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UmmIbrahim

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Everything posted by UmmIbrahim

  1. I just realized that I hadn't logged in to the forums in almost a year! Time flies, especially when managing a senior and college apps. My second DS is finishing up his college journey, and waiting to hear from a few more schools, but I can list the ones he's been accepted to thus far (mostly the big state schools with EA applications). He applied as a computer science major, which is always a challenge! University of Virginia Virginia Tech James Madison University (merit-based full ride woohoo!) North Carolina State University Rutgers New Brunswick Rose Hulman Institute of Technology (nice scholarship) University of Maryland - College Park University of Wisconsin - Madison Waiting on a few more responses before he makes a final decision. It's been exciting to get in everywhere he applied so far though! Congratulations to all of the seniors!
  2. Yeah, this sounds exactly like our CC Online branch classes. Everyone says that it's pretty much teach yourself, and the students who like them are often older students who need to quickly knock out foundational requirements (like precalc, foundational math, foundational English, etc.) on a condensed schedule. Other times, it's students who work full-time that like the flexibility, but, again, they know that they are signing up to teach themselves with minimal support resources. A good option for some of those groups, for sure, but it's really not my idea of a "class." And certainly not one that I would be paying the same tuition for as a full-session, in-person, maximum support regular class! Good luck to your kid in getting through the classes this semester. Our experience with in-person has been overall stellar, so I hope that you can find a way to try those out in subsequent semesters if the logistics work out!
  3. That's really too bad. I can definitely relate to taking a schedule hit for driving out to an in-person DE class! One semester, I drove an hour each way for my oldest son to take a class with a particularly awesome professor (it really ended up being worth it!). This year, my middle son has had his first chance to do DE in-person (he has previously had all synchronous online classes because of covid), and it's going really well. This kid doesn't mind online classes at all (my oldest hated them), but even for a kid who doesn't mind live online, the in-person is just still so much more engaging. I drive 30 minutes each way twice a week to make that work, and I do think it has been worth it. I hope you are able to juggle your schedule so that you can try some in-person offerings next semester. Even if you can just squeeze in one class, you might find it to be worthwhile!
  4. Oh I can definitely see lower student motivation leading to less desirable outcomes in the course. Your online version of the class sounds a lot more interactive with regards to other components (labs, recitations, etc.) than the online version of the courses offered at our community college. Those online versions are almost universally not just a difference in lecture delivery method. They almost feel more like coursera/edx type offerings - i.e. you are pretty much on your own with dubious email-based help available (sometimes even no recorded lectures! just readings!) but please keep up with the deadlines! I think a course like yours as you describe would probably be the best of all possible worlds with regards to an asynchronous class, but, as you describe, even the best version of asynchronous doesn't match the in-person, live class.
  5. I can't say anything about your particular cc system, but I can speak about ours. This type of asynchronous, mostly teach yourself, minimum prof interaction type of class is part of our Online branch of the community college. My two kids who have taken DE thus far had been told early on to avoid those kind of classes. In our system, they have a different course number that starts with an "E" (i.e. they are marked as something different than a regular-style college class), and when my oldest was applying to college, he had to specify how he had taken his DE classes. The universities we talked to strongly preferred in-person instructional methods, and advised against taking DE with the "online" branch of the school. Online classes (not the synchronous via zoom versions, which became popular during covid, but the asynchronous classes) tend to get much lower ratings from students overall at our cc. There are always communication problems (professor doesn't respond to emails for weeks at a time! professor hasn't graded any assignments and the class has one week remaining! etc. etc.) and most students don't recommend taking those online classes unless there are no other options. The synchronous stuff, in our experience, has been wonderful. As long as we've been mindful about "rate my professor" scores, things have gone really well. Now, take all of this with a grain of salt, because your community college system may be very different, but if there is any way for your child to take in-person classes or live synchronous virtual classes, I would really recommend trying those and comparing the quality. It may be that your online versions of classes are bad like ours are. Good luck!
  6. No, there are no rentals. A small-sized tablet is around $20 and the medium size is around $70 on amazon. I should also note that these aren't required of the students. It was just suggested by the teacher to make science communication easier. Some students may be using iPads with styluses as well.
  7. Through no fault of poor Mr. Kernion, this kid got to hear so many of the videos passively a few years ago. His preferred method of learning is definitely not auditory (he's my one who is not much for audiobooks, for example), and combine that with "boring" sounding videos that he was exposed to in the past... yeah, he would not be loving it if I tried to do those with him ๐Ÿ˜‚ Any course that is primarily video learning is not a good fit for this particular kid anyway. So far, with the Athena's class, there is textbook reading, discussion board posts (these seem meatier than what I usually think of as a required forum post), a lab, several videos about falling bodies (feather and hammer on the moon, feather and bowling ball in a vacuum, etc.), and a written problem set due in the first week. The expected workload outside of class per week is listed as 4-5 hours, and the tasks seem to be nicely laid out for scheduling purposes. The class is using tablets to write out work on Miro boards. This will be our first time using the digital stylus/wacom pad, but it seems like a neat way to manage digital work in a math/science class. I will be sure to keep you posted as we go along. The instructor is also a big fan of Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) calculation, so the kids are all getting introduced to RPN, which is neat because I never thought to introduce it to my boys.
