Use [] not {}. The closing [], use \b. Need the “” to indicate the closing.
{b}Last Chance for a Moron{/b}
ok, help
i am feeling a bit insecure right now.
bold
Just use [ and ] rather than { and } and you have it.
Same works for quoting another poster. Just put replace “b” with “quote”.
@SincererLove I’m a lurker here but wanted to chime in on Bates. It’s at the top of my DD17 list and if you have the chance to see it, I would. The Maine schools (Bates, Bowdoin and Colby) are very popular at our Midwest independent school. When I ran the NPC it was quite generous with aid.
Bold
My quirky but very intelligent uncle used to teach at Bates. It always sounded like an amazing school!
This html stuff is exactly what I’m doing in my computer science class right now. Don’t feel bad about it being a bit of a challenge-it took me 30 minutes of my husband explaining how to convert binary numbers into hexadecimals and back again, and I think I may have cried twice before I understood it. I kept putting spaces between the [ brackets and messing it up. and not understanding why they’d use letters in the hexadecimals instead of just counting to 16…
**Thank you{/b}
Yay @BigPapiofthree !
Hooray! for ** @BigPapiofthree ** <:-P
It only took two pages. 
Example Usage [ b]this text is bold / b
Sigh, after 18 months of “I want to go away to college” my S says today “I need to find one of my friends to share a dorm room with.” You’re probably not getting both, kid. Being the smooth operator I am, I talked up the suites-with-private-bedrooms like at UA.
** Math track **
About 30 juniors and about 30 seniors take Calculus BC each year out of the class of 150 students. So a little over 1/3 graduate with Calculus BC. If AB is included, I would say over half the students graduate with Calculus.
Reposting my earlier post in this thread,
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19681659/#Comment_19681659
In our school, where my kids started in 6th grade, math placement puts kids in Honors in Math and Science and english placement puts kids into Honors in English and Social Studies. The placement is done either Spring of 5th grade or August of 6th grade. Then it stays that way mostly for 7 years. It is rare for kids to move from Honors/AP to Standard or vice versa.
Our elementary school had 3 different math groups beginning 3rd grade. During the first period (math), they move to their leveled-classrooms and then return to their homerooms afterward for the rest of the day. They had reading groups as well and read different books. I did not pay attention to DS’s reading groups much as DS’s started Kindergarten not reading (three years of Montessori preschool was spent on cutting bananas and washing windows, not learning alphabet) and finished K reading. That was good enough for me. DS17 was in the first group from 3rd grade, and in 5th grade they did Pre Algebra. At 6th grade he entered Algebra 1 Honors after a placement test. (This was the interesting placement test where the secondary math teacher told me that DS17 will be in multivariable/diff eq in 12th grade. wait, What? you predict future into 6 years?)
The same elementary school put DS19 into the first group in math. Probably because of DS17. Wrong! During teacher conference the homeroom teacher very apologetically said DS19 will be moved (down) to her third math group.
I could imagine many parents pleading ‘noooo… my snowflake belongs to the first math group!’… I knew DS19 did not belong there. He was adding 2+3 with fingers while the class was multiplying and dividing. I was like what were you teachers thinking? It took him several years to be able to read analog wall clock. I did not realize because there were so many digital clocks at home.
Fast forward two years, DS19 also made it into Algebra 1 Honors and Science Honors in 6th grade and is on the same track as DS17 since then. (I had been very worried that DS19 might be placed into Prealgebra in 6th or back to Algebra 1 at 9th grade as that often happens to some students.) I figure either he caught up or “the math track” has a wide margin. Oh, DS19 did math club and was chosen for the school team, and his team won a 4th Place at the regional MathCounts. Yet, he cannot multiply in the head.
8-|
My DS took pre-calc in 9th, Calc AB in 10th and IB math 3 in 11th (and took CALC BC exam). I believe he skipped pre-algebra. Majority of kids who attended a gifted elementary school did same.
Math is so confusing and different in different schools. S did Alg 1 in 7th, Geometry in 8th, Alg 2 (college-based) i 9th, Precalc (college-based) in 10th, and Calc 1/2 in 11th (Calc B/C). Starting at Alg 2, the kids are placed in a faster, more rigorous track that uses a college textbook, or a slower track using a HS textbook. S got to take CBE (credit by exam) tests for all math classes starting with Alg 2 I think (or maybe precalc? who can keep track) for college credit. Sr. year he will have the college-based Calc 3 for 1 semester, and then may have to take a DE math class for 2nd semester. Perhaps a stats class. He loves math, but the stress of the acceleration is definitely not for everyone.
I considered homeschooling because of math, but we were lucky to get a series of teachers who were happy to find ways to accommodate outliers and a group of peers who made him not the odd-one-out.
Starting in 2nd grade, he was usually in a group of 4 kids who did “different” math. One of the kids ended up doing Calculus I the summer before 9th grade and is now on upper-division math courses at our UC. (He’s really focused on math and not that much into science and CS.) DS took Calculus BC in 10th and the rest of the group in 11th (normal advanced for here).
I was happy to come in once or twice a week to help with the math group, and roped the other parents into coming in other days. The teachers got extra funds from the school to purchase more appropriate math books. The kids loved the Ed Zaccaro books. We’d have them play Set and other math games. Also, for 4th-6th grade, there’s a local math contest in spring, so the kids would do old contest packets.
So, I guess I kind of homeschooled a group of 4 in math, but on the school campus. It was fun back when I could keep up with him in math. 
That’s nice @Ynotgo 
I’m trying to decide what I’ll do with my teaching energy after D graduates. I know I could make some serious $$ tutoring various subjects. I would like to volunteer with literacy or numeracy—school kids, adults, immigrants, whatever.
Just to help out for any other parents who are feeling as overwhelmed by these math tracks as I am – I consider DS17 to be “normal smart” and his test scores support that. However, he went/goes to smaller public Midwestern schools that do not offer the kinds of tracking I see here.
He open-enrolled as a freshman to his current HS, but both schools worked the same. An advanced math student could skip a grade or, very rarely, two of regular math in late elementary or in middle school if the parents requested it. We had no idea it was an option, so we may have missed a year of that until a middle school administrator brought it to our attention before 7th grade. So, S and a few others missed 7th grade math to take 8th grade math and then Algebra I in 8th grade.
No honors or AP math is available until AP Calc (no idea if it’s AB or BC) and AP probability/stats as a senior.
Although S would have benefited from more rigorous math classes, there’s nothing I can do to help him “catch up” at this point, and I’ve decided it’s one of those things that just is. As I said his test scores support his ability to do as well as his peers in college.
Tying this back to previous QOTDs – maybe this means I am more in support of standardized tests than GPA. I hate to say that because I agree that tests measure one moment in time and they’re very dependent on the specific questions each kid sees that day. However, even with a school profile to look at (and I still have no way to see S’s but doubt it’s that helpful), how can a larger OOS university adcom possibly compare the GPA and rigor between my S’s schools and some of the others recounted here? In practice, I’m sure there’s more general filtering and unless a competitive scholarship comes into play, it won’t matter that much in the end, but it’s still intimidating.