This is great. But can I also say I hate rules that aren't really rules at all?

Common App. Though I had planned to work through the UC app as well. I'm learning so much about the idiosyncrasies, and I'm really glad to be doing this.

Halloween is around the corner, and my kids enjoyed graphing the distribution of candies they received, making a pie chart, etc. (25% Snickers, 10% Tootsie Rolls, etc.)

Hi, Terri: No, we're not considering attending. But I do know some smart kids who attend. I'm just generally curious about the school since it's nearby; I don't need information imminently. My general sense of the school is that it's big enough that if you have gifted kids, they can find their tribe and the tougher classes. They also have a really good robotics team. Frankly, it reminds me of my own big public high school that attracts students from all walks of life.

I'm poking around the Secondary Schools section, and I see that there is room for 4 different schools. In addition to "Home Schooled" which I will select, I can also add some other vendors we have used like PAH and SOHS. This is helpful because in the "Courses and Grades" section of the CA, it will populate a pull down menu with a list of schools she's taken, and we can enter her PAH and SOHS classes as having been taking with those vendors, which seems more accurate than having taken them at my homeschool, which one could argue is also true. But if I choose to add more than one secondary school, the CA prompts the student: "Please provide details about why you left each of the above secondary schools." which sounds a bit negative and implies that we were enrolled full time. N.B., the Courses and Grades section is new this year I believe and not widely required by colleges yet. Any thoughts on the best way to approach this?

A rule of thumb I've read in all these books is your student should write an essay about an experience that no other student could write. I could write about being on the basketball team and how that helped me learn teamwork. Trouble is, there are probably 300,000 other basketball players who could write the same thing. As long as his scouting experience is unique to him, he's in a good place with his topic.

The essays I've written that have gotten me into competitive undergrad and med school were not creative at all. I'm just not a creative person. They were very concrete and specific about my personality and my life. I decided what about myself I wanted these schools to know, and I told them, using specific examples. I'll backtrack a bit and say that I deliberately write my introduction in a way that's designed to lure in the reader, so I suppose that could be considered creative. I began my med school essay with "Last week I graduated from second grade." If your ds is tired of essay writing classes (who wouldn't be?), I recommend he read sections of these books. They often have a nice process of going from brainstorming ideas, rough draft, to final polish. One book even helps you "recycle" one essay for different prompts. I thought all these books were helpful: On Writing the College Application Essay How to Get Into the Top Colleges How to Prepare a Standout College Application Get Into Any College: Secrets of Harvard Students

In addition to all private, public, and charter schools, try calling any after-schooling centers and tutoring centers and any place that is related to education and serves students. You never know. Tell them you are willing to pay any registration and proctoring fees. Tell them your student does not require accommodations. If you live in a state where schools are not required to offer you services, be really really nice.

Since my kids have taken classes in CS, machine learning, and electronics, I created a subject called Technology. I'm not sure if I'll keep that or call them electives. Or maybe Technology Elective?

Whoa. You are totally right. When I'm logged out I can access the thread! Weird. But sadly, when I'm logged out I can't change the tags and when I'm logged in I can't access the thread at all, let alone the tags. And now I have a new work-around.

I was wondering about this, too. Perhaps your daughter is hanging out with a free spending crowd and she feels like she needs to keep up. It can be really hard to not contribute when your roommate wants to buy nice room decorations or eat out.

I remember I always looked forward to the log problems on the AHSME because those were easy points. There are only 5 logarithm rules, so it's easy to work through them to find the answer. Also, the log rules are pretty easy to derive in a pinch, using only the relationship between logs and exponents.

My dd took AP chem in 9th grade having only had middle school science prior. It's a lot of work and requires good EF skills, but PAH has an excellent course. her science schedule: 9th: ap chem 10th: ap bio 11th: advanced bio and ap physics c 12th: ??? If she likes electronics, you can consider using these books by Charles Platt, published by Maker Media.

I found my old thread, and it's still not available to me. http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/500073-reading-comprehension-help/ "IP.Board Message You do not have permission to view this forum. In some cases joining this Social Group will give you permission to view this forum."

My dd is concerned about the teachers she wants to write her letters. She has had a great relationship with her AP chem teacher from 9th grade and her AP bio teacher from 10th. But she's been hearing that she ought to have teachers from 11th or 12th grade writing her recommendations. Is it better to have more recent teachers write her letters? What difference does 1-2 years make? She continues on as a TA and tutor for both classes, so she has some continued contact with these teachers, though it is online, so not very directly. Thank you for sharing your experiences and suggestions.

So do they allow students to take the AMC 10 and the AMC 12 on the same day?

This happened to me about a year ago. It wasn't a pinned thread, but one I had initiated. I received some generous responses and I needed to find that list of resources again, but the entire thread that I had created was off limits to me. It was now the property of a private group--I think for parents of students with learning differences?--and I needed to join the group in order to ever read it again. I tried every work-around I could think of, including contacting the leader of the private group and Help thread on WTM. Eventually I came up with something...it might have been finding a cached page on google or something. It was very frustrating.

FYI Art Benjamin's Discrete Math on Great Courses aligns nicely with this text.

I thought it was way harder than the Intro C&P book, but maybe because much of the material was completely new to me.

Is this Woodside HS of which you speak? We may be neighbors. I'll be really interested to hear how a year there goes.

There's a great MythBusters episode about the fake moon landing.

Wow, no bed rails? That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Many competitive colleges make it harder to get it than to graduate. Even very selective universities will have an easy major or two.

I think learning Python is good thing to take before AP CS A. You can learn a bunch of the computer science concepts without all the heavy-handed OOP stuff you'll find in Java. That way, when you land in the AP course, your student will already be familiar with the programming concepts and now only need to learn the Java specific material.

The Common App gives ample opportunity to discuss any issues you have with your student's record. I think if your dd is enjoying this course and you are unable to locate a place to take the exam, you could include in her application the information you have provided here. You might even include it in the counselor section as well as in the part completed by the student. I think the situation you describe would be perceived to be entirely reasonable. I think you are correct that few high schools offer ap psych, and therefore there would be few locations that would offer the exam, let alone to an outsider.