresponding literature, and add the tests. So don't feel like he won't learn it if you don't cover it now.

I wouldn't stress too much. The Admissions Office is most likely probing to see if the W's were due to him failing the class. A simple explanation will settle that.

For us the most important thing is that school has to be first in our day. If any playing happens, then trying to get everybody (that includes me) to drop it and focus on school is very, very difficult. SO, they get up and get dressed and then come to the kitchen for breakfast. I shoot for around 7:20-7:30am. Usually I have already eaten, so while they eat, I start our Bible study at the breakfast table. After that we move into the living room for our hymn. Then on to their lists of assignments for the day from there. I have to go to work at noon, so that does help me make sure I start on time and stay on task. We don't have the luxury of stretching things out all day.

With my first child, we started SOTW 1 in grade 1. It was definitely a struggle. I ended up reading one paragraph, asking a comprehension question, read the next paragraph, ask a question, etc. Then extracting a full narration at the end was an extraordinarily lengthy and arduous task. So I decided to wait until grade 2 to start SOTW 1 with my next kid. In 1st, we read through picture books chronologically through US history and she gave me narrations on those. Between that and WWE, she was much better prepared to face SOTW when we started it in grade 2. (She also seems to be more naturally interested in history, which also helps). I also agree with a previous poster that it is better for them to be able to read along in the book rather than just listening. Both of mine (and me too) prefer reading over listening. I think that both reading and listening together - getting the information in through two senses rather than one - is the best way to help remember. Also, repetition. Dd has to listen through the whole chapter on audio on Monday (and she reads along). Then on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, she re-reads the chapter section we'll be covering for the day. Then she's ready to answer the questions.

Interesting. I have worked in a university admissions office for 18 years and I've never heard of a Profile EFC. I should have started visiting this board a long time ago; it's insightful to find out what other issues people face at different institutions. So obviously, my university only uses the FAFSA EFC, so I've never dealt with this specific issue. BUT, every year I face people who have a totally unrealistic view of paying for college. There's always people who just apply without even bothering to see how much our tuition is. To them, it's immaterial because doesn't financial aid just pay for everything? They are in for a shock when they get the award notice and they have a balance! And it is sad when they just can't face reality. One year I had a student come all the way out to campus for orientation before his dad finally had to pull him and go home. They had all the numbers for months, but they kept clinging to the hope that the money was somehow going to magically appear. It's sad because I know how much parents want this for their kids and how much they just can't let their kids down with the bad news that they can't pay, but sheesh... this kid would have been so much better off if his dad had prepared him for the reality of their local state University a lot earlier, rather than let him come all the way out to campus to move in. Hopefully OP's friends will realize this and let their kid down sooner rather than later.

That's right. They just changed it last year. File date is now October 1 instead of January 1, so you submit the previous year's taxes. Assuming it is basically the same as this year, then you don't need to do anything else. If your student is Pell Grant eligible, then the institution is going to be asking you for verification. Or if your income for 2017 has dropped significantly and you feel that your student should be eligible for more aid than given, contact the financial aid office at the university to find out what to do next. This would be after they issue the original award based on 2016.

I haven't tried doing that but I think it would be doable if you are willing to do a lot of extra work coming up with sources and feel confident enough in your own abilities that you don't need to rely on the sample answers to evaluate your student's work. I just typed out a whole long analysis of all the different things you'd have to adapt and how much work it would be and in the end I deleted it because the final conclusion is that even though it would be doable, it would be very time consuming. I think it would be much easier to just get a writer's manual on how to write various types of pieces and then apply it to whatever topic you are studying. But WWS is so detailed, varied, and scripted that it would be a lot of work coming up with alternate scripts and alternate sources. And I really think you'd need both student and teacher's books to do it right. Personally, I do not think it would be worth the amount of work necessary just so that the two paragraphs my student ended up writing at the end of the lesson were related to a topic we were already studying. At the end of each section the student has a longer project on a topic of their own choosing, and it would be fairly easy and more worthwhile to have that project correspond to something they are studying. (Although I like to let ds pick his own topic completely. Writing is his least favorite subject... letting him write about whatever he wants is the small consolation.) We're in week 16 (I think), and so far I don't think we've had any

