Index funds

Unless the scholarship specifically states that it is for tuition, you can decide how much of it goes towards tuition and other qualified expenses and how much goes towards non-qualified expenses. This is true no matter how the school automatically applies it. As stated upthread, it can be advantageous for the student to intentionally claim some of the scholarship funds as going towards non-qualified expenses and paying income tax on it. This is because the parent can then claim some of the qualified expenses for the AOTC. So, the student pays a little more in income tax and the parent gets a bigger credit. I then turned around and gave the AOTC refund $$ to my DD to stash away for future school expenses.

Thank you for this. I hadn't considered this factor. Still, I think a small fee would be worth keeping this option open for DD.

I do not know from personal experience but have repeatedly seen on threads from College Confidential that EFC calculators are not accurate for families with self-employment income. The reason being is that they WILL add some of the expenses that you deducted back into income. I do not know exactly how they make that determination. Your income is low enough that it may not make much difference. However, I've seen some anecdotes where folks gross well over $100,000 in their self employment but deduct so many expenses that they claim a small fraction as net income. This is what the schools are looking for.

I'm wondering about the ethics of accepting a scholarship at a school that DD may decide not to attend. She will be a transfer student in Spring 2017 and the two main schools she is looking at have WILDLY different deadlines. One school she has already been accepted and offered a nice scholarship, the other doesn't even open the admission application for Spring 2017 until this August. She is leaning towards the second school but her major has a competitive entry so it isn't a sure thing. She would like to keep the first school as an option until she finds out if she is accepted to her major at the second school. This could be well into the fall semester from my understanding. She is supposed to log into the portal for the first school before May 1 to accept or decline the scholarship. Is there an ethical problem with accepting it now when she won't know for sure if she is even attending for several more months? I was so pleased to side step the crazy senior year admissions process when DD decided to take advantage of the free community college program Tennessee started. But it seems like we just postponed the pain for a few semesters!

These are completely new to me. Thank! I will give them a try.

Thank you, Night Elf! I actually have a couple of these so I image I will like the others!

Puzzles and strategy games, mostly.

I'll be traveling more for work over the next few months and would love to hear some game recommendations that I can put on my Kindle Fire. Free is best but if you highly recommend one with a cost, I'd like to hear it to. Thanks! Oh, I've learned not to trust the Amazon ratings for the games because apparently it is common for a game to give players items/points/coins in return for a high rating.

We had 3 cats that got along very well. We recently euthanized one that was old and sick. Now one of the young ones is very unsettled, hissing (a lot) and attacking (some) the other young cat. I imagine that she is attempting to take the place of senior cat in the household hierarchy. Is there anything we can do to ease the transition? Or is time the only solution? DH is threatening to adopt another older cat but I figure that will just upset things even more.

Congrats on your efforts! Seriously, baby steps are fine if that's what works for you. I'm too much of an "all or nothing" personality so I dropped sugar cold turkey. A couple thoughts: If you stop eating/drinking sweet things, then soon things you never thought of as sweet will taste sweet. I now take only heavy cream in my coffee and the cream adds just the right amount of sweetness to it. I've found it easier to just focus on eating whole unprocessed foods rather than trying to duplicate the processed foods in a healthier way.

We rarely test.

The money will count against them but high medical bills IS a "special circumstance" that merits a review. In other words, they'll need to be honest and claim the money on the FAFSA and CSS profile but then notify the schools of interest of their circumstances. They schools then have the option to provide further review and make a professional judgement adjustment.

Thank you, everyone. I had trouble finding my way back to this thread. For some reason, "my content" is only showing some of my posts and oftentimes, my most recent posts do not show up at all. I even tried searching by author and couldn't find it. I appreciate the information and experiences. We still don't have any information yet on the possible cause. He's supposed to go back to the doctor next Monday. For now, his mother is just repeating "he's fine" whenever anyone asks. I'll try to come back and update if/when there are answers.

I agree. I wasn't there. Maybe it just felt like 15 minutes to his mom.

Nephew had a seizure last weekend. No known health issues prior. It lasted about 15 minutes and he didn't remember anything, including the time immediately afterwards. He was taken to the hospital where they did basic tests (I don't know which ones) which were inconclusive. They were away from home during all this but he was cleared to fly back home and follow up with his own doctor. So, other than the really scary reasons for a seizure out-of-the-blue like this, are there any benign causes?

