The issue is not volume of reading. She reads that much and twice that much in every other subject....the issue is teaching yourself Chemistry with only a textbook when you are not a Science minded person. Not to say that better time management wouldn't help but I looked at her planner and it turns out that aside from this past week she had schedule everything out more in blocks of time over the week. ... honestly she won't take any Science at college except the very minimal one requirement, and probably in that case it'll be an Earth Science. Also, the 25 pages really need to be done in two or three days because you also have the OYOs each day as well as a Study Guide which takes about two days and then studying for the test. And in college she would actually have a teacher going over the material at minimum twice per week and she would also have access to Office Hours. So, teaching onself chemistry completely alone with only a review session for 20 minutes per week, does not mirror either high school or college. Honestly again I think that sometimes homeschool parents who cannot teach a subject expect kids to totally self-teach and it's just not fair or possible. Since my dd is not a future STEM major, I dont' see the need to hunt down a tutor, and stick with a college prep academic Chemistry class, since she already had two college prep Science with Lab. And unlike so many homeschool moms I know they either expect the kids to self teach and don't really follow up, or they do everything open-book and it's a farce. I think why PAC or AOP works for her is that not only is it meant for self teaching, but the material is at least for this General Science course slightly easier, as well as the fact that the program helps portion and schedule everything out, and has daily checks for understanding and mastery. For Science, that's a good fit for my dd. I would be happy if, in her ONE Science class she will ever take in college if she gets a C. C's get degrees 🙂

No, she's taking General Science 3 from AOP, the third in a sequence of high school General Science meant for 11th graders. It's a less intense high school series which touches on all the topics of General Science, over four years. The third year will be something more academic on her transcript, give a short overview of Chemistry as well as other topics, not as academic as a full Chemistry but better than not having a third year of academic Science at all. Thanks for all of the other ideas!! They will still be useful to link since there are a few chapters of Chemistry in the course she is taking now.

Yeah, I feel like an idiot because it is there but just way down low and not really in any way spelled out. But the class should have been titled “Review and Labs” The teacher is soooo nice, she asked if it would help if she added a five minute preview each week and said my dd is one of her favorite students! 😞. But the amount of reading in this text seems overwhelming to me. I know we expect a lot of our homeschooled students as far as self teaching but I personally would have cried every day and I was a great student with a good memory and easy ability to memorize...never would I have wanted to read over 25 pages per week and teach myself chemistry every week! My dd is more clever and better at math but not so good at reading and memorizing text especially Science. ...I can’t really help her, when I try it takes me a long time to sit down and read the many pages and try to digest the material myself and then figure out what’s missing, and our personalities clash anyway. We are going to switch her to a General Science instead...(NOT Apologia General Science but another one meant for 11th graders.)

it turns Out the teacher is not teaching at all I reread the syllabus and realized she is only doing a 10 minute review and labs it is up to the parent to teach the student review with the student and discuss with the students

Good thoughts. I’ll have to look at the tests and talk to the teacher. One of the frustrating parts is that the teacher doesn’t answer any of my emails. And sometimes doesn’t answer my daughter’s either. So I really have no way to gain info. I’m hesitant to try to go before or after class because of the schedule and setup at the co-op. It would be very obvious and therefore awkward for my dd and I’m sure it would be inconvenient to the teacher but she hasn’t emailed me back all year. one of the teachers she has this year does the extremely hard open book test things but it makes sense since a large part of their grade isn’t even based on tests - instead it’s based on Key Assignments which are difficult and time consuming. And the tests are 60% essay questions which require a lot of synthesis and thought. So that definitely makes sense to me. But for chemistry you’re just learning the same concepts regardless of how it’s presented so I don’t know if a teacher could make it much harder than it normally is. Maybe I’ll compare her tests with Apologia’s original.

Dd is taking chemistry at a different co op from the one she usually attends. The teacher is brand new and her solution to the difficulty of not having more time with the kids is that all tests be open book which I will not do. the class is on a Friday and the teacher doesn’t do much teaching. They mostly do that week’s experiments. My dd is really having trouble - she takes Saturday’s off of schoolwork and then sundays and Monday she’s doing tons of work for the classes she has Tuesday through Thursdays - often times it’s already Wednesday before she even Really gets down to business with chemistry and by then of course it’s not very good, so Friday she spend the entire day Doing it and then going to the class. I’ve spent time reading it with her and I have to say without a class and teacher it’s challenging - just a lot of info and reading and even some math. I would like to encourage her to get the majority of her chemistry done Sunday and Monday. But I’m not sure that time management is the only issue. I’ve thought of having her to PAC integrated physics and chemistry instead but also she won’t have much hand holding in college so I’m not sure she should drop the chemistry.

