Depends on what your daughter’s college applications plans are. If applying for selective schools or competitive scholarships, she should have 4 years in the core subjects. Not being great at a subject isn’t a great reason to avoid willingness to challenge herself.
Being well prepared for a chosen major and a college is not enough because there are too many qualified students to fill the spots. I like post #20- challenge yourself. Getting a B in your worst subject is certainly not bad. Choosing a different class because the benefits for the student (not the grade) are greater is better though. Perhaps it is the last chance to take subject X since one wants the knowledge and knows it is an unlikely college class choice. Balance.
My English major took 4 years of math and science. She ended up testing out of the math requirement at her school (a top 30 university).
The graduation requirements and math flexibility car vary quite a bit by state and school. For example, the high school I attended required 3 years math for a NYS Regents diploma. Students could graduate with fewer years math, without a Regents diploma. Looking at their website now, it is still 3 years for a Regents or Advanced Regents, but now an standardized exam score is required. I am dating someone who is working on a college degree in math, but had to take more courses than most because she graduated HS without any math beyond Algebra 1. The local HS in the area of CA where I live now seem to have similar requirements – 3 years of math + passing Integrated Math 1 or Algebra 1.
OP has received a lot of good advice. I agree with those who are encouraging a math class senior year. These are some things I would take into consideration:
– I would talk about opportunities and how sometimes taking the easier path results in frustration later on. We know kids who opted out of calculus, only to learn that they would have to take a calculus class in college…especially if a student changes majors. And of course if you haven’t fulfilled a prerequisite for a desired course in college, it can mess up your scheduling and prove costly. It’s difficult at your daughter’s age to understand the benefit of planning for flexibility.
– I also agree with those who see value in challenging oneself. My daughter never gravitated toward STEM subjects, but took Calculus and Stats her senior year…no science due to an AP Urban History class she really wanted to take. In college she was very happy with her decision as a business major, which required both Calculus and Stats. It allowed her to obtain AP credit for the classes. This helped with lessening her workload and made studying abroad easier.
As a parent I believe choosing to be challenged helps them understand/appreciate the correlation between hard work and goals. A college acceptance is not the destination, it’s a step on a path.
I’ll also add that at times I felt my children were taking on too much in high school. However, now that one has graduated and one is successfully navigating junior year, I think their intense high school academic/sports/EC commitments helped them understand themselves better. They tested their capacity which gave them confidence in their college aspirations.
Just saw a reference (from The Atlantic 6/7/16) stating that fewer than half of all American high schools even offer calculus. (Of course these are not the high schools that most CC kids go to.)
Re: Post #24 and some others above, I understand the value of challenging my D and not letting her avoid Calc just because it’s hard. Like many parents, I have to balance colleges’ desire for a rigorous curriculum with their desire for a high GPA. I think taking Calc might lower her GPA considerably for fall semester of senior year, not only because she might get a C or lower in Calc (she already has one D+ in a math class on her transcript from 9th grade) but also because she would have to invest so much time in it that she might get lower grades in the multiple AP courses she would be taking concurrently. It’s a tough call for me which would be worse for an admissions officer to see–a bad midyear report right at the time they are starting to read RD applications, or a midyear report that shows no Calc. We will wait and see how Precalc/Trig goes, though I think if it’s available Statistics senior year might be a good compromise. I also don’t want to make her high school years all about getting into college, though I realize this is a rare sentiment these days.
@calmdownkids, my DD is actually really enjoying Stats. The teacher is the same one she had for Precalc. She sees the class as meaningful and useful (something that would have been a hard sell for Calculus in the nonSTEM world.)
I think a lot depends on where your D wants to go and what she wants to major in. Hopefully, by mid-junior year she will have a better idea and can plan accordingly.
My D is in IB- she is top 5% in her class and many of her IB classmates, including herself have never taken Precalc. Most took IB Math Studies and are now in AP Stat. For my D it made no sense to take Calc as her major doesn’t require it . Some of her friends tried to push her to block CC Math3 and Precalc sophomore year- she said no. Her IB coordinator tried to push Precalc during the summer- she said no. She knew her top school for her major didn’t require math beyond College Alg. and Stat. She has already been accepted to her top choice- so she did what was right for her.
For science, she doubled up sophomore year- Chemistry and AP Environmental. She needed to for IB (our state, NC, requires Biology, a physical science (most take Chemistry) and Environmental science to graduate). She decided to take IB Biology for her IB science- and to only take it Junior year. She has never taken Physics (like a lot of her fellow top 5%) and never will, she only needs one more science class in college.
