JeanM
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Posts posted by JeanM
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What a nice surprise! I'm sure having the added flexibility in his schedule will be a plus.
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I have not found the bolded to be the case with the schools my kids have applied to - the colleges definitely wanted to know why we homeschooled. However, I didn't address this in the counselor letter; I addressed it in the school profile. My school profile contained the following:
Community Profile - which included population stats, stats on our public school system, and the stats of my two oldest kids (comparing their SAT scores to that of our public school)
Reason for Homeschooling
Educational History of the applicant
Educational Partners
Grading Policy
Thanks, that's very helpful!! Just curious, I'm not sure what the bolded means, "educational history of the applicant." Is that an explanation like if your ds was homeschooled and in public school? Do you cover anything pre-high school?
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Here is what goes in a typical "school kid" counselor letter:
http://hscw-counselorscorner.blogspot.com/2015/09/a-quick-refresher-on-counselor-letters.html
Thanks Janet, that is very helpful! I'm leaning towards writing my own at this point, but it's good to have options.
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DS is definitely planning to use the common app, so it sounds like he does need a counselor letter.
Jenny, thanks for your incredibly generous offer, I'm pming you now.
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You don't need to address that stuff at all. In fact, I wouldn't. They don't care why you homeschooled and you run the risk of turning them off if they don't like your reasons. You can address "how we graded", if you want, by putting your grading scale somewhere on the transcript. Or just put number grades (percentages) instead of letter grades.
I would take her up on that offer, and try to get 1-2 more other people besides (the band director would be good, and individual teachers). I didn't write any of my son's letters. That was part of the reason that I outsourced some things, to have letter writers. If you are worried about defending your homeschool, let his test scores speak for themselves. A couple of good letters and some good test scores (AP, SAT, etc) and you will be fine.
Thanks, TammyS. He has teachers who will write letters of recommendation for him, and he might ask his debate team coach too.
Well, I did address those things, but I did it in our school profile document, not in the counselor letter. The counselor letter is about the student, not the "school."
Also, there is a distinction between the counselor letter and teacher recommendations. As the administrator of our homeschool, I felt it was entirely appropriate that I write the counselor letter for my son. However, he also had multiple letters from other teachers, as is required by most colleges.
So maybe I'm not really understanding the counselor letter. I can definitely put some of that stuff in the school profile document. But then what goes in the counselor letter? My perspective on my son's readiness for college? Sorry, I'm really struggling with this.
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My ds has been going to the public school part-time. This year he took AP English, honors Spanish III and band at the school. His guidance counselor is very nice, and a former homeschool mom. He's met with her several times, and she definitely knows who he is, but I'm not sure how well she knows him. She has offered to write his counselor letter, even though he is applying to schools as a homeschooler. Any opinions as to the pros or cons of having her write the letter?
I'm assuming she'll be considered "more objective" by the colleges. I had been thinking that the counselor letter was the place where we would address why we were homeschooling, how we graded, etc. Can that stuff go somewhere else?
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2 essays! So wonderful. He is very focused!
I finally have my CDs and school profile done. :hurray: Just needs minor tweaking as senior year courses are not firm. I am listing planned senior year courses in it. Should I leave them out?
Summarized some of his extra reading into a one-page list for now. Have no idea how I am going to write the counselor letter. Good luck snowbeltmom!
Wow, you're very on top of things. I need to get moving! I've got course descriptions for the first two years, but not beyond that.
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My ds took AP physics C without having had previous high school physics, but we did spread it out over two years. There was a recent thread about this:
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I didn't know whistleblowers got much money either. But I guess you have to incentivize doing the right thing, because the person is going to be in great fear of loss of job or even life, I imagine. It seems like a lot of whistleblowers end up dead for some reason.
Oh, I totally agree that you have to make sure that the whistleblower will be adequately compensated for loss of job, etc. The stress has to be huge.
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It's an interesting lawsuit. As far as I can tell, the pharmaceutical companies are being sued for claiming the drug was a "first line" cancer drug over a certain period of time. However, the drug is still being used, and has since been officially approved as a "first line" drug. So I'm wondering if there actually are any "victims." The reverse is actually possible - that people were helped who might not have been. I'm not in any way condoning misrepresentation of drugs, but I think in this case it might be difficult to identify victims.
