Yes, we're in VA.

We have one EA that we should hear from in mid-December and another in January. So far, my son has been accepted at University of Mary Washington ($4,000 scholarship), Emory & Henry ($20,000 scholarship), Liberty (haven't got the financial info yet), and we just have these last two we are waiting on. He applied EA for all his schools because I didn't want the process to drag out and I wanted to have plenty of time to go and visit campuses after we knew where he was accepted because he's really not sure where he wants to go.

Once my son hit the teen years, he became much more willing to do schoolwork for outside teachers than for me. Part of that may have been that we started outsourcing a little bit in middle school and he always gave priority to those outside classes, which makes sense, but part of it is probably just wanting independence from his mom, which I see as normal and healthy. I still have to tell him to do math every day or he will just skip it because that is the one subject he is still answerable to me on. He always gets everything done for his outside classes, though. So, I'd look for local coop classes or online ones. There is a lot out there. I've never heard of acellus, but it sounds like scoutingmom's suggestion might be a good one.

My husband and I really enjoyed this restaurant the last time we were in Lancaster. I had the crab cakes and they were wonderful. http://lancasterbrasserie.com

No, I felt really good about the DO precalculus course. My dd started preparing for the subject test right after she completed his course and was able to do very well answering the questions on the actual CB practice exams I had, but she was not fast enough. So, I feel like DO covered everything that needed to be covered, but my dd needed more practice with the concepts, which she got with the beginning of Saxon Calculus. A lot of people recommend taking that exam right after precalc, but she really needed a bit more time to let the concepts sink in. The Barron's practice exams (at least for the Math 2 test) are harder than the CB tests. My dd is not having any trouble at all with Saxon Calculus after using DO for precalc.

Here's the book my dd is using: https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Math-Subject-College-Preparation/dp/0804125600/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511896924&sr=1-3&keywords=SAT+subject+test+math A lot of people also seem to like the Barron's book, but my dd found it frustrating because it included a fair amount of things she had not covered in her precalculus course with Derek Owens. https://www.amazon.com/Barrons-SAT-Subject-Test-Level/dp/1438007914/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511896924&sr=1-1&keywords=SAT+subject+test+math The Barron's practice tests are known to be significantly tougher than the CB test, so if your student does well on those, they will probably have no trouble with the CB test. On the other hand, my dd was really stressing because she took too long to complete the Barron's tests. Maybe they would be easier for her now that she has done some of Saxon Calculus, but the Princeton book seems to be preparing her well for the exam so we have not even tried Barron's again.

The college board has come out with a new book that includes 4 official SAT Math 2 subject tests. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1457309327/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I wouldn't know about this book, but Arcadia had posted about it earlier this fall. My dd is going to take the test this Saturday and has found the Princeton Review book very helpful. It is very straightforward and everything is explained clearly.

Hmm. They must have recently changed that. I'm pretty sure they had been offering one language with listening test in the fall and one in the spring.

I agree with this. I think there is a difference, though, between allowing the hard workers to have their A in a challenging class, if they mastered the material, and dumbing the class down so that 60% of students get an A (which is what has happened at the public schools near us). It is currently a trend to have *many* valedictorians in a graduating class. This was not something I had ever heard of in the past. I am equally against giving Bs and Cs to top students because only so many are allowed to have an A.

I said "see School Profile" for most of this section, but I also said that we did not belong to a homeschool association. I said that we had used standardized testing to meet homeschool requirements, but did not include any testing results. I know others on here have added things like National Latin Exam scores. I did go into a little more detail about the type of interaction my son had with the courses he took outside of our home. I wanted to be clear that he does get out of the house quite a bit and that I don't just keep him locked in the basement, lol.

Thanks for pointing this out. We were very happy with dd's score. Her subscores were all about the same, but I thought the area we would put more effort into was getting the math as perfect as possible, because I think she's stronger in language arts subjects. Now you've got me thinking I'll need to look more carefully at that. I'm also grateful to Yvonne and others who said they did not prep for the 10th grade PSAT. It's nice to have a baseline and, honestly, if she had studied a ton, I think it just would have made her anxious on the day of the test.

