Brantly I’d be surprised if a student who bowed out of honor classes would get into Tulane, Lehigh Or Maryland.
Students at our high school who take the regular courses aren’t going to get in to selective colleges, so the question is moot.
If you define “respectable” as a typical public, this is common at many HSs. I’d guess ~1/3 of the students in the NYS public high school I attended went to a SUNY without taking any honors/AP classes. If you mean highly selective colleges, then it is uncommon and depends on things like what types of academic opportunities were available to the student. For example, one of my relatives attended Stanford without taking any honors or AP courses because her small, rural high school didn’t offer any.
I’d be shocked if any sizable number of students at either of my flagship or flagship-level colleges didn’t take some honors or AP classes before starting college. Of course, I’m sure there are some outliers but I doubt there are many.
I personally know students who did. It’s not a matter of “bowing out” of honors. They did not meet the criteria set by the (very competitive) HS. I maintain that it does happen when 1) the HS is a known entity that provides a high level of rigor, even at the non-honors level; 2) the student gets an SAT or ACT score that is “helpful” to the college’s stats; 3) the stdent applies EA or ED; and 4) the student is full pay.
I just thought of another school that has accepted non-honors/non-AP students from our HS: Bucknell.
For these students, their biggest trump card is the high school they attended.
Brantley, I would guess with some of those schools the trump card was the full pay. The test score and the rigor of the hs show the kid can do the work but an ED full pay who can do the work is a tempting admit at strong, not elite schools.
This depends so much on the school and district and even the major. The non-honors kids at my kids’ ps are not going directly into the (strong) state flagship unless they’re athletes but many could go to the cc and transfer in. Is it the typical path? No, because the hs is a competitive public and most kids who want college are pushed toward challenging themselves. But it’s possible, especially with certain majors. A student could choose a math or engineering major and really struggle in Eng courses. For a student who struggles, I found flagships often have some easier classes to help gpas (something I found missing in the tougher schools). So once a student gets admitted, he may be able to plan his course selection around any weaknesses.
The fact is that the student will have to step up at college, no matter what HS he graduated from and which college he is attending. If student does not realize that, then his goals may get derailed after the very first semester of freshman year. There is no big difference between regular, Honors and AP classes in HS. All of them are simply not as challenging as the college classes, unless the teacher makes them more challenging. Then, the kid is lucky, assured A in college class. It has happened to my D. in college Honors English. Her HS teacher had torturous requirements. Thanks to him, there was an easy A in college English, but absolutely NOTHING new was learned in this college Honors English, just a waste of time.
Her first college Bio was complete opposite of this. They went thru AP material in the first 2 weeks.
And again, her HS science teacher made a huge difference in her college Chem. class. Despite the fact that the teacher did not believe in calling class “AP”, he taught his classes at the levels higher than AP. Again, result was a very easy college Chem. class with quarantined A and as a cherry on top - the job offer from prof.
Calling class Regular / Honors / AP does not mean much. The level depend more on a teacher.
At our local high school a kid who took no honors or AP would not get into a selective college. Large public high school, very diverse, with three levels: reg, honors, and AP. State public Us are selective, one taking only top 7% of class, so student not in AP wouldn’t have the class rank to get in. The quality of the teaching was lower in regular classes.
How did it come to be that the teaching quality was lower in regular level courses?
How did regular become synonymous with remedial?
MiamiDap, I am really curious about where your kids go to school that there would be no major difference between regular, honors and AP classes. While that might be true at private schools, that wouldn’t be likely at most public schools unless they are really low level or maybe small and uniformly high level-- hm, haven’t seen that yet. At the public schools I know, there are definite curricular differences between on level, honors and AP classes. While a teacher could make some adjustments, there are strong rules in place. So students choose from different books, have different writing standards and even grading has rules here which limit the degree to which a teacher can subjectively adjust a grade.
“There is no big difference between regular, Honors and AP classes in HS.” Maybe no big difference between honors and AP (at our school both honors and AP versions of the same class aren’t generally offered; basically the honors classes for underclassmen feed into the AP classes for upperclassmen) but there is a big difference between regular and honors/AP, both at my daughters’ school and at the one I attended.
@2collegewego I suggest looking at Miami’s post history. I’d take her observations with a grain of salt 
My engineering grad attended a state school honors college. The honors college ran intro STEM classes for students who had already taken the AP/IB version in high school, but wanted/needed to repeat the class because it was required for their major or for medical school admissions (although medical schools really do not seem to care which version a student takes), or because they might not have felt ready (or gotten permission)to enter the next level of classes. Most students in these classes would have stats comparable to those admitted to elite schools.
The regular (default) classes were set up for students who had taken college prep, or who had not gotten a solid enough background in their AP/IB classroom to enter the honors class, who were not yet sure of whether they wanted a STEM major, or who could not fit the honors class into their schedule. There have been some complaints however that as admissions have become increasingly selective, even the curved default classes are assuming an AP/IB background. A few years ago, a Penn State professor advised us that a student who had not taken at least some honors/AP classes in high school, but who had the aptitude and motivation to attempt a college STEM major, might even want to avoid the large lecture classes on main campus and start out at a regional campus.
The multiple choice/web work format in the default math classes also trips up some students, at least initially, and favors students who have learned much of the material in high school (and need only to get used to a new format of showing what they have learned) or realize early on that they might need to access a tutor or study group.
Ironically, honors college classes across the board were closer to what my kids experienced in high school , than large lecture classes - few if any multiple choice tests, lots of interaction with instructors and peers. So were small, upper-level classes with professors (rather than TA’s) taking charge of grading and office hours. The assumption was that if students were working hard but not making progress, it was the instructor’s responsibility to help them develop more effective study methods, or adjust their own level of instruction or evaluation.
Quite a few students from our high school with college prep only backgrounds have done well in STEM majors at college and gone on to employment, grad school, or medical school, but they have avoided elite schools and did not take honors classes at a state flagship, committed to “catching up” in college, and sometimes taken summer classes in order not to take too many STEM classes at once in the first couple of years.