Many private colleges do publish their merit scholarships, so you can see what they could potentially get. Those scholarships will give you a decent indicator of what kind of aid you are likely to get as well, at least in our limited experience. My kids earned top level scholarships at several private colleges. They were offered limited financial aid— and we sound like you— in-state university is about right, price-wise, not interested in taking big loans. The private colleges thought it would be reasonable for us to pay upwards of $120k for four years AFTER netting top-tier scholarships. My kids are happy at the in-state U, where they will graduate debt-free.

My oldest has stayed at school this summer for the most part, since the lease on his apartment is a full-year lease. He’ll be a senior this year, and each time we see him, he seems to mature faster than we can imagine. This weekend will be the last weekend at home for my youngest; the following Saturday, we drop him at his dorm for his freshman year. And then it’s just us and our cats and our students. And yes, happy for them and sad for me is a good way to put it! There will be good things coming, too— it’s been 22 years since my husband and I had ourselves to ourselves for more than a few hours to a very occasional weekend. Or just been able to waive off dinner if we weren’t hungry because we didn’t have anyone else to be responsible for feeding. But it’s going to be very weird, too. We have always eaten home-cooked meals around the table together as a family. I can foresee a few nights of eating out, despite the calorie intake, just to avoid that empty table for a few nights.

I don't recall the "educational Partners" thing in the Common App, so I probably ignored it. However, in the transcript, if my student took a course through an external provider, it was noted. On the one-page course summary at the top of the transcript, I had a column for letter codes and a legend at the top: T = Well Trained Mind Academy; R = University of Delaware; etc. (I tried to avoid letter codes that could be mistaken for unfortunate grades on a quick glance-- U, I, W, C, D, F) On the annotated transcript portion that described the course contents and resources used, line 1 was who taught the course and how it was graded: Course Taught by Dr. Elizabeth Edwards, PhD. Grade based on Exams (20%) Major Essays (30%) Weekly Assignments (50%) (I just made up that description, though Dr. Edwards is a real person who teaches rhetoric). I kept the annotated section as short as possible, though it was still quite long because we got through a lot of books (we used Build Your Library extensively); Who taught it, how it was graded, What the course covered (succinct), and resources used.

I see you already got your answer, but in case someone else looks through this thread in the future, Build Your Library also fits that description!

I have used the True Earth strips for a couple of years now. They dissolve well, get the clothes clean, come in unscented or “linen,” and the packaging is all cardboard— no plastic. For a really small load (like a single set of sheets) I just tear one of them in half and save the other half for the next small load.

My oldest ended up in a triple, so he lofted his bed to create space. The dumbest nice thing was a felt pocket that could Velcro over the railing. It had space for him to drop in any papers he was reading, his kindle, and best of all, it securely held his glasses so he could find them before climbing down. To go with that up in that lofted bed was a clip on lamp. Laundry strips were the next best idea! No heavy jug to cart around, no mess. One envelope lasted a whole semester. They work fine in campus machines (just put the strip directly in the tub). And skip the fabric softener. It’s just unnecessary. Their room didn’t have coat pegs, so we sent in a metal coat rack and a small bath towel to place under it. The guys appreciated kicking their wet or snowy boots off onto that towel and hanging dripping coats over it and not having a wet floor. I heard a rumor that one of the roommates actually washed it from time to time lol. Otherwise keep it minimal! If you plan to head out for parents weekend in a few weeks you can bring anything else they request, or order stuff delivered from Amazon or Target. Better to add than to have too much stuff.

Good luck, all! My top tip remains: get those essays and applications complete now before senior year starts. It makes the rest of the year so much less stressful! You can always add last-minute test scores and things as they roll in later. Best wishes to all this year!

If she is taking the course from an online provider and the test somewhere else (often the case when taking an online class such as through PA Homeschoolers) the class instructor will issue a join code for the class. At that point, your daughter will need her college Board account so she can enter the join code provided by the instructor. When the testing site registers her for the actual exam, they will issue an exam-only code that will connect to the classroom code and her account. Make sure she uses a consistent email address through all parts of the process when signing up for the different parts. It is one way to help ensure all the dots connect correctly and scores report smoothly.

Unfortunately, no. Even we classroom teachers we don’t get to see individual student graded responses; we just get instructional reports that show us what types of information the students mastered and struggled with, at a class level. You can pay to get your student’s test book back, but it will not have the grading information in it.

