We just found out about this scholarship. D took the March 10 SAT for a different purpose to qualify for CTY classes, which she does now. D wants to apply for the fun of it. She hasn’t really done anything exceptional, but what she has done has been what her passion seems to be, which is ancient and modern languages. Unfortunately, since due date is April 10, it’s really short notice for her teachers to write recommendation letters. Plus, she’s homeschooled so having a complete transcript will be a problem. She has taken online classes in writing, math, languages in 6th grade and now takes a couple of online classes too. So obviously, it will not be a complete transcript.
I prefer that she doesn’t apply because I don’t want to bother her teachers since we will need to burden them at the end of this year for high school applications.
And of course we would be competing against kids of exceptional abilities, but D read through the website and thinks the judges will take a holistic approach. 8-|
Ten days is too short to prepare a great application. Just wondering if that’s what you all think as well.
Sorry, just saw this. I do think it would have been difficult to pull everything together in time, especially given the needed speedy turnaround for the teacher recommendations. That said, if she’s a fast and talented writer, maybe it would have been doable? The essays were a lot of work for my daughter, but writing is not her thing.
Did she end up applying? And, slightly off topic: what online classes do you recommend for writing and languages? I’d love to get my daughter in a summer writing class to get practice pre-applications, and my daughter also loves languages and is thinking of starting a new one outside of school.
I decided against it since it would have been tough and unfair for the teachers. D seems to think applying to anything is fun, but she’s very comfortable in writing.
If you are interested in writing classes, we have tried Brave Writer, specifically their SAT essay class and fan fiction. The former is good practice for writing essays in general and latter because D loves writing about her favorite characters. Both classes provided detailed feedback, but they don’t have live classes. We’ll take another couple of classes this summer. I’ve looked at So Verbose which has very reasonable prices and may try one.
Have you looked into CTY classes? I just browsed again this morning, but I’m not sure if the price is justified for either writing or languages.
Is there a specific language your daughter wants to learn? We’ve done quite a few, and one of my favorites for practice is italki.com. It’s one to one with quite reasonable prices. Also, Languagebird.com is one that I’m thinking of for the summer, but the prices are steep; I’m still deciding whether the results will definitely be better than paying for a cheaper tutor on italki.com, both of whom use Skype as their platform.