I had similar thoughts! I think if my dd had been in 11th grade this year, I wouldn't have accessed her score because then I'd just worry about it.

This is another option we are considering. It is an appealing idea. We could continue to use Spanish121 for conversation practice. How much writing did your dd do for her class? I'm sure I could have Ray Leven review her written work and I could get all the books used for AP lit or take her to the Spanish section of the bookstore and have her pick some things off of the shelf.

I'm not surprised by your niece's experience. I'd love it if we could find an online lit class for all three of our dd's to do together. One put together by a WTM parent would be wonderful.

If you are talking about the December 2nd date, languages with listening are not being offered. I only know because my dd was going to take Spanish with listening in November and we had a conflict, so we had to switch her registration to the regular Spanish for December. Which may be just as well because, as you've seen, it isn't so easy to come by a reliable cd player. I think you should be able to add another subject test on the date of the test, though, for Spanish or French without listening. We are hoping to do that for the math subject test.

I spent some time looking again today and didn't find much for AP Lit online, other than the Stanford and the CTY classes and I'm pretty sure I ruled both of those out before because of the high price and a lack of reviews. I had thought maybe our local ps might offer it, but it doesn't look like it. I wonder why there are so few offerings for this class? Anyway, I think I will check out the local university. Thanks!

Thanks, Kassia. How did you find out about the OSU classes? Do you know anyone who has used them?

My dd would like to continue with Spanish, but I'm not sure how to help her with that. One thought was to try to find an AP Spanish Lit course. Another was to see if the local university would allow her to take some upper level Spanish classes. Does anyone have any thoughts for me on this?

This is something I've never seen mentioned here before. A family friend went to Duke with a large scholarship and was so unhappy there, he decided to leave after a couple of years. He has to pay back all of the scholarship money. I think he owes $60,000.

My dd may be doing something similar to what your dd is doing next year after she finishes AP Spanish this year. My current plan is to give her credit and call it Spanish 5 or 6. Or maybe call it Spanish literature if she does enough reading in Spanish. If you want outside validation for what she's doing (not that I think she needs it at all), would she be interested in preparing for the Spanish Lit AP exam?

This looks like a lot of great information. Thanks so much! I think I'm going to start by going through the first survey Janet posted with my kids to get a better idea of what is important to each of them. Then, I will move on to the other resources you have all listed to find schools that seem to fit. This will keep me busy now that we are done with ds' apps.

So, now that I've just completed the application process with my son, I'd like to get a head start on it with my dd. I think we will have some nice choices for ds, but I found myself scrambling at the last minute thinking he should have a few more options than he initially had. Is there a good book out there on college selection? Anyone have a great method for narrowing down the choices? Good sites for my dd to read? I've read the Colleges That Change Lives book, but I'm thinking that must be getting pretty dated.

I used to spray static guard on the brush I used to dry my hair. If I get a little static after drying, I run a dryer sheet over my head. Also, you might do better if you dry your hair either in a semi-humid bathroom, like right after a shower or with a humidifier running nearby.

Thanks, Snowbeltmom! Now that you mention it, I may have bought the book you linked already because I had originally planned for my dd to take Sue Gilleran's class. Thanks for the syllabus offer. PMing you.

I think it's okay to give two credits if she did two years of solid work. Lots of providers do complete the basic grammar and vocab in two years, but some, like CLRC, take 3 years and if you took their online class, you would have three solid credits. When my dd switched from Lone Pine to CLRC, she went from Latin 2 to Latin 4/5. If we had stayed with LP, she would be in Latin 4 right now, which is not their AP level. As it is, she switched to Lukeion and is in Level 4, which is AP level for them. So, LP only takes two years for the basics, but then they stretch Latin Readings out over two, whereas Lukeion only takes one year for Latin Readings. Though, I think Lukeion has added in either an optional third year on grammar or 2nd year on readings. So, lots of ways to do it!