We’ll….crud. Just heard back from the small ‘independent learning school’ where we’ve taken our AP tests for years that they don’t expect to be allowing outside students to take AP exams this year. The public schools here have been consistently unhelpful always in this regard, and I don’t expect it to be better this year. I’ll start the phone calling marathon tomorrow, I suppose. at lears we’re only looking for 2 this year, and they’re fairly common.

DS took CV honors chem 2 years ago. Not self graded, but I assume the materials are the same. 100% (200% even) recommend it. Connie is a rock star at explanation and motivation. I will caution, at least the honors class is very legit. It is a material amount of work. It's not billed as an AP class and doesn't follow the AP plan exactly, but based on DS's experience it's about as in-depth.

I will happily take the win. But I won't hold my breath that the people who are harassing minimum wage retail workers over their employeer's mask policy are likely to be swayed by anything. (true story. happened to our son 4 weeks ago. they entered and announced "we're unmasked and unvaxed. and not leaving the store", recorded it and doxxed the employees in their youtube channel.)

agreed. no impact at all. People will just come up with a different bogus reason not to get vaccinated. If you don't trust authorities or experts on a subject, you don't trust the process they create and endorse. I'm glad it's approved because that will allow some institutions to require it. And I think they should. Yes, you're free to not get vaccinated. And you're free to then also just stay in your home.

this all raises a general question. Suggestions to provide only a single grade / class and include test scores on the transcript seems like great suggestions - you do want to highlight all the important bits in a single, easy to see manner. OTOH, standard public school transcripts have semester grades and don't include test scores...right? On the one hand, there's no real reason to be constrained by the public schools do. I wasn't for class planning or teaching, after all. OTOH, admin offices see a bazillion applications and transcripts. Maybe they'd rather have everything in a standard, expected format?

@8filltheheartthat linked example is showing as 'unavailable'. I can kinda infer it from the screen shot from @daijobu, but if you are will to repost I'd love to look at it.

English was at home (except the DE this year). Math was AoPS (taught by me) up till this year - LinAlg and MVCalc is at the local CC. Everything else was outsourced (German from OKState, Chem from CloverValley, Physics, CompSciA, Econ, APUSH were through PAH).

thanks for the input. I'll try that and see how it looks. He got a 36 on the ACT. It'd be nice to highlight that. I've not seen a lot of test scores on transcripts, though. I'll look around for some formatting.

such as? I could move Econ in to 'electives' and make 'social sciences' be just 'history'. That seems a bit better.

thanks. So, this is where we're at (I went ahead and pulled the math and German classes from pre-9th. That seems like a very reasonable prospective)

I'm wondering if anyone has advice on some transcript questions I'm hitting, as I'm putting this together for DS's common app. He's planning on a STEM major (probably Chem or ChemE) and targeting selective schools (Stanford, Northwestern, CMU, Michigan, UW, Chicago. no UCs) 1) would you including 'non-core' classes in the transcript. He has 6 or 7 credits / year from core classes (English, foreign language, math, science, social science). Currently, everything else is an activity. Will the target schools care that there's no PE class or art classes? competitive swimming & theatre + voice I'm currently listing as activities. 2) include math and foreign language from before 9th grade? How far back to go? Does anyone care, or would they assume that if he took PreCalc in 9th he probably took Geometry and Algebra II before that, so I shouldn't bother? 3) reporting weighted vs unweighted GPA? If weighted, which classes to give the bump for? Just AP & DE? Honors Chem and PreCalc also? Does the answer change if unweighted GPA has been trending down slightly (4.0 freshman year, 3.86 last year) but weighted is steady at ~4.3? 4) assign 1/2 or 1 credit for each of Physics C Mechanics and E&M (and this year for MacroEcon and MicroEcon)? I think he has 'enough' credits either way. Many of the local HS's seem to treat each of the Physics' as full-year classes, but I don't want to just pad the number of credits since I don't think he needs that. thanks in advance for any feedback!