WTM recommends Mind Benders for grade 5, so that's what we did. Ds LOVED them. For 6th, we did both Fallacy Detective and Thinking Toolbox. I can't remember how we paced it. I think one chapter per week made each book about a semester long. Actually, I think he blasted through FD and then TT took a little longer. Anyway, Ds loved them both. Only problem is he is constantly picking out his little sister's "fallacies". Eight year olds use a lot of red herrings, apparently. 7th grade - MP Traditional Logic I 8th grade - MP Traditional Logic II

I started Ds when he was in 6th, but he's a year ahead so he was 10 years old when we started. It is a very challenging program, but doable. I think the most important thing, especially when implementing at a younger age, is to go at your own pace and don't try to finish the book within the "day" time frames that are scheduled. Now in 8th grade, we're still in book 2.

We started WWS1 in grade 6 and now in grade 8 we're not quite halfway through WWS2. I expect we'll be working through grade 9 to finish off WWS3. I'm not really sure how we'll address rhetoric writing once we've finished the series, so interested to see how others answer. I don't really want to have a whole separate writing curriculum from our literature studies, so I'm hoping that whatever I end up doing there will cover writing too. Excellence in Literature looks like what I want in terms of combining writing instruction with literature studies, but I'm not loving the selections. I'm also looking at Stobaugh's literature but not really sure how much writing instruction is there. WWS is excellent. Ds hates it but the quality of his output proves its effectiveness. Ds just completed his WWS2-week 15 paper. I asked Dh last night if he read it, and he answered that he googled the first few lines to make sure they weren't plagiarized. He thought they were too good to have been written by a 12 year old. Of course Ds is quite bright (IMHO), but I still must give most of the credit to WWS.

Here's what my dd-8 is doing. We're in FLL 3 and WWE 3 now. We do FLL 3 but skip the copywork/dictation exercises. The narration exercises are oral. We are doing WWE 3 workbook as written. However, right now we're at half pace; two days per week. Then we spend two days on cursive handwriting. Once she knows how to make all of her letters in cursive, we'll drop handwriting and go back to four days of WWE. SOTW - she gives me an oral narration and I type it. So she's getting the composition experience without having to do the extra writing. Apologia Science - last year she gave me oral narrations and I typed them, just like with SOTW. This year we are using the notebooking journal so she is writing her own narrations, but the pages only have lines for just a few sentences. She still has to answer questions about the text orally. Spelling - we are using R & S which requires minimal writing each day

I did Treasure Island as a read aloud when ds was about 8. I had never read it before and I loved it. Ds was totally bored. I think he really didn't understand it and I should have waited. I've always felt that if I had waited, he would have loved it. He had this book of children's classics that were shortened for little kids, so he knew the plot already and was totally into it. I think that spoiled him for the longer version with slower parts. So maybe now that I think about, it's that kiddie book I regret him having... Now at 12 he's reading Kidnapped on his own and enjoying it.

I like curriculum that is very open and go and doesn't require a bunch of different components to make it work. Not only is it most efficient, it tends to be less expensive, too. I also think carefully about whether I actually need to buy the teacher's guide. For example, handwriting workbook. Do I really need a teacher's guide for that? No! Student workbook is good enough. Spelling. Do I need a teacher's guide? No! She does the workbook exercises and then I give her a test on the words. I don't need a teacher's guide to see if she spelled everything correctly. Can I buy an answer key separately? Usually a lot less expensive than the TG. For math I buy the textbook, workbook, and answer key. Don't need the TG. I think the textbook does a pretty good job of explaining the concepts. Can't get by without the TG for Rod & Staff grammar, but it is non-consumable so I don't have to spend anything additional for second child. Also, do I need to buy the DVD component? So far I never have (until this year - we bought Math Without Borders USB which was very affordable compared to other DVD math programs out there). I also like to buy workbooks in PDF form if available. Sometimes they are more expensive than the hard copy from Amazon or Rainbow Resource, but cheaper in the long run than buying workbooks for multiple students. I am willing to pay more for things that save me time. Sure, I could save money by creating things on my own, but since I work part time too, I don't have time to do all of that. Price is always a huge factor for me in curriculum decisions, and so far I have always been able to find a less expensive option that does everything I want.

