Thanks to all for responding, and for all your kind words. I'll definitely come back to update his progress, and hopefully read about your children's successes.

Well, I haven't been a regular on this board for a long time, although it was a second home at the time the first Well Trained Mind book was published! My 2nd child graduated from high school in the spring. I have one senior left, but she hasn't homeschooled since her Freshman year. Anyway, I wanted to thank those who have helped me over the years. I also wanted to encourage other homeschoolers of high schoolers with learning disabilities. Here is a link to a thread I started a while back. http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/393347-discouraging-math-sat-score/ I know that every child's path is going to be different, but I just wanted to say to those coming up behind us, that not in my wildest dreams did I expect my son to be where he finds himself today. A few months before I posted the above post, my son wasn't sure if he was cut out for college. He has dealt with very low processing speeds his entire life; didn't talk until after age 3 with help from ST; couldn't read until around age 10/11 and only after intense therapies from academic therapists, OT, vision etc. I used to spend hours doing brainskills and various software programs with him daily for years, often feeling like I was neglecting my other very able children, and wanting to pull out my hair, despairing that this didn't feel like it was going anywhere. He's also a middle child with two very bright siblings to walk in the shadow of. Yet he channeled some of his OCD tendencies during his later teens, and achieved amazing results. He reads more than any of my other kids (even though he is still dyslexic and slow). He has followed a rigorous Great books curriculum that I never would have imagined possible for him to do, even at age 14-16. And he loved it! He has received a 4 in AP bio despite no accommodations at the time. The following year, College board approved the accommodations as a result of his junior year testing (processing speeds in the first percentile and very low academic fluency) and he received 5's in both AP calculus and AP Chemistry. He was the top of both these classes at the local school where he took these courses, receiving 100% in his final school exam in Calculus AB and qualified for the Chemistry Olympiad in his region. He had to do a project at the end of that class which he based on his readings of Einstein's relativity for his Great books course. In his October SAT (first time he took this exam with accommodations in place) his critical reading soared to a 710; his writing was 690 and his math was 640 (which was 10 points below the score he received the previous May without the accommodations - so this confirms what others have said that accommodations only help where there is a real need for them, since most of his issues were language arts based). His grammar and spelling is, and probably will ever be, wonky, and yet, he learned how to write excellent papers for his Great Books course that went from B's to A's by his senior year (externally assessed) on complex topics. In a week, he will begin a double major in Forestry and earth science/Geology at a local public school, with a view to obtaining a masters in Forestry in his 5th year there. He has been awarded many scholarships so that our contribution to his college education is relatively low. He is also in the honors program. He also got accepted into several private colleges with significant scholarships as well as Renssaeler Polytechnic (engineering school). Anyway, as his mom, I'm obviously brimming over with pride in his accomplishments, and all this seems like nothing more than shameless boasting on my part. It is just that. But I also share all this in the spirit of encouragement for others who might be wondering what might be at the end of all this for their own children. Obviously, his path is his path; his challenges have been, and will continue to be (the college is awarding him the same accommodations he was given by College Board and the local school system of time and a half in all exams and tests), his peculiar set of challenges. So never any guarantees about any outcomes, ever. However, I just wanted to stress how impossible all this seemed to be to the both of us when we started on this journey. Please, don't ever let moments of doubt make you tire or falter, no matter how discouraged you both might feel. I have lived through days and years of wanting to weep with exhaustion and worry. Don't ever pigeon hole what you think your kids are capable of achieving - you simply have no idea, and nor do they. As I said, my son didn't think he could even consider college at age 16. He just turned 19 this summer. I never thought it was wise for him to wrestle with the Great Books, but it was probably one of the most inspiring things he did which affected him at a very deep level. I feel that here was an individual who might well have been trapped within a label so that neither he nor others could see the richness that was hidden deep inside him, waiting to find a way to express itself. I truly believe that homeschooling was the absolute key that unlocked his ability to access that part of himself, so that his disabilities did not define or limit him, but he was free to discover his personal best. So again, I know - shameless boasting on my part. But please applaud yourselves for going through all the pain, the sweat and the tears in order to unlock your own child's fullest potential, whatever that might be. So, adieu to you all, and very, very best wishes as you continue on this path you have chosen. Your kids are in the very best, closest to perfect, hands. You should be thrilled for them just for that fact alone.

