@2muchquan Lol! There is a homeschool box to check that removes ranking options.
In terms of rigor, I address that in my school profile which has incorporates not only dd’s info but that of her siblings. Schools want to know if kids are academically prepared, so I include that her 2 siblings graduated (summa) cum laude, their professions, that her brother has a 4.0 and will graduate with his masters in physics simultaneously with his bachelor’s, etc.
I do not try to present our homeschool courses like a traditional schools’ courses at all bc they aren’t. It is why we homeschool. I highlight exactly what we do that is different (my kids design their own courses, for example. Or that there is no upper boundary to what they pursue other than their own abilities.) Knowing why you homeschool and why it matters for your kids makes all the difference in how that question is answered. For me, that is an easy one.
I imagine for some homeschoolers who don’t really know why they homeschool, writing the school profile and counselor letter is rather generic and non-compelling. For me that is the heart of my part of this process.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek@2muchquan I would suggest you buy a 32GB or 64GB USB 3.0 Flash drive and have your kids use that to store things. You can usually find them on sell locally or Amazon. 32GB would probably back up there entire data directory. If you have Mac buy a portable drive and use Time Machine. I trained my daughter a few years back on what to do. She uses nothing but an IPad these days and it backs up to the cloud. I have seen new machines have hard drives fail in the first few months. General rule the older machine the more the risk. Glad it worked out this time.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek – I like your school profile description. I am a bit in awe of home schooling parents as I am FAR too lazy. Question: do standardized test scores assume more importance in admissions for home-schooled applicants? (And is it all one word or hyphenated?)
@2muchquan – I agree with you! My son knows SO much more than I know. Also, I moved to this town for the schools.
RE: HD crashes. One Mac suffered a kernel failure. That was odd to watch as a movie theater screen was pulled down over my computer. Apple ended up having to replace the entire computer, and I did lose some files at that time. You would think I would have learned, but no, new computer later suffered a HD failure, and I lost more. The only thing I really care about losing is photos, and I had undertaken two large photo scanning to make slideshows projects that were lost with last HD failure. While I could have gone back and rescanned the photos, it never happened.
@NCComputerNerd – Re: your comment that the older the machine, the higher the risk. None of my Macs have been all that old. Three year replacement cycle but the one that suffered the kernel failure was perhaps 14 months old (Apple Care helped there; they ordered an entirely new machine after failing to repair it twice.) The new computer suffered a HD failure another year out! Current computer is 18 months old, and I am backing up to Time Machine (supposedly) but still manually back up to a 4TB HD, but only every other month. The full back-up is almost 1TB; I need to move some photo libraries off the computer.
This will be a good reminder during college app time for all of us, although the very little my son has done (creating a list) has been on Google Doc.
@CT1417 Standardized test scores carry a lot of weight in admissions for homeschoolers. My kids have a lot of outside validation via SAT II’s, APs, AIME scores, etc. to validate the grades on the transcript.
Regarding computer crashes - we have Carbonite installed on all of our computers as I was never good at backing up files on a regular basis. Both my and my son’s computers have been hit with one of those viruses that completely takes over your computer and Carbonite was able to get all of our files back.
Question…to even apply to Yale what all testing do you have to have done? My S has ACT…SAT…PSAT along with Dual credit classes. I don’t think take dual credit classes from what I see on the website.
@snoozn great updates on our tours! They both sound wonderful. I confess to being slightly relieved that RIT was perceived as utilitarian. S is very hung up on campus aesthetics and RIT looks pretty dreamy for him…but unaffordable so that lessens the pain for me a bit (not that he has a clue I think it’s dreamy or its unaffordable, I’ve not introduced it to him as he prefers I do the financial weeding first). I like that they have a quidditch team personally.
We used to call that “above the fold” for web design. And though the fold has changed and people don’t think about things the same way, the basic principle is quite valid and not just in web design.
Which is always a problem for me as I over explain everything! And just end up confusing people or losing them and the salient points get missed!
@MSHopeful great tour updates as well, sounds like Columbia cemented their spot!
@Mom2aphysicsgeek congrats on getting the counselor letter done! We are largely backwards here as well. Partially because the list is still morphing away! Nothing more terrifying than potentially lost work. Our kids use google drive for virtually everything these days to avoid that as best as possible. Which can be a real pain then migrating that info into other programs but at least it protects the content and they have started using dropbox to some extent. My life is in the cloud anymore. Used to really concern me but over time, as hard drives have died, etc, I’ve become paranoid and tend to store most in the cloud. It does help with computer performance though as I can get by with a much cheaper laptop that has less storage! LOL We also have an external for backups though I’ve not been good about using it since I upgraded my cloud storage.
@CA1543 I didn’t realize that “box” was on the common app (which I’ve yet to actually see as S hasn’t created his account yet). I thought it was in their letter but a box actually makes more sense. I did see it on one of the apps but it was part of a counselor letter. I was hoping to ask the GC where S would fall in this. I think she will check most rigorous but I honestly don’t know! What are the options for them to check on the common app?