I hope everyone is getting the scores they expected or better today as AP scores are released! I tell my students throughout the year: You may well have goals and dreams for which you need a good score. I will support your efforts and provide you with all of the tools you need. But always remember: your worth as a human being is never determined by a test score. I am proud of all of my students, whether they took the exam or not, or whether they earned a 5 or a 1 (different students are facing different circumstances, priorities, and situations, throughout the year and on test day). My students can rely on me to be supportive no matter where they stand in the class. I am happy that we more than doubled the global percentage of 5’s. And yes, I invested hundreds of $ and thirty hours of training this summer to make the course better still (because as a practical matter, many students DO want a high score and college credit, and I will do what I can to help them achieve that goal). But the best outcome is having a group of students prepared to interact with statistics in the world around them, and who spent a year learning to think more flexibly about data. So May your score reports be what you hoped. And even if this one score falls short, hopefully the experience in whatever your students studied was worthwhile and amazing. Good luck to all! Jen Driscoll AP Statistics/PA Homeschoolers Honors History of Science/PA Homeschoolers

Yahoo!

Scores are released to students on July 5. Some students saw them today because colleges got them today and released them early to student transfer portals (they weren’t supposed to, but this happens every year). But the official score release day to the College Board accounts is July 5, not the 3rd.

Wow, I’m feeling so fortunate that our state U is so good about this stuff. My son filled out a pre-advising questionnaire about his intended major and potential interest in any future minors or double majors, then it guided him through each category of breadth requirements and had him look through the types of classes available for each one and had him list some ideas about his preferences in each category. Then he went to a pre-advisement webinar live online to learn what the process would be, graduation requirements would be, and what the available tools for managing his plans were (online audit tools to show him what requirements are met and in progress and still to be met, 4-Year suggested planner, etc). Finally he met one on one with his assigned advisor, who had his transcript, transfer transcripts and self-reported AP’s and math placement score, and they looked at the recommended freshman year plan, filled in the obvious required courses, then looked at the spaces where options existed and talked about the choices available for those options, with backup plans for each slot (schedules aren’t final until August). At his request, I sat in the background during the advising appointment, but I didn’t actually say anything— he handled it just fine on his own, which I figured he would. I DID give him a heads-up before he went in to let him know the advisor would have a “formula” to work from, and he had a right to self-advocate to diverge from the formula if appropriate (our older son did not do this and ended up with 18 credits his first semester, which was rough, though he survived). DS2 ended up with a good schedule that he’s happy with, and feels he now knows the process if he wants to go back and talk to his advisor about changing something up later, and I reminded him he DOES have room to drop one course during free drop/add if he needs to (I’m fine if he only carries 12 credits his first semester), and pointed out which one would be best to drop, but after that I’m pretty hands-off with my kids for course enrollment, unless they ask. DO have your student log in to the university’s system and do some poking around. There may well be some “tools for success” sitting around they may want to be familiar with such as degree audit calendars, pre-scheduling planners that let you put in trial schedules ahead of your registration time so you have time to think through your scheduling plans and make a few different plans in case the sections you wanted fill up, and suggested 4-year plans. I think a lot of colleges and universities do have these kinds of tools parked somewhere. It may also be possible to change advisors after the semester starts, if they find their advisor is just not a good fit, depending on the size of the school/department.

Egads things are getting real. The number of things left unchecked on the checklist before he heads out in fall is growing smaller, as are the number of days remaining until we have an empty nest…

Sorry, typing on my phone… I can’t even figure out what “Jay” was supposed to have been before it autocorrected…

Just a thought. Have her verify that she is certain she consistently used the same email address at every step of registration and contact with the testing school, and that it’s the same email address as the Jay AP test taken. i have several students who ended up communicating with me through multiple email addresses during AP Stats without even realizing it until I asked them to verify who they were before sharing information. The college Board does attach information to specific email addresses as well as those ID stickers and if something doesn’t match up, it can goof things up fast.

Another boardie who used to be very active here had her out-of-state college student end up in the ER in a diabetic crisis. And nope, the hospital would NOT release any information or allow Mom and Dad to direct care. It isn’t scare tactics. It’s a real thing. Without a POA, the local hospital is completely in charge.

I’m not getting the infantalizing thing. These documents, done correctly, don’t give you carte Blanche to run your kid’s finances. They give you the ability to step in and prevent a train wreck in the event that your kid is incapacitated— and they can be modified by your offspring at any appropriate time in the future (such as has a spouse, adult children, whatever). Everyone should have these things in place, quite frankly; they aren’t safety harnesses for “adultlings.” It’s the opposite of being infantalizing— taking full responsibility of your finances by planning for how to survive a catastrophe is a very adult thing to do, and requires very adult conversations to take place. It’s difficult to even pay someone’s cell phone bills or get access to a balance without a legal right to those accounts if they are unable, but the billers will not hesitate to add late charges and interest to those accounts even if the person they are billing is incapacitated. And, “Oh, I’m Mom” doesn’t cut it like it did back in the 1950’s. I think the conversations needs some reframing. Financial planning is about the person *taking* responsibility, and not just assuming that if something bad happens they will get to toss their hands in the air and cry, “Well what could I have done? I was unconscious!” Owners of debt are often not super sympathetic to that approach. Sometimes they are, which is awesome. But it is not their obligation to do so. So planning ahead is a very *adult* thing to do.