My ds is like this. I now require that he recheck all of his work before the answer key ever comes out. He usually finds most of his own errors. I think developing the habit of rechecking your work before turning it in is a good one to carry into a future situation of being in a classroom with another teacher. Also, if part of the problem is not accurately recalling math facts, then maybe give her additional drill sheets or flash cards. My ds has excellent conceptual understanding of math, but he would have a lot of errors because his calculations would be off. I really hit hard with drill sheets until he had them down. It's too difficult to do more advanced math if you still have to count your fingers. While she's still working on memorization, you could allow he to keep a multiplication table to reference while she's doing her work.

Rather than switching to something different, it may be that you just need to adapt it to fit your needs. With my oldest, I had a lot going on that year and just couldn't keep up with the workload I'd created for myself. So I ended up dropping WWE 3. He was still giving me narrations for SOTW and writing out his own narrations in the Apologia Jr. notebooking journal, so he was still writing. We picked right back up with WWE 4 the next year and he did just fine with it and is now successfully working through WWS. Now my youngest is in WWE 3. I've added a handwriting curriculum for cursive instruction and since I don't have time to do everything, we're going through WWE at half pace. We do WWE for two days, then we do cursive for two days. Once she's mastered cursive, we'll go back to four days of WWE. Now that I know what the track looks like further ahead, I know that grade 5 is an open year for writing as WWS is better to put off until grade 6. So taking longer than a year for level 3 isn't a big deal. I also think that it is unrealistic to think your child will be able to have the passage down after hearing you read it twice. So if that is part of the problem, don't worry about that expectation and read through the passage as many times as is necessary for them to get it.

I work in a University admissions office. We do waive the fee for campus visitors, but we will waive it at other times as well. We will waive the fee for students we meet when we do high school visits. We also hold regional presentations in areas we draw a lot of applicants from, and we waive the fee for students who attend. Sometimes we'll waive the fee for a student we met at a college fair that seemed to have strong interest - like if they stop and have a 15 minute conversation with us instead of grabbing materials and walking on. We usually waive the fee if their high school counselor calls and asks us to. Also, as the year progresses and we're trying to generate applicants, sometimes we'll send out emails to all the prospects in our database who haven't applied yet and include a fee waiver to encourage them to apply. The first one is usually right before Thanksgiving, because a lot of people use that weekend to start filling out their applications. Same right before Christmas break. All that is to say I highly encourage you to get on all the mailing lists for all interested schools and attend any events in your area that they will be at.

Universities have a way of managing documents received before they have an application from the student. As long as it's clear from the info on the transcript that it is the same student as the student they get an application from in the future, they should get matched up. Of course, errors always happen. You're probably fine having already sent the transcripts, but after a few weeks it doesn't hurt to call or email Admissions and ask if they have received it. Also contact Admissions at each university to ask what to do about the NZ university that won't mail a transcript straight to them. At my university, we don't accept a transcript that's been delivered by the student as a official, even if it is still sealed. But other universities might. And if not, the international admissions office is probably familiar with how different countries work. So they'd probably say, "Oh, yeah, we know NZ is like that. So go ahead and do it this way...". Or they might say, "we've gotten transcripts from this university before. Call again and this time ask for...".

I have an old activity guide in a three ring binder that someone kindly gave me for free, but a new textbook (purchased in 2009.. is there a newer edition than that?). I decided to buy the PDF of just the student pages when it was my daughter's turn. I don't do the activities so I can't speak to that. But I rarely have any problems. Once or twice we couldn't do the map activity because the instructions didn't jive with the map she had in front of her. Once or twice there were narration questions that dd couldn't answer because the topic wasn't covered in the new edition (which I guess is a difference with the textbook and not the student pages). But personally the problems are minimal enough that it wouldn't have been worth it to me to replace the activity guide to match my textbook. And the coloring pages and maps are sooo much nicer in the new that I don't regret buying the new student pages, either.

