Our "Mom-generated" transcripts have gone far -- Both of my two older kids are going to a USNWR "top 20" LAC, one on a full-tuition scholarship and one on a full-ride scholarship (including books!). We submitted nearly 20 pages of supporting documents, and they had lots of test scores -- AP's, SAT-II's, SAT's -- but only about half of their courses were "outsourced." The remaining courses were designed and taught by me! The Mommy transcript served them well!

There are a couple of things you can do -- 1) Sign up for the collegeboard "SAT question of the day". 2) Go to number2.com This is a VERY user-friendly SAT prep course that is FREE. My kids really enjoyed its vocab program, but the math and verbal review was pretty good. 3) Have your kids read plenty of "good" books this summer. 4) Relax -- spring of junior year is quite a ways off still!

That is so wonderful that you folks have cooperative school systems! We are blessed to have a private school around the corner that is wonderful -- the kids take PSAT's there and most of their AP's there, but it is a small school that only offers a few AP's. My son has to take two AP's with the school district this year -- the private school doesn't offer those two tests. I am praying that the school district actually ordered ds's tests and that the testing goes uneventfully. The odd fact that always amazes me is that my kids seem to be the only hs'ers who do AP's around here. Our school district has nearly 100,000 people living in it, but I know of NO other homeschoolers who do AP's! :confused:

Somehow we always end up doing math over the summer. :-/ I encourage the kids to do something different over the summer -- volunteering at one of the many history museums around here, building the kayak (hopefully this summer's project for ds2), kiting, gardening, long (for us) bicycling trips, field trips, visiting with friends, working if possible, etc. Then we fill in the longish gaps with school -- I can ALWAYS find something that we didn't get to last year! :D

It's funny -- I have the opposite point of view from LaJuana. I figure that anything that clarifies my child's background will be helpful in the college admissions process. You see, I believe that kids from small out-of-the-way high schools, like homeschoolers, are at a disadvantage in the college application process, and I want to do anything that I can to overcome that hurdle. Admissions counselors visit high schools, talk with guidance counselors, and get to know the "scoop" on individual high schools and their programs. As one admissions counselor at Duke put it, "You are sweating over that 'B' you received in English your junior year. What you don't know is that we know your high school so well that we know that that teacher has not given an 'A' for the past nine years." That is one reason why a brilliant student from some out-of-the-way high school in, say, Nebraska, might have problems getting accepted to a liberal arts college in Maine -- the admissions counselors don't know a thing about the high school. They could accept the student and take a risk, but except if the student REALLY stands out, why should they make the gamble when there are plenty of students from more well-known schools? This knowledge of high schools can work both ways -- if John was accepted from little-known high school B and does not do well at the college, the college would be less likely to accept another student from high school B. I submit all the information I can to the colleges to overcome the obstacle of the college knowing NOTHING about my program of studies except what we tell them. This is one area where homeschoolers have the advantage over students from little-known high schools -- we can share lots of paperwork, but the colleges, to be fair, won't accept lots of paperwork from the smaller schools. Just a different point-of-view!

You cannot collect recommendations for college beforehand for a couple of reasons -- 1) Usually colleges have their own forms that they want you to use. 2) Colleges want the recommendations mailed directly to the college by the person filling out the recommendtion. This maintains the privacy of the recommendation so the recommender can be totally honest and not worry about offending the student. This is standard policy for ALL of the 12+ colleges we have dealt with. And we have not hesitated to ask folks to write out as many as six or seven recommendations -- the hard part of writing the recommendation is writing those couple of paragraphs. Once they have done that work, they might as well copy and paste the paragraph onto 6 forms as onto just 1 or 2. Each college forms ask slightly different additional information, but usually it is fairly simple and non-time-consuming. My one piece of advice is when you ask a person to write some recommendations, to ask for ALL of the recommendations from that person at once. My dd1 had some problems when she decided to apply to a school fairly late in the year -- people who were delighted to write the first round of recommendations were not pleased at being asked again. She did manage to find people, but this school did not receive recommendations from her first choice of people.

If you are of a Reformed perspective, I would STRONGLY recommend TurthQuest by Michelle Miller. There are different books for different time periods. TruthQuest offers Christian commentary on the period and booklists. I have NEVER actually tuck with a history curriculum, but I have used TruthQuest for the past several years. It is wonderful for us non-curriculum types!