I'd say AAA needed for just about any subject in Oxford. Although, when I was there a couple of decades ago, they also had different ways of getting in without them. My conditional offer was that I obtain two E's at A Level. This also varied from college to college within the university. A professor there told me that although they extend the EE offer, the expectation is that every acceptance will actually get AAA or AAAA. My friend majored in Chinese at Oxford. Her professors told her that quite a few students apply for the more obscure majors, such as Chinese, then suddenly discover their calling was English all along (implying that English is more competitive to be accepted for, since so many apply to that department). It is probably much harder to switch there, however, than in a typical US university, and not guaranteed to be sanctioned by the College. When I applied, there was this whole unspoken, unwritten political code about where you could put a chosen college on your UCCA form. Most schools were savvy about this at the time, but I was working completely by myself (no parents etc.) at the equivalent to a community college here in the states - so I was a bit clueless. So, if you listed one college that was a particular rival of another, higher on your list, you would receive an automatic rejection, since you had basically insulted it. Oxford was on the top of my list and I received an acceptance. I receive 4 very fast rejections from the other colleges I had listed, well before I'd heard back from Oxford. I have no idea if it still works like that today. I'm from the era of GCE O Levels and A Levels (or "Owls" and "Newts" as I explain to my Harry Potter devotee kids!).

So glad we didn't have ucas essays when I was a high school student!

Much of that resonates with my own uni experience, even though outside of Scotland, with much narrower focus. It is *very* self-directed. We chose which lectures to attend - attending none was fine in my subject (English). However, you also have the opportunity to work intimately and deeply with experts in the field. In my case, that meant seeing unpublished excerpts from a a major author that were hugely significant to understanding his work, but unavailable to the public (I could only quote it within university essays). Outside of the lectures, we had small group meetings (Princeton seems to function similarly), and weekly tutorials - usually with just one other tutorial partner. This is where we would work with the professor, almost one on one. For medical students, there was no pre-med. You were thrown into the thick of it with day one of college (where they introduced you to the cadaver you'd be working with for the rest of your time there). Same for Law. After your law degree, you could go straight into to a paid articled clerk position at a law firm before becoming a 'solicitor'. I can't remember how you became a barrister(trial attorney) but I believe through a similar process via the Inns of Court. The other thing I had a really difficult time adjusting to personally when I came here was the scorn leveled at the English Major or other liberal arts degree recipient! At the time in the UK (although I hear things have changed and followed the US system more, now?) there was much wider range of occupations that someone with a degree in history, English, Music etc could go into out of college. My flautist friend joined an accountancy firm. I could have even become an attorney (but it would require a few more hoops/training than the articled clerk with a law degree referenced above). The irony is, there's more academic specialization in the UK, earlier, but more career specialization in this country - at least, that's how it was when I first arrived in the US. As the girl in this article suggested, there is something to be said of learning how to go deeply, and masterfully into a subject than to superficially cover a multitude of topics. And for those of you who read TWTM, that was the whole reasoning behind classical education - not how broadly things were covered, but how passionately and deeply. You learn how to learn. Then that transfers to any field you enter into. Even though I'm "just an English Major", I have had employers here who are amazed at how many hats I can wear, and wear well. I can do a lot of things better than those who have learned how to do only one thing superficially.

Laura, Yes, I heard that Princeton derived from Scotland.

Learners4life, Tutor sounds awesome. Really! I never felt like I had the time or the experience to moderate discussions well. I either just took over, or took us to the wrong places. DS really enjoyed the Academy last year, but his class is big this year, so it is harder to have a continuous, spontaneous discussion. I have an older version of Well Trained Mind. They were the ones that suggested doing govt. as part of Great Book readings. It has been so long since I consulted this book, however. Thought I knew it all by heart by this point!

Thanks for all the input. In the end, this is what I have for my 3 social studies credits, based on other things I researched here today: World history 9 US history 11 US Govt. & Economics 12 I will list English I, II, III and IV. The course descriptions will show that I & II are primarily based on composition skills. By III & IV there is more emphasis on literature . I am including World Literature in grade 9 as an elective. In grade 10 & 11 this will switch to "Survey of Western Civilization I & II, Ancient/ Middle Ages- Renaissance," again, as electives. So as long as my basics are in there, I'm hoping the fact that this might be a weird course for high school should be okay. In 12th Grade, I'm applying the credit for the literary works studied to English IV, and the American Govt. related reading will apply to Govt. 1/2 credit along with supplemental reading (will also look at Idiots Guide to US Govt.). I think he will also go ahead and do the Microeconomics online course through the state college, which has 3 college credits. I am going to hold out for 1.5 credits for each Western Civ. course taken (ie.in 10th and 11th grades), and that decision is also the basis for me creating a credit of literature and .5 credit of Govt. (+ supplementary reading and writing) in 12th grade. If you look at Great Books Academy, they estimate that this course should take 12-14 hours per week. If I had decided that ds should do the additional college credit version where he writes answers to a few questions each week, it would have been 18 hours and has been accredited for 6 hours per semester of college credit (elder brother did this and got about 24 credits towards college for two years of work). In 10th grade, we actually read more, discussed longer, and wrote more, because we were doing this by ourselves rather than through the online school at that time. At my dd's public/private high school she is awarded two credits for ballet and 1.5 credits for AP Calculus, so I don't think it is unusual for admissions to see weird credit hours on transcripts (even though admittedly, her school is accredited). So, I think, hope we'll be good, and that he will still show that he took rigorous, unusual courses, while still hitting basic requirements. Thanks again!

