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mirabillis

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Posts posted by mirabillis

    College App Check-in Commiseration Thread

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    Who wants to weigh in with seniors and college apps? This is about a million times harder than AP exam registration or AP exam prep or SAT prep or all of those combined into one. There are so.many.moving. parts. ACK! Who wants to commisserate?

    Here's where we are at:
    First deadline - Nov 1 (next Nov 30 - not even thinking of next yet)
    Common App Profile - done
    Common App Education - not done
    Common App Testing - not done
    Common App Activities - not done
    Common App Courses/Grades - not done
    LOR - sent off 4 (2 are completed)
    Counselor Letter - in final draft mode
    School profile - almost done
    Transcript - done
    Course descriptions - done
    Common App Essay - in revision
    Supplement Essay #1 - in revision
    Supplement Essay #2 (if applicable) - in revision
    Supplement Essay #3 (if applicable) - not started
    FAFSA - not started

    • Like 2

    How long was/is your counselor letter?

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    Oh my! We are 3 weeks away from early decision applications due.... and still up to our eyeballs in everything! Not a single door has been shut. I think I'm starting to panic...

    Re; Counselor letter

    How long was yours? Mine is about 1-1/2 pages, and many homeschool ones I see are just that. But all the sample non-homeschool counselor letters I see are 1 page long. (see here: https://blog.prepscholar.com/3-excellent-letter-of-recommendation-examples) Will adcoms not appreciate a longer letter? 

    Also I had a non-homeschool person look over the letter and was struck by how personal it was, rather like a family member talking familiarly about the student. Should I try to make it more in line with the objectivity of what those non-homeschool letter samples above look like? Or are adcoms expecting this from the parent/counselor?

    Please weigh in - tell me how yours was patterned, how long it was, etc. Help!

    • Like 1

    Well, This Conselor Letter is Intimidating!

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    On 9/27/2019 at 9:58 AM, Reefgazer said:

    I am afraid to start.

    i could have written that myself. i planned to finish the counselor letter this summer (i finished the school profile, course descriptions & transcript). but i left the counselor letter and never *quite* got to it. i just started myself about 2 weeks ago - our first deadline is november, so time is of the essence.

    i started by just jumping into the middle. thinking of stories/facets of ds's character i'd like to portray that i know aren't going to be in his essays or most likely not in LORs, not in his academic profile - i don't want to retread. so i just started with that, and thought of stories to 'show don't tell' - and started writing stories. one at a time, each night or early morning, i'd feel inspired and would pen just a little. before i knew it, i had 2 pages, a neat intro that came to me and a conclusion - and now it was time to prune. i look at it every other day or so, and with fresh eyes, make more changes each time. haven't had anyone look it over yet - that's next. 

    it wasn't nearly as hard as i had built it up to be once i wrote the first word... and then the next and the next. and starting right smack in the body of it really helped make it less intimidating too. :-)) 

    i'm right there with you!

    • Like 3

    AP Exam Registration Changes - Questions

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    On 9/11/2019 at 4:57 AM, jplain said:

    4. After receiving payment, the host school’s AP Coordinator should generate an exam-only section code and provide it to the student.  That code should be entered in the student’s College Board account.  This is the step that auto-populates the documents that will be sent to the school, so there shouldn’t be any need to go in and pre-fill out stickers like my daughter did last year.

     

    Still trying to figure out the new AP system. So we have join-codes entered for official classes (PAH, etc). Now we're waiting for the exam-codes. One school doesn't order tests until Nov 15 deadline, so we just wait until then for the exam-only code?

    • Like 1

    Common App Letter of Recommendation Q (anyone?)

    in The College Board

    Posted

    Perfect thanks both of you!

    And then do I just choose 1 school and invite all of them (no need to specify all 8 or so colleges to them, right?) It will just populate that recommender's letter in the other colleges, right?

    I also found out that you CAN invite a recommender to pen both a school-specific and generic LOR, by inviting them twice to 2 different email addresses. This is if they are willing. We will ask.

    Still trying to figure out how to request a non-teacher to be a 'teacher' evaluator, but in all I've read about specific colleges and what they want from homeschooled applicants, they prefer academic LOR, but if the only academic teachers are online classes with no direct contact, then someone who knows applicant personally is better. It's just weird, b/c then the recommender will be invited as a teacher, and will have to checkmark whether high school/college professor and school name. Luckily, said LOR writer is affiliated with a school, but not as a teacher... so still not sure about this. Might call the AOs on Monday.

    Common App Letter of Recommendation Q (anyone?)

    in The College Board

    Posted

    I have a couple quick questions re: LOR on the Common App

    1. Can you ask someone for a LOR and when it's sitting in your Common App, then choose not to use theirs? (Like someone said you can ask more people, than less, as some may not follow through, but in the CA you can choose whose rec goes to which school?)

    2. If LOR writer has an affiliation with top choice school (alumni, etc), can you have LOR writer write a school-specific (mentioning the school anyway) recommendation?  And then have them write a generic version too to send to other schools? Possible?

    3. If school asks for 2 TEACHER, 1 OTHER (optional), but says on their website that for homeschoolers if academic is only online, never met you people, they'd prefer community leaders and other - then do you have your 'other' recommenders uploaded in the Teacher slot? (B/C it only allows 1 "Other" and requires 2 "Teacher")

    THANKS!! Anyone else in the middle of Common App?? Weigh in! Love to hear from you!

