@LoveTheBard URich was at the top of her list at one point until she learned that they have science, history, and foreign lang subject test requirements for homeschoolers. She has subject test scores, but only one of those 3. She dropped them from the list. The vast majority of schools do not place extra testing requirements on homeschoolers or if they ask for subject tests, it is usually submit 2 or 3 across subjects, not specific subjects. So lit, math, and a foreign language would work.
Ironically, not a single school any of my other kids have applied to asked for extras from homeschoolers other than course descriptions and book lists (which I agree with and provide), yet she has run into 2.
Anyway, she insisted back in March that she was finished testing. Period. Her mind was made up and choices have to be made around that decision.
SciencesPo is one school that has come up as affordable and offering everything she wants. I am not sure how a European school would react to her homeschool transcript. We may look and see if it is even feasible to pursue.
@dfbdfb I’ve been doing the same thing though not quite at that level. For the moment we are focused on compare in the depth of emphasis offered within the major and/or the ability to minor or double major from an overall program quality standpoint (esp if not offered as area of emphasis) and depth/variety of faculty and classes. I did end up migrating it to a table though as it was getting pretty unwieldy and then have it in a binder. With tabs. Sigh. I like spreadsheets but S needs paper. Still 2 more schools to go. I won’t take it quite to the level you have until we’ve some acceptances.
@dfbdfb We do the same for all of our kids. I want to make sure they have an understanding of all required courses before enrolling. We also look at actual semester offerings to see how many sections and what exact titles are offered each semester.
One thing that Bama has that I really like is Degree Works. My older kids didn’t have it at their schools, so I don’t know if this is standard at most schools now or not. DW tracks their courses as completed in all categories for their degrees, so when they log in, they can tell exactly what is required in every category to complete their degrees. My ds was triple majoring at one point and DWs merged the overlaps so it was easy to see.
@ct1417 LOL!! Now that would be a fun thread to start on a main forum. "My child wants to major in old Norse languages and Vikings studies, but I am concerned about their employability. At least the pat post, “Heritage speakers are a dime a dozen, so knowing a foreign language is a worthless accomplishment bc everyone can do it,” wouldn’t be an actual viable response! :))
@CT1417 U of Washington offers Scandinavian Studies, all languages I believe. Unlike those small liberal arts schools in the Midwest where you have to choose - do you want Swedish (Gustavus Adolphus) or Norwegian (St. Olaf)?
Wow my D15 would have loved an Old Norse Languages course, along with Old Norse myths for good measure.
S has taken two schools off of his list this week. It’s amazing to me how things start to crystalize in their minds when application deadlines begin to loom. So it looks like I can answer the question of how many schools, 7-- Two likelies, 3 matches, 2 reaches.
DegreeWorks: @Mom2aphysicsgeek, the college I teach at has DegreeWorks, and speaking as a faculty advisor to students in my department, I agree, it is (once you get used to the 90s-looking interface) utterly wonderful.
Scandinavian languages: I actually took a little bit of coursework in Scandinavian languages as an undergrad. As a result, I can still struggle through reading basic Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian (both Nynorsk and Bokmål)! It’s kind of a fun thing to have.
Scandinavian humor: Speaking of Scandinavia, if you don’t follow the webcomic [Scandinavia and the World](http://satwcomic.com/), I’ll just say that it’s a fun place (and one where you might even learn stuff).
JOTD: Speaking of Scandinavia: How many Danes does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Eleven—one to screw in the lightbulb, and ten to drink themselves into oblivion in celebration of it.
When we went to Iceland this past summer, we were told several times that Icelandic and Faroese are the closest modern languages to Old Norse. We talked at the Settlement Exhibition museum with an grad student in Scandinavian languages from Norway who was studying abroad in Iceland.
DS21 for a few minutes said he wanted to learn Icelandic, until we looked it up and found it’s supposed to be one of the most difficult languages to learn as a non-native speaker. I felt like I was doing well just to pronounce place names with the right th sound.
P.S. When DS17 was struggling with a “tell us more about your culture” short essay, I told him he could talk about his Viking ancestor “Orm” who “migrated” to England around 1000 AD. He’s not buying that he has any relation to that culture.
I try to always call South Carolina UofSC, although I see now that both of them are actually U’s of SC. I would suggest simply referring to their mascots: Gamecocks and Trojans, but that might get me expelled like those kids @MichiganGeorgia mentioned.
I went to USCali for grad school, and it’s my belief that they would never go for being called anything but plain old ‘USC’, even though USCaro was founded well before them.
Considering the timeline for admissions process, I see a big difference is just caused by each student’s school… I have a college sophomore DD15 and a HS senior DD17 and their college app experiences are different because of the different high schools.
