<p>I just wanted to add that I've read some of those 'observations' of "top" schools as they make their decisions and I'm pretty sure I saw one kid who was great by everyone's (by this I mean the adcoms said so) standards but got waitlisted (or denied?) because of a C.</p>
<p>Actually, the worst part is that even if the C doesn't get one rejected or waitlisted, it most certainly kicks them out of the competitive scholarship rounds. </p>
<p>Like others have said, I really do appreciate a rigorous course. However, I don't see the benefit of intentionally tainting a student's record just for its own sake. A $200k lesson? No thanks.</p>
<p>I don't see why the GC should not add something if the teacher is the sort that always gives low grades. That is something that some adcoms just might take into consideration if that is the only blotch on the record and the young lady is under consideration. The note may not be needed if this is a routine thing and the colleges the OP's D is targeting have consistently taken this into account from that school and teacher. </p>
<p>All this might just be blather if the girl is not applying to schools where this would make a difference.</p>
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I don't get it. These so-called "top" colleges are inundated by applications - why SHOULDN'T they hold a "C" against a candidate when they can likely get one who took the same class and got a "B-minus"? Seems like this teacher, to his or her credit, is helping the schools do the sorting, and since the teacher will know the students in that class better than any of the admissions officers ever will, why not?</p>
<p>I think the GC should definitely keep his nose out of it. This is something between teacher and student.
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<p>Zen callousness is not pretty, even if it's witty.</p>
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Perhaps the same thing goes with this course and the colleges that are usual for the high school kids there to attend. It would be a problem if the young lady has her sights on a top school and this is not a school that is known by them.
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<p>My kids attend a middle to upper middle class suburban public hs where, for whatever reason, there is a culture where most of the kids will attend schools in-state and our many publics, and there just isn't much of a culture of going out east to school, or out west, or just exploring options outside the area, despite the fact that many of the parents could (potentially) afford it (obviously I don't know for sure, not knowing anyone's financial situation).</p>
<p>I would hate to think that a top school would look at my kids' record, say "oh, but we've never admitted anyone from XYZ school," and they get penalized for that. That's so fundamentally unfair. It's not their fault that their classmates' parents are a little on the provincial side.</p>
<p>^ That is indeed fundamentally unfair--but also the reality of college admissions, which has never been and never will be fair.</p>
<p>Well, it's time to change it :-)</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I did not mean that it is held against a student if a school is not well known or known at all by a college. (though indirectly, I guess it is; it's not as direct as I ended up sounding). WIth as many schools as there are, the most selective colleges do not know all schools equally well, and there are schools that they are more familiar with than others. They may not know some schools at all. It's just that there are some prep schools where many kids apply to those colleges each year for many years so there is a history, and those high schools may be known right down to the courses and teachers. That is what Tokenadult meant when he was saying the colleges may know that specific situation. </p>
<p>However, if your school is not known, and that specific situation is not familiar, a C in a course can really be deadly, in that it is a grade that will often and usually eliminate a student from contention in the admissions situation at certain schools. HPY has so many kids applying with perfect transcripts, so why should they consider a kid with a big fat C in the middle of the transcript during junior year, the most important year in a course where many if not most of the applicants to such school will ace? They would only do so if the candidate has something else compelling or mitagating circumstances, one of them being if that student comes from a school that is known to them in a course by a teacher that regularly pulls this crap. </p>
<p>Don't know how the situation is going to change when so many highly qualified, high stat kids apply for the too few seats at such schools.</p>
<p>"Zen callousness is not pretty, even if it's witty."</p>
<p>It's not callous. Callous is admissions officers who spend three minutes per application, and have to make decisions based on their three-minute reading. This teacher is in a much better position to separate out the "c's" from the "b's" from "a's" than any admissions officer, or any GC will be able to, based on this class. </p>
<p>Callous is the false pretention that all the "A's" in a class are equal, and the very callous belief that an admissions officer should see it that way (so that they can make decisions based on income, friendship with a particular GC, or the need for a third tuba.)</p>
<p>If I got a letter from a GC based on a situation like this, I'd tell him to send me the student with the B-minus.</p>
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I had visions of having my acceptances to places like UPenn, UVa, Chapel Hill and several others rescinded.
