<p>I disagree with the above posters. I took courses during the school year at a local college, as a “guest” student… the courses were free, but I still did all the work. No, you can’t say you got an official A in the class, but what I did was have the professors of each course type up a small note explaining that I was a guest student and did not receive a grade, but I “would have” gotten an A. All the professors signed the paper, and it was attached to my guidance counselors’ School Report when I applied to college… all worked out fine, and I think the statements from the professors were just as good as writing down “A”.</p>
<p>Yes, I thought about doing that. </p>
<p>But 3 of those classes (Differential Equations, Calculus, and Mathematical Modeling, the most difficult ones… haha) were taught by my dad, so something like that holds no weight for those 3 classes. YES, I could get a note like that signed from the other two professors, but how could I get a note like that signed from my dad? </p>
<p>And he didn’t give me a preferential treatment, of course. It just doesn’t work like that, when your family are dedicated church-goers who hold integrity as the highest value.</p>
<p>Dear Mowmow,
If this is the worst thing to happen to you, you are luckier than you know. A few years ago, I spent a couple summers getting chemotherapy to save my life. I can’t begin to count the things I missed since 2004 when my cancer was diagnosed. Life IS unfair, and we have to deal with it and learn from it.</p>
<p>Yeah, it stinks that you did the work but don’t get any credit, but maybe you can take CLEP tests for those subjects and get college credit that way. Have you looked into this? I’d be surprised if you couldn’t get significant math credit from CLEP tests. Check them out.</p>
<p>Lots of people do hard tasks and get nothing back except “that warm gushy feeling in your heart.” You, on the other hand, got to spend time with your own father (something lots of kids miss), doing something that you both obviously enjoy, and have surely learned more in those summers than lots of us will EVER know in math. Time spent in the pursuit of learning is not wasted. :)</p>
<p>End the pity party now. You will take the SAT both I and II and sail through them with no problems. Think of what will come from THAT!!! 
You are surely destined to get fat envelopes from some of the finest universities in the nation. You are truly luckier than you know…so quit complaining and start planning where you’ll study with that head full of math.</p>
<p>GOOD LUCK!!!</p>
<p>"And how the hell do I come across as a “whiny, privileged kid” if I want to explain that I worked hard in these classes? "</p>
<p>Because you want to get credit for a class that you didn’t pay for that you took from your father. Most students can’t take college courses for free. In fact, doing so probably is against the college’s rules. Usually colleges require even auditors to pay.</p>
<p>Most students don’t have parents that teach college. </p>
<p>You took advantage of the situation by not paying, and now you want to have things both ways: You want colleges to be impressed by a course that you can’t prove that you took, and that you took from your father because you were fortunate enough to have a college prof as your dad.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I’ve been a college prof, and my husband still is a college prof. I can image letting my kids audit one of my classes, but I’d be embarrassed if they thought they’d wasted their time if they wouldn’t get credit on their college app for doing so.</p>
<p>^^^^ It sure is easy to judge someone’s misfortune sitting comfortably behind your screen, isn’t it? I’ve heard recently that telling people who are clearly unhappy they are “whiny” is the mature thing to do. How very dignified for a retired “professor”. </p>
<p>How about this? Let’s say you get a full scholarship to University of Whatever for a reason relating to your status/race/socioeconomic class. You spend a year there, working your butt off, getting straight As. And then the office contacts you with some information, that, due to “unfortunate error” due to no fault of your own, your first year there is now null and void. </p>
<p>But hey, you learned something, right? So now won’t you be OVERJOYED about taking your entire first year again!- while all your friends move on to sophomore year. </p>
<p>I mean, if you complain at all about it, you are clearly ungrateful, whiny, and immature- Because real people just treat every setback as a “learning experience” and move on. Right, oh holy one?</p>
<p>Get real. Time is valuable, to anyone.</p>
<p>Complain to your dad for not telling you. Maybe that’s why he’s teaching at the university of nowhere.</p>
<p>No, I wont do that. He still taught me, even if I wish now it would have never happened, and I could have done something else more productive with the summer. </p>
<p>It’s just as much my fault- I should have researched something like this better. I never asked him, thinking blindly I couldn’t just be DOING all this incredibly hard work and never receive an iota of formal credit for it.</p>
<p>I do not, cannot COMPREHEND how someone can seriously have such a lack of respect for others that they will go behind their masks of internet anonymity, and explicitly insult someone who just found out that… that 3 summers have just blown away… that someone is left with a “learning experience” and nothing more, when he hoped for a set of hard-earned credentials. Especially when I have done NOTHING to ever offend anyone here. </p>
<p>If a rich friend’s beloved pet just died, and he feels morose about it, do you tell him “Shut up, stop whining, you’re still luckier than most people.” Not even Mother Theresa has the right to do that, much less YOU.</p>