As a side note, I had no idea that whistleblowers got that much money.
Side note two - while I'm sure that large pharmaceutical companies have done some bad things, I know quite a few people who work for big pharma. They work hard and care deeply about people's lives and health. They are not all bad, greedy people.
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DS is away now, and he'll be gone or busy between now and the end of July. So I'm hoping he'll get started on college applications in August, which gives him plenty of time before school starts (I think it starts Sept. 1st).
He doesn't want to write his common app essay in August though. He'll be taking AP English literature at the local public high school, and the school has every senior English class devote time to writing and critiquing common app essays. He's been through this once already because he took a "senior" English class as a sophomore. While I would dearly love for him to just get going, he has a rational reason for putting it off. So I'm hoping he can get started in August on supplemental essays, etc.
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My ds did calculus-based physics without having done algebra-based physics first. However, he did spread it out over 2 years. So he took the AP physics C mechanics exam the first year, and the AP physics C electricity & magnetism the second year. He was taking calculus along with the first year of physics, so basically he started calculus first, and then added in the physics when he was ready. I think it would be hard to do that if you were trying to fit it all in one year.
He currently thinks that he'll be a history major, so he doesn't necessarily need to take more physics in college.
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Both of my dc took subject tests yesterday. Older ds took world history and physics, while younger ds took biology. DH did the registration for them, and he registered older ds at the local public high school, but he was unable to do the same for younger ds - he got an error message saying there were no slots available. So younger ds was registered in the neighboring town. This made yesterday morning slightly more complicated since dc needed to go in opposite directions.
So afterwards I asked older ds how many kids were taking subject tests. There were two total (including ds). Apparently they waited a bit for a third student, but the third student never showed. In the end though, I'm glad it worked out this way. Older ds said that he and the other student both finished their first test quickly, and the proctor let them start their second test when they were both done with the first. I think it might have stressed younger ds if he thought he was being slow.
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My biggest brag for the year is that my dc managed to work together (sometimes a challenge) on a National History Day project, and they took first place in their category in the state. They're going to nationals later in June.
Older ds has had some major firsts too - first (part-time) job, first college class, got his driver's license, etc.
Younger ds went from being homeschooled full-time to being a part-time high school freshman. He had some challenges at the beginning of the year with adapting to school especially with a complicated schedule. He took his first AP test, which hopefully went well.
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I don't understand why so much effort is expended on arguing about the extreme ends of each controversy, when we all know that most people fall in between.
If we are asked to choose between calling ourselves "pro-life" and "pro-choice," we are going to choose the one that best covers our position. "Pro life" usually means I would rather not see babies aborted if it could be reasonably helped. Most pro-life people have exceptions. Almost all would put the mother's physical life/health ahead of the baby's (assuming the mom herself chose that, or did not have capacity to choose). Most would be neutral on abortion when the baby isn't going to be viable after birth. Many if not most would make exceptions for rape, incest against a child, or very young teens / pre-teens finding themselves pregnant some other way. Anyway, those are all relatively rare situations compared to the number of abortions to which none of those apply.
Also, most pro-life people are not opposed to contraception, or many other reproductive choices that would not lead to an embryo/fetus being aborted. Or the choice to have someone other than the biological mother raise the child.
So it would be nice if people could have a discussion about pro-life without continually yelling about that rare instance which isn't even an issue from a pro-life perspective. Or apply terms such as "anti-choice" (or as suggested above, "anti-reproductive choice").
Pro-choice to me means being in favor of a woman's right to choose abortion for her own early-stage pregnancy. Sometimes people calling themselves "pro choice" believe in forcing abortions, pushing abortions on certain people who are undecided / don't want one, late-term abortion, intentionally letting an unwanted viable newborn die immediately after birth, advocating against adoption, treating abortion the same as the Pill from a moral perspective, blaming childbirth for all sorts of women's problems, etc. But I am not yelling about those people because I know they don't represent most people who are pro-choice.