Interesting. So I should use my MA (Oxon) without guilt here in the US! I remember the universal groans when we were told in a workshop in UK that to do post-grad work in US we'd need to hit the math books we hadn't touched since age 15! I do think that both options should be available - to specialize or not. I see kids and young adults suffer by being forced to do courses that they are clearly not cut out to succeed in, and put their passions on the back burner in the mean time. By age 16 you either have a good sense of which parts of your brain work better than others. At the same time, all rounders and undecided people can benefit from holding multiple doors open for a bit while longer.

Went there many years ago, but not sure I could help regarding US homeschoolers. During my interview, they were looking for passion and potential in my subject of choice. They couldn't care less what I did in my free time. The neat thing is, that you interview with the actual professors who will be (possibly) teaching you for the next 3 years (typically not 4 unless you do foreign language etc.). They were looking for an individual, not someone who does all the right things, if you know what I mean. Strong academics are taken for granted. I actually started to get up and walk out in the middle of my interview, but that didn't deter them (although, I don't recommend this!). There was a big to-do when we were back in the UK several years ago about a girl who got rejected, even though she had all the right qualifications - and how Harvard or another Ivy picked her up in a heart beat. Think it was mainly PR on Harvard's part, but it does demonstrate how they aren't just looking for perfect, or obvious candidates. Good luck to your son! It is an amazing experience if you can get in.

