Are they charging $40 for a missed test _in addition to_ the regular registration fee? Or is the $$$$ regular registration fee refunded except for that $40? (Guess I could go poke through the site, but maybe someone already knows...) ETA: And WHAT exactly could possibly be the rationale for tacking ANOTHER $40 on to the already ridiculous cost of ~$100 for each AP exam?? In what way does NOT taking the thing affect the CB's work involved?

What did you think of HSLDA's test prep? I was looking at that, even though she doesn't need the English. Why did your youngest go a different route? PM me, if that's easier. Thanks!

I agree that Khan would probably be the best targeted prep for her, but she doesn't have the self-discipline to follow through with it. "Also, is your dc close to the desired score or pretty far away? Will only a few points make a big difference? Will more practice be the answer?" If she could bring her math score up, she could be on the edge for NMSQT commended, I think. Hard to say. She knows where she wants to go to college, and I think she'll be ok getting in as things stand now, but I'm not sure and don't want to gamble on it if I can find her a test prep solution that would work for her.

I didn't have to go this route with my sons, but I think my daughter could use some solid math SAT test prep. Her English score is good, so she doesn't need that but I know most prep courses do both. It seems like Khan would be the best, targeted prep she could do for math, but, alas, she does not have the drive to push her way through math. I need something where she'll have to follow a clear schedule and get, hopefully, at least some personal feedback. Any suggestions?

I use CrosswordLabs.com to make Latin vocab practice crosswords for my students. It's free. Quizlet is supposed to be good for online review games. One of these days I'm going to spend the time figuring it out. ?

Thank you, both! I'll check those sites out tonight!

Has anyone found an app which allows you to create your own printable cursive practice sheets on a Mac? When my own kids were young, I used Fontware, I think it was called, but it no longer works on my updated Mac. I'd like to type in a poem and have it printed as D'Nealian cursive for the kids to use as a reference for their copywork. Thanks in advance!

Yes, the cahiers are the workbooks. I was able to correct the exercises on my own, so I'm not sure where the answers were. Sorry! You could take a look at the series on Holt's site. I did that first and then went looking for the pieces I wanted. Just fyi.... you'll see the "One Stop Teacher Planner DVD" on the site & it will look tempting, but it isn't necessary. I only got it bec I could get it the charter bought it for me, but I could never get any of those to run on my Mac. I think they'd be more of a distraction than a help, anyhow.

We used Bien Dit 2 for a year with my sons because it was what the local high school used and I wanted them to be able to go directly into the high school's French 3 if they wanted to go that route for 9th-12th. I also figured that, since it was used in the local high schools, it would be easier for me to find an effective/efficient local tutor, if necessary. Bien Dit was easy to use. We were with a charter at the time, so we got all the parts... student text, teacher text, audio/video, test booklet, workbook. All we ended up using were the student text, test book, and workbook. If I hadn't had some background in French, we would probably have used the audio/video component. The text and workbook can be found used online fairly cheaply. French 1 & 2 are pretty standard across the board; they all teach certain basic vocab and basic grammar. Other than Rosetta Stone, you probably can't go wrong with whatever you use, as long as you can get the audio/video support you need if you don't have any background in French to draw on.

I think it's interesting that they're requiring not just a paper written by the student, and not just a graded paper written by the student, but a graded paper _with_ teacher comments. At the most basic level this might help prevent students from submitting essays that are not theirs, although the essay mills will find a way around anything. I would also think that a graded paper w comments would give a pretty good idea of the quality/level of instruction and that might shine a light on what exactly an "A" means for that class and, by extension, at the school overall.

Yes! This was exactly our path, too! When the kids hit 7th grade, I started looking at the UC "requirements." We even used a charter so their a-g math & foreign language credits could transfer to high school &, thus, their transcript. Oh, the time I _wasted_ churning and churning on the arbitrary craziness that is UC "requirements." I think we Californians tie ourselves in knots over a-g hoops, only to find that we didn't have to. Took until end of 9th grade to fully realize that if we followed the UC a-g class requirements, JUST to get into a UC, we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot as far as 1) the quality of courses & education my kids could get during high school, and 2) how attractive my kids would be to other colleges. The a-g approved classes I could find were pablum compared to the caliber of classes at Lukeion (vs a-g approved Rosetta Stone?!?!?) and a multitude of other high quality providers out there. I found we could do much better for our kids by choosing great classes with great teachers and going the subject test route. And, in the end, none of that churning and planning around UC requirements mattered because none of the kids (nor I) were even interested in going to a UC after seeing the other possibilities! The UCs are great schools, for some kids, but they didn't turn out to be what my kids wanted.