Sorry, I was responding to the original post with just the mailers from the selective schools. I'm super happy for your dd, and this is definitely something to be excited about. We never looked into it, but I understand it's really helpful both financially and academically. I would still say 11 is too much, is she really excited about those 11 schools? Just pick the ones she's really excited about 🙂 Unless she has lots of time on her hands and is able to do a beautiful and meaningful job of all 11....or another thought is to start with them in the order of which she is most excited and that seem best for her, then work her way down the list, so if she doesn't get through all 11 you'll know she put the best heart into the first 5 or 6

Not to in any way burst your bubble, but it's all a marketing game nowadays. She may very well get in, but them reaching out to her means almost nothing. The more applicants they can get, the lower their acceptance rate, which makes them look even more selective which in some ways makes them even more appealing...so they spend a LOT of money sending out mailers, and pamphlets etc. One Ivy League school even courted my son with a phone call, and several letters in addition to the expensive full color mailers. He did not get in. Now, that is not to say it's not worth it to apply but keep things in perspective and only apply if, you can afford it, and if your dd is actually excited about the school. I made my son apply to two extra Ivy League schools that he was totally not interested in, and in retrospect it was a waste of time since he was overloaded with advanced classes and had already applied to some very selective schools that he was excited about. He ended up getting into a fairly selective program at a big school which is moderately selective and we are super happy with his choice, and he also got scholarships to other less selective schools. Luckily my son is not one to be high in the sky hopeful and then down in the dumps, nor is he one to set his sights on exactly one thing and takes things as they come, so his rejection from his top choice school didn't make him super upset or dejected 🙂 But really, the mailers mean almost nothing. We are getting them now for my dd, not as many because her SAT scores are lower but she's definitely getting a lot of them and it's not because they actually want to admit her. It's because they want to increase the application pool.

Wow that’s amazing and super interesting. If you take a block off because you’re sick you’d be dropping that class but you would have already registered for the next class....what happens then?

I don’t think it’s a good idea for the regular school year nor do i think it’s the wave of the future. If you get sick or miss even one class it’s an astronomical problem. And for classes that involve math, where things need to sink in, I think that the brain often just can’t put that into long term memory the way a longer course can .:.and of course you have less time for each concept to sink in, so getting lost is more likely. I’m sure there is a time and a place but I wouldn’t encourage my dc to take too many of these types of courses if at all.

Edelweiss, that sounds awesome! Glad she's doing well and also that she may get the chance to live on campus as well. Best of both worlds. My poor freshman son is extremely sick, with - get this- a virus that exists only at Penn State so it's interesting to the CDC and they're studying it. Way to be committed to your school! haha...all joking aside he ended up in the ER needing 4 bags of IV fluids, went home did BRAT diet, felt better, ate some chicken, went back to vomiting, back on BRAT diet...hopefully won't need to go back to the ER ...so today doing BRAT, tomrroow BRAT plus chicken broth and crackers, for Friday he called hte chef and ordered some mild soft foods, and also for Saturday plain chicken and pasta, so hopefully he just needs to very slowly work his stomach back. So far he has missed two classes due to this thing 😞 and gotten behind on homework due to visiting ER< visiting doctor, walking to get prescription, making and going to get INstacart orders, cleaning up puke and having to go to the laundry room over and over... 😞 I wish I could hug him.

It looks like he already did Algebra 1 and also Geometry. What are the rules in Canada about colleges and what they require for math? I could be wrong but it's my understanding that Canada is more like Britain, where the colleges are far less expensive, but a lot less people go to them, and there are other options such as trades. So I don't know if community college is a thing or what your goals are for college. Here, not taking Algebra 2 would pretty much be a death warrant to any academic college admissions. It would also cause the student not to score well on the SAT's. However, if you were going into a trade, the military, maybe an art school where they care more about your portfolio than your math...it would be fine 🙂 My dd is pretty good at math and self-teaching and found TT Geometry to be extremely easy with non stop A's all year long. She is finding the Algebra 2 much more tedious and challenging. I'm not sure if it's them, or the subject matter, but there's that for you. Have you looked at Key To? How about Kahn Academy, where he can just re-do different problems until he gets mastery?

