And as of today everybody in my immediate household is vaccinated. DS got his second shot yesterday. He ran fever and chills last night, but is back to normal today.

Because most homeschoolers around here are not vaccinated and we have enough medically vulnerable in my family. I am not taking chances to bring something home. No vaccine is 100% effective.

I am so close to the finish line and I still can’t tell which way it will go. Although I could also be justified sending them my therapy bill. 😂

As opposed to what? Correcting while screaming? Must everything nowadays be infused with feelings? I just think we make such a big deal out of such small things sometimes.

Not just you. You know how uneven it was for us in more detail than you care. 😂 Our biggest issues - if you are working through a particularly tough problem, it’s hard to know how representative it is of the exam (especially if it’s the first hour of so if the exam) so it’s unwise to make a decision to skip because there is no way back. Same goes for easy problems - is it easy and should you rush it in case you come up with a tougher section down the line? And if you finish with a bunch of spare time on your hand, no way to double check and catch silly errors. Digital exam is a resounding no for us going forward.

I change my mind. I knew the inability to circle back to problems was going to be the issue but now I know how big of an issue that was. I don’t think I would allow my kid to take a digital exam ever again. There was no ability to pace yourself.

CA schools aren’t generous to out of state students. But if you are full pay, they are still cheaper than many privates.

I wouldn’t write my own syllabus. Just use theirs. The wealth of prep material is tremendous now from videos to reviews to MCQs…. It makes self study a very doable task, I think. We are also planning on self studying (probably not next year though).

I would start looking and asking in mid September.

Only rich districts along with private schools here are offering exams in person, so i am not sure how they will normalize the curve, but those two exams (paper and digital) are really not the same thing anymore. Having said that I hope digital exams are here to stay.

I think this really needs to be the focus of high schools. It’s unforgivable what our high schools look like.

As a native speaker of a language that has no grammatical gender, all these pronouns just blow my mind.

Having personally seen some of these admissions officers, I find it absolutely repulsive that we seriously think these people are truly measuring our children’s potential. I will say no more. And accomplishing it in just 15 minutes per application!

Only I think it’s really difficult to figure out that culture. I have a highly academic kid who needs a very low key environment. Not an easy combination. I look at UCs and shake my head. It seems to be completely dominated by highly competitive kids from Silicon Valley. My child wouldn’t last a day. Everybody else thinks I am nuts and read too much into it. I don’t feel qualified to guide my kid at all. So I just got a Fisk guide from a friend and plan on having him read some representative samples of descriptions and see if anything “speaks” to him. Maybe couple of descriptions of LACs, couple tech schools, couple large public U’s....

This. Absolutely this.

so how does one measure potential? IQ tests? Recommendation letters? To me GPA shows achievement, not potential. And so do standardized tests. And should we disregard potential from middle class and upper class kids? So should poor show potential but the rest academic achievement?

I would also give a grade.

I have often looked at them and then looked away. They seem much more of a dreaded online platform than a class.

Seems like such an inefficient system and so much wasted time. And all those degrees and yet educational system is worse off.

Half the country seems to have a PHD in education and so many earned online. And then they want me to be impressed. 😂

I just found an article on it. The last part just made me roll 😂😂😂 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-04/america-is-pumping-out-too-many-ph-d-s “A handful of angry, downwardly mobile English Ph.D.s aren’t by themselves enough to overthrow the institutions of society, but they can make hugely outsized contributions to unrest and discord if they are so inclined. Remember, these are very smart people who are very good at writing things, and well-schooled in any number of dissident ideas. Those are the kind of people who tend to lead revolutions.” Not relevant to this thread, but funny nevertheless. 😉

Is the glut in all fields?

The book has arrived ! It's perfect. Big letters, big pages, all printed 🙂 There is no way he could ever study with an online book. Thank you again!

I will say this though that all of those brilliant kids who aren’t getting into top schools have really improved the quality of other schools. Even places like UCSC, which in my youth was a pot smoking and academically weak institution, now boasts very respectable programs. So in a sense the astronomically low admissions rates at the very top have improved other institutions. 25 years ago I would have laughed about UCSC, but it is now on our list for DS.

Yes, him 😢 Another thing that really struck me was being strapped for money at Stanford. Now don’t these universities have billions in endowment funding and supposedly make obscene amounts from those investments? How is it possible that funding anything there is an issue? The coaches fundraise? Good god. Where are all those billions going into? Now I am just curious to see the financial reports from those universities.