Hi, I've been doing Great Books for a while (with a *big* hiatus between child 1 and child 2). I did a modified year 1&2 by myself with second child, because I wasn't sure he could swing it (major reading problems when younger), but they let him in for their year 3 based on the fact I used their reading lists and study guides. Anyway, not sure if I can help but I am trying to answer your question for myself in a hurry! Need to get a transcript notarized today! Here's a link to a post + post itself I just did. Perhaps this is one possibilty for you? Or you can follow others' suggestions to my question (hopefully)? http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/487193-recommendations-for-governmentcivics/?do=findComment&comment=5194124 So, I'm sitting here with my son's transcript before me, and wanting to weep (or at least procrastinate a bit more and have just one more cup of coffee! ) ;-) Son has followed/is following a very rigorous "Great Books" reading list (one year with me, for the past two years with Great Books Academy program). Now he's in 12 grade. I want him to achieve at least 3 Social studies credits for the past 4 years. So far, he took "World History" with Spielvogel in 9th and US History (Bob Jones) in 11th. I notice that most colleges he is apply to want at least 3 social studies credits and most states have gov. + economics on their graduation requirement list. I was hoping that he could uses some of this year's reading list to contribute towards his government. Being educated outside this country, I don't really know what the inside of a government course looks like. But I intuit, he probably also needs some kind of spine to make a half credit of government legitimate. So, what is the lightest approach for that of all the books/programs listed up there (sorry, this is for right now, so I'm in a time crunch!!!). And which texts can I legitmately recruit from his great books reading list to support his 'government' half credit with the added spine? FYI, for 10th and 11th grade I was thinking of creating a "civics" course consisting of 1.5 credits. In my course description I would describe this as a mixture of world history, philosophy and literature. Will that fly with admissions people, and will they take that as "social studies" credit? I may fine tune the 'civics' label - I came here this morning to research it a bit more. This year, my plan was to use 1 of those credits as "literature" and the remaining 1/2 credit towards "government". In prior years, I have given him 1 credit for composition each year (in 9th I gave him an additional credit for world literature because it warranted another credit), but in 12th I will give him 1.5 credits for "American and World Literature + Composition" since he will not be doing composition as intensively this year as in the past). Finally, I was thinking of possibly signing ds up for an online dual credit macroeconomics 3 credit, 1 semester course, free at his local college. This would be mainly to fulfill the "economics" part of "Government and Economics". I'm a bit worried about the work load in his final semester of high school, but more so, that he will be bored out of his mind. I think he'd have much more fun with astronomy, but he is already science heavy on his transcript. Wish he could just do stuff for fun, and not to get scholarship money out of admissions people!!! So, just wondering if anyone has any recommendations about the necessity of doing that, or do you think we should take a similar approach as we are to Government? Here is his reading list for the past 3 years (includes those in progress fo rthis year): Year 2 Theogeny - Hesiod Prometheus Bound - Aeschylus Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides - Aeschylus Bacchae, Trojan Women - Euripides Aesop' Fables (complete) - Aesop Oedipus Rex, Colonus, Antigone - Sophocles Histories (excerpts) - Herodotus Plutarch's Lives (Lycurgus, Solon, Pericles, Alcibiades) Peloponnesian War - Thucydides Pre-Socratic Fragments Ion, Meno - Plato Symposium - Plato Georgias - Plato Euthyphro - Plato Apology, Crito - Plato Phaedo - Plato The Republic - Plato Poetics, On the Heavens (exceprts), On the Soul (excepts) - Aristotle Aneid - Virgil Livy (excerpts) Caesar, Anthony, Cato the Younger - Plutarch's Lives Duties - Cicero Annals (excerpts) - Tacitus On the Nature of Things - Lucretius Consolation of Philosophy - Boethius YEAR 3 - 2011/12 Great Books Program Third Year – Medieval Readings Week First Semester 1 Canterbury Tales -Chaucer 2 Canterbury Tales -Chaucer 3 Aquinas* 4 Aquinas* 5 Aquinas* 6 Aquinas* 7 Aquinas* 8 The Prince -Machiavelli 9 Utopia - Sir Thomas More 10 Praise of Folly- Erasmus 11 On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres*- Copernicus 12 Institutes of the Christian Relgion* -Calvin 13 Essays* - Montaigne 14 Don Quixote* -Cervantes 15 Don Quixote* -Cervantes 16 Oral Exams – (Dec.12 – 23) *Selections Only Week Second Semester 17 Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare 18 A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream; Shakespeare 19 The Taming of the Shrew -William Shakespeare 20 Coriolanus - Shakespeare 21 Julius Caesar -Shakespeare 22 Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences* - Galileo 23 The Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare 24 Henry V - Shakespeare 25 The New Atlantis and Novum Organum* - Bacon 26 Rules for the Direction of the Mind*, Discourse on Method*, Meditations-Descartes 27 Leviathan* - Hobbes 28 Spring Break, Apr. 2 – 6 29 Spring Break, Apr. 9 – 13 30 Paradise Lost - Milton 31 Paradise Lost - Milton 32 Pensees* - Pascal (May 64 33 Romeo & Juliet - Wm. Shakespeare 34 Oral Exams – (May 14-31) YEAR 4 - 2011/12 Great Books Program Fourth Year – Modern Readings Week First Semester 1 Hamlet - Wm. Shakespeare 2 Othello - William Shakespeare 3 MacBeth - William Shakespeare 4 King Lear - William Shakespeare 5 The Tempest -William Shakespeare 6 Tartuffe - Moliere;Phaedra, Racine 7 Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift 8 Essay Concerning Human Knowledge*, Second Essay on Civil Government*, Letter on Toleration* -John Locke ( 9 Essay Concerning Human Knowledge*, Second Essay on Civil Government*, Letter on Toleration* - John Locke 10 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*, Treatise of Human Nature*, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion* - David Hume 11 The Social Contract*, On the Origin of Inequality* - Jean-Jacques Rousseau 12 The Federalist Papers*; – Q 105, Art. 1 – Aquinas 13 U.S. Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, & Constitution 14 Democracy in America*, - De Tocqueville;Representative Government*, J.S, Mill 15 Emma - Jane Austen *Selections Only Week Second Semester 17 Critique of Pure Reason*, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals*- Immanuel Kant 18 Faust - Goethe 19 Philosophy of Right*, The Philosophy of History* -Georg Hegel 20 War and Peace* - Tolstoy 21 War and Peace - Tolstoy 22 The Brothers Karamazov -Fyodor Mikailovich Dostoevsky 23 The Brothers Karamazov -Fyodor Mikailovich Dostoevsky 24 Wealth of Nations* - Adam Smith; Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx 25 1st & 2nd Inaugural Addresses, Gettysburg Address; Emancipation Proclamation - Abraham Lincoln 26 Walden, Civil Disobedience- Henry David Thoreau 27 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain 30 The Origin of Species* -Charles Darwin 31 Nineteen Eighty Four -George Orwell 32 Relativity: The Special and General Theory - Einstein 33 My Antonia - Willa Cather

