I took AP Europe and that was hard! So, don't leave me hanging. Which one was he?

If you sign up for their Premier Plan you will receive: I think we are looking at the bullet for "Using income and asset shifting strategies to increase ... aid."

The WSJ reporting makes it clear that this is legal. Article may be behind a pay wall. Several universities in Illinois say they are looking into the practice, which is legal. “Our financial-aid resources are limited and the practice of wealthy parents transferring the guardianship of their children to qualify for need-based financial aid—or so-called opportunity hoarding—takes away resources from middle- and low-income students,” said Andrew Borst, director of undergraduate enrollment at the University of Illinois. “This is legal, but we question the ethics.” The woman and another Chicago-area parent who spoke to the Journal said they followed the strategy laid out by a college consultant company called Destination College, based in Lincolnshire, Ill. The company says on its website it has saved families as much $40,000 a year per student. The website doesn’t specify how. I love this image from their website: I can just hear the parents: "Bwahahahahah!"

I don't often see Competition Math for MS mentioned here, but I do really like this book. Especially I think the counting chapter is excellent. Short and to the point. I have the AoPS Vols 1 and 2 on the shelf, but only used them a bit. It should be a great supplement. You can also have your student take old AMCs that are freely available on the AoPS website for fun.

I have a list that was made available to parents at Stanford OHS. It's organized by state, if you want to PM your location to me. Can the anti-CB club have a secret handshake?

I agree with Kareni. There's no downside to taking the PSAT and not doing well unless you think it may discourage them, or give them additional anxiety or whatnot. OTOH, it could reassure them, or demystify the exam. It depends on the kid. IIRC, my dd only took it in 10th grade, and it didn't count for anything and we didn't report it. But it did give her valuable information about where she stood with respect to national merit. Check this, but I'm pretty sure no college asks for PSAT scores, though I suppose you could report them if they are high. They are solely used to determine National Merit Scholarship, and sometimes for merit-based financial awards.

9th grade is pretty early. I would have them take the real PSAT (not the 8/9) so you can get a better idea of a baseline for the actual test. Taking the actual PSAT will also allow you to compare it to the National Merit cutoffs for your state. It's probably too early to really know, but it will give you an idea of whether they are close enough to make the cut off. (I forgot how much math is a prerequisite, but take that into account obviously.) You can also see if they are weaker on either math or english, you can decide how you want to increase those skills generally over the next couple of years. I would save real prep for the year before the exam. Take it again in 10th grade and then you'll get a better understanding of how many points your student needs for any scholarships he may qualify for. Good luck.

AP vs DE is very specific to the preference of your student as well as the preference of your college. In addition to info from PP's I'll add: Dd prefers to be with high school age peers, not those scary older college students! (Ironic stated since so many high school homeschoolers take CC classes, but whatever.) I loved not having to drive and park at CC. She enjoyed the convenience of online AP classes. She also enjoys taking tests and excels in them. She'd rather study independently and take a single test, not least because it is so much less work and time than attending classes on campus some distance from home. We're in California, so AP exam scores of 3-5 satisfy some of our a-g requirements, and show a reasonable amount of academic achievement. But DE does the same thing. I'll also add this bit. If you want to major in CS at Stanford, they actually recommend that you take your physics classes (required of all engineering students) at the local CC! Physics CS majors must take both a Mechanics class (PHYSICS21, PHYSICS41, PHYSICS61) and an Electricity and Magnetism class (PHYSICS23, PHYSICS43, PHYSICS63). Mixing classes from different series is acceptable. Physics labs are not required for the CS major. In general, almost any college level, first year physics class that covers mechanics and E&M will be awarded transfer credit and count towards the physics requirement. So if you want to take physics at Foothill College, the local community college, or at home over the summer, that is usually fine. (Foothill the CC closest to campus.)

Here's an idea I'm just going to throw out. Could he do something else for math this year instead? I'm thinking intermediate number theory or intermediate C&P? They are both fun and useful classes. Then maybe he'll have another year of maturity under his belt and could manage some more self-study or have room in his schedule for this Blue Tent class? Calculus really shouldn't be that hard for an AoPS kid.

