<p>Please let me start off by acknowledging that this post was not in any way written with a malicious intent. I thank you for your criticism - it has helped me to further think about my situation and some better ways to explain it.</p>
<p>You wrote:
"How does stuff like "qualifies for free and reduced lunch but doesn't get it" and "homeschooled partially" put you at a "severe disadvantage" for college apps?"</p>
<p>Actually, I believe that it is the whole of these factors that puts me at a severe disadvantage in regards to the ability to study and participate in activities. In other words, more affluent students would be able to have access to many more options than I currently have.</p>
<p>You wrote:
"The only disadvantage I see at all is that of your having moved 8 times. However, what I don't understand is that you've gone to 3-5 high schools? Why can't you give an exact number rather than an estimate of the number of high schools you have attended?"</p>
<p>To explain the ambiguousness of my high school enrollments, I was enrolled to attend a high school and had a schedule ready to go, but my family moved just a few weeks before the school term started to another high school district. I have had two discontinuous terms of homeschool - one during the latter part of my sophomore year and one during the latter part of my junior year, and I am not sure if I can count that as one high school or two high schools.</p>
<p>Amb3r, I believe that I have been somewhat unclear about what I meant by "severely disadvantaged" - I will try to make my intentions clearer. I do not mean severely disadvantaged in terms of chances of getting into the colleges that I would like to enroll at, but "severely disadvantaged" as in being severely restricted in doing the things that I want to do. I have very limited resources in regards to money and transportation - I cannot buy what I want to buy (such as online high school courses, lessons for an instrument, expensive Model United Nations conferences, legal help, etc.) and cannot be transported to where I want to be transported (a music teacher's workplace, a college information seminar, a friend's house to study, the local library for volunteer work, etc.). I would also like to emphasize the first point I made about many different factors contributing to my severe crippling as a whole.</p>
<p>You wrote:
"The thing about the SSN - I'm not sure how it affects college apps, but plenty of high schoolers don't learn to drive until their senior year, and I have a lot of senior friends who still don't have jobs now. Not being able to get a job and not being able to drive doesn't severely impact college admissions."</p>
<p>Actually, my father recently admitted that I did indeed have a social security number after I nagged at him for a while about it and accidentally discovered the fact he was trying to hide when I stumbled upon his tax forms. It seems as though I still cannot obtain a driver's license due to my parent's unwillingness for me to obtain one and/or my ineligibility to obtain one. My father told me that my social security number could not be used to obtain a driver's license or to authorize me for work, but I am not sure about the truth in his statement due to the previous lie he had been upholding for possibly years.</p>
<p>Because my family is actually much below the poverty line (which is something that I have not mentioned before), it would more than double our family's yearly income if I were able to obtain a job. This would make a huge difference in the options that I would be presented with - this is the same with the ability to drive. The inability to drive and to obtain a job might not affect more affluent students, but it would certainly affect my situation to a high degree. As an example, if I were able to obtain a job, I would have decided to homeschool my junior year on a full-time basis, which would greatly speed up the rate of my education, instead of the cheaper alternative of part-time homeschooling, which I fought hard with the public school administration to achieve the right to do.</p>
<p>You wrote:
"Your parents aren't proficient at English? Maybe they're among hundreds of thousands of American immigrants for whom English is a second language? Join the club."</p>
<p>Sure, my parents aren't proficient in English, and I'm sure that there are many students out there who regret their parents' lack of proficiency in English as well. To nitpick at your choice of words, of course there are millions of people in the United States for whom English was their second language. However, my mother is not proficient at English at all, and I wouldn't call English her "second language." My father, who is somewhat proficient in English, is still not proficient enough to clearly get his points across when I have some troubles with the school administration, and he does not like to take initiative. It seems as though I always have to nag at him about important issues (such as the Free/Reduced Price Lunch Program and AP Exam Fee Waivers) to get him to start filling the applications out, and even then, he sometimes leaves areas blank, which I have to point out after he's "done" with the forms. As I mentioned before, when I want to argue a point with the school administration about the legality of some of the school's decisions, my family is not able to help, and I must seek legal information and argue my points by myself. This arduous effort takes precious hours of potential study-/homework-time out of my life. I doubt that other students with parents that lack proficiency in English do not have as many troubles as I do in this form or in any other form. In addition, I would not be in my current stressful situation if my parents were wealthy and fluent in English.</p>