Everything you said is true, which is why we told our son that the POA was going to be filed and forgotten about— unless he was rendered unconscious and unable to make decisions for himself for an unreasonable time, and had nobody else to do it for him (such as a spouse or long-term SO). Tragic accidents and TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) happens, even to the young, and a young single adult can get into a really complicated problem if bills go unpaid for months because they are in a coma and nobody else has the ability to pay their bills or rent. And yes, even as a very non-helicopter parent, it would bother me if my kid was in the hospital unable to make any decisions because he had been completely incapacitated, so hospital staff were making decisions for him. The purpose of these documents isn’t to meddle in the life of a functioning adult. It’s to keep a disaster from getting worse than necessary in the event that something truly horrid happens in which the person is no longer in a position to make any decisions of any kind. It has nothing to do with renting them a car, or overseeing run of the mill ER trips or anything where they are capable of *asking* for help. It’s for when they are NOT capable of asking for help. For families who may not have had these conversations with their 18YOs, it’s also an important conversation starter about their wishes (which may evolve over time, too, a good reason to review these documents ever 5-10 years, with parents reciprocating about their wishes). Burial or cremation? Organ donation? How many measures to prolong life, and at what point to let go? Not happy conversations, but, I speak from experience of having had these conversations with a parent, incredibly helpful to have had before they are needed. So yes, I agree with you completely that it is not our place to oversee or meddle in the everyday lives of our adult offspring! And these documents are not for that purpose at all. Just because they CAN be invoked doesn’t mean they HAVE to be or that they WILL, and in many cases there are clear guidelines that have to be met before they can be invoked anyway, such as documented incapacity of a certain length. It’s not about protecting our adults from adulthood. It’s about mutual trust to be able to step in when absolutely needed if they are physically and mentally unable, just as they might be able to do for us, assuming you have a complete living will and POA etc set up for yourself as well. Just some food for thought.

Our state U specifically states there is no credit given for foreign language classes taken prior to ninth grade grade (regardless of the claimed level of the class); they want to see a minimum of 2 years of the same language studied, during grades 9-12. The best practice is… check the specific requirements listed on the application pages of the types of colleges where your daughter might be applying.

I honestly tried to find out— I was really curious why she would think this was a good idea. She never did articulate an intelligible reason for it though. Fortunately, I had more of the better kind of professor in my college journey.

Yup. I had a genetics prof who stood at the front of the room and said, very clearly, “I gave you enough space for 1 paragraph for each answer. DO NOT write more than that. I will draw a line after about 200 words and stop grading there, so whatever you do, don’t do a brain dump, because it won’t be graded.” I knew the material backwards, forwards, and sideways, and when I must, I can edit down to say what I need to rather concisely. I did so. I got an F. I could see classmates who had turned over their papers and scribbled to cover the entire back pages of the exam all got A’s. I went to office hours and asked what the story was. Her response? “Of course you should write down everything you know. I just wanted to get everyone excited for the exam.” So I failed because I was the only one who followed directions. ::::shrug::::: You can believe that on the NEXT exam she lived to regret “exciting” us. I can write fast and tiny, as well as organized. She needed a magnifying glass to read it, and you can believe I filled every available inch of paper. The key is to learn from the first exam and adapt. And I left feedback at the end of the course that it is best to NOT give directions that mean the opposite of what you say.

The learning here is that professors don’t teach by the textbook; many are expecting that in college, you are reading and digesting that on your own, and then lectures are where their emphasis and particular lens through which to examine the material come into play. They have very wide latitude for how they wish to handle their courses (unless it is a course that has a common syllabus because multiple people teach across several sections and coordinate exams, but this does not sound like such a situation). One of my sons took the 3-semester French sequence in college. The second semester exams and lectures consisted mostly of pop culture (which was actually in the text— it was in the margin notes and footnotes and photo captions) rather than any straightforward grammar/vocabulary. I told him to deal with it— and that learning a language does involve learning cultural touchstones that people do actually talk about (even if they are not interesting to him). If a professor emphasizes something in lecture, assume it will figure prominently on the exams. If it happens on one exam, prepare for it to happen on the next and the next (by the third exam and then the final, my son was sticky-flagging the pop-culture stuff in his text to cram before exams and his grade went way up as a result; he was already good at learning the actual language part of the course). One of the things that makes college courses exciting is when professors add their expertise to a course and don’t just teach from the book; college students should be ready to learn what’s in a textbook independently, for the most part, and arrive in lecture ready to build on that, or to ask questions to clarify anything they didn’t get.

Well I think everyone should take stats, and you need algebra 2 as the math prerequisite 😉 (self-promotion). Jen AP Statistics/PA Homeschoolers Honors History of Western Science/PA Homeschoolers

I don’t know if you’re interested in any AP classes, but Rebekah Lang at PA Homeschoolers has something close to a 100% pass rate on the exam. Her kids seem to learn quite a bit in her classes, and have fun in the process.