I'm curious about the bolded. I'm sure the Catholic church is against both contraception and abortion. I'm not sure about other positions. I had a friend in college who was not Catholic, but was opposed to both. It probably also depends on the type of contraception. Some are opposed to some forms of contraception, but not others.
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I'm not going to get into all of this ...
But I did want to address some possible confusion on RCC stance wrt to maternal vs fetal medical need.
The RCC does not require a women to deny herself needed medical care bc she is pregnant.
So let's say I had cancer. A tumor needed removed or I needed chemo. And I was pregnant. There is nothing in RCC teaching that says I could not do that. Because the purpose of the treatment is not to kill or harm my baby. It might do that! But it is not why the procedure is being done. So if I do it and lose the baby, that sucks, but I'm not committing a sin. And also, there's nothing wrong with a mother deciding to NOT accept that treatment bc she wants to give her baby better odds of survival. Either options are within RCC values and teachings.
Or I developed HELLP. Same thing. If the mother cannot carry the baby to viability, then she can't. Tho that is rare. It has nothing to do with valuing the baby more to try to do so. If medical intervention, and there are some measures they can take to safely buy a little bit more time, but if those interventions don't help her, then they don't and she is going to deliver anyways. No one is going to think she immoral bc she couldn't carry longer. It really wasn't a choice unless someone things she chose to have HELLP, which is silly.
The general rule of subsidiary is that we cannot have babies if we don't take care of mothers. So all this talk of babies having more value than mothers makes no sense at all from a RCC perspective. It generally is not possible.
Thanks for the explanation. Just curious about how the bolded works, if you know. If the chemo/radiation/whatever treatment was definitely going to kill the fetus, would the RCC be ok with aborting the fetus first, or would you just do the treatment and whatever happens, happens.
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DD had a close call today. She misnumbered and had only a few minutes left on the test before she realized she'd skipped a problem. She had to rush to change 20 MC answers. The only thing that saved her is that she circles the right answer in her booklet so she just worked backwards using her circled answers in her booklet. Her only fear is that in the lack of time she's afraid she didn't erase good enough or mark dark enough. She is nervous about this one, ya'll.
Just FYI, I believe you can pay to have the test hand-scored. I'm not sure exactly when you need to request it, but if she's very worried it might be worth looking into it.
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I am one of those people. Doctors determine medical risk. Simple as that. So in the case of your 9 year old girl from Brazil, the significant element is that her doctors felt her pregnancy was high risk. I think it is likely that any pregnancy in a nine year old would be high risk. Obviously people vary in their readiness for pregnancy, but I would think most healthy 18 year olds would be able to safely carry a pregancy, even a twin pregnacy to term.
Briefly on the topic of organ donation, yes I feel people are morally obligated to donate organs on death (they aren't using them). In the case of live donation, obligated is too strong a word. I would say that if someone in your close circle of people needs an organ & you could provide you should give it serious consideration.
Thanks for your thoughtful responses. I have many conflicting feelings on these topics myself.
I agree that any pregnancy in a nine year old would likely be high risk! And most healthy 18 year olds would not be high risk. There is a lot of middle ground in between though, which makes it very difficult.
Personally I see a strong similarity between forcing a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term in order to save the life of the child and forcing an unwilling live organ donor to donate to save the life of a person (child or adult).
Just to be clear, I am not advocating forced organ donation. This is purely a thought experiment!
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I have a question for the pro-lifers who think abortion is ok if the life of the mother is at stake. I think there are multiple people in this thread who hold that position. Where do you draw the line - like if the mother is 100% guaranteed to die if she carries the pregnancy, that's ok right? What if it's only 80% likely that she'll die? 50% likely? And so on? It often is not completely clear cut whether the mother will die.
I thought about this in relation to a recent story in the news about a 9 year old girl from Brazil who was pregnant with twins after being raped by her step-father (hope I got the details right). The doctors sounded sure that she would die if her 9 year old uterus carried twins to term, and she was able to get an abortion. If that is ok, what if she were 9 years old, but it wasn't twins? What if she were a little older? Many people draw the line at some point. Like if she were 18 with a single pregnancy, it sounds like at least some people here think she should carry it to term. I'm trying to understand how you decide where to draw the line.