  8. Oh, sorry if that was confusing. DE stands for Dual Enrollment (i.e. classes taken at the local college during high school).
  9. I have been dithering for the last year or so about what to do about AP Physics C - Mechanics and my middle son. My oldest took the PA Homeschoolers course with Kernion that combined Mechanics and E&M in one year, and then took both of the Physics APs. My middle son is a different can of worms, and I knew that he would NOT enjoy the style of the course videos that comprise the backbone of the Kernion course. Even if we had done the Mechanics-only year-long option with Kernion, we would still have the same issue with those videos not really sticking for him. The only other options I knew of were the online "AP shop" type places like FLVS and SVHS or dual enrollment. Yesterday, I discovered a new option at Athena's (they do gifted education that is geared towards student level and not age). They started a new year-long course - Physics Mechanics. It's not labeled as AP, but the instructor is going to be assigning prep work throughout the year for students who are interested in the exam. I really like the sound of this class from the first session. The instructor seems very passionate about the subject! I thought I'd throw this out there in case there were others, like me, looking for different options for AP Physics C. https://athenasacademy.com/courses/physics-mechanics-year-long-course/ My son had signed up for a DE calc-based physics class before I discovered this option, but will likely drop that since he's currently registered for like 18 credits (with the expectation that he'll drop something after the first week of classes). I like the idea of spacing the content out over the year for a less intensive pace, as well as skipping out on the stress of the "forever grade" with the DE class.
  10. One of the nice things about the Common/Coalition Apps is that your recommenders are not required to manage multiple letter submissions in multiple places. From their side, it's just one submission and done. We liked not making our letter writers work hard! ๐Ÿ™‚ We did a ton of VA state schools, and they are perfectly fine with the Common/Coalition app. (I seem to recall Virginia Tech only taking the Coalition App maybe? It's been a while, but the Coalition App is pretty much the same thing as the Common App, so it's the same idea)
  11. I came here to say exactly this. I was surprised that no one mentioned my favorite in the first two pages of the thread ๐Ÿ˜‚ I tried my first SweeTango like maybe two years ago, and now that's what I look for when buying apples. They seem to be increasing in availability each year, which is great!
  12. Thanks for the reminder about the opening of the new testing dates. I just got my middle son registered for his very first SAT on the August date. I'm hoping his summer prep gets him a decent first score. Expecting to have to take it lots of times with this kid though, lol.
  13. My oldest son took this class a few years ago. As far as test prep classes go, it's fine. Mr. Caro made it fun for the kids, and it was an outside class that made some of the prep get done in a timely manner. Since that time, we have learned a lot more about prep for the SAT. Now, I don't think any class would be the best use of prep time. There is no way to make a class meet the individual needs of different students, whether it be Princeton Review, WTMA, or any other provider. What really makes a difference in the score is just having the student grind through as many problems as humanly possible. This means taking all old tests, going through UWorld problems, finishing all the chapters in the College Panda math book as well as the College Panda Math test book, and just going crazy with the amount of time that you have. You have to see a wide variety of all of the tricks, and the best way to do that is just large amounts of exposure to the questions. The reddit group r/SAT is also a good place to find the most up-to-date resources. You will find a lot of kids on that group using inexpensive resources on their own and achieving really big score improvements. No fancy class necessary at all. That said, if you have a kid that wants no part of test prep and is unwilling to do anything independently, then maybe a class would be the only way to get it done.
  14. I feel your pain! My son got sick at the end of last week and is still congested and feverish. We did not go for his BC Calc exam. ๐Ÿ˜Ÿ Because of a busy summer filled with travel and speedcubing competitions, we're just going to have him take it next year and hope for better health. Luckily, a PCR test came back negative, so hopefully it's just normal viral crud. Good luck in getting in during the makeup testing window and I hope your kids feel better!
