@Postmodern. I said earlier, the B “may also not be competitive for these elites. Nor the “A” in a less rigorous class.”
Hughes saying, “want to see students perform at the highest levels possible” doesn’t tell me it means take the higher level and get a B. Keyword is really “perform.” And, " If that meant getting a few B’s in AP courses, I would prefer those results every time" says zip about admit chances. He’d like to see a kid taking on the challenge, sure. Then more.
“far better off challenging themselves than playing it safe…”
I agree, in principle,raised my kids with this in mind. But that’s not any assurance in such a competitive pool for elite admissions. And, he may be more desirable than the kid who slacks off on rigor. But what would make him more desirable for an admit when so many took the rigor and got the higher grades?
As for ND, you still have to meet a mark. There are no gimmes. (Except some athletes, sigh.)
Right, but since the binary choice is between the AP B and lesser A, the answer should be limited to those responses.
It’s similar to the question “Is it better to make a lot of money or do something you love”? The answer of course is “make a lot of money doing something you love”, but if the answers are limited to filling in the oval with a #2, many people would choose the latter.
To me it means “if I am looking at two kids I like, who are otherwise nearly identical, and one took AP History and got a B and the other took honors and got an A when AP was available to him, I will take the AP kid.”
I do realize that this theoretical (but omnipresent) question has nearly 0% practical effect on elite college admissions.
This is what you don’t know until you try. It’s “The Lady or The Tiger” in many respects. The point is, go for it, take the risk, push yourself, as there is little benefit in playing it safe. Although, I will point out that even Mr. Hughes admits that if the workload from AP hurts your other activities (such as you other classes or your EC time) then it is a bad choice.
Perhaps, but maybe the honors history kid already was taking 5 other APs in science, math, English, foreign language and art, getting As in all of them, and just wasn’t into history. You are making it a binary choice when it is not and, most kids aiming for an elite college are not going into an AP class expecting to get a B. Plus, this thread is about getting into elite colleges, not which course choices are best for kids overall. The bottom line is for an elite college, getting virtually all As with the most rigorous schedule is what is required. A kid likely can explain away one B as trying AP chem when they are a humanities person (or AP lit when they are more mathy) but more than one is unlikely to impress.
That being said, I agree that I would prefer my kids challenge themselves, rather than take the easier class. However, that would also be balanced with stress, other classes, ability in that subject, and what their overall goal was. One of mine took many APs, but none in history because it didn’t interest him. Another took most of the history and lit APs, but only 1 science APs, again due to focus and lack of interest. I don’t think kids have to take every AP offered, especially if it is clear from the start that they aren’t going to ace those classes.
PM, but we’re talking admissions, not philosophy. Go ahead and take AP, get a B. I happen to agree it can be the better life lesson. But don’t expect an admissions tip at a most-competitive college.
I’m uncomfortable with " don’t know until you try" because most kids are “trying” based on info that’s, at best, off-kilter. Or plain old insufficient. (Not much different than hoping you’d get a prize or win a contest because, after all, you “tried,” There’s a disconnect in there. Yes, you need to apply to see the results. But try to be informed, know what ‘doing your best job’ means, know what they look for- and be realistic.)
That’s related to my point – that you can’t get all A’s in the most rigorous schedule if you don’t take the most rigorous schedule. You have to decide that before you know the result. Therefore, the result which ends in a B is a better choice, even though the AP-A is the better result. At least there is a chance.
I am sorry, but if the question is binary, then the answer should be also. The fact that the question may be flawed is not really relevant.
I agree with this 100%; but I also realize that or elites that value rigor as “very important” this could be damaging. (Note that Mr. Hughes’ Harvard has rigor as “considered” on the CDS).
LF, you still haven’t answered the question in the binary way it was asked, and you seem to not accept that I agree with your statement above, although I have typed it a few times now.
I understand that this may be where we genuinely differ. My opinion is skewed because I have been an entrepreneur nearly all of my adult life, and the “half court shot” approach has worked for me pretty well. To each his own, of course.
I personally know several kids who overextended themselves in APs (some of which they had ZERO real interest in) because they were in the AP rat race- and they had plenty of HONORS level courses available. The result was some Bs in some APs. The Bs bring down the GPA and the additional APs ended up hurting them in elite college admissions. If you read CC enough - first question is always GPA, second test scores. That said, 1 B won’t be the deciding factor on keeping kids out of elite schools.
There are many ways a student can challenge themselves with most rigorous without loading up on extraneous APs.
This is exactly why the whole college admissions thing is poisonous for the future. If you deviate from the predefined path you get nuked by AOs. What is this doing to creativity in the best young students in the country? Is it any wonder why the AOs are flooded with indistinguishable applications???
So are you saying that those kids who couldn’t handle AP level courses that their peers could are better candidates for elite colleges?
And I know you are focused on UW, but in most high schools I know of a weighted A- is better for rank than an honors A, and a B+ almost as good but much more beneficial when rigor is considered.