<p>You wrote:
"How have you struggled with school administration? I hope you do not mean to say that you've had disciplinary issues or suspensions on your record."</p>
<p>Actually, the struggles that I talk about have nothing to do with disciplinary issues. I also apologize in advance for the long narrative that I am about to give, parts of which may or may not be relevant to your inquiry. During my sophomore year, I did not see why the school administration would not let me take AP Chemistry even with a proficient understanding of the prerequisite course, chemistry. They did not offer any proficiency tests and shut me down with a simple "The course is only for juniors and seniors," without a logical explanation why. I had started this debate from the beginning of the school year and the struggle lasted until late November, which was the time when I realized that it was far too late to switch over. I consequentially transferred out of that school and into homeschool. During my homeschool year, I studied mostly on my own through textbooks/online readings and also with my father's help, to some extent. When my family moved at the beginning of the next school year, I decided to give the new public school a chance and decided to enroll there. However, without any formal credits obtained from accredited institutions, this new school did not accept my homeschooling credits immediately. I was offered the chance to take an exam on AP Biology and AP European History, which I had at least some proof of through my AP exam scores. I was also told that I could obtain some credit for my Japanese I course that I took in homeschool upon the release of the results from a test that I would take in the December of 2007 called the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which I eventually passed. I have not asked for credit for this class yet, because the administration also told me that any transferred homeschool credits would be on a pass/fail basis, not on a grade basis. The administration offered me a mathematics placement test which I was supposedly not successful on (the math director refused to tell me my score), but I attributed this to a number of flaws in the test and the testing environment. After bringing up the issue with the school board supplemented with photos of the testing environment, they gave me a very vague reply. I was only allowed to take the placement test for math and not science, which I desired to take as well. With logic that I could not understand, the school told me that my science placement depended on my math placement, and because I did not pass the math placement exam, I could not even try to place out of my science class. However, I won on one point when my AP European History exam score showed proof that I had studied the subject - I was subsequently placed into AP United States History. Not satisfied in being placed in freshman/sophomore math and science classes during my junior year, I asked the administration if I could part-time homeschool, to which they replied with a solid no. However, by describing the uniqueness of my situation and bringing up state laws that supported my case, they ended up changing their mind, but urged me to stay for at least the rest of the semester. When I finally transferred into my part-time homeschool, the administration took away my lunch period and replaced it with a study hall. I am not sure if this is legal, but I have not checked into it because it is no great concern of mine as of yet. I am currently homeschooling a few courses, including my math and science classes, while I am at school from period 3 to period 8. Another reason I decided to part-time homeschool was that I would be eligible for the public school's extracurricular activities, which I find fascinating and very rewarding. Once again, I apologize for the extreme length and possible irrelevance in parts of my narrative, but I hope you have a better understanding now of what I mean when I talk about the struggles with my school administration. Feel free to ask me more questions about my school situation, but in doing so, please realize that it brings up bad memories when I have to talk about this topic.</p>
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<p>Amb3r, I appreciate the constructive criticism that you have provided, as it has helped me to clarify what I have written in the first post. Please do not take offense in anything I have said - I certainly have no malicious intent in my writings to you. I would like to thank you for replying to my thread, and I hope that my post has clarified any points that previously confused you.</p>
<p>(I was wondering - is there any way to change the first post now? I recently found out that I do in fact have a social security number and would like to change the information in the first post. Thanks for any help in advance!)</p>