So how is Sci Oly going for people this year? Our team has been working so hard over the past few months. They went to the regional competition recently and did well enough to move on to the state competition.

I feel Ii can communicate when it relates to money, academic documentation or anything a guidance counselor might step in for. I recently got involved when a school couldn't find ds's test scores. The admissions person who responded to his emails was not able to find the scores and could only suggest resenting them. I called a week later when scores still weren't showing up. The admissions person I spoke to was able to find the scores in about 5 minutes and pull them into his file.

I think your last point is key. In VA AP tests were pretty easy to schedule. It just wasn't a big deal. It might be complicated in CA by the fact that homeschools are private schools or part of a public charter school or private PSP.

Nice that they called. Last year, ds took too long trying to pick the ideal session. By the time he went back in, the one session he could attend was full. DS2 has the attitude that he'll accept any of the summer programs on a first across the transom basis. It's too hard to try to coordinate multiple sessions flying to the mainland upping the level of difficulty.

Reading the NYTimes article, I can't help but compare it to what ds is doing in Model UN. Not only does he do crisis simulations with public speaking and negotiation practice, but he does his own research, writes a 1-2 page position paper for each conference, and deals with a new topic/country assignment with each conference. Also, he has formed a homeschool MUN team, recruited interested students, trained the in MUN procedures and research, coordinates meeting spaces at the community college, and participated in MUN League decision-making. Cost of each local MUN conference is typically $10 for pizza. At the end of a year, he's been accepted to a committee co-chair position, where he is now writing the research background guide to introduce the topic to other students. He's also applying to the leadership team of a large 3 day conference for a year in which it is planning to double its size. I know that there is an issue of access for some students. This might be the main way that some kids are able to visit DC and take part in some of these activities. But it does bug me when they are marketed as leadership, when they might be closer to a summer camp with a government focus.

Depending on the student's goals, it might be worth looking at ROTC scholarships. The four year scholarships cover tuition, uniforms, books and a small monthly stipend. Students take military/naval science courses each semester, drill with the ROTC unit, and have summer training periods. At graduation, they are commissioned as officers in the branch of the military the ROTC unit is affiliated with. They serve on active duty for a period of time as "payback" for the scholarship (typically 5-10 years depending on branch of service and specialty). ROTC scholarships are competitive to get, and are based on grades, extracurriculars and leadership experience. (Participation in JROTC in high school is not required. It can be a good extracurricular activity, but so can Boy Scouts, sports, a part time job, robotics, etc.) ROTC scholarships don't cover room and board, but some colleges will discount room and board for ROTC students (I think UCSD does this, for example). Students can use ROTC scholarships at colleges that have a ROTC unit for that service. (IE, a student has to be accepted at a school with an Air Force ROTC unit in order to use the Air Force ROTC scholarship there.) Navy ROTC applications ask students to list schools with Navy units in ranked order. If they are granted a scholarship, it is assigned to a specific unit (there is some possibility to ask for the scholarship to be transferred to a different unit/school). DS has gone through this over the last year. He earned a Navy ROTC scholarship assigned to his first choice ROTC school. He also earned a merit award from that school. Depending on stackability, that will bring his costs down to $8-14k/year. (Part of the cost here is high transportation costs to and from Hawaii.) It's not an answer for every student, but it can be a very good package for those who are interested.

If you require SAT Subject tests and have scores say for Math and Physics for a bunch of engineering students you can look at SAT scores and Subject test scores and make a rough comparison. How would a 3 on AP Physics Mechanics relate to that? Is a 5 on Physics 1 better than a 3 on Physics C? How do either compare to an SAT Subject score? I understand not wanting to make substitutions for the Subject test scores when it's required. I have seen more flexibility for using different things as evidence of advanced work.

Also Some schools require or would like to see subject tests from homeschoolers. It is better to take them shortly after a course than a couple years later.

It would partly depend on what grade level it's written for. Now that I have high school students, I don't usually read through Rainbow Resource, even though I poured over the catalogs when my kids were younger. Christian Book Distributors Home Science Tools Timberdoodle Of the big outsourcing things we've done (Oklahoma State University's German Online, Amplify/Edhesive AP Computer Science, and Lukeion Classes, I think I heard of each of them on these boards or from a friend. Lukeion has booths at conventions, but I still waited to hear reports from other people before I took the plunge.) I used to read some homeschool blogs, but I've gotten away from that as well.