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<p>Was the end of the story that none of those acceptances were rescinded? </p>
<p>I based my comment above on a specific remark made at a public meeting by a specific admission officer from what is probably the most selective college in the United States. Just tonight I was at another college's information session </p>
<p>and the admission officer from that college, who reads by region as do most admission officers at most highly selective colleges, says that if a student's high school is at all unfamiliar, the admission officer gets on the phone and contacts the counselor or the teacher or both. It's the admission officer's JOB to know the high schools in the region, and at many other kinds of colleges the effect of one C, especially in an AP class, would be negligible.</p>
<p>OK, tokenadult, I trust your judgment and experience - here's a theoretical.<br>
Let's say my son decides to apply to Whitman College in WA. There's no way in hell that anyone from our school ever applied there -- IF they ever applied anyplace out west, it would be a UCLA or USC or UCB at most, certainly nothing as off the beaten track of state-school-or-bust as a Whitman (or a Pomona, or a Harvey Mudd ... you get the idea). </p>
<p>According to the Whitman site, the regional rep who covers my area (Illinois) also covers these states: Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, N Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, S Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin. The midwest, and THEN some! </p>
<p>How in the world could she possibly "know" all the high schools in that region, when in fact, the number of high schools who will EVER have a student express interest in Whitman is quite low simply because it's a relatively small school and not on the radar screen for most kids? </p>
<p>And how can they possibly be so closed-minded as to not understand that certain very affluent public schools have students who go all over but less affluent schools obviously don't? So my kids get penalized because I didn't move to the North Shore where the pressures on the kids to get to HYP are quite real, because now their school -- still a good one by objective measures -- isn't "familiar"? There's a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't for you. I'm sincerely interested in how that all works in a situation like that. Are you seriously saying that they'd say, "Here's Bob from a North Shore school that routinely applies to us; here's Bill from another public school district we're not so familiar with. Bob and Bill are basically equal, but we'll give the edge to Bob because two years ago, Joe from his high school came here, even though Joe's record reflects not one bit on Bob's abilities"?</p>
<p>No, they will say, "we'll give the edge to Bob because it will likely cost us less, given his zip code, (we are need-blind, of course ;)) and because keeping in good graces with the GC there means we get a continuing supply of full-pay applicants." (It might be different if Bill weighs 280. :cool:)</p>
<p>researcher, whether the teacher's grading is out of line is not something I (nor anyone here) is in a position to know. But even if he is out of line and he's completely on some kind of power trip, I would definitely NOT speak to the teacher, as a parent. This is likely to hurt your kid more than help her.
Your daughter should be the one to approach him and ask for help. The suggestion by those who said she should work something out with him-either by asking for specific study materials or by getting essay help in advance, are on the right track. By the time kids are in high school, I think it's rarely if ever the place for a parent to speak to the teacher regarding grades.
If this teacher thinks he is "preparing his students for college," how do you think it will come across if mom or dad is in there pitching for her?<br>
If she is seriously concerned that her grade will keep her from future goals, she could drop the course. These are the kinds of decisions that kids will make in college, as well. I'd talk with her about her options and let her decide and take the appropriate action.</p>
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Was the end of the story that none of those acceptances were rescinded?