I agree about making it a homeschooled course listing the audited class and instructor as the primary resource for the course and assign a grade based on the final project. You have to be a little careful about how you phrase it so that the admissions office doesn't hear it as him being enrolled in the course/institution because then they'll be looking for an official transcript from the institution. If this were an unusual, or an above-and-beyond, sort of thing, I'd want the course to stand out. I'd list the professor's name & qualifications on the course description list & note that the student was invited to audit this particular course & why, assuming there's a story there that highlights some above-and-beyond aspect of the student. If the student's final project was graded by the professor, I'd use that grade and note that, also, in the course description. Basically, show that this wasn't just a typical high school level course done at a local co-op or community college. When I was putting together my sons' transcripts, I heard that having a "pass" credit on the transcript could be detrimental, that some schools converted "pass" to a "C," which could impact the student's overall GPA. I'm not sure if that's the case, but I thought it was enough of a risk that I didn't list any "Pass" grades on my sons' transcripts.

FWIW, I ended up writing the letter and uploading it. I'm not sure if the formatting would have been preserved if I'd put it in the text box. (Can't get the formatting below to work; it did NOT look like this! The name of school was in bold. Skipped a line between home phone and "Student: ..." Skipped a line between "CAID:...." and the salutation "Dear Sir or Madam:" I thought it came out looking pretty well and professional! Name of school (We're in CA and used a Private School Affidavit, so we had to have a name on our yearly PSA submission. I used that.) our street address home telephone Student: .... CAID: ... (the common app student ID number) Dear Sir or Madam: [body of letter] Sincerely, my name Homeschool Parent/ Administrator

Looks like the deadline for listing (or changing) a first choice college is May 31. A student can change his first choice up until then. From the NMSQT site: "May 31, 2019: Deadline date for NMSC to receive reports of a sponsor college as first choice. Because it is necessary to treat all Finalists consistently and conclude the annual competition in a timely manner, only college choice reports that NMSC receives by May 31, 2019, will be used to identify the final group of candidates to a college or university that sponsors awards."

I submitted an unweighted GPA, which seems to be the clearest, most credible number to submit, so I used a 4.0 scale. On the transcript, I also put down an overall, weighted GPA, up at the top, under the unweighted GPA. I explained the weighting GPA calculation in the "Key to Grading" box on my transcript as well as in my "School Profile."

I'd be very interested in what you think of CLRC's Brit lit as you get further along. I was looking at that or TPS's for my dd, but CLRC's Brit Lit conflicted w/ CLRC's GB3, so we dropped that option.

It's still early, only the third week, and I should probably wait until my daughter is further in, but I have to say I think I love CLRC's Great Books course! My dd is having to read much more closely now that she actually has to synthesize what she's reading and learning in order to write about it. There's a weekly, maybe page-long essay and short answer study questions (for which she has to include textual support) and a longer essay every couple of weeks, I think. The instructor actually READS everything and provides intelligent, cogent, useful feedback on it! I think I may have FINALLY found a class of the caliber of the English courses I was fortunate to have had at an excellent, private high school! Good literature, good discussion, & solid writing!

My dd loved that class last year!

LOL Here, it was I who was afraid my dd would get a 2 on the exam, based on some of the feedback she received on her essays. Of course, I didn't tell her that. However, I did keep reminding her that all she needed was a 3 and that might be hard to get on an AP Latin exam. As a mom, I did wonder from time to time if there was a "kinder, gentler" way to the same end, but ultimately my dd learned a whole lot more from the classes and from Amy than Latin. Amy pushed her harder than I would have and harder than any other teacher she's had so far, and for my dd that turned out to be a good thing, despite my worries.

My daughter was similar..... She took Lukeion Latin 1-4/AP with Amy. Just got a 5 on the exam this year. She somehow adapted to Amy's hard core approach & actually thrived with it. Complained about the "evil Mrs. Barr," (in a joking way. sort of. lol), but she knew she was really accomplishing something in that class and was proud of herself. The fact that she was obviously accomplishing something very difficult was sufficiently satisfying for her to be content taking the class. She did not opt to continue with Ovid, but she's still comparing her other classes to her Lukeion Latin classes and basically thinks that if she could do Lukeion, she can do anything.