She picked an obtainable school as her top choice that was known for her major. She took classes based on what she needed for her major. Many of her classmates have gone lighter in subjects that weren’t their strong suit- they are applying to top schools- so only time will tell if they made good decisions. My D doesn’t regret a thing.
Wait and see where your D wants to apply- AP Stat is a good way to go for math. If she feels like she needs a science- she should ask others if the AP Environmental Science teachers are good- this makes a difference! The AP test doesn’t have a great pass rate. Otherwise, she should take a science that might interest her.
" I think taking Calc might lower her GPA considerably for fall semester of senior year, not only because she might get a C or lower in Calc (she already has one D+ in a math class on her transcript from 9th grade) …"
It might reassure colleges to see an upward trajectory in math grades during high school, given the D+ on her transcript.
Giving your D a solid grounding in math is a gift, an absolute gift. I was math phobic throughout HS; took no math in college, had to take math for a graduate program (an MBA).
I am astonished by how much numeracy is required for my job (I work in corporate HR and am still not a math person). Even in “soft” fields, the world turns on data. It is everywhere. We are rolling out a new benefits program- that took two years of detailed analysis on usage rates, slippage, costs, actuarial tables, etc. CEO wants to know why retention dropped last year in three key countries, but has increased substantially in the rest of the world. We shift our college recruiting protocol so that instead of reimbursing candidates for their travel AFTER they get to the interview (which is clearly problematic for kids with no money, no credit cards, and no mommy/daddy to lend them $100) we pay for everything up front-- what’s the increase in costs for the program, what’s the payoff for us in getting a more diverse workforce, what percentage of hotel rooms will go unused due to last minute cancellations and will our travel providers cover a portion of our increased costs.
I’m in the LEAST math-intensive function in my company, and I still need math every single day. Even our graphics and creative/design folks- math and data. Nobody makes decisions on a “hunch” anymore- it gets tested, market research, what does the analysis tell us.
Encouraging your D to do as much math as she can in HS is a gift. She’ll be able to take the more rigorous statistics stuff (required for the social sciences) in college. She’ll be able to read an article in the Economist about the shift from a coal based process to solar and understand the graphs and the charts, or read an article in the WSJ about vaccination rates for various illnesses around the world and understand the regression analysis. She’ll be able to decide whether to travel to a Zika country based on facts and not hysteria.
To me it’s a no-brainer.
Another vote for statistics for the college bound kid who will not be a stem major. Chances are they may need stats in college and it’s nice to have a high school level stats class under the belt. That’s what I did with #1 who started Algebra in 8th grade. As a college freshman he took Calc has his math class for graduation requirements.
UW-Madison requires all entering freshman to take both an English and math placement test, Even if she doesn’t take another “math” class there are quantitative reasoning A & B requirements for all degrees. If she doesn’t pass out of QRA on the placement test then she must take a math, com sci, or philosophy course to satisfy QRA.
Thanks for the advice, everyone. We have a number of factors to consider. Perhaps I am unfairly influenced by my own history (never took calculus, never needed it in my professional life), though I do understand the value of a solid math/statistics background for many non-STEM fields.
Just because your target schools don’t require 4 years for the 2018 incoming freshman doesn’t mean they won’t for 2019 or 2020. Colleges can change their requirements quickly. You may end up with much more limited choices than you planned.
To follow up on @blossom in #30, I would bet a paycheck that (OP’s) D will have more use for math than my son will ever have for French or Ceramics, his GPA eroders.
It takes stat and some math just to read a newspaper.
Perhaps many writers of such know that many readers will not understand the math or stats, so they tend to include interviews of people with personal anecdotes that tend to be believed more than math or stats.
Of course, the power of personal anecdotes over data can lead people astray as well.
@ucbalumnus , I’m not sure that the journalists know any more math than a HS freshman. As Mark Twain said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
I would be careful about no math senior year. I’ve seen mentions of math required in senior year. Our high school and state schools require 4 years of math. Since my daughter is doing dual enrollment and only needs 1 semester of math for 1 year of high school credit we were still told even if she took 2 math classes junior year to make sure she took math her senior year.
As a reporter I will chime in and say most reporters can’t do math (although it’s getting better, and the good jobs are in data-based journalism).
I agree on taking as much math and science as you can stomach. I would think it makes you stand out in a crowd of history majors, for example, who didn’t bother.
My daughter will major in nursing and is still taking AP calculus and dual enrollment physics this year, even though neither is really required for that major. She will have taken six math classes and five science classes by the time she graduates - honors algebra 1, 2, geometry, precalc and AP stats and Calculus, and honors physical science, biology, chemistry, anatomy and DE physics.