Ds did a GenCyber computer security camp last year. It was hard for him to decide to take it because there was so little info about it. The camp was run out of the local university. He really enjoyed it. Computer Science is his degree goal so attending may have helped.

Thanks all. DS1 may have ended up a little ahead of himself on math. This might be a good way of keeping him humming along. I sometimes forget what I have on my own shelves. It hadn't occurred to me to have him spend a semester doing C&P, but I think he'd love it.

Would you do this after the algebra 1 content of the Intro to Algebra book or only after finishing the book?

I didn't want to come off as a helicopter parent doing the app for her kid. Ds had tried to deal with the admissions office but had not gotten helpful responses. So I was trying to convey that I had m guidance counselor hat on. When you create a Common App account you get a CA registration number. This college uses that number along with last name and date of birth to grant access to the admissions portal. Other colleges sent emails acknowledging the application and issuing their own login number with a link to create an account with the school to follow the status of the app. This was the only school out of four CA schools that just used the number from CA.

We have used Lukeion for a variety of semester courses and workshops. (Latin 1-AP, Muse Unloosed & Muse Reloosed (classical literature), and Advanced Research Writing plus a half dozen workshops, mostly as recordings) Latin 1 was incredibly hard, with a steep learning curve for my kids. They were not good about pacing their studies throughout the week and frequently got slammed on the day that homework was due. They have learned a lot about the meaning of deadlines, working through an assignment even when they don't want to, and the consequences of procrastination and not getting things done. It was sometimes painful, but I'm so glad they did learn those lessons. I think that one reason dual enrollment has been mostly smooth is that these hard lessons were already somewhat understood. For those who are new to Lukeion, workshops are typically 4-5 sessions of about an hour. Sometimes they are offered once a week, sometimes they are everyday for a week. There isn't assigned homework, and there isn't a grade. Semester long courses have a live class session. They use WebEX teleconferencing software. The student sees a slide with pictures, diagrams, text, etc while the teacher talks. There is a chat box on the side that is on during certain parts of the course. (I would recommend sitting with younger students early on in the courses. I've seen that some classes have a lot of "spam" type posts like posting "Hi" over and over. I'm not sure if younger students realize that everyone else is seeing what they write or that they are taking over the chat box.) Semester courses have a weekly homework and regular quizzes (weekly or biweekly in most of our courses). One aspect of these courses is that students have hard deadlines. Students can work ahead if they know they will have a conflict, but late work is usually not accepted at all except in cases of true emergencies. A typical schedule might be Thursday class session. Homework due no later than Tuesday of the following week. A quiz that opens up on Sunday after the class and is due by Wednesday following the class. Then a new class session. Keep an eye on the time of the classes. Because they are done live, it may mean getting up early in the morning to join the class. It is possible in some cases to do a class via recording only. I think this is a lot harder on the student. DS is doing it for one semester where he has a clear time conflict, but I think he's getting a lot less out of the class because he's not as emotionally invested in the recording as he usually is in the live classes. BTW, we've had both Dr. Fisher and Mrs. Barr for Latin. They are both really great. DS and I also took the Muse literature classes from Sue and really enjoyed that too.

Next lesson: Be Bold - Just pick up the phone and call admissions. After ordering new score reports from CB*, and agonizing over the fact that scores still aren't showing up, I finally called the admissions office. It took a couple transfers and about 5 minutes before the admissions rep was able to bring his scores over manually. It's still not showing up in his online file, but she said she could see all of the scores. When I called, I explained that I was calling for a homeschooled student in my role as guidance counselor and that I had questions about some of the documentation supporting his application. I didn't get any sense that they were putting a black mark against his app because I called. DS isn't fond of having phone calls like this. It may be partly a generational thing. In this case an actual conversation was able to quickly fix what might have taken a dozen emails and several days.

Did you pick from the Yes/No options or did you click on Other Choices? The Other Choices does give a more nuanced array of options. I often find polls like this frustrating. If you ask someone if they think the country is on the right track and they say no, they might have a completely opposite idea of where the right direction is from another no answerer.

I'd be ok even with a test that asked questions about basic governmental organization.