So, I'm sitting here with my son's transcript before me, and wanting to weep (or at least procrastinate a bit more and have just one more cup of coffee! ) ;-) Son has followed/is following a very rigorous "Great Books" reading list (one year with me, for the past two years with Great Books Academy program). Now he's in 12 grade. I want him to achieve at least 3 Social studies credits for the past 4 years. So far, he took "World History" with Spielvogel in 9th and US History (Bob Jones) in 11th. I notice that most colleges he is apply to want at least 3 social studies credits and most states have gov. + economics on their graduation requirement list. I was hoping that he could uses some of this year's reading list to contribute towards his government. Being educated outside this country, I don't really know what the inside of a government course looks like. But I intuit, he probably also needs some kind of spine to make a half credit of government legitimate. So, what is the lightest approach for that of all the books/programs listed up there (sorry, this is for right now, so I'm in a time crunch!!!). And which texts can I legitmately recruit from his great books reading list to support his 'government' half credit with the added spine? FYI, for 10th and 11th grade I was thinking of creating a "civics" course consisting of 1.5 credits. In my course description I would describe this as a mixture of world history, philosophy and literature. Will that fly with admissions people, and will they take that as "social studies" credit? I may fine tune the 'civics' label - I came here this morning to research it a bit more. This year, my plan was to use 1 of those credits as "literature" and the remaining 1/2 credit towards "government". In prior years, I have given him 1 credit for composition each year (in 9th I gave him an additional credit for world literature because it warranted another credit), but in 12th I will give him 1.5 credits for "American and World Literature + Composition" since he will not be doing composition as intensively this year as in the past). Finally, I was thinking of possibly signing ds up for an online dual credit macroeconomics 3 credit, 1 semester course, free at his local college. This would be mainly to fulfill the "economics" part of "Government and Economics". I'm a bit worried about the work load in his final semester of high school, but more so, that he will be bored out of his mind. I think he'd have much more fun with astronomy, but he is already science heavy on his transcript. Wish he could just do stuff for fun, and not to get scholarship money out of admissions people!!! So, just wondering if anyone has any recommendations about the necessity of doing that, or do you think we should take a similar approach as we are to Government? Here is his reading list for the past 3 years (includes those in progress fo rthis year): Year 2 Theogeny - Hesiod Prometheus Bound - Aeschylus Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides - Aeschylus Bacchae, Trojan Women - Euripides Aesop' Fables (complete) - Aesop Oedipus Rex, Colonus, Antigone - Sophocles Histories (excerpts) - Herodotus Plutarch's Lives (Lycurgus, Solon, Pericles, Alcibiades) Peloponnesian War - Thucydides Pre-Socratic Fragments Ion, Meno - Plato Symposium - Plato Georgias - Plato Euthyphro - Plato Apology, Crito - Plato Phaedo - Plato The Republic - Plato Poetics, On the Heavens (exceprts), On the Soul (excepts) - Aristotle Aneid - Virgil Livy (excerpts) Caesar, Anthony, Cato the Younger - Plutarch's Lives Duties - Cicero Annals (excerpts) - Tacitus On the Nature of Things - Lucretius Consolation of Philosophy - Boethius YEAR 3 - 2011/12 Great Books Program Third Year – Medieval Readings Week First Semester 1 Canterbury Tales -Chaucer 2 Canterbury Tales -Chaucer 3 Aquinas* 4 Aquinas* 5 Aquinas* 6 Aquinas* 7 Aquinas* 8 The Prince -Machiavelli 9 Utopia - Sir Thomas More 10 Praise of Folly- Erasmus 11 On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres*- Copernicus 12 Institutes of the Christian Relgion* -Calvin 13 Essays* - Montaigne 14 Don Quixote* -Cervantes 15 Don Quixote* -Cervantes 16 Oral Exams – (Dec.12 – 23) *Selections Only Week Second Semester 17 Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare 18 A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream; Shakespeare 19 The Taming of the Shrew -William Shakespeare 20 Coriolanus - Shakespeare 21 Julius Caesar -Shakespeare 22 Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences* - Galileo 23 The Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare 24 Henry V - Shakespeare 25 The New Atlantis and Novum Organum* - Bacon 26 Rules for the Direction of the Mind*, Discourse on Method*, Meditations-Descartes 27 Leviathan* - Hobbes 28 Spring Break, Apr. 2 – 6 29 Spring Break, Apr. 9 – 13 30 Paradise Lost - Milton 31 Paradise Lost - Milton 32 Pensees* - Pascal (May 64 33 Romeo & Juliet - Wm. Shakespeare 34 Oral Exams – (May 14-31) YEAR 4 - 2011/12 Great Books Program Fourth Year – Modern Readings Week First Semester 1 Hamlet - Wm. Shakespeare 2 Othello - William Shakespeare 3 MacBeth - William Shakespeare 4 King Lear - William Shakespeare 5 The Tempest -William Shakespeare 6 Tartuffe - Moliere;Phaedra, Racine 7 Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift 8 Essay Concerning Human Knowledge*, Second Essay on Civil Government*, Letter on Toleration* -John Locke ( 9 Essay Concerning Human Knowledge*, Second Essay on Civil Government*, Letter on Toleration* - John Locke 10 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*, Treatise of Human Nature*, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion* - David Hume 11 The Social Contract*, On the Origin of Inequality* - Jean-Jacques Rousseau 12 The Federalist Papers*; – Q 105, Art. 1 – Aquinas 13 U.S. Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, & Constitution 14 Democracy in America*, - De Tocqueville;Representative Government*, J.S, Mill 15 Emma - Jane Austen *Selections Only Week Second Semester 17 Critique of Pure Reason*, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals*- Immanuel Kant 18 Faust - Goethe 19 Philosophy of Right*, The Philosophy of History* -Georg Hegel 20 War and Peace* - Tolstoy 21 War and Peace - Tolstoy 22 The Brothers Karamazov -Fyodor Mikailovich Dostoevsky 23 The Brothers Karamazov -Fyodor Mikailovich Dostoevsky 24 Wealth of Nations* - Adam Smith; Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx 25 1st & 2nd Inaugural Addresses, Gettysburg Address; Emancipation Proclamation - Abraham Lincoln 26 Walden, Civil Disobedience- Henry David Thoreau 27 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain 30 The Origin of Species* -Charles Darwin 31 Nineteen Eighty Four -George Orwell 32 Relativity: The Special and General Theory - Einstein 33 My Antonia - Willa Cather