My DD15 went to a very small private high school school, and all of the graduates were college bound. Her school calendar started a few days before Labor Day, and the beginning of the school year had some big extracurricular demands… So, we didn’t start working on college apps at all until October. The HS counselor was new but did a nice job. Nothing got lost…no crisis happened, all went fine although we were nervous about everything.
Fast forward 2 years: My DD17 is in a large public HS ( 500 seniors) and it started August 10th! Initially I was concerned about how the app process would go with this second daughter because of the large size of her school and of course, they always seem underfunded and understaffed. But, her counselor is experienced and organized, and transcripts are handled online through parchment; there is a formal process for requesting teacher and counselor recs. If we follow procedures, things seem to be working well So, we are trying to stay ahead of the "pack "of students there by applying a bit early, and then hoping we will get through all of the needed steps without any major mishaps or lost items. So far, I am pretty impressed with this counselor as well.
One of DD’s colleges of interest sent a letter saying something like “our program is competitive, so don’t delay in sending in the rest of your app materials”…however their deadline isn’t until January! They are not supposedly “rolling admission” , so why hurry? Well she is trying to get it done soon in case getting app in early is a slight advantage.
I think it is important to allow a couple weeks before deadlines for apps,essays and all of the extra items to be sent in, in case something is lost or forgotten!
My son finally earned his William T. Hornaday Badge it took his three years to complete. It was the first one at his counsel has seen in 65 years. He acheived it through the boy scouts.
JOTD in memoriam:
Infinitely many mathematicians walk into a bar. The first says, “I’ll have a beer.” The second says, “I’ll have half a beer.” The third says, “I’ll have a quarter of a beer.” Before anyone else can speak, the barman fills up exactly two glasses of beer and serves them. “Come on, now,” he says to the group, “You guys have got to learn your limits.”
I’m with you, @2kidsinky. If there’s a deadline, I’d rather beat it by a fair amount. Treat it kind of like showing interest at schools that ‘say’ they don’t track it, or scheduling an interview when they are optional. I’ve only worried if this means rushing through an essay just to get the app in, in which case it pays to take a little extra time. Although this doesn’t work well, either, when your essays are stacking up because your kid can’t quite get the hang of talking about herself in the CA essay. ~X(
our strategy is the same as above, only for slightly different reasons. mine is interested in very small programs with very few seats, the vast majority that are filled by ED/EA applicants—there are very, very few slots left in the RD pool making it extraordinarily competitive with people who have some serious stats getting waitlisted or worse yet, flat out rejected.
of course we wouldnt turn our nose up at merit either.
so for us, the EA deadlines are set in stone.
meaning that YES, its late in the game. the clock is ticking, and since we really cant rely on our busy guidance office to get it done, we have been very proactive about timelines. there just IS NOT any room for error.
We attended a talk last night by Fareed Zakaria. This is the 2nd time I’ve seen him speak, and besides being an accomplished journalist, he would make the most interesting history/political science lecturer. Much of what he had to say was off limits for CC given that his topic was “Election 2016” (he shared interesting thoughts on the realignment of the 2-party system from left/right to open/closed).
However, the book he was signing was his most recent, “In Defense of a Liberal Education.” He only mentioned the book in one post-lecture Q&A, but it seems relevant to @Mom2aphysicsgeek 's other thread and the threads she mentions in her original post of that thread. I’ve downloaded a sample to my Kindle, and will check it out. Also, he mentioned having a 17-year-old daughter, so possible class of '17.
@Ynotgo Tell your son to write an essay for “tell us about your culture” and talk about all the bacteria growing on his dirty socks under his bed
U of South Carolina has it tough - they can’t be Carolina or USC nationally because of dominant sports programs. Maybe they should change to South Carolina University.
I try to always call South Carolina UofSC, although I see now that both of them are U’s of SC. I would suggest simply referring to their mascots: 'Cocks and Trojans, but that might get me expelled as well.
I went to USCali for grad school, and it’s my belief that they would not go for being called anything but ‘USC’, even though USCaro was founded well before them.
I agree with @itsgettingreal17 about getting things in early, not because you have to, but as mentioned…things can go wrong. Although, it sounds like a lot of things are going wrong for your daughter @its. For all the faults of our large public HS, their counseling office and college/career center has impressed me by getting things done on our schedule. We have two 10/15 deadlines, and they have already met these dates with all Teacher LORs/School reports/GC LOR/Transcript…before we have even gotten the app in at one of the schools.
Something else that I’ve noticed, someone mentioned above but it’s worth repeating. Some deadlines are for ‘everything’, not just the app, but all associated documents for which you’re at the whim of your HS.
@Ynotgo is it true that some schools would not look at an app that arrived early, before a deadline? If true, that seems insane. If you know that’s the case, then certainly there’s an advantage to getting that essay just right, assuming you don’t have 30 others to do like my daughter. :((