I worked all day at a poll several years ago. One of my family members was up for re-election in a local office. It was not a presidential year, so most of the ballot was local candidates and ballot initiatives. It was troubling how poorly informed many of the voters were. A great many of them had no idea what the ballot initiatives meant, yet they had voted on them anyway. Several people voting indicated that they didn't know who the current office holders were. Yet they were there to vote for or against them. Turnout was low, but would have been even lower if not for the EMS levy on the ballot. The area hews toward one political persuasion. Even though the local offices were officially non-partisan races, the local party endorsed specific candidates and handed out a sample ballot. That sample ballot was probably the most influential item available to voters. In several elections, sitting office holders have lost elections solely because they lost the party endorsement. Frequently they lost to someone who was far less capable, but who had stronger party affiliations. In the most recent election a candidate finally wised up and printed his own sample ballot on the same color paper with a political description (ie, conservative/liberal) instead of the party name (ie, Republican/Democrat). He actually beat the endorsed candidate. Seriously, the lack of background information displayed by people coming in to vote (or coming out from voting) was dismaying.

OT: I'm not sure what grade your dd is, but I had one of my kids take the SAT as an 8th grader. We used those scores to qualify him for Johns Hopkins CTY and for Duke's program. (Having said that, I didn't end up registering him for any of the actual programming or courses. I would also agree with Regentrude's comment that participation in gifted programming is not an essential marker for selective university admissions success.)

You might also see if student publications like the campus newspaper are available for colleges you're looking at. That can be an indication of what topics of concern on campus are. If there is an official and unofficial papers, it can be good to look at both. You might also look for Facebook groups related to the college in question.

You might also find some good discussions at College Confidential. For example this thread popped up when I searched for Christendom. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/christian-colleges/1519902-what-are-some-christian-colleges-universities-that-are-really-christian.html

I'm not sure what you are asking; however, have you looked at the Common Data Set information for the colleges you are considering? A few years ago, a law required most colleges to provide specific answers to a commons set of questions. The idea was that this would give a set of comparable results for questions about students, admissions requirements and financial aid. You might find some of your answers within these results. You can find the Common Data Set responses at IPEDS. Sometimes they are also available on the websites for individual colleges or on sites that use the IPEDS database to feed into their own college search engines. https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/

When we first started homeschooling I wasn't around any real life homeschoolers. We were overseas in a country were host nation families couldn't choose homeschooling. We were hours from any base with other US homeschoolers. When we moved back to the US, dh told me that I was going to be around other homeschoolers, even families we knew and loved, who would be doing things differently. And that was OK. Our homeschool did t have to look just like theirs. In fact our homeschool doesn't look the same for my youngest as it does for my older two. Our family is in a different place (physically and emotionally). My youngest will be an only child at home during his high school years. That will mark a huge change. We have been very nomadic. I can't express how lonely it felt to be the mom of the only new Cub Scout in a den of kids who had been together every week for five years. Most of them never even learned my kids name. I know they did t mean to wound, but it still weighed on me. I don't think people mean to cause hurt with posts here. Most are trying to help. Some don't realize how their words come across. Some just haven't dealt with a challenging kid or academic setbacks. (For those few posters who are abrasive, I have the ignore list. I usually still read their posts but at least I have a quick reminder that I've found them unhelpful in the past.)

Sometimes when I come across as Debbie Downer in a thread about Latin or some other topic, it's because I want to share our experience. For us Latin sometimes consumed the entire day (typically because my kids had put off their translation until too close to the due date) Similarly physics first was a total bust and almost derailed homeschooling altogether. My kids weren't automatic enough in their algebra abilities. It's easier to post a lot when you are planning a subject out. It's less enticing to come back and say things didn't come off as planned. If I do post about our hard spots it may come off as not being supportive of someone else's plan. And to be honest I can't know all the details at someone else's house. Maybe their kid is completely ready for physics. Or maybe my experience will warn them of pitfalls so they can be more successful than we were.

I think my answer is "it depends." I think we're settling into the idea of "8th Grade, The Sequel." There are few big red flags that would make me say he has failed to make acceptable progress. I simply feel that he is still fighting with writing, and I want that to be more solid when he starts high school. I probably don't have to really decide until Aug, when I need to send in a Letter of Intent to the local school. And I also know that I can revisit the grade assignment down the road in high school. Math and foreign language could be either 8th or 9th. Science and social studies might also be valid for either grade. So it will depend on what happens down the road.