This is a long thread and I've lost who mentioned organ donation, but I think it is an interesting parallel. In the US it is prohibited to sell organs or to compel someone to donate an organ. If a life or several lives would be saved by organ donation, should the family of a dying (or recently passed) person be compelled to donate their organs? If a pro-life person would be willing to compel a pregnant woman to carry an unwanted child until birth, when it could be given up for adoption, why shouldn't organ donation be compulsory as well? What about live donation - like if you have a sibling who needs a kidney? Should the healthy sibling be compelled to donate a kidney if the sick sibling is almost certainly going to die without the donation?
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Both my dc are done for the year! Now we wait until July...
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Congratulations! We're also waiting on April 12th scores...
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The public schools here are also great about letting homeschoolers take AP exams. DS2 had his first exam - AP European history - on Friday. He was nervous, but he thought it went ok.
I'm a little worried because DS1 is taking AP physics C - only electricity and magnetism this afternoon. I told him to double check at the school on Friday where and when he is supposed to take it, but he forgot. So I called the school Friday afternoon, but didn't reach a human - left a message. Most of the APs are off-site at a church, so I want to be sure that he knows where to go. And I want to know for sure what time they are expecting him, since the E & M is kind of half of a test. He's supposed to be at work at 5 pm today too, which should be fine as long as everything runs on time!
Edited to add: I did reach the school this morning and confirmed the time and place! DS is fairly confident about the multiple choice, but a little worried about the free response. I guess we'll know in July.
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I'm not disagreeing that it's frustrating when things get stonewalled for partisan reasons. However, my gut says what you're referencing is more dependent on the timing of vacancies than anything else. It certainly sounds terrible to say Republicans haven't approved anyone since since 1895. However, have we even had an equal number of vacancies when there's been a Democrat president and a Republican Senate? I'd need to check that out before coming to any conclusion about who plays games more. Personally, I think both sides are guilty of such nonsense on a whole range of issues. Neither one gets to claim the high ground.
Sorry, I was not trying to make the point that Republicans haven't approved anyone since 1895. I was trying to point out that it hasn't been an issue, so the senate as a whole has less experience with the circumstance. There are *no* current republican senators who can say, "well last time we did this...."
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re long run effects of stonewalling in a system in which the Presidency and the Congress are often not the same party:
Right. Because two of the perfectly likely electoral possibilities come November is that once again (like now), the Presidency is held by one party and the Senate majority by the other. And -- whichever party has which -- there's a real argument that the Senate -- whichever party holds the majority -- could (some posters here seem to be arguing should?) stonewall the *new* President's nomination.
If the SCOTUS seat can stay vacant without even a hearing for over a year, why not two years (until the Senate might flip again?) or four (until another shot at the different party-President?) Under the stonewallers-are-doing-their-job argument, shouldn't ANY Senate majority of the opposite-to-the-President party ALWAY stonewall ANY SCOTUS candidate?
And that leaves us....
(FTR, I actually think Roberts is doing everything in his power NOT to go down in the history books as the Chief whose tenure is mostly known for a slew of hung decisions that don't set precedent and have all to be re-heard. A side of him seems to be emerging that I wouldn't have guessed was there. This may well go down as his finest hour. Still it's hard to watch the sausage being made.)
Interestingly the last time a Supreme Court nominee from a Democrat President was approved by a Republican-controlled Senate was in 1895. There have been lots of Supreme Court nominees from Republican Presidents in recent years approved by a Democratic-controlled Senate.
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June ACT scores
in High School and Self-Education Board
Posted
My ds was very pleased with his June ACT score until today, when he saw the writing score. Does anyone know how much impact the essay score has on colleges? He is aiming for some highly competitive schools and some not quite as competitive small liberal arts colleges. His essay score is 14 points below his composite. To be honest, he didn't do much prep for the essay. He is normally a fairly good writer.