Please carefully read the following information prior to attempting to register. This page explains the conditions a family agrees to as part of registration, and basically constitutes a registration agreement.

If you haven't read through our entire web site, then please stop right here and return to our home page. Go through the pages linked from the menu on the left side of the home page, paying particular attention to the links under the "Classes" menu heading. There is essential information on every page, and you will regret registering without reading through those pages and getting to know us first. Then return to this page and continue to read it carefully. Your opportunity to register comes at the bottom of this page.

Our registration process is an honor system that assumes you will not register for a seat until you are ready to commit to it. When you register for a course, we hold that seat and prevent other students from taking it, even in advance of your full payment. Accordingly, we consider your registration request to be a commitment to fully pay for that seat, even if you change your mind later. If unforeseeable and unmanageable changes in your circumstance necessitate dropping the seat before classes begin, we will gladly refund any fees and tuition paid. Such circumstances could include unexpected severe medical problems or unexpected household moves. We do not consider changes in your academic plans or changes in another organization's schedule to be sufficient reason for you to drop one of our courses—we consider those to be your discretionary decisions and would still expect full payment.

Please wait to register for a seat until you are ready to commit to it. If you need to finalize your educational plans within your own family or with other organizations before you can fully commit, then please do so before registering with us.

If the section you prefer in a course is wait listed or full, we recommend that you first register in the same course for an open section you can commit to making work for your schedule. Please do not hold any open seat you are not willing to use if a preferred seat does not become available.

Whether or not you already have an open seat, if there are wait list seats at times you prefer, we recommend that you also register for any preferred wait list seats. You may register for as many wait list seats as you like, but may hold only one open seat per student in any course. We maintain a very effective wait list process, and have historically filled the vast majority of the wait list requests.

You will not be charged for wait list seats, and you do not pay anything to be on a wait list. You should not pay the family registration fee until you are paying tuition for at least one open seat. However, please do not hold payment for an open seat because you are waiting on other seats to come open—you may lose all your seats if you do not pay on time.

Please do not register for "contingency" seats in other courses, or for other open seats on the same course. If you do not get accepted into a class due to placement issues or wait list issues, we will offer you an alternative course and a full refund of all applicable tuition and fees. If you want an alternative course, we will use the date/time of your original request to place you into the alternative class. Because of the way we manage this process, there is no benefit to you in holding contingency seats. This only makes it harder for us to seat students and manage wait lists. We may even without notice penalize those who hold contingency seats, placing others ahead of them.

We consider a family's registration request to be a well-intentioned commitment to take that class and pay all fees associated with it, and we assume that families do not request a class they believe they are likely to drop later. However, we understand that circumstances change and other opportunities arise, and we want to reasonably accommodate those changes. We provide a seven-day grace period during which a family may without charge drop a course using the "D" link next to the course's name on their family account page. After this grace period, families must notify the administrator to drop a course. We will assess a $1 per day charge for every day (including the initial seven days) an open seat was held in that course before the seat was dropped or changed (unless we initiate the change, such as with a placement change). We do not assess this fee for wait-listed seats held and dropped, or for wait-listed seats offered and refused.

Many of our courses require prerequisite classes or a placement exam. Some teachers have their placement materials linked from the course description, and some send placement materials when the student registers. If your student needs to submit a placement test or essay and the placement materials are linked from the course description, please submit placement materials at the time you register for an open seat or a wait list seat. If they do not receive placement materials, teachers may drop registrations beginning seven days after the registration date. If the teacher sends you placement materials after you register, please return them to the teacher within seven days of receipt, unless the teacher specifically gives you a different timeline.

We will not evaluate placement materials for anyone who has not registered for the course. Please pay on time, even if you do not have placement results of "Teacher Approval". If you do not get accepted into a class due to placement issues, we will offer you an alternative course and a full refund of all applicable tuition and fees. If you want an alternative course, we will use the date/time of your original request to place you into the alternative class.

Prior to registering, we require families to test software on the computer(s) they will use for class. Software for our classes and procedures for testing it can be found at GatherWorks TPS Support.

We prefer payment in full for the entire year upon registration. This avoids late fees and reduces processing costs. However, we are sensitive to the challenge of paying in full for multiple classes at one time, so we have a standard payment schedule in which we break required payments into two parts for each semester of the class. Please note that families are responsible for tracking their own payments and paying on time. Please review our standard payment schedule. Please make the first payment when you register into an open seat.

• Your family page (where you register for classes) automatically updates immediately to reflect your current balance and future payments due.
• You should not pay the family registration fee by itself. Please wait until you are paying tuition for at least one open seat. Please do not pay for wait list seats.
• Please do not hold payment for an open seat because you are waiting on other seats to come open. We do not commit to holding seats without timely payment.
• Please do not hold payment for an open seat because you are waiting on placement results or "Teacher Approval". If you do not get accepted into a class due to placement issues or seat availability limitations, we will offer you an alternative course and a full refund of all applicable tuition and fees.
• We may assess a fee of $10 per course for each required payment postmarked later than the deadlines in our payment schedule, including initial payments postmarked later than ten days after registering for an open seat in a course.

We register "overseas" families (those living outside all four continental U.S. time zones), then returning families, then new families. Please note again that this is an honor system—there is no automated feature to keep families from registering before their allowed time. However, we review the database regularly, and we will drop any registrations that do not comply with the schedule. In those cases, we usually also block the family from future registration until we resolve the misunderstanding.

After testing software (required only for new families), please use the following links to register. They will not become live links until the date and time registration opens for each group. We look forward to serving your family.

» Proceed to Overseas Family Registration for returning overseas families or new overseas families.

» Proceed to Returning Family Registration.

» Proceed to New Family Registration.