  15. My middle son took AP CSA yesterday as well. Not sure how he did, but he's the kind of kid who somehow never has a sense of how he did. His biggest issue is sometimes interpreting the questions and knowing what "they want from him." His divergent thinking is always a challenge on standardized tests ๐Ÿ™„ It also probably didn't help that the high school where he was taking the test had some kind of a power issue during the morning testing session. So the afternoon tests started quite late, but by that time he was back in the testing room with no phone and nothing else to do but sit and wait for more than an hour and a half. Eek! This school did a big production of escorting him through the hallways going and coming since he wasn't a student there (last year's host school was far more casual about things), so I think the other official students were able to float around, use the bathroom, hang out in the hallways, but my son just had to sit in the room because he wasn't a student. He didn't really complain about it, so I guess he was able to entertain his mind with something. It was just an unexpected "homeschool student" drawback. Regardless, that one is done and now he's preparing for AP Calc BC on Monday. I can't wait until he's finished! Good luck to all of the other AP test takers out there.
  16. Beyond the basics of mean, median, and mode, the SAT will have a box and whisker plot on rare occasions, so be familiar with that from the statistics unit.
  17. Pretty sure that there are NO matrices on either the PSAT or the SAT. The ACT, on the other hand, does have a matrix question or two on occasion.
  18. If it helps any, you know that my oldest got into most of our state schools plus others and he had 0 fine arts credits. I totally do not recommend doing that (it was more of a "we ran out of time and he always hated all of his options" thing... I'll be doing better with my next 2 kids!), but since you are talking about some of the same schools, I think your 0.5 credit would be just fine if you don't want to try to get more ๐Ÿ™‚
  19. Hey, it looks like you have a good plan for next year. Just throwing it out there that if you are graduating your kids from your homeschool (which I am pretty sure you are), our state does NOT require that list of courses you are referring to (personal finance, 4 English credits, 3 math credits, yadda yadda) to be completed by homeschoolers. It is explicitly for students in public or private schools as a graduation requirement. Given, you will surely be more than meeting the English, math, etc. credits, but you don't have to spend time on personal finance if your kids aren't into it and you don't want to! My oldest son didn't have an official credit for that option (we covered financial literacy through general family discussions/practical matters and not as an official class on the transcript), and he graduated just fine and his transcript was accepted everywhere we applied, both in-state and out-of-state schools. The state law that pertains to homeschoolers does not have an explicit list of classes. More power to you if your kids really want to tick that box like public schoolers, but it seems like you might be squeezing it in the summer because you feel you have to, so just throwing it out there that you don't! Good luck with your planning.
  20. Hey, I thought I'd respond since it was some of my oldest DS's experiences that are scaring you off! Especially since you guys are in the same CC system that we are. To give some balance to our two bad experiences (out of so manyโ€“our CC really is pretty awesome overall), I will say that the science classes that my older DS took there were sooooo great. He had absolutely amazing labs and a great overall experience with his favorite chem prof (Beth Schomber if you want to check her out). He got to synthesize aspirin and compare its potency to an old bottle that the prof keeps around to let the students see how well they did. He got to make nylon, and there was a competition to see which lab group could make the longest strand. The facilities for lab work are just top notch, and I could never have replicated what he had access to at the CC at home. Honestly, it was those early, amazing chemistry exposures that led him to initially think he might like to major in chem. Please don't let our crappy pre-calc teacher scare you away from some great CC options. And the orgo teacher is much better now (the department helped her tweak her class), but I'm pretty sure you guys are not looking at orgo as a science to add on. CHM 111 and 112 would be great classes for a senior to take to get ready for college science. We had a homeschooled friend in Physics 231 and 232 last year who also had only good things to say about the prof (That is the two semester sequence of calculus-based physics - university physics... they also offer Physics 200 and 201 (I think those are the numbers) if your kids haven't done Calculus yet but want to take more physics). Additionally, any classes your kids take in the second semester of their senior year won't even have grades posted when you are jumping through the admissions hoops, so you don't really need to factor in the whole cc grades affecting your admissions decisions. UVA gives credit for tons of our CC classes, so you might want to consider that as well when comparing AP to DE credit for that particular school. You can end up with a great or terrible class anywhere, but please take my previous DE post in the context of trying to give suggestions for things that I've seen go wrong in DE classes to a parent trying to make sense of a student's readiness versus grades. Our CC system is really good on the whole, and judicious class/prof selection can give your kids an amazing college experience! Best of luck in nailing down your schedule for next year.