Thank you for posting this. I imagine many AP coordinators will be unaware of this "join code" and the idea of an "exam only" section, especially this first year. I predict it will be rough to get this sorted out come October, but hopefully subsequent years will be easier. Brace yourselves...

I thought the AoPS classes stuck to a standard "script" during lecture that didn't change from section to section?

You may want to start a new thread about Questbridge specifically so you can learn more about their specific process.

Five subject tests seemed high to me, so I checked their website: All U.S. citizens applying for admission to W&L are required to submit the results of either the SAT (W&L's code is 5887) or the ACT (W&L's code is 4430). Although we do not put undue weight on test scores, they are an important tool that helps us distinguish between similarly qualified applicants. We realize they reflect your performance on one Saturday morning, and we want to give you every benefit of the doubt. Here's the good news: Writing scores are not required on either exam We will accept either version of the SAT We "super score" both the SAT and ACT (though we will not do so for results from different generations of SAT). This means we will combine your best section scores from multiple tests to produce your highest SAT or ACT score. SAT Subject Tests are not required for admission to W&L. Is this requirement just for homeschoolers?

My dd enjoyed Spanish with Language Bird.

Wow, those are 2 very different schools! I hope he finds his people at Duke.

It was kinda hard to wrap my head around the CA because there are so many parts and sub-parts. But I've found it is very forgiving of errors and redos. Just about anything you enter can be rescinded and re-entered later. Even after you upload a pdf, like a transcript or school profile, if you later change your mind, you can delete it and upload another copy. (This is all before you hit the final, final, final, submit button at the very end. No changes after that.) But when you are completing everything for the first time, it's all changeable. After August 1, you can start taking a look around. You'll need to have your student create an account first, and then name you as a counselor. Then you can register and log in and start familiarizing yourself and filling in basic information. I found the customer service reps at the CA were very responsive, too.

This is so very true. Dd got a job her senior year where she was working for a full day on Mondays and Fridays, every single week. Name one school--public or private--that would let her off of school 2 of every 5 days. And it was (and is) a tremendous experience for her.

It actually sounds like you have some excellent record-keeping going on, you just need to reorganize it into classes: course title, instructor name, textbooks used, course description, etc. It'll take some time, but should be doable. This exercise is common among unschoolers who need to organize everything that was learned into well-defined classes. A hack is to find course descriptions for high school classes similar to yours and use that as a starting point. I'm glad @FuzzyCatz mentioned college's aggressive marketing because I wanted to warn of the same. Not to prematurely discourage you because I think by all means if her test scores are consistent with what a school typically admits, and your student wants to attend, then you should definitely apply. But really, that's a decision that should be made independently of whether you received a brochure in the mail that was likely triggered by a high test score. Ignore the brochures. If your student wants to attend, throw your hat into the ring. You won't be admitted if you don't apply. I find that people on these boards have varying ideas of what they consider a "selective college" so you may want to see where your student stands by going to College Confidential and looking at the Chance Me threads. Here's an example of a Harvard Chance Me from a few years ago (not my kid, it came up in a google search): 2250 SAT770 SAT US, 800 SAT Math 2, 770 SAT ChemTop 1-3% GPA in schoolAP US, AP Bio, AP Chem, AP Micro, AP Macro, AP Lang, AP Stats (all 5's)AP Physics C, AP US Gov, AP Lit, AP Calc BC (Taking senior year)Honors: National Merit Semi, National Honor Society, Cum Laude SocietyExtracurriculars:1) Research (9th grade-)Publications- 1 co-author in Human Molecular Genetics, 1 co-author paper submitted (accepted by reviewers), 1 co-author is in preparation for publication.Intel ISEF 3 times- 9th grade Student Observer, 10th + 11th FinalistPresented research posters 3 times at International Spinal Muscular Atrophy research meeting.Invited to give a seminar talk for graduate students on the research project.Worked 4 years at one lab; during that time, interned for short periods at 2 other labsAttended a program at a local hospital for gifted high school students, studying molecular biology of cancer.Employed at Ohio State University as a Student Research Assistant.2) Neuroscience writer for the National High School Journal of Science (12th grade-)Wrote 8 neuroscience review articles for the entire summer 2013 issue, reviewing current progress in neuroscience research.3) Speech and debate (9th grade-)4th Place and 6th Place in Duo Interpretation at two tournaments.4) MusicCare volunteer at the James Cancer Hospital (11th grade-)Volunteered 100 hours at hospital to play piano for cancer patients and visitors5) Piano Performance (5th grade-)Finalist at Hope Young Artist Competition.Honorable Mention at local competition.Organized and performed a solo piano benefit concert. Team leader of 26 students and 8 teachers, raising $3500 for breast cancer research.6) Violinist in school orchestra (7th grade-)Perform in 5 concerts every year; orchestra was selected as a Finalist to compete at National Orchestra Festival competition7) Ballroom dancer (5th grade-)1st Place Juvenile International Latin, Riverfront DanceSport Festival4th Place International Open Latin 3 dances, Arnold Sport Festival (Dancing division)😎 Junior Director at local civic association (12th grade)Helped to organize and plan community events, such as 4th of July Parade (100 community service hours)Other awards: Recipient of 2012 and 2013 Presidential Service Award

