My PG daughter (13 years old) is looking to take additional coursework - she attends a (somewhat) traditional school during the day - so we were thinking maybe something online would work. She applied to Stanford OHS - but is looking at something for now as well. She is thinking maybe of History and/or Biology or something interesting off the beaten path. I looked at BYU and it is very cheap, self paced and has some interesting looking courses. Any thoughts or recommendations?
No experience with BYU, but we've had good experiences with online college courses at the local community college--which, in our state, are also fairly inexpensive, due to state early college/dual enrollment initiatives ($200/course, plus or minus). Check your local CC. In some states, a limited number of courses can be taken for free as dual enrollment (funding permitting and space available). It won't be self-paced, most likely, but there will probably be more options for course selection, and possibly some transferability for HS credit, depending on your state regs. She'll probably have to submit some documentation from her school, and take placement exams. It's usually a minimum of hassle.
Some info on dual/concurrent info in NE states:
https://nebhe.org/info/pdf/policy/Policy_Spotlight_Dual_Enrollment_in_New_England.pdf
I've heard that the BYU class quality really depends on the instructor. But that's almost the case with everything. If she qualifies for CTY, that might be a thing to look into.
The community college idea might be workable, depending on your local resources. Our state law says dual enrollment is for high school juniors and seniors ONLY. Our local community college says they won't enroll anyone under 16, although they possibly might be forced to if one wanted to make a big enough fuss and had the right scores/qualifying data. (DD's SAT scores more than exceed anthing they could ask for, but we're not ready to cross this bridge yet.) My DD12 was permitted to cake a continuing education language class, but being continuing ed, of course there's no transcript, grades, or credit--AND they made me register and pay for the class myself in order to chaperone her, effectively doubling the cost. (It was worthwhile to get her placed into the 2nd semester of a language class at our high school, though).
Our CC also claims DE is for juniors and seniors only, at least age 16, but also has policies for taking younger learners on a case-by-case basis, probably partly because since homeschoolers can arbitrarily change the grade of their students anyway, they needed a policy that wouldn't be summarily worked around. All of the CCs in the state system actually can allow younger learners, but only some of them post their policy publicly. It's worth asking. Online classes shouldn't have issues with chaperoning.
Aufilia, that's annoying, that you had to pay for the class too! Back in the day, my mother accompanied one of my sibs (then 9) to class for the first few weeks, but only for her own peace of mind--and no one made her pay for it. But of course, it was a different time, with different liability.
Our community college (well state college now) requires you to be physically on campus if student is younger than 16 (car, library, lounge, etc.). What a waste of parent’s time after the first few weeks. Online is one way to get around that.
Thanks - we are not really interested in dual enrollment and credit does not really matter. I just want something that would be interesting and stimulating - something where she could explore a new area or new idea that maybe she had not previously encountered. I like that a lot of the online stuff is self paced - but without a really good, motivating, instructor I think it can also be really dull.
What are people doing for high school - the regular courses are not really enough to keep them engaged. AP is a lot of work, but not necessarily super-interesting - not that my school has AP courses anyway... lol.
Have you considered playing around with MIT OpenCourseWare? There are full-fledged MIT first-year courses on there, complete with video lectures by preferred faculty, problem sets/readings, and exams, but there are also high school level classes that are more like samplers or topical, which might be fun to dip into.
https://ocw.mit.edu/high-school/Check out some of the courses developed for high schoolers by MIT students.
These classes (as well as the more conventional full MIT courses) are all self-paced, and you may choose to do or not do the assignments.
I was expecting to have to chaperone DD -- it was really the having to PAY for the privilege of hanging out on a college campus that was bonkers. Apparently there's a POLICY, so the fact that I literally have undergraduate coursework years beyond this beginner subject and also a Master's Degree in a strongly related field were meaningless in the face of THE POLICY. *eyeroll*