<p>If Anyone has done this program what have been your experiences with it? Does it help with anything?</p>
<p>Im in it and its alright but the only reason its fun is because of the teacher so it might not be the same for you and really all we do is take cornell notes,team building,discussions about college etc etc but it does help for me because i get the support and alot of my college questions answered.</p>
<p>I signed up or AVID my 8th year going into my 9th grade year and my guidance counselor said it wasn’t necessary if you already made good grades so, I never took it.</p>
<p>I am AVID, too, since the seventh grade. I thought I need it to go into a UC school when I was in seventh grade. However, I made higher goals in the past few years of high school, so I believe AVID wouldn’t help me much anymore due to those goals.</p>
<p>My AVID class is motivated by my AVID teachers to take the SAT and ACT and AP exams for their corresponding AP classes. However, they did take SAT and ACT, but everyone back out on AP exams. So, the class is not extremely motivated.</p>
<p>Moreover, the class can tend to be annoying for me since I have to turn in like 10 pages of Cornell Notes (it was a good thing that I self-study an AP course since that was my only source of notes) and have to go through some tedious assignments. However, tutorials are what I enjoy the most in the class since I have the satisfaction to help people in their academic core classes.</p>
<p>The reason I am still continuing the course next year as a senior is because it is a class filler. There are no interesting electives at my school that I would like to take.</p>
<p>It’s a lot of fun. I was in the program as a sophomore and a junior. We are practically a family because we have weekly team-building and we go out for lunch sometimes. There was so much we needed to do in not so much time. It turned out we didn’t have much time to prepare for the SAT, and I did not like the binder checks every week. I figured that I didn’t need the class next year since I managed to do fine last year. I’m the only person in the class who wants to apply to UC’s and some top private schools, so I wasn’t like everyone else. Most kids have a 2.0-3.0 GPA, and I figured they’d benefit the most form the class. I decided to take yearbook instead of AVID next year because the enrollment is very low and my skills from journalism would be very useful. The AVID family be very disappointed, though.</p>
<p>The AVID program IS NOT for AP students. [AVID</a> | Decades of College Dreams](<a href=“http://www.avid.org%5DAVID”>http://www.avid.org) states that AVID is geared toward the middle range of students. The notetaking, the structured multiple year sequence, the enforced nonsense, all of it is good for a non-elite student, or someone who isn’t motivated to succeed on his own,but an AP kid can be trusted to do what AVID entails without having to make the sacrifice.
AP kids tend to have their own signature notetaking method, why mess with a beautiful thing by mandating a single style?
If your school has a 4 year program, that means 4 precious electives you won’t be able to capitalize on, or 4 AP classes you shan’t be able to take because of the program. I’ll admit that AVID’s college admissons preparation is pleasant, however there are other ways to attain a similar or better effect. There’s the Collegeboard website, and CC, and rankings, and a plethora of books, not to mention your Guidance Counselor. The last great advantage of AVID is the sense of comradery associated with it. As I see it,the AP Program gives you this same feeling, except it’s better because you’re surrounded by intellectuals with similar academic interests.
My frame of reference is observation within the school system. We have more than 20 High Schools with AVID program, one of which I go to. Most AVID kids in my system go to a CC or no name college following graduation. Bottom line: AVID’s not necessary or elite. That may or may not be cool with you.</p>
<p>If you have any questions, let me know.</p>
<p>Thanks for posting, bandgeek05. I headed into junior year with doubts about my tough course schedule, but self-motivation was the main thing I needed to survive.</p>
<p>I didn’t like being subjected to one organizational method or one note-taking system. That is one of the factors that led me to leaving the program.</p>