<p>My son just finished APEA, getting "B's" in Calculus(21120) and Physics(33106). Going in, he was expecting "A's", but miscalculated the difficulty. He will apply to CMU in the fall but is concerned that the "B's" will hurt his chances. How will admissions (CIT) view his grades--(a) nice try but we're not looking for "B" students or (b) we're impressed that a 16 year old gave up his summer for such a demanding schedule-nice job?</p>
<p>Just my opinion, but I don’t think they will look at B’s as doing poorly at all. Maybe not magnificent, but pretty good. These are not high school classes, these are much more difficult and it is much tougher to get an A at CMU than most any high school. I think this will reflect positively on your son, as that is better than average-with many college students in his class. He should definitely mention in his essay how much he enjoyed spending the summer at CMU, and talk about it alot!</p>
<p>My son also took some classes this summer (different ones, advanced math and programming). He has gone to a very challenging high school, but said these were far more difficult than any class he has ever taken .</p>
<p>There’s a reason that AP/EA automatically keeps A and B grades unless asked, asks about C grades, and automatically disregards D or T grades. </p>
<p>Receiving a B in a class at a university as hard as CMU is an achievement, especially for a high school student, and will reflect well on him if he’s applying there both by showing his academic merit and his interest in the school. </p>
<p>Another thing to note is that if you have the records purged, if he were to get in to CMU he would have to take the classes again as they wouldn’t be on his transcript. (I did the AP/EA program myself before attending the school).</p>
<p>Did your son attend an on-campus interview during his summer there? I got the feeling that the interview was beneficial to my application, and at the very least it got me a direct line to an admissions counselor if I had any questions later on.</p>
<p>Crazyshow:</p>
<p>He did have the on campus interview, which he thought went well. BTW, he said Calculus and Physics were 10 times harder than anything he did in high school. And he is one of the top 2 or 3 math students in his high school( the top academic HS in the state). He had Holman for Physics, who he said was great.</p>
<p>Make sure he keeps the business card that the counselor who interviewed him should have given him, if he has any questions a direct email is far better than the ‘switchboard’ email (the main undergrad admissions email which takes a long time to be processed)</p>
<p>My son thought that Physics was graded on a curve and Calculus wasn’t. The grade distribution seemed to be 20% A’s, 30% B’s and the remainder C and lower. Not much grade inflation, if any. Does this seem to align with other’s experience at CMU?</p>
<p>What is grade inflation?</p>
<p>I say, don’t care about the grade, care about the learning. Then you can get over worrying about the class average on a midterm being a 42%. Also, those summer school classes are jammed together—in a semester you have more time to ruminate and practice.</p>
<p>I think my experience at CMU was the opposite, Tamiami. Physics definitely wasn’t curved (at least Newtonian wasn’t, I got AP credit for E&M, so I can’t say). My Calc 3D course must have had a curve since I know I bombed the final HARD and still managed a B.</p>
<p>To those of you who attended the AP/EA program, did you use the EA option when applying? I’ve heard different views on whether EA is advantageous. Opinions?</p>