I came to the site to get some tips on making Ds's transcript fit into expectations, and found this post. Oh boy! As someone who went to Oxford, and was born and bred in UK, I can't tell you how mad the US college system makes me! I gave up the idea of Ivies for my kids long ago, as it just isn't economically viable for my kids. I do feel that they discriminate against the middle class. However, for many of the reasons listed above, not attending an Ivy doesn't really bother me. I totally believe it is the individual who determines their future success, not the institution they attend for 4 years of their life. My other pet peeve is the college board - the almight gate keeper that makes a killing from the college application process. Why does so much of this discussion hinge on money all the time? But that's another thread. Oxford, by the way, doesn't want to know what you do in your spare time. Just that you have a distinct passion and ability for your chosen major. Generally, I feel that economics pressures many would-be college applicants. Like others here have mentioned, I feel that any pressure to conform that my son feels is so that we can find ways for him to attend college, period. Not talking Ivies or competitives. He has his heart set on a very small private college that is only 30 minutes from our house. And it pains me no end that he probably will get accepted, but will have to decline for financial reasons. Older brother got accepted to a *very* good engineering school a few years ago, but the $30K per year price tag, after scholarships etc. made him decline and go to a place where he really wasn't happy because of the lack of course offerings, but was at least affordable) What's worse for DS2 is that he has not had the options to get the kind of merit aid he would need, because of his early struggles with learning disabilities. The focus to overcome those was stronger than the focus on racking up high SAT scores and dual credit. Actually, his academic and activity record is pretty good, and he is such a hard worker that he ends up succeeding pretty nicely, but not in the bright and shiny way that would rain down merit $$$ on him. Said college he wants to attend suggested that I check out scholarships for people with LDs, but those I found want us to have too low an income. State public college is going to cost perhaps as much as $23,000 per year with residency included, if he does not receive a scholarship. A more selective state publich college would only be $18,000 but doesn't offer the courses DS is looking for. DS1's state college at that time cost more for him to go to than the small private college that ended up giving him a scholarship (and DS1 had about 52+ college (not cc) credits at the end of high school, as well as amazing extra-currics.). It just saddens me that so much of this is a money game, rather than a genuine reward for hard work and diligence, with the middle class white male and LD penalized the most. And I'm not saying that the individual should never have to pay, but that the price tag is usually beyond what an average middle class family can realistically afford. When ds1 went to college we paid $10,000 out of pocket ourselves, and ds racked up substantial student debt. That's about the best I can hope for for ds 2, yet he did not come into the world with the advantages of his older brother. Lord knows what we'll do the year after that with dd (who will need to fly across country for several college dance auditions, company dance auditions, and apply to dance college programs as well as regular college programs). I agree totally with the poster above who said that high school AP classes are often the only choice for serious students. DD attends a school where she has little option but to take AP English and History this year, even though she is not strong in those subjects. She's a future science major, but her options for AP classes in those areas are a bit harder to come by. She is currently taking 3 AP exams in junior year. This meant that over the summer she was dancing in a summer program (kind of not optional for a dancer) from 9-5 and then doing homework all evening. This was her summer vacation! Yet, she still prefers to go the traditional high school route, and it seems to work for her better than homeschooling. As a born performer, she needs an audience, I suppose! ;-)

