I became an Independent Educational Consultant some years ago, as my youngest was completing high school. A couple of the companies mentioned in the article have contacted me to encourage me to send my students to them for research mentoring. Their marketing is aggressively persistent. I'm not convinced this type of "research" is that beneficial, and do not suggest it to students.

We looked for trends across multiple ratings. Did several people say the class was disorganized, that grading was delayed, that the professor was hard to reach or understand. If it's just 1-2 saying that the class was hard, I take that with a grain of salt.

Knowing where students of a certain profile applied and were not offered admission is an important data point. Often, students compare their stats to the released data about admitted and enrolled students and think they have great chances. But they don't see the many similar students who were not offered admission, because colleges don't release data on the whole applicant pool or on students they didn't admit.

If the school uses that info to recommend colleges to students, then current students benefited from past classes sharing. If it's just to flash a scholarship total at an awards event, I'd encourage them to consider how false those cumulative totals are (when a student only enrolls at one institution) and how this type of comparison erodes teen mental health.

I must not have been clear. Yes, I think these classes are worthy of inclusion in activities sections on applications. On the Common App, there is an entire section devoted to activities. Which can include all sorts of things. There is also an Additional Information section on Common App that could be a good place to describe these studies if they aren't on the transcript.

Think of "extracurricular activities" as a broad category. For some students it's school sports, student government, and school clubs. Things that all fall under their school's umbrella. But activities also include work, volunteering, hobbies, community activism, youth organizations outside school, music, dance, club sports, family responsibilities, hobbies, etc. All of these can be good in the sense that they allow the student to explore interests and develop as a person and give admissions a rounder sense of who they are and how they spend their time. Whether they are good in the sense of being rewarded with an admissions bump depends on many factors revolving around institutional priorities. I think AoPS classes outside the traditional school math track is just as interesting as a math circle or math club, though a bit more solitary. If I were advising a student, I might ask how they could share the interest in math with others, like forming a small club, leading math activities in group settings, or tutoring.

If this has been a big part of his experience, it might make a good topic for one of his Personal Insight Questions (in addition to going in the courses section).

Colleges I've seen respond quickly include University of Oregon, Jacksonville University, Norwich University, and University of Alabama in Huntsville. Note that UAH has a quirky homeschool transcript template (but has also taken homeschool transcripts from parents alongside their template). Pittsburgh does have rolling, but has also been getting more popular and is becoming known as a school students need to apply to early. So not sure they have a speedy response right now.

Also available from Hechinger Report for those who don't have a WaPost subscription. https://hechingerreport.org/the-shuttering-of-a-rural-university-reveals-a-surprising-source-of-its-financing/

I have used citation generators. The appearance and prompt requirement is quite distinct from ChapGPT. If their argument us that students think because citation generators are permitted, AI writing generation is also allowed, that's an interesting distinction. I think many syllabuses will have specific AI sections in the fall. And some colleges already have a requirement for students to complete a plagiarism training as part of orientation. If AI is discussed and the student took the training, it would be hard to claim ignorance later.

Well Trained Mind Academy has a calculus class that uses the AOPS text. We did AOPS at home for algebra & geometry, then shifted to WTMA. I think the classes were good, and my son was well prepared for college engineering.

AI detectors will have a strong whack a mole aspect in that they will be aligned to one generation of AI, and then the AI will be refined (I hesitate to say get better). One early detector looked for liveliness in the righting. AI responses often are pretty flat and predictable (because they are predictive language models). But students who aren't mature writers also often produce flat and generic papers. I put several essays from students I coached last year through one detector. The struggling writers were flagged as possible AI or as needing more input to make a determination. If I were a student, I would stay clear of AI, even for idea generation. Keep rough drafts of work and notes, for example by saving interim drafts as separate documents rather than editing over them. Read any statements about AI or plagiarism from a syllabus and ask about anything that seems unclear or not specific. For good measure, this should include understanding what help students can get from other students on work that isn't explicitly group work. (I dislike using the term plagiarism for reusing one's own work, but students should assume it violates assignment expectations unless they have pre-approval. ) Be ready to self advocate. It's great to work with the TA or Prof of a course. But students can also reach out to the next higher level for assistance and clarity. If there are campus discussions of this subject, be involved. Maybe the college explanation of plagiarism needs to be refined and expanded. Maybe the process for what happens if paper is flagged needs to be clarified. Be part of the discussion and solution. (I notice for example that Bowdoin lists four types of plagiarism, including self plagiarism. They also have extensive examples of direct and mosaic plagiarism. Though I wish it included an example of acceptable paraphrasing too.) There is a lot of cheating happening. And it's not new. I had copying when I taught coop classes over decade ago. It's not just other people's kids who are tempted or choose to use something found on the internet.