Thanks to a recent Virginia state law, schools are required to offer tests to homeschoolers. We usually have the kids take their AP exams at this wonderful private school that is about 1/2 mile from us. However, we could NOT find a school that offered AP macroecon -- they all offered microecon. SO we called HSLDA and they offered to threaten to sue the school district for us. Thanks to HSLDA, my ds did end up being able to take the AP micro exam through the school district, but the process was NOT pretty. So I would say that the answer to your question, "Is it easy to get the school district to offer AP exmas?" is "It depends on your school district!"

One clarification -- Schools that ONLY use the FAFSA will only expect you to pay your EFC as generated by the FAFSA. Schools that use the Profile (which includes many though not all private colleges) in addition to the FAFSA may expect you to pay much more than your FAFSA-generated EFC. The Profile takes into account assets like home equity. Even if the college guarantees to meet 100% of need, colleges that use the Profile in addition to the FAFSA to figure out how much a family has to pay may well end up saying that your family should pay a number that is multiples of your EFC. Ask me how I know this -- ds was accepted to U Chicago but the amount we were expected to pay was significantly more than our FAFSA-generated EFC. :glare: (Ds is not going there!)

Next year we will use Holt's Biology: Visualizing Life text with the directed worksheets, thinking skills worksheets, and chapter tests by Holt as well. We will also use the Thinkwell Biology lectures to supplement.

I would just say that if she really doesn't like Apologia you should investiage other options! My older two kids absoltely hated Apologia. They practically went on a sit-down strike. I have never quite understood why they disliked it so passionately, but they did! We switched curriculums and they have been reasonably happy with everything else we have done for science, so I know that they werenot just whining for the sake of whining.

I have NO idea whether or not our course descriptions were ever read by anyone! When dd1 and ds2 were talking to admissions folks about what kind of documentation the admissions office would like to see, they ALL (Ivy league to state schools to LAC's) basically said, "As much as you care to send us!" Even UVA, which is a huge school that stresses on its admissions forms how they don't want to see any extra documentation, reacted positively when we asked if they wanted to see reading lists. The counselor said that UVA rquired course descriptions of homeschoolers. I guess whether or not to send in course descriptions depends on the college. I will always send the course descriptions in the application package -- I figure that we don't have anything to lose by sending them in (the worst that can happen is that they don't get read) and everything to win by sending them in -- namely impressing the admissions folks! But like all things in homeschooling, different strokes for different folks! :)

May God bless you and keep you. I will continue to pray for you -- may God surround you with His peace; your surgery and recovery -- may it be successful and quick; the doctor -- may he be skillful and wise; and your family.

We sent course descriptions -- all 8 pages! Course descriptions convey the level and difficulty of the work your students have done in high school. Why would you not want to send them along with your other materials when applying to college? I figure that the college has NO idea of what "English 9" means unless we tell them. Does it mean working through one textbook or does it mean extensive work with not only grammar but also literature, literary analysis, essays, analogies....... Even the more specific course title "US history" gives no idea of how challenging the course was. What textbook was used? What other books or resources were used? Did it require reading primary sources? Did it have an extensive writing component? Any major research papers? A course with extensive primary source readings, a difficult textbook, extensive writing, and major research papers will be a MUCH more solid course than one that just uses a fairly simple textbook. Since our kids did a LOT of hard work in high school, we wanted the colleges to be aware of all the work our kids did. There are two circumstances where I think sending in course descriptions is pretty much required: 1) Merit scholarships. If you are interested in your child receiving merit aid, you want your child to come across to the admissions folks as very well qualified. Course descriptions help convey to the admssions folks what kind of work your child is capable of. 2) Selective schools. Stanford says on its page about homeschoolers that that "you should provide a detailed description of your curriculum when you apply." Selective schools already have many many applicants; our job as homeschoolers applying to selective schools is to convince them that our student has the background to not only succeed at that school but also to contribute to the community. Course descriptions provide the admissions people with more information, which is helpful for them in making decisions.

PSAT's -- Dd took the PSAT ONLY during the fall of her junior year. She was a Natl Merit Scholar, so the fact that she only took the PSAT once didn't hold her back! Once we found out that students can do the PSAT multiple times, we had ds take the PSAT both during his sophomore and junior year. He also did well; I think that taking it twice did help him to be more relaxed his junior year. SAT's -- The "normal" way to take SAT's is in the May of junior year and then fall of senior year. We didn't follow that timing, since my kids were doing AP's in May of junior year and SAT-II's in June of junior year. Both kids took the SAT in January of their junior year. They both scored well enough that they didn't bother retaking it, but if they had wanted to retake it they would have done their retake of the SAT in March of their junior year.

We have done AP courses through both Scholars Online and Pennsylvania Homeschoolers.