Psychologist

I would use the public school's scale, adjust accordingly and keep careful paperwork showing the difference/adjustment/

Well NARHS accepted all of our documentation for past grades, so we are good to go on an accredited transcript 🙂 (Patting my back for saving such good records of everything.) 🙂

definitely working on the art portfolio 🙂

Graphic Design, but not at at an art school. For one thing we do not want her to go to an art school but a regular U for lots of reasons (want her to have more well rounded education, more well rounded student body, regular college experience, they're usually very expensive, her portfolio is not good enough for the best ones and the mediocre ones aren't worth the expense, and above all we want her to have the ability to change her major if she decides that doing art all of the time, as a matter of necessity is not her thing.) We have geographically limited the search significantly because of safety issues (aka where she can take a train safely in said city and where she couldn't) and also she wants to be within driving distance of our family back east - she is excited about the adventure but doesn't want to be on an island, not her thing at all 🙂.

Lori, thanks for the reminder, she is applying to PennState but a much much less difficult to get into major in a way. The GPA and SAT score threshold is very low but they only accept 80 students per year. So she will do early decision and say "yes" to summer session. When I called them, they were very adamant that GPA is all they care about as well as SAT scores, but were a little baffled about whether it mattered if the GPA was a homeschooled GPA. Lori- yes thank you for the reminder. Unfortunately the options for above average students in her major, where we are looking, and what we can afford, are very limited. It seems her choices are either colleges with average SAT scores of about 900 ....or they sort of bump up to about 1300's...it is very interesting ....Then, when you factor in specific major, affordability AND Geography, they shrink exponentially. So i want to be sure that, allowing her to be who she is, nothing holds her back from the colleges that are a slight reach. She adamantly also does not want to do subject tests or CLEP. She works very hard at 6 subjects, is working hard at her art, is learning how to drive, studying for the SAT's and taking two extra curricular things....for her that is enough, and she's not one to pick up a study book, ever. Thanks for thinking aloud with me as always everyone!

One thing that really seemed to validate my older son's transcript, was in addition to his extremely high SAT score, his plethora of community college classes. Every time I spoke with admissions they jumped for joy about that and said that was awesome, etc. My daughter is really happy with her co-op classes and they're much better than what I had in school back home. SOme of them are more academic than the CC classes, and they certain have better foundational skill-building. She doesn't want to go to community college or take CC classes online and frankly, everything is going so great, I don't see an actual reason. BUT her SAT's are 86th percentile. They're well above average but not so amazing that I think they'll validate her entire education or cause readers to take a second special look just because of them. I have looked into NARHS but I'm not sure we saved enough paperwork for what they require to get a middle states accredited diploma. So, if you applied as a regular homeschooler, what advice do you have that we could do to sort of "validate" her capabilities and education? I thought maybe she could just take a few accredited online mostly computer based classes through SVOHS but not sure that's really enough...

Similar to this, is that my son wanted to share some things about being a libertarian. My husband felt he should avoid any and all references to faith or politics whatsoever. I felt that my son should be himself and if it really matched the prompt and made sense to him, he should go ahead and include it. In the end, he didn't specifically avoid it but it just didn't really fit any of the prompts and I was glad he was able to be himself. He chose a university that has a more than usual number of conservative students for a large research university partly because he likes to be himself, and doesn't want to get bricks thrown at his head for it. 🙂 There was one question on Stanford's prompt that he answered in a whimsical and yet clear way that he has specific views on drinking and such, but I don't think that in any way would have marred his chances there, assuming it even made it to the reader pile 🙂 In the end, my son feels good that he was able to be himself. On the other hand, we were kind of relieved that he didn't out and out write an essay on his political views because you never know who the reader is.

If you PM me I will see if I can find it

We stuck to one page

This is why I would never ever send my kids to a college that runs on the quarter system. Too stressful! And all because they want to jam pack more students in

Nah, needs deadlines, and enjoys interaction... I guess what we might do is utilize the campus south of us, but the satellite campus so the commute is shorter and the demographics a little bit different. Nice downtown area she can also grab a bite to eat or something which would be fun for her.

Yah, it's so crazy how fast mid terms come, and how everything moves along so quickly. They even already have to request housing for next year at some universities and already have to make appointments with advisers and plan next semester's coursework. Too fast!