Based your post, your student may prefer taking classes at community college. You'll want to contact local families who are familiar with dual enrollment requirements locally. Otherwise for Spanish, Language Bird is very interactive, and you can work at your own pace. Stanford Online High School is also very interactive with a nice community of students worldwide, but tuition is high and you need to apply as you would any private school. But you can enroll part time or for a single course. My dd loved her PAH classes and made friends there too. She just returned from Orange County to visit an old PAH friend and will be flying out to Utah next month to see another PAH friend before starting college.

1. Accreditation: I'm not sure what accrediting agency you are referring to. Could you elaborate? This was not an concern for us, as I'm unaware of why this is important. 2. Transcript: It was a lot of work and we went through a lot of interations. I've had some experience using spreadsheets, but it was mostly with using formulas. I was wholly unfamiliar with how to make a spreadsheet look beautiful. Once a homeschooling mom clued me in (hint: extremely narrow column widths, and widespread use of merge cells), I was off to the races. Still, whenever someone else in my family suggested a change, it would take 45min - 1 hour to clean up all the merged cells and whatnot. Lots of suggestions for edits were made, lots of versions, lots of double checking of math for GPA calculations. I recommend getting started on this asap, even for your 10th grader. 3. Admissions: Dd was admitted to Stanford and all her STEM safeties. She was rejected by the Ivies and MIT. Overall, we're happy with her result. 4. Be organized. I have a google drive with folders and subfolders: You can not start this process too early. You can start now by collecting course descriptions into one document. Join the hs2coll yahoogroup and the College Confident Homeschoolers FB group. But WTM is an excellent source of advice as well. In August, create a counselor account on the Common App if you think you'll be using it. (This is tricky because it requires a student with an account to invite you, but you can work around that.) Familiarize yourself with the CA. It's a lot to wrap your head around, but overall I found it very forgiving of errors and redos. Stay on top of the testing schedule, which will depend on your student's goals.

I find this to be true regarding good advice in general.

This is a really good point. Sometimes schools actually put their multi-million dollar endowments to better use than enriching hedge fund managers...like cutting students a break on tuition. If you love an expensive school, it can't hurt (other than the application fee) to throw in your hat and see how much love they show you in return. Where love = $$.

Oh my gosh, I started watching this on your recommendation, and it's too funny! For readers of the other thread on college costs, there's a biting episode about just that in the last season.

I had the opposite issue with a gal I was tutoring. She had been taught the traditional long division algorithm but it just wasn't sticking with her. Each time, it was like she was having to memorize it all over again. I thought the partial quotients method might resonate better with her, especially as it's described in Beast Academy. I described to her the new long division algorithm, and we tried a few problems. Then I compared it with the traditional algorithm and showed that we arrive at the same answer. And then we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. (Neither one is perfect in IMO, so it's really a matter of preference.) I asked her to try out the new algorithm with some homework problems and let me know which she preferred. Learning new and different algorithms and comparing them to others is a great learning experience, particularly when you can explain why they arrive at the same answer. After that, you can proceed with the one you think is most efficient and gets the job done.

This reminds me of a bit by John Mulaney about college costs. (A warning about languauge.) "By the way, I agreed to give them $120,000 when I was 17 years old. "With no attorney present. "That's illegal."