<p>You could conceivably arrange to enroll for credit in the higher level class you had planned to sit in on this summer. A nice grade in that class, recorded on a legitimate Embry Riddle transcript, would go a long way toward validating your previous unrecorded work.</p>
<p>If you just want placement when you get to your “real” college/university, follow bugaboo’s advice and ask the department(s) in question for a placement exam.</p>
<p>You have totally ignored a previous poster who explained that you will be able to take math placement tests once you are admitted to college. You will score phenomenally well, and place into higher level classes, thereby saving time, possibly money, and reaching graduate level courses as an undergrad. This would give you a real advantage in grad school applications.</p>
<p>You can easily list the summer courses on the application’s summer activity section, and explain your interest and devotion to math. If you accentuate the positive, your three summers of effort will be noticed by adcoms.</p>
<p>Cross-posted with happymom.</p>
<p>Actually, you are right, that could help me out quite a bit. Thanks for the info- can I really test out of a class like Differential Equations? I thought most colleges didn’t let you do something like that. </p>
<p>Testing out of Calculus won’t help me because I’m pretty certain I already scored 7 on the IB Math SL Exam- that will let me out of Calculus itself in most colleges.</p>
<p>You can test out of Differential Equations.
I know three people who’ve done it.
And you could even try to test out of Multivariate Calculus, if you’ve taken the class.
That’s a winner, you’d be out of math classes ;-).
The 7 on the IB test would excuse a first- and second- semester calculus class, right? </p>
<p>Don’t be down. If you go to a good school, they probably won’t take your IB tests anyway. You’ll have to retest out of everything. It happened to my friend who’s going to Stanford.</p>
<p>Actually, there might be a way around your problem if you level with the colleges to which you apply about your situation and then document the college classes in the detailed way that homeschoolers sometimes use to show colleges what they’ve been up to. You could simply, straightforwardly list the classes you sat in on, attach the college’s course descriptions and syllabus for each course, and list the papers you wrote for each of them (perhaps including one, and stating that any of the other papers you’ve listed is available if requested.) Then include a brief, to the point narrative explaining that you love the subject matter and were extremely fortunate that because your dad teaches at the university, you had the privilege of sitting in on and fully participating in math classes taught by him and other professors that were much more challenging than what was available to you in high school. You can state outright that you aren’t including recommendations from your dad, but that you are sending letters from the other professors whose classes you sat in on attesting to your full participation in the classes, including perfect attendance and completing all assignments, and listing the grades you received on papers and tests. And there you go. The colleges to which you apply will understand exactly how you spent your summers, will have a brief description of each class, and will have letters of recommendation from professors to whom you aren’t related. I think you will come across as a highly motivated, dedicated student, particularly if you present the material in a clear, organized way that has absolutely no mention whatsoever of your disappointment that you don’t have formal credit for the courses. Stick with the facts; they’re impressive.</p>
<p>I understand how you feel cheated, but how is this different from the person who does an unpaid internship without getting college credit? True, he can put it on his resume. Yes, he did work hard but got no credit or money. Yeah, he worked long hours helping a professor do stuff that other guys get paid to do, but he won’t get credit or pay and missed out on lots of other activities. So why do students knock themselves out to get unpaid, creditless internship opportunities??? For the experience, learning, and additional opportunities that RESULT from those internships. Like them, YOU will also get other opportunities that result from your 3 summers of work. </p>
<p>You don’t have to agree with me, and I suspect you won’t, but your 3 summers will help you a lot later in college. You can take CLEP tests, get college credit for math courses, and score super well on the SATs this fall. Talk about fantastic test prep! It’s a winning situation for you!!! :)</p>
<p>You can choose to whine about it, lash out at other posters, and make excuses for your short fuse, but that won’t change your situation or help you see the silver lining that is MOST definitely there. We are not always in control of what happens to us, but we are each in control of how we respond to it.</p>
<p>what if you had a dean or someone other than your dad who is high in administration at that school write a letter about what you did there?</p>
<p>^Great suggestion!!!That would be similar to what interns hope to get after busting their butts for no compensation.</p>
<p>What do you expect the college admissions counselors to do?</p>
<p>Anyway most top colleges will not accept these credits. </p>
<p>I don’t understand how some of your matches suddenly became reaches… if you explain your situation, you will be fine. Colleges have to be slightly apprehensive about courses you take without any record especially if your father taught them. It’s quite possible and probable that your dad was fair, but a college will make you take a placement test no matter what.</p>