I work in admissions at a university and our average ACT score is about what you're looking at. Admissions rate is around 80%. Although in all honesty, the majority of the 20% who were not admitted didn't ever complete their applications. We very rarely deny admission. Essay is optional. I can tell you that the majority of essays I read are very dull and boring. Many of them show that the student put very little effort and thought into it. Some of them were not even proofread. Some of them the student didn't even bother to turn spell checker on. I wonder how they ever made it through high school (but that's a whole other topic... also I could say the same for many letters of recommendation - also a whole other topic...) Since the student usually still meets GPA requirements and math prerequisites, bad essay writers are usually still admitted. There are certain topics that I've read on SOOOOO many times it's pathetic. If I read one more essay on how the student's goal in life is to be on the first manned mission to Mars I'm going to scream (I'm sure that is specific to my school and not the most popular topic in general). There was a period of time when every essay I read was "How 9/11 impacted my life" (that was a while ago... this year's applicants were still babies then so it doesn't come up anymore). Probably worth a google to find out what the most common essay topics are and avoid those, if only for the sanity of the poor admissions rep that has to read it. I think the very best essays are the ones where the student shared about an event that really changed their life. For some it was something really huge like a divorce or a family death. For others it was something very simple, such as overcoming a challenging situation at school. Any situation where the student can talk about how they walked away as a better person at some level would make a good topic. I think scouting probably gave your son one of those experiences that he could write about. "Scouting" might be generic, but a personal experience will always be unique. Of course we don't do common app so I'm out of the loop on what their topics are... but I would bet a lot of the essays we get were originally written for that.

Electronic versions are not considered official unless the institution is sending them through a secure delivery service such as Parchment or Naviance. (Not sure if NZ schools participate in those). Otherwise, paper copies in a sealed envelop mailed directly from the school are what they want.

At the university I work for (in admissions), we would want an official university transcript (mailed directly from them), an official high school transcript, and your "mommy" transcript. Everything else could be listed out on a resume and that would make it all a lot easier to read than sorting through all the different certificates. I wouldn't think the music diploma is necessary unless he's going into a music program and wants transfer credit or advanced placement. Then the university would have to tell you what sort of documentation they need to evaluate.

Just a suggestion as one who works in an admissions office. Maybe it would make a difference at a highly competitive school, but at my school, the admissions decision is 97% gpa and SAT/ACT score. The only time that sort of thing comes into play is when the student is very borderline academically, and we are looking for other indications that the student has the ability to be successful. And even then, the volunteer experience would fulfill that. Scholarships are also GPA/test score based. However, I do think there is value in developing a relationship with your admissions counselor. So I see this as an excuse for your daughter to make contact with her counselor. Find out who it is, and send an email asking if this information should/could be added. It most likely won't make any difference in her admissions decision, but now she's opened up a line of communication with her counselor. Now she'll feel more comfortable emailing or calling with a future question. The counselor will start to recognize her name and remember who she is. This probably won't make any difference on her admission, but there's always an advantage to knowing that you have someone you can turn to when you have a question or need help. And occasionally the director of admission will send out an email to the staff such as, "do you have any students who missed the cut for scholarships that you feel should be considered?" And the ones who have made personal contact are the ones who will pop into the counselor's mind.

I read this play with my 12yo earlier this year. We read through Oxford School Shakespeare version. Our system is that I read it out loud, substituting in the more understandable words/phrases from the annotations while ds reads along and sees what the original wording is. Every so often we stop so I can make sure ds understands what's going on, gets the joke, etc. Then at the end of the scene we listen to the Arkangel Shakespeare audio of the scene. This worked out okay. Ds is not thrilled with Shakespeare, but he ended up thinking Bottom was very funny. We're going to see a staged production of The Tempest next spring and I'm planning to pre-read it as described above, but skip the audio. He'll go in understanding the story, and he'll gain all the other insights from actually watching it.

You might also try allowing them to follow along with you as you read, instead of just reading it to them. That helped both my kids a lot. Some of the passages in WWE are more difficult than others. For the more difficult ones, you might have to read through the entire story twice before you start asking them questions.