I completely agree with this. There is no real money in education; nobody would go into teaching to make money. I think most teachers at WHA, WTMA, TPS, Lukeion, and the other reputable providers teach more as a labor of love, hoping to make enough to make ends meet. Nobody does it to get rich. I cringe when I see people complaining about paying $600/year for a class. That's $67/month to teach a complete subject! A good, diligent writing teacher I know once told me that, when she calculated what she was really making after factoring in class time, prep time, individual help time, and reading/grading/feedback time, she was making about $7/hour or something like that. I don't agree with all of WHA's policies, either, especially the new student fee or the house system since we don't need those. However, I understand what they're trying to do and I think they have the best intentions and the highest hopes for improving the overall experience for their students, I'm just not the particular market segment that that sort of thing appeals to or is useful to. I'm a la carte all the way. Being able to pick and choose is why we homeschool rather than use a private school. (That and the fact that $49K/year/child for local private high school is out of our range! That same school charges $32K for full day PRESCHOOL!!)

Like Alewife, I picked a date about two weeks after I thought we'd actually finish to avoid any issues with classes finishing late or testing or .... anything else that could possibly come up. I felt like too early a grad date was more likely to cause problems than a later graduation date.

Credits seem pretty meaningless. Our local public school requires 220 credits for graduation!? Each one-semester course is 5 credits. I have to believe that college admissions people know that what constitutes a "credit" is all over the board, so I concentrated more on what classes my kids took, rather than a random number of "credits." I tried to align with how the better private schools did things rather than how our public school did things. The private schools did list PE/"Health", but did not list Driver's Ed or other "life skills," so I didn't, either. The difficulty I had with credits was how to combine classes from different sources which have different definitions of a "credit." With my sons, I compiled all classes, from all sources onto a single transcript. We homeschooled under a public charter in 8th & 9th, in case the boys wanted to go to a brick & mortar. All those high school courses were listed as 10 credits on the official charter transcript. When I listed them on the single transcript, I listed them as 1.0 credit for year long courses and 0.5 credits for semester courses, just as I did for every year long or semester long course. My daughter took a summer Bio w/ lab class at the local community college. The transcript from the cc will list it as a 3 credit class. Since it, theoretically, covered one year of high school biology, I'm planning to list it as 1.0 credit on her transcript. (It was nowhere near the caliber of the high school biology class she'd have had at the local home school/school hybrid that we usually use for lab sciences, which also makes me feel like "credits" is meaningless.) Although I compiled a single transcript with all the courses my sons took, I also submitted the charter's official 9th grade transcript. None of the specific colleges to which they applied raised any questions about it.

Hi, Sorry for the delay... Haven't been on the wtm boards much lately & didn't see your question till now. (Tried to PM, but it said I can't PM you, either! My mailbox isn't full, so no idea what's up) Yes, my boys and my daughter have taken a number of AP exams at SIL. We have had no problems there at all. One nit I have w/ them is that they don't acknowledge receipt of registration and payment until it gets close to the test date when they send out the details of when to arrive, etc, etc. Now I know, so I just mail in the reg & payment and then email the following week to confirm they received it. SIL really saved me when my boys were in 11th and had registered for the AP Lit exam at our local public high school. The ps was communicating extra info about the tests through their school channels, which of course we didn't have access to, so we weren't told that the kids had to be there 30 mins earlier than the time stated on the forms. I dropped the boys off 15 mins early, but they wouldn't let them into the room even though they had not even STARTED filling out the demographics section, yet! SIL very graciously let me register the boys for the make-up test date, no problem at all. Anyhow, last year, when I asked my boys and daughter whether they wanted to take their APs at SIL, the public school, or Bellarmine (Catholic school where we've also done a few tests), they all said SIL. It is not a fancy place. It's kind of in an older strip mall location. But, it's quiet & small. Much better than the ps where the hordes of students are directed to do this/that and go here/there by the assistant principal shouting through a bullhorn! Craziness. Is this for the 2019 AP exams?! If so, you are SO on top of things! Good for you!

My dd will be taking Alg 2 this year, as a junior. She's not a math person, & I didn't push it. However, now I'm feeling like maybe she should have done Alg 2 last year, instead of Geometry so that she'd have it in time for the PSAT. Oh, well. Don't know what the right answer is. & It won't really matter unless the student is in the running for NMSQT, if you care about that. Just throwing this out there FWIW.