depending on your intended major, that may be great or useless. I just looked up the current requirements for my major at my alma mater, and engineering majors do not take a physical science GE, nor would the non-calc physics count for the physics req. OTOH, if you did have a physical sciences GE, then you could get the 8 credits w/ just the 1 physics class. <shrug>

Is DS planning on taking Calculus in HS? If so, is it worth waiting to take the C version of Physics which is more likely to count for college credit? My DS took AP Physics C Mechanics & E&M w Kernion through PAH last year. I'd second the impressions of him as a teacher. The course is well structured, etc. It seems like the calculus based version isn't especially more work than the algebra version, and then you've had the level of class that's necessary for stem. It's been decades...but back when I was in HS (when dirt was new) I had an algebra-based physics class and later a calculus version. The latter was both more in-depth and considerably easier to understand. At the time, I didn't feel like having been through the first course made much difference in ability to take on the calculus-version.

unexpected results this year. 4 on APUSH and Chem 5 on Physics Mech and E&M based on practice tests, expected a solid 5 on Chem, 4 on E&M, and would have happily taken the 3 on APUSH. <shrug>

DS completed his freshman year last year as a MT student. loved it. the shows had maybe a smaller cast and they staged everything to minimize physical contact. everyone wore masks. there was no audience. It was live streamed, and honestly the sound quality was fairly poor. Most performances were done in a gym, which didn't help. He also joined the 'competitive choir' and that was great, too. They all had 'singing masks'. They stick way out from your face and make you look like a duck, but they did stay on while the kids were singing. Rehearsals and performances (no audience) were done with the kids spaced pretty far apart. IIRC, rehearsals were 30 minutes, then vacate the building for 20 while the ac cycles through, then back in. Some were held outside. The sports teams all had various quarantine problems and COVID cases, but as I understand it no transmission was linked to choir or theatre. <shrug> Current plan for next year is the normal set of performances - both 'main stage' and student run. The college is requiring everyone (students, faculty, staff) to be vaccinated. Interestingly, I hear from DS that the voice instructors found it easier to teach students who were wearing masks. Something about feedback when learning 'where to place your voice'. Which sounds weird, but I know nothing about the mechanics of singing.

He took them back to back….and is signed up for Connie’s OChem this year (he’s super excited about it). CloverValley Honors Chem was work. Maybe 10 / week, and some very focused studying for days before midterms and the final. AP Chem was pretty light. He watched maybe 1/2 the video lectures and tended to do the HW the night before it was due, and ended up with >99% in the class. it was totally a review class. Which was fine - it was a stressful year and he also took both PhysicsC APs this year. But he probably could have skipped the class and just taken the AP exam after the clover valley course.

DS took Moskaluk's AP Chem at PAH this past year. He liked it. It went well. practice tests suggest a 5. That said....it was not difficult. He took the class Connie (CloverValley) is now calling 'Advanced Honors Chem' the year before, and said it covered more and in more depth. AP was basically a review.

https://www.amazon.jobs/en/teams/internships-for-students is the primary page. also https://www.amazon.jobs/en/business_categories/student-programs. As a CS major, she'd probably be looking for a Software Development Engineer internship. If she can't find the application process, DM me and I'll help get it sorted out. It's a pretty great experience, IMO. They're assigned to a team that owns something in Amazon/AWS, have a specific project to work on, a mentor assigned, and there's usually a number of fun interns-activities scheduled. I've worked with many, and by the end of their summer they've designed and implemented a thing or feature, shipped it, and some customer is using it....which is pretty exciting as a young engineer. Note that all big-tech will have something similar, so you might as well take a look at all of them.

