These look great! We'll have a look at these! Thanks for the tip.

Would Life of Fred Chemistry be a good, fun summer intro read? Anyone?

Some are pricey, yes. But some are fairly cheap/free: Edhesive - ComputerScience AP/Intro/Statistics (free - $150 '9w/homeschool teacher pkg) Thinkwell - Maths/Sciences/Government etc (under $100 usually buy it thru homescoolbuyerscoop sale) there's lots others but that's all we've tried cheaply. Many cc courses are free for dual enrollment high schoolers... If your kid just won't do the work, any work regardless who assigned by, that's another thing entirely. For us, outsourcing, assigning grades and being accountable was enough to whip my ds into shape. CC would be an even bigger accountability measure, having to see professors in person... imo

By end of 9th grade, we outsourced everything. Our last hold-out English wasn't/didn't get done with me, so we have outsourced it all. Outside accountability/deadlines work wonders. Not everyone can do that, but it works for us. I then would know the dates of deadlines to make sure we were on track, but my ds was good about 'their' deadlines on his own, for the most part. Heading into 10th- we have everything outsourced.

Wow this sounds fantastic! I have seen you recommending her on other threads. Can you share how you came about her and some details about the class for your dc? I would be very interested in this for the following year, 11th grade. I recall you are one of the UC-success stories - so assuming they did great on this AP exam, no doubt! Please share as much as you can!! Thanks for the tip!

Is a TI-84 Plus sufficient through Calc AB/BC? Will we need an Nspire? Anybody with calculator knowledge know?

We are in the same boat. DD is not a mathy-sort and we painstakingly slogged our way through Pre-A this past year to get us up to speed for Alg I in 8th grade. We were teaching Dolciani Pre-A at home - but we are outsourcing for the first time for Alg I to Jann in TX's MyHomeschoolMathClass. I've read all the reviews and I think it's the best fit for my non-math loving daughter to help her feel confident with math and excel. We're excited about it!

We really like Homeschool Spanish Academy. Used it for our first year last year (9th) and found it to be a light-workload class (important as we have some heavy workload courses) but ds learned a surprising amount. I can't wait to see what next year brings.

I found this list on collegeconfidential and thought it was cool (still do!): http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/628617-prestigious-awardscompetitionsrecognition-list-do-you-think-its-a-valid-list/

We're on an airplane! LOL! (on the 8/26 testing date)

We are retaking one (as a rising soph also) but won't be in town on Aug 26. So will retake on Oct 7. I think the Aug date would have been perfect though, before the new fall classes start.

Same here. I only know when I was back in college I just went to the student clinic, super cheap even though I had no insurance. Times have changed!

So do all universities have automatic health insurance baked in? It seems so from what you all are saying. How much is it?

Thank you! Great advice! 1 credit it will be - I just wasn't sure. I agree, regentrude, I think descriptive titles are good as applicable. I'm glad you think the same. I think then I might call the whole she-bang together British Literature. That would leave this past year as American Literature, so that works. So it's ok to call it "British Literature" for all 3 components for 1 credit? Or should I break it up into composition/literature 1/2 credits - 1/2 credit "British Literature" and 1/2 credit "Essay Workshops" ? *Or like Rootann suggested the other 1/2 credit "Composition"?

I am wondering what you would do with this? My ds will be taking next year for 10th grade this for English: Write@Home Essay Workshop 1/Essay Workshop 2/Persuasive Research Paper (composition) Center for Lit - discussion only World or British Lit (literature) Roy Speed's 10 week Shakespeare (literature) - just b/c it sounded fun 1. Should I just call all this "English 10" and then note it in the Course Descriptions - that was my original thought. 2. Or this was my 2nd thought, call it "English 10" for 1 credit; then Shakespeare Intensive for 0.5 credit b/c it sounds so darn cool on his transcript 3. Or should I lay out each as 0.5 credits and list them individually on his transcript? 4. Or something different? Not that it matters a whit, but guess I'm just wondering what I should do.