<p>"How about this? Let’s say you get a full scholarship to University of Whatever for a reason relating to your status/race/socioeconomic class. You spend a year there, working your butt off, getting straight As. And then the office contacts you with some information, that, due to “unfortunate error” due to no fault of your own, your first year there is now null and void. "</p>
<p>This is not at all comparable to what happened to the OP. If he didn’t realize that he wouldn’t get course credit or a transcript notation for a course that he didn’t register for and pay for, his father surely knew that. It seems simple common sense that if you want to get course credit for a college course, you register for it and pay for it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Church-goers do not have a lock on integrity. </p>
<p>In this case, how can you seriously complain that it is in injustice to YOU that you were allowed to sit in on college classes, using resources such as the building and the attention of your professors, without paying a dime? Everyone else in those classes was paying for it, and subsidizing YOU. And you are complaining because you are not going to be able to steal the credits?</p>
<p>You have an odd idea of integrity.</p>
<p>Other people have suggested ways in which you can inform college admissions depts of the fact that you participated in these courses. Perhaps you will also be able to convince them that you did it because you love learning. I’d work on that.</p>
<p>Northstarmom and Consolation - literally everything you are saying is 100% flat out wrong, not to mention mean-spirited and idiotic. These are some of the stupid posts I’ve seen on CC. Almost every college let’s the professors’ families take courses for free. they do it to keep their faculty happy. It’s a typical and normal occurance and you need to stop freaking out like little jealous girls. You both need to stop talking like immediately, you’re embarrassing yourselves (especially you Northstarmom, get out of the thread).</p>
<p>OP - stop whining about integrity or whatever, you’ve mentioned it in like every single post in this thread yet NO ONE has even brought that point up or whatever.</p>
<p>You wouldn’t have gotten transfer credit for those courses anyway (if you went to a good school), that’s not how it works. What would have happened is that you would’ve been able to skip out of those classes (Diff Equations and Calculus) and would be able to enter math courses that require those classes as prerequisites. Thus, in this way nothing has actually changed. You’re still going to easily place out of Diff Equations and whatever math classes you took (either through a placement test or just telling the Math Department your situation, it will be simple and easy), and will be able to place into Linear Algebra and Real Analysis and all those other high-level math courses. Seeing as you seem to like math and will want to take those high level math courses, that will be good for you. If you were at any point imagining that these summer courses would be able to get you out of your future college’s core math requirement, you were mistaken. Again, even if you had registered for the course, your future school probably wouldn’t have accepted it as credit.</p>
<p>Re “ugh my reaches are now matches my whole college list is scaled down”: if you’re serious and not just being melodramatic right now, then you SERIOUSLY overestimated how good college courses look on applications. They’re nice, but not great or a hook or anything. Your GPA still counts a hell of a lot more than taking summer college courses. There are lots of people who take college courses over the summer. This will not significantly impact your chances. Further:</p>
<p>You can easily correct this. Write a letter stating what happened, what courses you took at the school and with which professors and what grades you got in them, and then have all the professors you’ve had for them sign their names. That’s what I would do. Or ask if they will write a brief description of the course, a brief evaluation of how you did with it and with what grade they gave you, and then have them sign it, seal it in a letter and all that **** and hand it in. The fact that one of the letters or signatures will be by your father doesn’t matter. No one but you is seriously freaking out about this integrity and possible preferential treatment bs.</p>
<p>But this is what I’m really curious about:</p>
<p>How did you even take these classes to begin with??? Like, you had at least 2 professors that weren’t your dad, how did you convince them to
a) not call security on the first day when they saw a kid (you) enter their classroom who’s name clearly wasn’t on their attendance list, and
b) grade your assignments/tests when you weren’t even a registered student??!</p>
<p>Oh, and if you plan on taking a course this summer or next summer or whatever, REGISTER FOR IT! DUH! Jeesus.</p>
<p>Well, my dad is a well liked guy in his faculty. He wanted me to get some more experience with computer programming, and decided I should learn some C. The C/Unix class was being offered by a friend… so, you know. Same thing with Trigonometry. He only teaches Calculus 1, 2, 3, and Diff. Eq., along with some applied mathematics classes. </p>
<p>Anyway, I will do exactly that. Thank you guys, I’m not feeling bad about it now. I can easily get some signatures, and such… and thanks for not being mean-spirited like <em>cough cough</em> some posters. I appreciate that! For the most part, I’ve gotten great advice- It’s safe to probably say this thread can be brought to a close.</p>