Wondered about this more generally. Not sure the amount of detail I will need to provide to the admissions. DS was tested last spring and received accommodations for College Board (after he took AP and SAT, unfortunately) and at the local high school where he is currently taking two courses. Not sure if he should point out the timing of receiving the accommodations vis a vis taking the exams listed on his transcript? He is re-taking SAT this October with accommodations now in place (time and a half). Also taking 2 AP exams at the end of this, his senior year. DS's academic record looks pretty good, as do his test scores: 1300 on CR + M SAT (530 on his writing score, which just refuses to improve); and 4 on AP Bio test (received an A for the course from local high school). But because of his documented processing issues, his courses have been less bright and shiny than they might have been. When he started high school in 9th grade, I was spending much of the English Comp. time just getting him to spell like a 6th grader and write even a bit legibly. His language art skills will always be a major weakness for him, comparativley speaking. So his college essay won't be stellar. Nor has he taken the number of AP courses/dual credit, that he might have taken had he not been dealing with some of his LDs (could barely read at age 10 etc.). So, just wondering how much of this I share with admissions, or just send everything in on face value, and let it speak for itself as though he was just a regular student with regular issues. Like most parents these days, money for college is a sore point, with dd coming up right behind him the following year. So the more 'help' we can get in the form of merit scholarships, the more likely it is that he can pursue a program that is close to his heart. If you factor in all his LDs, his accomplishments have been huge over the past 4 years. But not sure how much to draw attention to that? Any thoughts or experience would be gladly accepted!

LaraMLl, I can't speak for others, but I assumed CC stood for community college wherever I used it. I don't frequent these boards much these days (although I did in the early years of homeschooling my kids) so I just used the abbreviation for community college I've seen used elsewhere. Classical Conversations - that's the relatively 'new' franchise type group, I believe? I've only encountered that once briefly, a few years ago when we were first looking at high school options, but it hadn't really established itself in our area at the time. So it's not something I ever would have thought about.

PrincessAriel, That's fantastic! So happy for the both of you! I think any parent finally gets to breathe out once we see our dk starting on the path towards independence! Thanks for your perspective.

Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences, and good luck to both of them!

Thanks for the tips!

Well, this doesn't seem to work. I guess what I need to do is click "mark all as read" then select "Custom" and "topics I have posted in"? Anyone a pro. at this? I'm having a really hard time keeping track right now of what I posted, and where, and any replies! Thanks.

Ah! So via a long complicated process, I finally found the post I was thinking of that had the instructions that made this simple last time: Try subscribing to your thread (it's in Thread Tools when you have the thread open). Then when you are able to come back, click on User Control Panel (upper blue bar) and you will get a list of any subscribed threads that have new posts. Click on them to see the new replies. Now I'll have to go see if I can figure out how to implement these instructions!

DD, 17 with processing speed issues, was recommended by his evaluator to begin college at CC in order to ease into a college load gradually. Does that make sense, do you think? Pros and cons? Also, would love to hear from other parents or students on how they or their DC transitioned from High school to a college program with some kind of LD. Thanks!

As a non-American homeschool mom, this is my first time trying to figure out the US college process by myself, with a homeschooled, LD junior. Please excuse me if this is covered elsewhere. I have done nothing all this week other than read this and College Confidential, and apart from a sense of panic at lost time, my eyes and brain are starting to ache! I do have an older child who went to college, but he wasn't homeschooled at the time, had tons of dual credit (almost an associates worth), and navigated this by himself with the help of his school and teachers. So, first, where do I begin to search for these scholarships outside the colleges my son will be applying to? Son has severe processing speed issues, but is highly motivated and academically successful in terms of grades. SAT scores aren't fabulous enough to earn much in the way of scholarships just yet, but we are hoping that he can improve before next fall (senior year), especially as we believe he will probably receive time and 1/2 accommodations by that time. Right now they are 570R/640M/530W without accommodations. His GPA is good so far, but as you know, that counts for little on a Homeschool transcript. He is exploring careers in Forestry, Hydrology, Geology and Parks and Recreation. There is a strong drive to encourage more students to study forestry in his state, and we were told by a professor at the local public university that there is usually money available to help Forestry majors, since the demand for jobs exceeds the pool of graduates. It is a great program for that, but my fear is that it is a big university and he might not thrive there with LDs. There are also a couple of smaller, private environmental colleges he is looking at, where he would probably do very well, but the price tag would have to come down significantly. One of the admissions officers told him to start looking for scholarships now, but I honestly don't know a reliable place to begin that search. I know there are plenty of 'services' out there, but I have no clue which ones to trust. We are even considering CC for the first two years, at the advice of his NP tester because of his processing speed issues. But something about that doesn't feel right to me, especially as he would miss out on a couple of years of paid internships in the field he wishes to go into (the colleges have great programs to secure these opportunities for their students). Anyway, where do I start, and is this even a realistic process for him? Or is it something only those with perfect SAT scores and academic records pursue? Desperate for some pointers asap. Thank you!

