How well does he know Latin?

Exactly my point -- all of these jobs are "T" or "E", probably not "M" or "S".

One reason is the common online college application. Kids now are applying to substantially more schools than they were before, so naturally, acceptance rates are going to go down. It isn't unheard of here for kids to apply to 10 to 20 colleges.

But isn't it interesting that they all always use that one word? It is as if they all got together when we weren't looking and came up with one good question between them to always ask.

We do a huge disservice to job seekers by lumping everyone in the "STEM" moniker together. There's a huge different between academic science and pragmatic engineering, and whatever "technology" is. Substantially all jobs for science PhDs are (directly or indirectly) federally funded research programs, and there's basically no job growth there. Many kinds of engineering, and, say, computer programming, are a completely different story, and there are many more jobs out there.

This article is so horribly written that it can't even manage to summarize correctly the data that it cites inline. The article claims that 80% of NYC high school graduates can't read at grade level. What it says later is that 80% of NYC public high school graduates enrolled in NYC community colleges need some kind of remediation. Obviously, that's not good, but they are two almost completely unconnected numbers. And what's the nature of this remediation? A one week class? One semester? Two years? That's a big part of the story. Then, the article paraphrases Michelle Rhee, almost certainly incorrectly, saying that both rich and poor kids in the US alike rank 26th out of 30th in industrialized nations in some unspecified math test. This just doesn't pass the sniff test. And there's not reference cited. Now, homeschoolers aren't the strongest defenders of public schools, but we don't need to stretch the truth to make our points.

Antony and Cleopatra is underrated, obviously has lots of classical allusions, and very interesting characters, and ties into Julius Caesar.

I just want to say that I have a tremendous amount of empathy for 18 year olds -- think how much conflicting advice they are getting about this subject, and no one really knows what the future will hold. I hear all kinds of conflicting advice: Don't go to college, only go if you don't have any debt, ring up a little debt, don't worry about debt, only go to the cheapest college you can get into, go to the best college you are accepted to, etc.etc. etc. And if they choose incorrectly, they get blamed for being stupid and not taking the correct path, or not being "grown up" enough to foresee the future.

Seems like a great opportunity for small colleges to do some marketing -- I'd much rather small colleges invest a bit of money in proctoring AP tests than the deluge of mail they send. And you'd get to visit their campus in person.

I wonder what percentage of Latin AP test-takers are homeschoolers?

I think more of us have gone down this road than you might have imagined. First, what kind of foods do you like? Second, I would focus on starting slowly, maybe finding two or three recipes that you like, which you can focus on for the next few weeks. Third, I'm a huge fan of crockpots and leftovers. It's pretty easy to throw a bunch of stuff in the crockpot in the morning, and have a nice hot meal for dinner, and leftovers for later. There's a zillion cookbooks, so I hesitate to recommend some, but can't help myself: Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Anything" isn't nearly as intimidating as it looks, and has many basic recipes. When I was starting out, I really liked "The Monday through Friday Cookbook", which spent a lot of time talking about what to stock in your pantry, so that you always have a couple of possible meals you can make without a trip to the store, and how to plan for leftovers. It may be out of print now, though.

Now this is a project! Please let us know how it goes. I assume that you want that nice smokey taste in the meat, so are you planning to keep the lid on the dutch oven or leave it uncovered?

The Ken Burns documentaries are so dense and fact-filled that I think it would be OK to see it once during middle school, then see the same ones again later with their high school eyes.

Forgive the geographically challenged, but how long is the trip in hours? Does it require an overnight stay?

Again, this is an easy knee-jerk reaction, but I'd rather have a career politician than someone who views Congress as a stepping stone to a highly-paid lobbyist position. Moreover, last year, the freshman class of newly-elected Congressmen was one of the largest in a long time, and we're still stuck in the mud.

While this is satisfying, many (most ?) members of Congress are independently wealthy, and don't depend on their paychecks.

OK, that's a start. That's all the economic aid, and doesn't count the military aid, but let's use that number as a much better than "I have no idea". Now, how much is the annual US budget deficit? How much is the US debt? How much is the sequester cutting?

How much do you think the foreign aid budget is?

I think this is very unusual -- all the IB schools I've heard of are either/or. And given that the IB classes often have different curricula than AP, I'm curious if this student took AP classes, or took the AP test after taking a corresponding IB class.

One thing to keep in mind is that you can generally only do the IB diploma OR take AP classes -- IB is a full program, and you can't generally "mix in" AP classes. I would also look at which classes this school offers at the IB HL (Higher Level) -- few high schools offer all of the possible HL classes, and you might want to start thinking about which ones you'd want to take before signing up for the program.

While I am constantly surprised at 16 year olds around here who aren't eager to get their licenses, it strikes me that a kid who knows he or she isn't ready to be driving yet is actually making a very mature decision.

The reading list doesn't look _that_ intimidating, many of these works I had read in high school. What is interesting to me is how few prose novels are on that list. There's a lot of drama, a lot of poetry (or poetic drama), some opera librettri (when was the last time you covered opera as literature?). The fact that much of this is poetic and drama may exagerate the page count somewhat. And the page count on a Loeb is probably double what you actually read, given that you are likely going to read it either in one language or the other. Nevertheless, Dostoevsky is a handful.

I'm sure that many don't know to eliminate a & b, but I also bet that this is the sort of "teaching to the test" that is done a lot -- first check the units to see if you can eliminate any, and if you are short on time, guess quickly.

A big hit here has been the "Enola Holmes" series, whose protagonist is Sherlock Holmes younger sister.

One warning about LLPSI is that it is easy to understand too much from context, and skip over the "hard bits", and miss important things. Make sure that you do all the pensa, and understand why. Make sure that you understand what each word means in the reading, and why it is is what case or tense or mood that it is.