  21. I don't have any particular advice other than to say that all DE is not created equal. I would really take a look at the material that the grades are based on. Do you think that the questions on the exams are fairly based on the material covered in the course? Is the professor clear in setting expectations for the students? Can you compare the material covered with other CC syllabi in comparable courses? Really make sure that the tests aren't "out there" and that the professor is on the level. There are some absolute doozies out there, so I would never look at a student and say "oh, I guess this C or B means you aren't quite ready for college material." If the class is a mess or the professor is a mess (so very common in what I've seen, unfortunately), you really may not know anything about your student's abilities at all. My oldest son mostly took professors that we had vetted with other local homeschoolers and had some wonderful experiences with his DE classes. That said, we still ended up with two exceptions: one was a math class and one was an organic chemistry class. The prof of the math class was a disaster. She would give different answers to the same question depending on the day. Couldn't make up her mind about which graphing calculators would be allowed (my son had explicitly had his calculator approved by her for exam 1), but then she looked at it again on exam 2 and decided she didn't like it and he had to take the exam without it. Just absolutely off-the-wall inconsistencies in so many situations. Luckily, it was his first CC math class in his first year of DE in tenth grade (Precalc 2, which was not hard for him at the time), and he managed to get an A and run away without any long-term harm done. But, oof, we learned the importance of vetting professors as best as we could from that experience. The organic chem teacher wasn't as egregious in terms of bizarre, inconsistent behavior, but that class ended up being a mess as well, and my son ended up with his only DE B grade. The tests had significant material not covered in the course (in lectures or in the book). When my son showed the exams to his favorite chem teacher in the department, she didn't understand how the department was allowing the orgo prof to use those exams because they were not aligned with the course. She was actually able to change the situation for future classes by having the department work with the prof, but that didn't help my son during his semester. Overall, DE was great for us, but we were VERY intentional about who we took classes with, and even then, last minute schedule changes left us with two absolute disasters. If my son hadn't been such a strong student, those two duds would have killed his GPA. In our experience, CC quality can be all over the map. So much is dependent on the professor, and the grading metrics can be subject to a higher level of volatility than you might find in a high school course. Many times, your grade is based only on 3 or 4 exams for the semester. That puts a LOT of weight on the exam (which tends to be different than a high school course), and can easily reflect poorly on a student if the exams are designed poorly. We have learned to approach DE with extreme caution because of the fact that those grades live FOREVER. I don't want to cut off scholarship options or admissions chances because of a terrible class or a terrible professor. Grades and bad profs don't matter much to me once my kids are in college (pretty sure I don't have any heading to med school where they would need to continue with tippy top GPAs), and I consider those kinds of bad experiences just part of the life lessons you get in college. Not every class or prof is going to be awesome ๐Ÿ™‚ That said, high school is a LOT different than college in terms of the stakes for the future, so I would just say really dig deep into what the classes are covering, how the grades are calculated, and how the professors of the courses are. Good luck to your daughter in finishing up her year strong!
  22. Oh no, we definitely had DS send everyone a follow-up email to thank them for their time. I saw this recommended many places, and it's definitely not considered schmoozy! One of DS's interviewers actually had several follow up emails about a topic that came up during their conversation, because the interviewer was interested in something that DS is really into. Then, when DS was accepted at the interviewer's school, there was another follow up contact from him to discuss.
  23. Yeah, even though the end of my son's senior year got shot by covid, I will say that because of the application timing, he was able to get in all of his interviews in person before things shut down. So I guess that's something! My kid would also have hated doing zoom interviews, so I feel your pain. I hope your son hangs in there. I will say the whole process was good practice for future interviewing of all sorts, so I'm glad that we went through it.
  24. Just jumping in to agree with this. My son did a lot of interviews, and there were actually a mix of different styles and it wasn't always the case that he would know who he would get in advance. One of the ivies just had a group of kids come to interview with a group of alums in a fixed location, and each kid would get somewhat randomly paired with an alum. So definitely no expectation of knowing anything about your interviewer in advance. The interviewers that he would be able to find in advance, he would just search to get an idea if they would have particular information about his major or fields he was interested in. He said he never brought up anything that he learned about the interviewer, lol. I think you are right on in having your child be quite familiar with the school and know lots about why they want to attend. So as long as they aren't interviewing with Brown and talking about how much they like Princeton, or something else equally egregious (I've heard that really happened, lol), you should be just fine ๐Ÿ™‚
  25. When my oldest was applying to college, we followed along with our friend who was applying for theatre at the same time (they applied to many of the schools that I've seen you mention on your list!). It's basically a double application process and just brutal with all of the auditioning. Hang in there! Not that this is a particularly helpful comment, but my son ended up NEVER visiting the school that he is attending now. Much of our visit time fell during the early days of the pandemic when there were no vaccines and campuses were COMPLETELY shut down. Luckily, we had made two trips right before things closed and were able to evaluate UIUC and UMich in-person. Looking back, I think it was good for us to get the feel of a larger state school in-person since we didn't have much context (DH and I both went to a smaller, private university). However, we had a HUGE list and DS ended up picking completely sight unseen. While, of course, this is not what you want to do, my son absolutely loves where he is and it all worked out great in the end. I truly believe that there were many schools on our list where he would have found a place to be happy. I tend not to go for the whole "one dream school" idea, and you can always transfer if things end up not being a good fit! So try really hard not to stress if you can't quite squeeze in all of the visits that you would like! It really can work out okay without ๐Ÿ™‚
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