when selecting a college for an engineering program, you might ask which companies recruit there. Or, if there's a target job/company, you might ask them if they recruit there. re: pay increase for an MS or PhD...._right now_ (and frankly right now is a bit of a weird time for hiring engineers as the market is super hot) at big tech. I can't say anything about how this compares to startups or smaller tech companies, or locations outside the US. - a new BS(EE|CS|CSE|etc) gets hired as an L4 at Amazon or L3 at Google. Most get promoted 1 level in 2-3 years. - a new MS(EE|CS|CSE|etc) usually gets hired as an L4 at Amazon or L3 at Google, at essentially the say pay as the BS, but they generally get promoted in a year. There are rare exceptions if you've done your MS in something directly relevant to where you're getting hired and you had a hands-on enough graduate degree. - a new PhD igenerally get hired as an L5 Amazon, L4 google. so, in comparison to what you'd get (say) 5 years post your BS, this is probably lower and of course you took on debt rather than getting paid over those 5 years. Yes, it's more than what a new grad BS gets by probably 1.5-2x, but the new grad probably got raises amounting to that or more over the same time period. OTOH, the fraction of Principal Engineers that have an MS or PhD is much higher than the general population. Note that most people do not ever get promoted to Principle, however. If it matters, levels.fyi appears to be fairly accurate for compensation at levels where there are enough datapoints to be meaningful.

the first programming language is by far the hardest. That's partially because the syntax of most common procedural and/or object-oriented, imperative programming languages is fairly similar, and partially because learning the concepts of doing programming and the basic tools for doing so (editor, compiler or interpreter, debugger, etc) is a bigger hurdle than the syntax for doing so in any (ok, most) particular language. If you're a good Python programmer, you can read most Java as long as you can google some syntax and library things. You could become a passable Java programmer in two weeks and a good one in a month. And, as @Ummlbrahim said, Python's syntax is somewhat simpler. That said, if your goal is 'learn to program in Java' and you're starting from scratch I wouldn't learn Python first. I'd just learn Java.

"So how to homeschoolers get on this thing? " AFAIK, there isn't a path to joining that program as a homeschooler. THAT SAID, Amazon offers internships to tech college students - mostly, but not exclusively, software engineering internships to CS majors. I've worked with dozens of them, and it's a pretty great gig. You get paid (rather a lot, honestly) and Amazon funds a cost-of-living for apartments, and about 50-60% get an offer for a full-time role once you graduate. I can get more specifics if someone's interested, but I believe the filtering is based on where you're going to school, grades you got, and an online programming test. I don't know how it works for internships, but it's worth noting that Amazon (and most big tech) do not recruit new grads from all universities. There's just too many and too many applicants, despite the fact that I have unfilled hiring recs every year. We pretty much only hire from the top ~30 colleges/university engineering programs when hiring new college grads.

youngest took AP CompSciA (the programming one, not the 'appreciation of computers one') from Mrs Lang 3 years ago, and then TA'd for it the past two years. They'd tell you the liked the course, and they did get a 5, but having helped them review for the test IMO they pretty much learned java programming from scratch in a month. From watching them TA the class there seem to be two categories of students - those who are engaged and active and leverage the TAs and do great, and those who are both totally lost and also totally disengaged. TBH, learning to do basic programming in a language like Java is just not that hard. So it's not so surprising that the engaged students do fine. IMO, learning to program requires feedback from a human. You can learn the syntax by yourself but learning how to think about the problems and express ideas clearly is a bit like learning to write an essay - feedback from a human is just super useful. But I don't see why it needs to be a full-year, full-time course. The PAH class is sufficient, but if you've got access to anyone who can program in an object-oriented language then the barron's review book and a periodic review by that person is probably also good enough.

If you've been through this process, can you DM me? Questions about what to do wrt names on test scores, transcripts, etc.

which school?

DS college shut down ALL group activities of any kind - practices for all sports, all meet-ups, dining in the cafeteria by anyone, etc. But yet the let the choir continue to practice in person because they've had 0 cases traced to choir and only 5 of 50 quarantined all term (contact w/ roommates who had a scare. all negative) Overall, positive test rates on campus have been much higher than Im comfortable with, but the choir has done fine. <shrug> It's almost like if we'd actually all wear a mask and actually all not stand next to each other then this wouldn't be all that bad!