We've done Class 2 with no guide and Class 3 rivers with a guide. We MUCH preferred the latter, as it was actually exciting without being scary, especially with the guide to keep us from getting in too much trouble. We just wore old sneakers. You want something that won't come off your feet if you fall in the river and the current is REALLY trying to undress you. :laugh: I'd check the weather forecast for expected temps. You can get too hot if the sun is coming down on you or too cool once you are wet and the wind picks up. It's a gamble either way. Have a great time! You'll probably come off the Class 2 river ready to try a Class 3.

I recently posted a homeschool success so I thought I would balance it out with a homeschool fail. Maybe someone else can benefit from my lesson learned! DD's engineering science course (this is a physics class) touched on the ideal gas law in lecture this week but didn't dally as they assumed all the students would be very familiar with it from chemistry. DD says that she was not familiar with it and sought further clarification after class. We used Suchocki's Conceptual Chemistry in 9th grade so I assumed that DD simply didn't remember it. I dug out this textbook and looked up the ideal gas law. Oops! Yes, the textbook does cover it, but it is buried deep in one of the environmental applications of chemistry chapters that we skipped! So, I accept the bulk of the blame for not scrutinizing these skipped chapters more closely to locate such a basic chemistry concept. However, I place just a smidgen of fault with the textbook for tucking it away in an otherwise skippable chapter. Although I'm calling this a homeschool fail, it is actually another good lesson for DD, that she is going to run across concepts that won't be covered in depth by her instructors and she needs to rely on self-study and seeking extra assistance outside of class, as needed.

Here is just one example, from my state flagship, for college entrance requirements: 4 units of English 2 units of algebra 1 unit of geometry 1 unit of trigonometry, calculus, statistics, or other advanced math 1 unit of biology 1 unit of chemistry or physics 1 unit of additional science 1 unit of American history 1 unit of European history, world history, or world geography 2 units of a single foreign language 1 unit of visual or performing arts

Essentially, you will be making things easier on yourself and your student if your transcript looks "typical." If you do not have specific requirements in your state to issue a diploma for high school, start looking at a few possible colleges if the student is college-bound for their entrance requirements. In all likelihood, they are going to want to see 4 years of "English" for example. You are just going to confuse things if you have "Writing" or "Composition" listed separately from "Literature" and it could seem like double-counting since it is typical for lit and writing (along with vocabulary, grammar, etc.) to be combined into a single English credit. One high school credit is generally 120 to 180 hours of effort. Most folks only count hours for courses where it would otherwise be difficult to determine when you are done. For example, if you finish a math textbook, you know you are done. If you are running for P.E., when are you done? Health and PE are different requirements. That's why I suggested separating them. Again, it is more typical to see them listed individually.

Combine art and music, count hours, and give a Fine Arts credit at somewhere between 120 and 180 hours. I'd break out "Health" from "PE" and give 0.5 credits each. Also, writing should be combined with literature to make a full English credit. The rest looks fine.

I wanted to comment because your description here matches my DD exactly. She had the stats to get some nice automatic scholarships (like at the University of Alabama) but wasn't ready to be so far away from home at a large school with potentially huge classes. Instead, she is going just down the road to the local CC. The classes are small, especially compared to large state universities, and the instructors are dedicated teachers (no grad students, no professors who would rather be doing research, etc.). Most importantly, it is giving DD time to mature and develop emotionally/socially. She has made HUGE strides in these areas just this academic year. By the time she transfers (probably to the flagship state university) in spring of next year, she'll be taking junior level classes (much smaller than freshmen courses, generally) and be ready for the challenges of a large campus. Just something to consider!

She did each of those courses a year earlier. She then did pre-calculus algebra and pre-calculus trig at the CC via dual enrollment her senior year, just to be sure she was rock solid. She sailed through, finding it a repeat of what she had already done. She probably could have tackled calculus her senior year. We aren't in a hurry. She had calculus 1 last semester and is currently in calculus 2.

DD participated in the spring round of testing for the Student Math League, an international competition among two-year colleges covering topics such as geometry, algebra, trigonometry, statistics and probability. The college recently posted the results and DD earned the top score for the school! I blame Math U See, which DD used from first grade through pre-calculus. Just a little anecdotal evidence to counterbalance the prevailing forum opinion of the program. :laugh:

What a neat story about your DD! Sounds like something like that just kind of happens. DD is studying computer science but isn't really far enough along in her studies to have the skills someone would be looking for in CS. She applied for an internship program at a near-by research laboratory but is trying to cover her bases by putting in applications for other jobs as well. She applied for a library page position in a near-by small town (she volunteered for several years at our local branch library so has some experience in that type of setting) and a summer camp counselor position with the same small city. Something just for the summer would be fine or else something that could go to part-time during the school term in the fall.