So true about Hamlet! The year my kitchen table English class read Hamlet, we went through a bunch of old test questions, and it worked for all of them! I think Romeo and Juliet and Huck Finn are pretty good, too. The AP English Youtube playlist from this past spring might also be a helpful watch in preparing for the exam; lots of good information about what readers are looking for.

This is my take -- I don't seem to be able to get the image upright. Heather

Thanks for the book title! The schools that are asking for course descriptions will probably go by the course description, not the syllabus name, for rigor, and will be used to seeing a variety of names. "Advanced Topics in Algebra" seems the most clearly non-remedial -- even the merit schools on your list should recognize that undergrad math courses include advanced algebra work.

I liked both of chiguirre's titles. Non-mathy people will look at the transcript and see something substantial-looking and recognize that it includes hard math, and mathy people will have a sense of the actual trajectory of your son's math learning. Could I ask for the name of the game development book?

Performance is such a big component of theater! I would look through what you can see in person as you pick plays. Since you have a local group performing Raisin in the Sun, I might be inclined to spend more time on it rather than less, and see if the actors or director are doing any kind of extra community outreach, or might be willing to meet with a group of students for Q and A. It's also worth considering even what film versions are available. Much Ado isn't probably the best or most famous of Shakespeare's comedies, but there are three movie versions (Joss Whedon's, Kenneth Branagh'

This is so helpful! Thank you for putting it so well!

For world history, we really enjoyed Ways of the World (text) and History of the Ancient World and Foundations of Western Civ.

Would this also be a place where the counselor letter could (indirectly) address rigor? If you as counselor write that she selected courses from the most rigorous load available, or something of that sort, that lets the admissions office tick off their little "didn't take easy classes to coast" box. I know public school students occasionally have to choose between AP options sometimes to make their schedule work out; this feels very similar.

I went through about the first six episodes with my two kids, another mom, and her two kids. We found the actual lessons ran quite a bit longer than the given time. There are one or two big exercises in each lesson (draw two pears, one with the stem toward you and one away; draw a cardboard box with flaps open; draw a still life of round bottles / vases / glasses), and we would pause for each one. I'd guess each lesson ran an hour or an hour and a half, not sure exactly, it's been a while. Then, there are homework assignments with each class.It would be easy to spend 2-3 hours a week at

DS took the intro courses out of sequence (after geometry when I think they are meant to come after intro Algebra A) and found them much easier than programming or algebra & geometry classes. I'm still calling them honors on the transcripts, though. I think writing formal proofs alone (for the online class) makes the class a tougher one than a standard ninth grade math elective class. The kind of thinking that it asks for, too, is deeper, even if the actual concepts don't go past algebra 1 math.

I am wondering what people put on these. Are they meant to cover both what kids read for a class and fun reading? Right now, I am listing literature and nonfiction, but not texts. And I'm including some quirky/fun books but not every single series book. Am I on the right track here? Also--do colleges expect students to have something to say about everything on the list? I am pretty confident that DS will be able to discuss the Shakespeare he's read even a few years later. But for something like The History of Western Science, on the other hand, I doubt it--there are things he's readi

DS went back to do Intro NT and C&P after finishing geometry. He's finding them much easier, and would be able to do another math class alongside. (In comparison, he found it tricky to do Python and Intro Algebra at the same time, though that was also his first time writing up proofs.)

I wanted to add a few more thoughts for Algebra A and B before intermediate algebra if not before geometry. My DS found the last few weeks of Algebra A to be the most challenging and most helpful of the whole intro algebra sequence. There were harder problems in algebra B, but they felt easier because of the deep understanding those last few weeks gave him. I have also found the placement tests to be too easy. At the moment, University of California considers intro A to be Algebra 1 and intro B to be Algebra 2 for their admissions purposes. (It is a bit confusing because intermediat

I loved little town. Especially for teens. My other favorites are little house and farmer boy. What about one of the newer verse novels for young adults? Fast reads, lots of white space in the page, but good stories and good language. Love that dog, or May B.