We love Dolciani Pre-A & Algebra. Also happy with Jurgenson's Geometry And Holt Biology. :thumbup:

Not who you asked, but I'll answer. I know nothing about code. And my ds had very little programming experience going in. The real-time responses on Edhesive's board were great. My ds had to query them nearly every big assignment once, when he got stuck. While I had the homeschool teacher account, I was not a part of it all. I really only used it to print out a written test ahead of his real test to help him prep for studying for the tests. He practice for exam prep with real past FRQs on his own, and was able to easily decipher the rubric to score himself. He loved the format - worked great, completely hands-off for me.

Why don't you like Edhesive? We really liked it and out of all my son's AP classes last year, it was the one he scored a 4. While there is no teacher, Mrs. Dovi does provide constant lectures - and you are kept on a very tight schedule to keep up with videos, related assignments, longer assignments, quizzes and tests. Whenever he got stuck on an assignment and some code, he'd post on the message boards and get an answer usually same day. Even my self-study averse kid loved the course and excelled. And it's really cheap - even if you go with the homeschool teacher package which was something like $150...

I've promised for some time I would do this - but I wanted to wait until the school year was over and there would be no grade repercussions (just in case!) for posting our honest and unbiased opinion of the course. We just completed PAH AP Human Geo. We went in with high hopes as our first AP for 9th grade. Very soon into the class, we realized it was nothing more than glorified self-study. He was assigned textbook readings/videos/open-book online multiple choice questions weekly. He kept up with the syllabus in a timely fashion the whole year. The textbook required (Fellman) is a slog to go through - and we began to bemoan it very early on. Others I PM around the boards from previous years agreed one of the books was a bear. We ended up spending big bucks on buying a different textbook (Rubenstein) that was easier to read about 3/4 of the way through the year to help round out the edges.There is no teacher feedback nor interaction (or precious little). So for $700+, your child will read a very dense college-level text, take multiple choice self-graded quizzes and watch various videos and tap out video reviews on those. While Ms. Gillespie is very nice and responsive when called upon, she doesn't teach at all and does precious little grading. If you don't mind a completely self-guided study for that cost, then go for it. She finally gave feedback on the first 2 FRQs assigned, but that was after she called upon everyone in the class to ask what more she could be doing. She's nice enough, but she really does nothing. You could easily find an AP syllabus yourself, assign the reading, and do as well as her for free. We have spent oodles of money on extra materials, as I am afraid with her course alone, with no teaching, that he is not as prepared as he needs to be for the upcoming AP exam. So I am essentially taking the reins of teaching... something I don't like doing when I've paid big bucks for the course. We'd hoped to get a 5 - as my son read 2 prep books and put a great amount of time into prep work. But no dice - he scored a 3 (as you can see, along with 40% of the class). My ds felt so disillusioned by the class that he's quite gun-shy of PAH at all, which is such a shame... but we are persisting, and he's trusting my research that the PAH classes we've chosen for this year are not of this ilk. I hope I can prove him wrong. :) Here is the breakdown of this year's scores: 22% - 5 26% - 4 40% - 3 8% - 2 4% - 1 Oh and to add insult to injury, at the start of the course we received by mail her published book (about life in the Appalachians or something). I thought how thoughtful of her - until I opened the book and found an invoice to be paid upon receipt for $20. How classy (not)! https://www.amazon.c...pie appalachian As always, YMMV!

Very helpful post, Sebastian. Thank you!

May I ask which schools? And did they just require 2?

Can she retake it? There's tests in August, October... and many throughout the year. Most report that retaking will boost the score if prep is done, almost always. Some say you can improve 50-100 points with a retake.

Haha! I thought I'd posted that - but couldn't find it either! Well your new thoughts are still most welcome. There's nothing like genuine opinions that can't be culled by reading descriptions in some college guide.

The oldest is completely undecided anyway, but I've got others in the pipe so any and all majors welcome. I've got an artist-type, and a mathy type and others as-yet-unknown. So I'll take any thoughts on anything.

may i ask, attolia, what your dd's scores were for these? just curious. and did you outsource any/all or study at home? ;-)