I think the College Scorecard site lets you sort by major. However, data is always limited by what is collected and sample size. Just one example, the Naval Academy used to tout their high ranking for alumni salaries on Payscale. But not only is that info all self-reported, but the methodology explicitly excludes military personnel.

I've found that colleges really want to see insights into homeschool students from non-family members. That doesn't mean you shouldn't write the counselor letter. You are the counselor and should use that space to provide context. But also find ways to submit letters from non-family members, even if those are outside traditional academic roles. If the online app doesn't accommodate Other recommenders well, contact admissions. Many will offer an alternative way to send letters.

I did something like this for a few classes. There was even a CC Chemistry class where the lecture course and lab course were separate sections with individual grades. And of course, one semester the grades in these weren't identical. So I explained in the course descriptions how I calculated the combined grade for my transcript.

It can often help to contact admissions and ask for clarification. It seems like many admissions offices don't really know what their websites say about requirements for homeschoolers and have different actual requirements. Some colleges are regionally focused and don't understand how different homeschool laws are in other parts of the country. And sometimes I wonder what they get in applications that they feel they ought list certain requirements. I personally draw the line at a school that requires a GED, regardless of the student's academic qualifications.

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/education/2022/08/12/indiana-university-purdue-indianapolis-iupui-split-separate-schools-colleges/65401042007/ https://indianapublicradio.org/news/2022/08/iupui-to-split-into-two-campuses-will-be-known-as-iu-indianapolis-by-2024/

A notarized transcript would only verify the identity of the person signing. Back 10+ years ago, it was a common practice. But I'd put it in the category of affixing a seal or stamp to appease those who value such things. I never notarized transcripts, and for my youngest just typed my name in a script font. There could be a scenario in which colleges asked for proof of identity for homeschoolers to prevent a student from posing as a homeschooler and submitting a fictitious transcript. (You'd be surprised what some people will do.) But it's not common now. BTW, IUPUI is disolving the joint structure and moving programs either under IU or Purdue. So there may be changes in requirements in the future anyway.

The scoring guidelines are very helpful.

I have no idea if this will work for math or science APs, but for English, government, and history, I found lists of previous FRQ prompts and made the kids go through them. For short response, we did them outloud or as bullet points. For essays, I had them write the appropriate thesis statement and the main point of each paragraph. In English Lit, we went through almost 50 past prompts for the long essay. I made them list 1-3 books they could use for any of the prompts. I also found a list of the most often cited works and had them mark any they could remember well enough for an essay and any other books read that were of a similar calibre. I'm not sure what the STEM equivalents would be. The point of this was to be able to quickly get started on the response, not spend precious time deciding how to respond.

There are many test optional colleges, but few that are test blind outside California. University of Washington, Washington State, and Worcester PI come to mind. But look carefully at requirements for homeschoolers, because they may still be required to submit test scores at test optional colleges. In a test optional or test blind setting, grades and rigor matter a lot. But in my opinion, admissions reps want to see outside grades of some kind and reccomendation letters from non-family members. I tend to weight outside honors, AP, and DE, be a some scholarships take the gpa as submitted. But don't lose a lot of sleep over your policy, because colleges will often recalculate an in house gpa according to their own methods for admissions. There are too many different high school policies out there not to.

I think you can do either, as long as you explain your policy and stick to it. I changed any +/- grade to the base letter grade and explained that policy in the school profile. My kids had grades from Lukeion, WTMA, and CCs. There are many grading policies in high school and lots of different rules for when students transfer. High schools use their own grading scale and adapt incoming grades to that.

Something that helped my kids was to go through a lot of the released FRQ examples to see what type of response garnered high, medium, and low scores. this gave them a good idea of how exhaustive their responses needed to be.

Have you already investigated where your student would take the AP exams? If their school doesn't offer the courses, they probably won't schedule the exam either. And while there are some AP courses that some students take as freshmen, there are other ways to bump up academic challenge level.

That does shound like a frustrating set up. Does your son reach out to the teacher when he's struggling with a problem or concept? Could you help him write emails to ask for clarification? Here is what I understand of the problem, here is my drawing of what's happening, here is the initial problem set up and where I went until I got stuck. As a problem solving procedure, I highly recommend drawing a diagram of what is happening and labeling everything you are given as a starting point.