I agree with skipping the 9th grade PSAT. Wait until 10th grade and take the regular PSAT (not the 8/9/10) cold, no prep. If your student's 10th grade score is in the ball park for the National Merit cut off in your state, then s/he can spend the next year prepping for it. I don't think taking the other versions of the PSAT provides you with useful information. Taking the PSAT 2 years ahead of time is likewise too early to determine if your student is a candidate for National Merit.

I've heard this as well. For example, you can change the essays you upload, which may be helpful if a college asks for something on a secondary application that is already covered in your main essay. In an effort to not duplicate information, you can provide them with a different essay. I'm guessing this might be an issue if you are applying to regular colleges and then some more specialized colleges like conservatories. But I think there is a limit to how many versions of the CA you can submit. Check with their help desk to see what the current rules are. We did not take advantage of this, probably either because it wasn't an issue for us, and it also would have taxed my brain!

One thing to check for when you upload documents. Last year CA added an additional margin around my documents, making the printed material smaller in size. I compensated by making the margins on the original document smaller than usual. Not sure if this will be an issue this year, but something for you to look out for. Again, when you upload some document it will be apparent, and you can always delete it and upload another version and keep what looks best.

I agree with RootAnn that the AP vs DE debate will forevermore remain undecided. My student happened to prefer taking online AP classes because she liked rolling out of bed and studying in her pajamas without needing to attend a boring lecture. She is also a good test taker and enjoyed the AP exams. For reputation, you might consider Hopkins CTY or Stanford Online High School. Although now that I think about it, few SOHS classes are actual university level classes, and they are far more expensive, about $5000 for a single course and $13,000 for part time. Also you will need to begin the application process soon for enrollment in 2020. But they are quite tough and SOHS has a great reputation. I don't have personal experience with Hopkins CTY.

If it helps, I did very little de novo writing of course descriptions. Typically it was a copy/paste from either the actual course description, or from the book jacket of the textbook. Then some light editing to remove the sales-y parts and make each with consistent wording. It's not ideal to start the process now in his senior year (better to keep track as you go along because sometimes course descriptions disappear from the internet), it shouldn't be too hard once you have a cup of coffee in hand.

Know that everything is reversible...even when it looks like it isn't. For example, whenever you upload something, it'll ask you: "Are you sure you want to upload this?" (or similar). It makes it all seem very final. But it isn't. As soon as you upload something, you can delete it and upload something else. (This is all before you hit the final submit button at the very end of the process, but that's a multi-step process in and of itself, and impossible to do accidentally.) So fill in forms and upload sample documents and see how it looks. You can also print out the application anytime and see how it looks to the admissions people. We did this last year, and I haven't seen the new version. But our menu was along the left side of the screen. That guides you to all the sections that need to be completed, and I believe there was something like a check mark to indicate it was fully complete. On the right side of the screen are suggested links to help screens. Common App also has a youtube channel, so you may want to scan those videos for what might be helpful. (I watched a lot of those before beginning the process.) Their online help is staffed by human beings and they are quite responsive. I usually received a response withing a few hours.

I think some of the toughest skills students must master are those cases that I often see posted here. Like how to advocate for yourself when it comes to unfair class policies or mistakes on financial aid. Take a look at some of the issues posted here on the WTM college board and use them as ideas for a role play. If there was some class to learn how to advocate for yourself without dissolving into tears, i would be the first to sign up!

We completed it last year. For us it was Section C, and just a lot of fill in the blanks: list of classes, grading system, phone number, etc. Do you have a specific question?

I guarantee you did not. Actual school counselors are churning out letters for as many as a hundred students every year. If you put any time or thought or energy into writing your student's letter, then you are way ahead.

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My dd had high test scores, so I did include them prominently on the transcript. Instead of the "class info" you have on your transcript, I include all that information in my course descriptions. I have a course description for every class my dd took, whether it was self-study at home or an online class or an in person class. I appended the course descriptions to the transcript into one pdf. Here's an example: AP Statistics In this course, students are introduced to the major concepts and tools for collecting, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from data. Students are exposed to four broad conceptual themes: exploring data (describing patterns and departures from patterns), sampling and experimentation (planning and conducting a study), anticipating patterns (exploring random phenomena using probability and simulation), and statistical inference (estimating population parameters and testing hypotheses). Partner: PA Homeschoolers Instructor: Carole Matheny Text: The Practice of Statistics by Daren S. Starnes, et al.

I happened to have a stylus and writing board, so I wrote my signature in a google drawing program, then copy/pasted it into my spreadsheet document that was my transcript. I did save all my documents as pdfs: the spreadsheet and the google word doc's, because I think that preserves the formatting better. For reasons I don't really understand.

