Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources What is EPGY open enrollment?

I have seen references to it here, but I am not really sure what it is. Today I saw a post that said something abotu $135/year. I did do a search, but it seemed like all the references were specific to particular posts and not a general overview of the different types of EPGY enrollment.

We enrolled in Fall and i paid $500+ and I just got a bill for another $500+ to re-enroll for spring. For some reason I thought we were already enrolled for the whole year.

I think the program is terrific, but it seems way overpriced. I've gotten a regular emails from my son's tutor and she seems great, but he hasn't required any help from her. He just runs through a session whenver he has time. it took a while to get into the swing of things, but now he does a few every week. I'm hoping to get to almost every day.

Is the "open enrollment" a way to get access to the online courses with less support and a much lower fee? That would be perfect for us as my son requires no support. He does, however, definitely need to keep doing it as he will hopefully be transferring to s different school next year with a more advanced math curriculum.

Can anyone advise me on this?

Thank you.

Oops, just searched again and found more info. I must have had a typo the first time (shocking!)

I gather that my guess was correct - open enrollment is access to the same online resources, with less support. And I need to find someone who is running a group who will allow me in?

If that's correct, is there anyone with a spot? Contrary to what you might assume from posts I've made here, we are very low maintenance.

Thanks.

I think you can sign up without being in a special group, at the rate IIRC of around $90 per quarter. So there is a big cost savings over $500/semester, although maybe not as much as you might get in a group enrollment.

One benefit of joining a group, according to melmichigan, is that the settings can be set up differently to allow a better fit for a gifted kid (no need to slog through as many drills). Here's a thread by her-- dunno if she still has an opening left:
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....group_I_have_a_few_openin.html#Post88680

mel did say that the $135/year may not be pro-rated, and you'd be joining in the middle of the current year, so I'd check with her on that.

I tend to agree with you, that the tutoring is probably not necessary for all kids learning math. With my son (not bragging in the slightest, all kids learn differently and my kid has his own set of weaknesses) I don't really have to teach him, just explain a concept in a sentence or two and turn him loose on IXL practice tasks, each of which can usually be completed in a couple of minutes, well before he gets bored. Then we just move on to the next thing, and if he says he thinks it's too basic we skip it. Based on this sample size of one, I think that with a kid who learns math easily, seeing a concept in practice, even briefly, may be more than enough, obviating the need for a tutor.

Thanks Luounu, I think I found a link where I can sign up like you describe:

http://epgy.stanford.edu/openenroll/index.html

This should work for us. If he needs help on a particular topic I can talk him through it. I really just need the curriculum.

Oh, yeah. My son's five, which means among other things that I can fulfill the role of tutor as needed for quite some time, like JaneSmith. But that obviously can't last forever, and I am admittedly stumbling my way through this.

My son is 9, but I'm OK with the math and will be until he goes beyond basic undergrad. Since he's not that advanced in math, it's not likely to ever be an issue for us. It's also very helpful for me to be able to have him working independently online while I do something else.

We aren't doing anything that's very ambitious math-wise anyway. He already knows most of the material, but it's a tough year for us and I just don't want him to backslide. I haven't seen any math work from his school in over a month.

Last summer we had a tutor and that was a great activity for the kids and brought in a different perspective. But during the school year I don't like the extra scheduled time commitment.

I signed up for EPGY open enrollment after I saw this thread. It was $45 for three months. But, we're already having issues with it being long and boring. You can bump the grade level up, but you can't cut through the drills without doing that. And you don't seem to be able to request a topic or to be able to make sure that you've covered all the topics in that level. So we had a huge tantrum after 20 straight minutes of dull 1+3=4 drills. And not a single fraction or probability question yet. I think tonight I'll do some drills myself to get to her real level.

Tallulah, we now love EPGY too, and it's by far the best thing we'e found for math. I recommend that you jump in .5 increments until you find the right level. My DS started it right after he turned 6, and the hardest thing for him was learning not to make "user error" mistakes by leaning on the keyboard or getting the cursor just so w/ the geography/graphing questions that require cursor pinpointing. Fine motor does sometimes come into play.

It took a few weeks of jumping around and changing settings w/ Melissa before we got to the right spot. We started at 2.5 and then quickly jumped to 3. The beginning of 3 was still very easy for DS, but then half way through it got trickier for him and he needed her to add more questions per subset for him to really master. He just moved into Grade 4, and now it's absolutely perfect for him. He gets enough questions to really learn, but still has his "A" (which is easy to obsess about w/ the way that it's always apparent!!).

Good luck with it!

It is actually tough for many kids because the interface is old and the old man's voice is not very thrilling. With mel's group, not sure about the other options, you can set to gifted and reduce the # of questions/drills.

We started it for awhile but child complained. We then used other math materials. Which took an hour. So after a 1 month of that, I told child, we can continue like this, or would you like to try EPGY math again -- that one only takes 30 minutes a day and then you'll be done. Hee hee So we're back in EPGY.

At the beginning you may want to try the exercises yourself to get use to the interface, esp with younger child. (We got a bunch of geometry questions wrong, clicking all the wrong things.) There is also a manual now that you can look over.

We also have to talk through "perfectionism" issues and not wanting to get anything wrong, to manage the issue of giving up the whole thing just when only get 1 answer is wrong. :p

Good luck!

Thanks for posting this. I am going to try doing this with my dd6 and see how she likes it. I may start it off to get it at her level. I looked into doing this without the open enrollment and when I saw the price was disappointed b/c we couldn't do it. We already pay for a saturday enrichment class and just couldn't add another 400, but the 45 is much more reasonable.