Hi, I have a 17 yo ds who just got retested. Processing speed at 9 was at the 7th percentile; at 17 under the WAIS-IV he scored at the 4th percentile and on the WJCogIII he scored at the 1st percentile. After testing at 9, my son received vision and OT briefly (until graduated out by his therapist) and continued to work with a private therapist who had us work with Brain Skills (which I'm trying to dispose of, if anyone is interested in this program anymore?) and various software programs for auditory and visual processing. The therapist evaluated him as having a -3.4 year processing speed deviation when he came to her, and perhaps 9 months later that had transformed to -1. I believe we continued to do some things at home after that, but she graduated him out of her program since she had remediated his other scores to age level or above, except for VP (-0.9) and spelling (-3), and did not feel that it would be helpful to us to continue to pay for her services. We still drilled math facts, and spelling was the last remaining academic mountain to climb. He could not read properly until age 10 - longer books age 11. However by the time he was in 9th grade, he was reading extremely challenging texts with good comprehension, doing well in Math, acing Biology, struggling through Latin (which he received an A for Latin II via Veritas Press the following year), doing well in grammar(Rod & Staff), but writing was still challenging, and spelling, atrocious, even though his thoughts were intelligent. He also managed to fit in drawing, art apprec. and music apprec. We continued to drill spelling until this year (11th grade) where he has made enormous improvements but is still probably lagging behind the general population. He had a very challenging workload for his high school years, and apart from it taking him a long time to complete, he was doing well. This year (11th grade) he has received A's in AP Bio at high school; A's in pre-calc at Veritas Press (Foerster's Alg + Trig); B+ from Great Books Academy where he has read and enjoyed 1 Shakespeare a week for several weeks, and many other works ranging from Aquinas to Hobbe's Leviathan. He undoubtedly puts in more time than his peers for all these activities. He also received a 570/R, 640/M, 530 (Essay 8) for January's SAT without accommodations. I'm merely describing all this to let you know that because he seemed to be improving yearly and doing well academically, processing speeds weren't things we woke up worrying about everyday. Only the re-testing drew our attention back to his areas of challenge, and just how severe they are. Perhaps if he had been in a traditional classroom setting it might have been more obvious, since he would have had a much more inflexible schedule which would have drawn attention to his deficits. Not that I regret that, though, since at home he has had the freedom to study what he wants at the level of intensity he prefers. I'm not sure they would have allowed him that freedom at a regular school given his academic and cognitive history. My daughter goes to PS full time now, and briefly experienced a high school class where the LD kids are put, and she never wants to go through that again). So, I suppose the answer to the OP's question, in my son's particular case, is that his processing deficits were briefly remediated, but seem to have 're-emerged' with some pretty scary scores. Perhaps we should have given them more attention over the past 3-4 years in order to maintain his gains, but his high school work load was daunting and his ostensible academic accomplishments appeared to be more than acceptable. I'm curious to know about studying music. I had not really heard that mentioned in my day, beyond the general concept that music studies help with a child's brain development/coordination. DS did study cello until 8th grade, but it seemed to be not only a burden, but a source of extreme frustration for him, and his teacher was very good, but not very understanding of his problems in tracking the music on the page etc. I always felt anxious that she was going to lose it with him (and once she did), even though this was a child who doesn't understand how to give anything less than 200% of his effort to any activity. Since it was not something he seemed to love, we allowed him to drop it for 9th grade to focus on other preferred activities.

First of all, even though I continuously click on the "follow" button it seems to stop working at some point - often after only a day or less. Secondly, someone once gave me a tip about how to review new content for the forums/threads I've been participating in. The trouble is, I can't remember what that is, nor can I find the post that contained the information. If I just click on "View New Content" I see content from across the Board. When I go to visit "My Content" or "Content I follow" the list seems incomplete. Any suggestions? Thanks!

And we also just had the results of his testing in - superior to above average in many areas but processing scores and academic fluency are extremely low, often in the first percentile. So hopefully next September he will sit the SAT and the ACT with time and a half. The person administering the test recommends Community College for the first two years to help him ease into the college workload. I will explore that option to see if it makes sense for him. Thanks again for all your help!