Also, conveniently, your student has graduated at the top of the class.

One. Unless you have twins.

Wow, you have my sympathy, particularly in light of the athletes free pass on this issue. I agree with the advice of the PPs, particularly about dropping the comp lit major. I don't think it's as big a deal to the med schools as you think, unless in her applications she's really portrayed herself as a lover of literature or a future writer or something. I'd just let them know you are dropping the major, and check with your premed advisor, but I don't think there is any need to offer much explanation, after all it's her third major. I definitely would not consider legal action, and I wouldn't escalate the issue higher in the campus hierarchy. That could impact her med school admissions chances more than dropping comp lit. Since this is a JAWM post though, I want to emphasize that this situation is pretty crazy. She's a senior applying to med schools, for goodness sake. Seniors are always traveling around for interview for grad schools, jobs, etc. Isn't it strange that she's the only student applying to medical school in her class? Is this typical of Williams? Maybe they just don't get a lot of future doctors there?

But only if you intend to graph the function on the x-y plane. One could use any "dummy variable" including y: f(y) = y^2 + 17y + 70. One of my favorite Math With Bad Drawings is the Baby Name Book of Variables which advises against naming a function "x" and the variable "f":

Yeah, and I thought 2 hrs/week seemed like a lot. With the Edhesive class, I thought my dd had decided against it, but lo and behold, come March she started finishing the problem sets, one after another. It was a struggle for me to catch up because grading FRQs is time-consuming. You need to check to make sure she wrote everything she was supposed to, and use their rubric to see how many points each thing is worth, so you can deduct the right amount. Ultimately it was more work for me, and less for the student.

Is that 2 hours per week? I don't think that's necessary, but sometimes these classes can require discussion board posts. I'm not sure if that's the case for PAH AP Stats, but I think it is for some other classes like APUSH and AP lang & comp. While requiring discussion board posts by students can ostensibly encourage an online community to interact with each other, I think many students don't give it much more than cursory thought.

I think either one will do a fine job of preparing. The Edhesive class has the feature of being self-paced. My very mathy daughter basically started the class in March, and raced through all the assignments right before the exam. There are no required discussion board posts or any extraneous activity. The parent acts as the teacher and grades the student's FRQs. (A grading rubric is provided.) So that's a lot more work for the parent, but the parent also assigns the final grade. I don't think Edhesive provides a transcript. If your student requires a more measured weekly schedule, then PAH may be a better choice. PAH will provide a grade and transcript, and the parent is pretty much hands off, including the grading.

PAH AP Chemistry (Mr. Moskaluk): Excellent with the caveat that your student needs excellent EF skills, be unafraid of posting questions to the discussion board, and ready to jump on those weekly assignments as soon as they are posted. (Score: 5) AP Physics C Mechanics (Lanctot) Switched to Kernion after a semester, not sure why, but generally unhappy with Lanctot. (Score: 5) AP Physics C E&M (Kernion) Much preferred to Lanctot and glad she switched. (Score: 5) AP Statistics (Matheny): So- so, especially for my AoPS kid. Gets the job done but not her favorite. (Score: 5) AP Calculus BC (Gilleran): again, not a good fit for an AoPS kid, but gets 'er done. (Score: 5) APUSH (Richman): excellent. (Score: 5) AP Lang & Comp (Inspektor): excellent prep. (Score: 5) Other vendors AP Bio at Stanford Online High School: Excellent, probably the best class they offer. (Score: 5) AP Statistics at Edhesive: solid, gets 'er done. (Score: 5) AP Computer Science A at Edhesive: (Mrs. Dovi): Excellent preparation. (Score: 5)

Sometimes good things do happen to nice people!

My dd enjoyed APUSH with Mrs. Richman at PAH. Also Renaissance history here are WTMA with Jennifer Roudaoush.

Arthur Benjamin's math Great Courses are pretty visual. He uses animations to illustrate concepts.

Argh. Stanford School of Engineering (seriously people? Stanford does not have an engineering school? Where do you think Hewlett Packard came from? Sun? Intel? Cisco? Lanny's late uncle earned a PhD in EE at Stanford, and he still doesn't believe Stanford has an engineering school?🤔) CMU College of Engineering Cornell Engineering Princeton Engineering ...I'm not going to bother linking the rest of the engineering schools. Look them up yourself if you don't believe me. I prefer this Quora response:

There is no intermediate NT textbook. Here is the Volume 1 and Volume 2 TOC. You can see it's redundant to the other AoPS textbooks, so not necessary to purchase. I'd need to check the copyright dates, but I believe Vol 1 and 2 were the first to be published, and then they followed up with the core subject textbooks.