He's a high school Junior! (not even!) And high school students who have found a subject they love are very far ahead of the game. I wouldn't worry too much about something ten years or more down the road. I would encourage this passion, but also help him investigate where it could lead. Keep in mind that if he is a strong candidate, his University should pay for his MS and PhD via a Teaching Assistance-ship or Research Assistance-ship (or both). College math is a very broad field, with many branches and sub-branches and the branch that he chooses to focus on may determine what kinds of options he may have post BS. Many branches of math can lead to gainful employment with good paying jobs in desirable fields. Many other scientific disciplines are heavily dependent on certain branches of math, like Economics, Statistics, Physics, Biology, Sociology, Computer Science, etc. In college he may find that applying his love of math upon some other field may be very interesting. Oh, I would also strongly encourage him to participate in any of the math competitions that he can. In addition to all the obvious reasons, finding like-minded peers may be the best source of answers to the kinds of questions he has, and the kinds of questions he didn't know he had.

While this may work at many institutions, there are universities that offer only a graduate degree in some fields, and not an undergraduate. More common, of course, is the opposite, where, especially at a LAC, there may only be an undergraduate degree offered in a given field.

I would first check to see what prices you'd get for these books. I think neither the 8th ed of Lial's nor the 8th of the WIley books are the latest, and both seem to be selling for $5 to $10 used at abebooks. Given that, I'd personally rather keep them.

Do you mean books they can work on now, in order to work up to the AP Latin level, or books for the AP Latin course itself? There's lots of good choices for the first two years of Latin, then things get a bit tricky. I really like the Lingua Latina books as readers: many students struggle after 2nd year high school Latin when they make a big switch from reading short sentences designed to teach the grammar lesson of the week to 3rd year, all of a sudden, they have to put it all together, and their reading can contain any and all of the grammar and vocab they've learned. The best solution to this is just lots and lots of reading, and that's what LL provides. For the AP Latin curriculum itself, I like the Bolchazy books which conveniently have all the lines that the AP test covers. Keep in mind, there's a lot of lines on the AP test, so you have to move fast the AP year to cover the texts. I would start in earnest the Summer before, and not wait until Fall. If you find Vergil or Caesar to be too hard, the Legamus series is a nice introduction, but you don't have time to do those in the AP year.

I'm curious if this is because of the school you went to, or the program within the school? And do you think your program is as rigorous today as it was then? (Do they still call it "drop the needle" if the instructor is playing from a CD or MP3?) It occurs to me that "describe what your exams are like" might be a good question to ask during college visits.

Yes. Typically, mottos have their nouns in the nominative singular, and your three nouns are all nominative.

I haven't used it, but Khan academy has free videos for high school geometry.

While we use it for memorizing small bits of information (foreign language vocab, math facts, state capitals), especially while in the car, I'm curious how you use it to memorize longer things, like the pledge? Do you have the whole pledge on one card? One stanza per card?

I respectfully, but strongly, disagree with the above statement, applied to many different contexts. Frequently, doing the wrong thing is worse than doing nothing.

It might be easier to see if you think about a similar problem, but have the train go 324 mph north, then 1 mph south.

3.14

But the true Ivies have such enormous endowments that they can offer tremendous financial aid package to those who get in. Typically, graduates of these schools leave with much less debt than any other school type. The dirty little secret of college admissions is that it is often the least selective LACs, with little endowment money to share, that leave students with those huge debt burdens.

It wouldn't surprise me if the posts were fictionalized, but I still think there's a good lesson for our kids here, not just for RMP, but for amazon reviews and all kinds of things: Your "5" ranking may be my "3", so the numbers don't mean much. However, if you are careful, you can read into the reviews more than the raw numbers.

From the OP's signature, she started her junior year this January, and is even now working on completing it, so she may not be on the traditional admissions schedule.

And that article is here: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/rateprof.html A little rough in places, but a good read. And I agree with everyone above that the numerical ratings for professors are generally useless, but you can learn a thing or two by carefully reading the reviews themselves.

Might I ask why you want her to take three "AP level" classes without taking the AP test? Transcripts are just one part of the applications puzzle, and external validation of mommy grades by AP test and other things can be very useful for getting into college. Also, I'm curious that you state you start your school year in January, and finish in September(?) How does that factor into the college admissions cycle?

"TBA" at a CC probably means "an adjunct we haven't hired yet", who may never have taught before. I would be very wary of TBA because it is more likely to be someone with no little to no teaching experience.

Only on the Chat board, it would seem. I don't get what point the stars serve. Seems like the chat board would be better off without the stars.

I heard the show, too, and I'm not sure I'm putting two and two together. Of the "artisan economy", they talked to: a woman who sold custom-made dog leashes, two men who sell adult (i.e. alcoholic) freezies, someone who made organic popsicles. While I have the highest respect for these young people who take matters into their own hands to create their futures, I'm having a hard time seeing how a six-figure private LAC degree is required to start a business selling dog leashes. Or is it just an odd form of credentialing: if you could get a degree in Art History from Columbia, then you do indeed have hipster credentials, and can learn all the social things required to run such a business.

While I don't agree with everything in the article, I do like the focus on the middle school years, where I think most of the problems in the American system are. The current obsession with K, pre-k and pre-pre-k just seems crazy. I know there are studies that claim to show the benefits of pre-k and head start like programs, but I just believe that so much damage is caused with the current warehousing model of middle school, that those years merit more fixing.

I'm not quite sure what, exactly, you are asking, but if it helps, the first one is an ablative absolute, and the second one is a passive periphrastic, expressing purpose.

You know your child better than anyone. If you think that his math SAT score was significantly lower than expected, maybe you are right. I've seen some kids who are incredibly advanced in math underperform on the math SAT, if they are so far ahead that it's been years since they've seen Algebra, and they didn't feel they needed to prep for the exam. How much math exam prep did he do? Even a modest amount of prep could help him tremendously, if it means the difference between having a technique in hand to use right away, vs. trying to remember or derive a procedure.

I would argue that's because they don't have to -- they can still get into college. I'm curious what percentage of these kids with a 14 math ACT graduate within 5 years. I'm guessing, what, 20%? 10%? Isn't it borderline fraudulent to admit them, take their money and fail the vast majority of them?

Yes. Absolutely, yes, I do believe this. Maybe not every single teacher, but the word about what colleges want for admission quickly gets shared with high school students. We make kids jump over stupid, meaningless bars for college admissions -- make them demonstrate "leadership", and athletics, and flute playing and honor societies, etc., and they begrudgingly do it, because they are told it is important for college admissions. And, I think 14 year olds (and more to the point, their parents and peers) are much more mislead by the current situation, where they are told that a 14 ACT score will get them into college, except once they are there, they suddenly are told that it won't get them through college, and least not without a lot of expensive remediation.

Exactly! Why does your University admit students with a 14 math ACT? The university is just signaling to high school students that this is college-ready. If you aren't asking the kids to do more math in high school, why would they? Better to tell the kids that your minimum required ACT score is higher, and if they can't get to that level of work in High School, that you'll be happy to accept them after a year or two of math remediation in CC, which is probably much less expensive than your (four year?) (public?) University. But, I bet if you put the bar higher, you'll put more emphasis on the high schools and their students to do better.