Just a reminder to also back up what’s on your phones. My android randomly reset itself to factory settings a couple of weeks ago. Fortunately, I have photos, contacts, etc. set to back up to the Cloud, but it was a solid 12 hours of recovering all that to my phone. The biggest loss was a well-developed running list of recommended books to look into – including many recommended here – that took me a long time to re-create. Now that app is set to back up as well.
D completed and submitted her first college app today! She was so proud that she took a screen shot to post on her social media. She’s officially applying to college!
@CT1417 ACT/SAT scores definitely carry a lot of weight. Test scores need to align with their transcript. Some schools require subject tests; for those schools, those scores take greater weigh as well.
Where we differ from @shuttlebus’s approach with our dd17 is that we are using different types of outside validation other than standardized tests to verify her transcript. She is also compiling an academic portfolio that incorporates different media to demonstrate her levels of achievement. (For example, one of her of her summer projects is a book she is translating from Russian into English and illustrating. It will be included in her portfolio. There is no standardized test for that. )
There are lots of ways to demonstrate academic achievement outside of the regular box.
Thanks @NCComputerNerd and @eandesmom (and anyone else I am forgetting.) I didn’t realize she hadn’t been backing up her files. I thought she knew better. When I asked her about it, her answer was that she has been so focused on what she is doing and falls asleep while working and then forgets. Umm…no! Lesson learned.
@2muchquan - I will be interested in what you think of Michigan State… My mom,sister,brother & BIL all graduated from there. They all really loved it. I on the other hand was supposed to go there and went for orientation registered for classes and saw how big it was ,freaked out and went to Central Mich instead. Mom took DS13 on a tour and showed him everything. Mom thinks it’s a really pretty campus, DS13 called it the brick city and wouldn’t apply. It was the only college he refused to apply to. He did like U of M but decided he didn’t like the snow.
Computers dying: The comprehensive exams in my doctoral program were a series of four 24-hour exams. (They were technically 8-hour exams—the maximum length, per university policy—but you got each question one morning and turned in your response 24 hours later, and I know nobody who ever successfully completed one within eight hours, so…) Student folklore included the story of a student from some years before whose computer had died when she was nearly finished with one (and so before she’d printed it out), and she brought in the entire early-90s computer tower and said “It’s on the hard drive.” The story’s coda said that the department paid for the data recovery, so that was good.
For my part, I had my printer die as I was printing one out, but I could still print it out at the department, so no biggie.
I make sure to keep both local and cloud backups now (plus an occasional full hard drive backup of my home computer that I keep in my office), due to my own past experiences losing data.
The Alabama visit: My daughter has time with faculty in both departments she’s interested in, and we’re having lunch with someone from University Fellows, plus a few other assorted more general info sessions. The folks in the Honors College know how to set stuff up, I must say.
What am I doing right now? Using Time Machine for my first time ever, and running a backup. I even partitioned the new external drive (that’s just been sitting around unused) so I can backup both Work and Home Macs. Now, gotta get another backup disk for the PCs at home…but that can wait.
Another computer-y thing that I did recently, and you can decide if it makes sense for you. I have scans of an official transcript, as well as download of score reports from ACT.org and CB for SAT IIs, and copies of senior course schedule. I put all these in one place up on Google Drive as well, and shared it with D17 (I just shared one big a55 College folder) so we would always have access to them in case they are needed and we aren’t at home. So, it’s not just Google Sheets and Google Docs, but normal files that should be up in the cloud, more for easy access not necessarily fear of loss. (We also use Google 2-step verification for a bit more security)
@eandesmom The whole Quidditch thing was cute the first and second time. It now bugs me. But, I was never a HP fan. Seems every school likes to talk about kids playing Quidditch. I may have had too much coffee this morning, though.
Congrats @itsgettingreal17, on the app! ‘We’ have not submitted any apps yet (unless you count UAs, but that was really just a $ transaction), although D has started 1. We will get a app fee waiver when we visit in a couple weeks, so holding off to submit just yet. I don’t know about you, but this app season doesn’t seem like it should be that stressful. I don’t really get it. Write a few essays, answer a few questions, and BOOM you’re done! Right? :))
Quidditch would be fun if you really could fly on brooms. Running around pretending you are on brooms flying doesn’t do it for me. I will confess to being a big HP fan though.
We use TimeMachine and have a drive that backs up automatically via wifi. For us it was more of a fact that we live in the “urban fringe” in a wildfire prone area and we never know if we will evacuated. It is easy to grab a backup drive and less easy to grab a big tower or iMac.
I spend 36+ hours recovering D12's computer last week. She didn't backup before doing a major OS update and the install failed big time. She did do backups but not recently. So couldn't just wipe the disk and start over. Everything seems to have been saved... But that was a PITA.
WRT disclosing LDs. DD pretty much had straight B’s freshman year, trending up to a 4.3 wtd GPA junior year. She has ADD and gradually figured out how to deal with it. Some schools probably don’t want to hear any medical “excuses”. Of course, those schools aren’t going to accept her regardless…
For DD, I seriously doubt that disclosing will ever hurt her. We want her to go to schools that are closer to her junior GPA. For those that are willing to focus more on junior grades, I think a reason will help them to justify it. Obviously some won’t - and then disclosing won’t make a difference.
She was so proud that she took a screen shot to post on her social media. She’s officially applying to college!