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<p>The end of the story was that the C+ did not show up until the bitter end on my final transcript. It did not appear due to averaging on the midterm transcript submitted in January. Because the rest of my final grades were strong with no senior slump I didn't get a letter asking for an explaination, which is the first step in colleges rescinding acceptance.</p>
<p>If the C had shown up on my midterm, I would not, according to my both my GC and Director of Guidance, have been accepted. It is not "negligible in adcoms minds because there are so many stellar students out there.</p>
<p>Because of the rigor of my course load Full IB and my counties well known grading system the C+ which = about an 84% They may have let me slide by.</p>
<p>My parents did speak to the teacher b/c my high school holds mini conferences every few months so that parents and teachers may speak about student progress. They didn't seek her out separately. All of my 8 IB courses were considered college level, but the other teachers didn't go out of the way to be GPA killers. They returned graded assignments and were helpful and happy to see us succeed. My English teacher was not one of those.</p>
<p>Has D spoken to the teacher about her C-, and about what could be done to improve her understanding of the material?</p>
<p>My first step after D speaks to the teacher would be to go over the tests with D and see what if anything might need to be done to improve her understanding.</p>
<p>Vistany, has that teacher been doing this for a while and have other kids not been accepted to, say, your flagship state school or top colleges with excellent resumes except for the grade in that one course? If your school is interested in helping kids get into competitive schools, I am surprised they put up with this behavior from a teacher teaching a course important for that path. I am surprised about the APUSH teacher too. Such teachers would not last long in my sons' schools. THe only class where grades are routinely low in sons' school gets kids in HPY from that course routinely, which is the BC calc.</p>
<p>For the smaller colleges where time is taken per app and there is high interest in an applicant, Tokenadult, I agree that a C can be negligible. For the "hot" schools or the HPY crowd, forget it, unless it is a school that is very big on the list for feeding students and the adcom knows the school well. APUSH is not a subject that gets a lot of sympathy when a less than optimum grade is earned. AP Chem, BC calc or college level courses like LIn Algebra , Diff Eq, Analysis...maybe. But APUSH, forget it.</p>
<p>"No, they will say, "we'll give the edge to Bob because it will likely cost us less, given his zip code, (we are need-blind, of course ) and because keeping in good graces with the GC there means we get a continuing supply of full-pay applicants." </p>
<p>Mini, we're full pay all the way. Bill won't cost the college one penny more than Bob. Now how does that change the scenario?</p>
<p>And in my example, I bet a Whitman probably only HAS, oh, I don't know, maybe 5 kids admitted from Illinois in a given year. Are you seriously telling me that the next year, they'll favor the exact same high schools? Doesn't that seem awfully random, given that one student's success means NOTHING about the next student other than their parents happen to live near one another?</p>
<p>Whitman is not a good example. The smaller LACs often will take the care to look at an application carefully, and if the GC does write a note about the course, if all else is in apple pie shape, even if the the kid is not full pay, it can well be fine. Most schools are not going to worry about one lousy C anyways if the GPA is still up there, class rank is way up there, and test scores are high. Where it can matter is at the most selective schools where the job of the adcoms is to cull, cut for any reason since all of the candidates are so stellar and there are many kids just as good as the kid with the one blemish. Mini, though tongue in cheek as usual, is pretty much on target with his remarks. </p>
<p>Also even at schools where the top colleges understand that the grades are on a steep curve and judge the kids accordingly (every adcom writing a book on the process will tell you that they do have to adjust for kids at such schools), kids at such prep schools are at severe disadvantage when applying for admissions, honors programs, scholarships, awards. I remember a big to do about All American status in a sport where the grade cutoff was a 3.4. Well, a 3.4 is the upper 10% in some of those schools whereas in the public school such kids will not even make the upper half on an unweighted basis. Oh, and many of such schools do not weight their courses and grades, nor do they even designate courses as honors or AP. Their kids are at a decided disadvantage in applying to those schools who do not acknowledge their system and do not know those schools. UVA is a top state school that has turned down a number of kids I know who fall in that category grade wise, and the same kids were accepted to HPY and company that knew and took into account the grading system. </p>
<p>So it depends on the colleges that the OP's D is targeting and if her school is known to those colleges and if they consider her school one of those where a C in APUSH is not unexpected whether that C can make a difference. In GPA, if the rest of the grades are all A's, the courses all weighted and are AP or honors, the C is not going to make much of a blip. It's only with those schools that have to look at every little thing to come up with a reason to decline that a problem will exist.</p>