    Hits & Misses? 2019-2020 Edition

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    15 hours ago, fourisenough said:
    • WHA AP Art History: Teacher said some disturbing things in his meet-the-teacher introductory class, so I knew right away it was a terrible fit for DD. After hearing him say that preparing students for the AP exam is not really his main focus and berating many of the CB’s choices of art works because they were made/interpreted by feminists or other marginalized people instead of many of the dead white men he respects too much, I very promptly withdrew DD and requested a refund of the hefty tuition for the course. Being WHA, they refused to offer a refund and instead offered a 50% credit toward enrollment in a future course. I was initially furious about it, but now I just feel lucky DD didn’t have to listen to that man rant about why he disagrees with the College Board (calling them “radical leftists”) all year after he and WHA used the CB’s considerable clout/brand to attract students to the course in the first place. I think of us as pretty moderate, politically speaking, but his perspective was much, much too conservative and his tone too angry for our tolerance; the tone was the worst part, honestly, as we prefer a spirit of healthy intellectual inquiry and balanced discussion/debate. Feels like a bullet dodged and a lesson learned on my part. 

     

    Thanks for the candor. The no-refund policy is one of the reasons we don't do WHA anymore... that and the significant cost increases. 😉

    • Like 3

    Common App Question - GPA Scale reporting/Honors/AP courses

    in The College Board

    Posted · Edited by mirabillis

    I have a few Common App questions as I'm knee-deep in Common App h#ll with my ds.

    Thought I'd combine the threads and ask the questions here. Please humor me... please help!

    1. )) GPA Scale Reporting
    The drop down is weird - it lists 4, 5, 6, 7.... 20, 100, none

    Are we talking like a 4.0 scale? Because why is there a 13, 14 or 15? 

    gpascale.JPG

     

    2.)) Academic Honors

    So... anyone else want to brainstorm some academic honors I might be forgetting?

    Also - should I include Congressional Award medal(s) in the Academic Honors section? (although they are not academic, but to make sure it is seen)

     

    3.)) AP Courses

    It says: Number of AP Tests you wish to report, including tests you expect to take*

    So a) do we have to report all of them (there is one my ds would like to not-report...)
         b) is there a benefit in listing the AP tests 'you expect to take' - should i then only list those we'll have signed up for already? (he's taking 5 APs, we're still debating which he should sign up for)

    • Like 1

    Whose seniors are not/will not take AP exams?

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted · Edited by mirabillis

    For us, the function of taking AP classes has been great - truly rigorous classes, no complaints here. And taking the AP exams 9th-11th grade has been invaluable for test prep, etc. My ds already has 11 APs under his belt and has already earned National AP Scholar... so we're just thinking if it won't matter with regards to college admissions (he is looking at selective schools), might be easier to skip the exams, but take the classes....

    • Like 1

    Whose seniors are not/will not take AP exams?

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    I think it will be an easier year without:

    a) having to worry about the new CB registration that is this month for 5 exams!
    b) having to go through major prep in april/may
    c) shell out nearly $500 for the privilege

    Does it matter? Credit-wise, he may have gotten some college credit, not sure.
    Probably not AP Eng Lit (as he already has AP Eng Lang)
    Probably not AP Calc BC (as he already has AP Calc AB)
    That leaves AP World, AP Physics C & AP Psychology - not sure it really matters that much.

    Thoughts? Opinions?

    Common App walk=through

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    Can someone just walk me through the whole Common App thing? It's time to open an account and start the process... I admit I am intimidated. Someone want to just walk me through how to do it, to lessen the intimidation factor, tell me how easy it is?

    Does my ds open a CA student account? Can we then look through Qs and how everything is set up without 'locking' in his responses? How do I get involved as a counselor - does he invite me? Do I need my own CA account? Should I just set up a dummy student account to start playing with it?

    Please help!

    AP Exam Registration Changes - Questions

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    19 hours ago, mirabillis said:

    OK so walk me through this.

    My kid is taking both PAH online provider AP class and self-study....

    So I go to my local school and tell them he'll be taking such-and-such AP exams. Can you please give me the exam-only code so he can enter it into his CB acct? (And I would include and say both the PAH & self-study exams?)

    Previously it was just email them, drop off a check for $94, show up the day of testing (or prior if said school does pre-bubbling) and take the test.

    Please walk me through it. Then when I get these super-secretive exam codes, we have to enter in both the exam-only code (from the school) and if an online provider, the join code also?

     

    please do help. 🙂 thanks! our schools here have never used total registration online, so doubt they are doing that now. please let me know - thanks!

    AP Exam Registration Changes - Questions

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    OK so walk me through this.

    My kid is taking both PAH online provider AP class and self-study....

    So I go to my local school and tell them he'll be taking such-and-such AP exams. Can you please give me the exam-only code so he can enter it into his CB acct? (And I would include and say both the PAH & self-study exams?)

    Previously it was just email them, drop off a check for $94, show up the day of testing (or prior if said school does pre-bubbling) and take the test.

    Please walk me through it. Then when I get these super-secretive exam codes, we have to enter in both the exam-only code (from the school) and if an online provider, the join code also?

    AP Exam Registration Changes - Questions

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    I knew that AP exam registration was changing this year... namely try to secure a spot for the exams in September-October, no longer in Jan-Feb. Ok, got that.

    BUT.... my son's PAH classes are giving him a 'join code' to go to his CollegeBoard account to be officially 'joined' into an AP class, that he can now register for.

    What is this all about? What about for self-study courses? Can we still take APs even if self-study and given no join code?

    Help! (I hate CB - why are they making these changes, are they trying to prevent self-study kids from taking AP exams?)

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