Dd received several of those. They only had a few questions though -- basically what college are you attending instead of going to OUR college? Then there were a few questions about why you chose the other college. We will be filling a few of those out this year -- several of the colleges ds applied to were fantastic and treated him wonderfully. We feel badly that he can't accept them all! We want them to know what a high opinion we have of the colleges. And two colleges offered such abysmal aid that we want to tell them about it! We figure that if we can help the colleges by giving them feedback, we are helping the whole admissions process for everyone.

Read "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float" by Farley Mowat. It's an absolutely hysterical book about sailing around Nova Scotia. Your sailing adventures sounds absolutely wonderful, Nan! Our whole family would like to join you.....

We have gone the AP-class-online route for both my older kids. They have done a total of 11 AP classes. We have really appreciated the outside teaching for a couple of reasons -- 1) I have two younger kids, a hubby, a house, and additional things I need to do. I could probably put together an AP curriculum, but it would take time and energy, and since I don't have any extra time or energy, the time and energy the AP class took would have to come from somewhere -- something else would suffer. 2) My kids have REALLY appreciated the outside opinions on their writing. When they get a strong score on an essay, they know that it wasn't simply that Mom was busy and didn't feel like taking the time to do a careful reading! :-/ The teachers have focused on aspects of their writing that I have ignored -- so the extra feedback has been VERY helpful. 3) The AP essay sections are scored according to a specific rubric. The graders are looking for specific things. I spent some time investigating the details of AP essay questions for US history and got quite muddled. Figuring out what specifically the AP graders are looking for and then teaching that to my kids would take time that I don't have. The teachers for all my kids' classes have been VERY well-prepared and have effectively taught how to deal with those questions. 4) At least for my son, he needed to be responsible to someone outside the family for his schoolwork. Doing AP courses onl;ine was a wonderful way of combining homeschooling with some of the benefits of school -- "real' deadlines, homework that sometimes doesn't fit his learning style, grade competition, etc. Again, I know that homeschoolers do do AP courses at home and then do very well on the AP exams. For our family that is not the right way to go -- the cost in terms of time and energy is too great. And we have found outsourcing classes during the later years of high school to really benefit the student and the family dynamics. And kudos to all you hard-working moms who do do AP prep at home and whose kids do well on the exams. I am SO impressed!

I always feel like homeschooling is like walking a tight-rope -- always leaing a bit too far one way and then overcorrecting and leaning too far the other way. We focus too much on academics...then lean too far focusing on family adventures and fellowship.....then lean too far into AP prep mode......then focus too much on..... etc. I guess that since we are still on the tight-rope, we haven't fallen off yet! :)

We use: Pre-Algebra: An Accelerated Course (Dolciani) Algebra 1 (Dolciani, Swanson, & Graham) Geometry (Jurgensen, Brown, and Jurgensen) Advanced Mathematics (Brown) Calculus 1 at William & Mary Calculus 2 at William & Mary The texts we use for math seem to do a great job preparing the kids for the calculus classes. Both have gotten compliments on how well prepared they are for calculus. The kids mostly self-teach the math. They come to me with any questions. I correct the assignments and I go over the work that needs redoing with them. My kids joke that calculus 2 is a graduation requirement for our homeschool. We have two more kids to go, but I think that all will have calculus 2, and one will probably do multi-variable calculus as well.

Wow -- I had NO idea that Campbell wrote so many texts! He must be a busy guy! Thank you for explaining about all the Campbell texts. I thought that he just wrote the one AP text and had no idea that he had a main-stream 9th grade text as well. Thanks for clarifying!

Bev, Could you post a link to your article? I am giving a talk to some parents who are just beginning to think about homeschooling high school, and I would love to start with some enthusiastic news! Thanks!

Congrats to all. I am SO sorry that some haven't received the fin aid stuff yet. Yoiks! We received our last one about a week ago. Ds is now down to deciding between two schools..... Does anyone want to get together for a virtual cup of coffee on May 1 to celebrate the finalized college decisions? :)

Eliana, Absolutely! The Holt Exploring Life is not an AP text. If my son were interested/capable of doing AP work, we would use Campbell's text, but since he is not a super-motivated student and he will only be in 9th grade, we are going the clearly non-AP route. I didn't get the impression that the original poster was interested in an AP course. If she were planning on going the AP route, I would strongly recommend the Campbell's text. Since someone has recommended the Campbell text, I was just trying to caution the OP that the Campbell text is VERY advanced and not to be used by the faint-of-heart! I am sorry if my post was not clear!