@planner03 I’m sorry, I know this is off topic, but, I have to ask … a no athlete policy for your robotics team? do you mean actually no athletes or a no one that plays a sport during the build season? I can understand not taking students with a big commitment during the busy time of the year, but a total no athlete policy makes me pretty uncomfy. Please let us know what your students decides to do.
@mugglemom lol, I put it that way because that was the teacher’s response when S inquired about joining! But you are correct, it is because the robotics team requires a student to be fully committed and unfortunately we don’t have set ec periods and athletic practice windows at our school so it is very difficult to play a sport(or three) and to be heavily involved in other after school activities.
Hates it. Probably is going to end up with a C this year, with all A’s otherwise. On the up side, there is only one (incompetent) teacher that teaches Spanish 4 and 5 and everyone gets an A.
@ucbalumnus He completed Spanish 3 this year. He will have BC calc, the highest math offered at our school. He has taken the standard NY science curriculum so far of Living Environment, Earth Science, and Chemistry. (no honors or accelerated offered) He is planning to take AP Physics I this year and II next year. Our school does offer AP Bio and AP Chem, neither of which you can go directly into-you have to take the NY science courses as prereqs, and getting either in at this point is going to be difficult if not impossible.
Upon exploring the RIT course listing I realize the although RIT is “selling” the course credits they are not actual RIT courses. Credit is given under the titles CAST-PLTW 101, 102, 103, and 104. (CAST is College of Science and Technology).
We aren’t in the RIT system and our HS only offers three engineering PLTW classes, but S has gotten a lot out of them. He has said he wants to be an engineer since he was younger, but as others have said, the classes provided a lot of value in verifying that interest and helping him focus on a specific type of engineering that most appeals to him. He does earn the college credit through Univ. of Iowa, but most colleges we’ve visited have said they’d transfer as gen ed credits and not get him out of any intro to engineering classes. The concern doesn’t seem to be so much about questionable rigor as about students being taught what and the way the specific colleges want their students to learn in those intro classes.
The comments about Bama and scholarships for having taken PLTW above are the first I’ve heard about that, but I’m definitely planning to look at that now.
The Bama scholarship is not specifically for PLTW. It’s available for all students with the required gpa and act/sat. It just happens that most if not all PLTW kids have those high stats.
Completion of Spanish 3 is probably sufficient for most colleges’ admission requirements, but check each college of interest to make sure. In college, engineering majors are less likely to have foreign language graduation requirements. If a college does have a foreign language graduation requirement for engineering majors, check carefully about whether that could delay graduation, since your high school’s Spanish courses are apparently worthless, since you mentioned the high school’s Spanish 5 not getting an older sibling placed higher than the first semester of college Spanish.
Having physics in high school is important as preparation for physics in college. However, the AP physics 1/2 without calculus will not give subject credit or advanced placement for engineering majors.
AP chemistry may be useful to engineering majors, since chemistry is often a peripheral requirement (i.e. required, but not an important prerequisite to other courses, except for chemical, materials, or biomedical engineering), so skipping it with AP credit can free up space in the student’s schedule.
@chardo Sorry for the aside, but I understand. I meant the comments that the PLTW credits transferred to Bama (at a C level?) as engineering credits, and separately, that some colleges (not Bama) may offer some scholarship money based on PLTW coursework.
Please, carry on, @planner03.
My son took DDP, DE, PoE and CIM. Of those, DE was the best in terms of actual learning interesting things. In part I am sure that was because of the quality of the instruction. Though PoE was taught along with AP Physics B, and that made for a good experience.
I think they are all worthwhile but then he was already oriented towards engineering and the PLTW classes were part of what made the high school appealing to him. He had to wait till senior year to drop the hated Spanish.
Wow, okay I am not sure this answers my question or not. I just found this thread. My rising senior is wanting to take PLTW CIM next year (registration is now). I think AP Gov would look better. Thoughts? I do not think he’ll be an engineer, although he may disagree. He is struggling in Precalc, and is a bit on the lazier side when it comes to getting schoolwork done, and I don’t think those things mesh well with Engineering programs. Thoughts appreciated!
CIM is considered a non core course, so yes, I would say AP Gov would “look” better. I can’t imagine a reason to take it if he doesn’t plan to pursue engineering/computer science in college. Does he have programming experience? It is year 3 course in the PLTW sequence at our school, so it seems like an odd course to be able to hop into. Does he have any background? Have you seen the syllabus?
Does this align with his interests?