@droppedit forgive me but I could use a little more detail on this point.
I can’t give a binary answer. In its admissions context, I find it hard to see as a binary question. The answer is: it depends. If the half-court shot has worked for you, I’d guess you fully understand the risks. And accept them.
Absolutely, I encouraged my kids to rigor, as an educational and life philosophy. But I knew how any B’s could backfire, in admissions. And I continued to encourage them, post-grad, to take the greater challenges. But it’s where you try to suggest taking the challenges inherently makes one a better candidate, even a more likely pick, that the reality of the monstrous competition comes to mind. Including the complexity of factors.
Mandalorian, please use the Race and College Admissions thread to vent. Or speculate. Many build assumptions on top of assumptions.
C’mon man that’s a cop out! I have seen many of your posts, you know a ton about this stuff, and you can absolutely answer it that way if you wanted to (with qualifications).
The AP class is a better choice because only then will you know if you could have gotten an A.
I quoted Mr. Hughes, who has far more experience than I, who said he would prefer the AP-B results “every time”.
Sally, as an “Admissions Expert” as your profile displays, wouldn’t it be more powerful to share examples across your many years of advising students rather than just stories about your son? However relevant or recent your son’s experience was it is simply a sample size of one.
The reality is elite colleges have many more highly qualified applicants than slots in the freshman class. So in elite admissions speak:
be memorable = don’t write yet another cliche essay
be involved = don’t be a joiner, make an impact
demonstrate interest = don’t regurgitate sound bytes from the website, be genuine and make it personal
And be rational. If you come from a huge state with hundreds of high schools and you are ranked 53 in your graduating class, odds are, unless there is something very compelling about you, the highly selective elite school will not have a spot for you. Recognize only a few kids from your entire county get in. And that is okay, find the schools that will show you the love.
But re: admissions, my expectation is: go for rigor and get an A. Otherwise, you have a tougher row to hoe. (Simply too many other applicants who did.) And the “it depends” aligns with mom2and’s post 116. What’s the B in, how does it relate to the possible major (or arena,) what else is so strong (quantitatively and qualitatively) that the B can be “forgiven?” Or not. And then the kids who are clearly high level, but couldn’t fit the, say, AP FL class into their schedules and DE math at a college, so they dropped back to H or CP FL. In their case, the lower challenge course is probably fine. (Does this give a clue how complex holistic is? It’s far more than an excuse for picking favorites.)
And the killer: what thinking went into the app/supp?
And all the Hughes comment tells you is that he’d “prefer” the AP. Not a bit about it’s ultimate impact for that kid.
For super-selective school admissions, the answer to “A in easy class versus B in hard class?” is likely context dependent.
For example, if choosing the easy class tips the overall schedule out of “most demanding” or leaves an apparent subject deficiency (e.g. stopping foreign language at a lower level, not taking all of the basic sciences, etc.), then it is likely to be more harmful than choosing a hard class and getting a B. On the other hand, having more than a very occasional B grade is likely to be disadvantageous as well.
Students who make the “A in easy class versus B in hard class?” (instead of “A in hard class”) choice frequently are likely to be uncompetitive in admissions to super-selective schools.
Of course, the choice of classes for the purpose of preparing for actual college work is a different angle to this question, but there is also some context dependency in this angle as well.
Wouldn’t the fact that an elite college admissions officer would “prefer” it make it the choice answer to the question which is really “which of these two options would an elite college admissions officer prefer?”
I’m just having a little fun with semantics here, I get your point and respect it, and don’t feel it is mutually exclusive to mine. I think we should turn our vitriol back over to the threads where people don’t honor their promises!
Happy Halloween all. May you all get plenty of Reeses Cups (and no stupid apples or pennies) in your bags today!
They prefer lots of things. But the competition is so fierce that you can like and like and like and then hit the disappointing element and stop dead in your tracks. Then an evaluation needs to be made- fluke or flaw? Again, forgivable or not?
I know you’re having fun and I like the glimpse into your thinking.
And I did buy Reeses today. Will probably eat them, myself.
With all this debate over getting a B, what is the percentage of students at elite schools that have perfect 4.0 unweighted? My personal belief it isn’t anywhere close to 100% as this discussion seems to suggest.
I haven’t read through all the pages of posts since I last saw the thread, but the discussion of B in AP vs A in regular seems too hypothetical to have much practical use. How does a student know whether he is going to get a B or an A in an AP class until it is too late to easily drop out? Personally, I found it easier to get A’s in AP and DE classes than regular HS classes because the material was more interesting to me, which probably largely relates to taking higher level classes in fields I was more passionate about and taking regular classes in fields I was less passionate about.
I think the more relevant question is what percent of students with sub 4.0 get admitted. If you instead only look at the % in entering class, you have no idea whether the high % of the entering class with 4.0 more relates a large portion of the applicants having a 4.0 or the college strongly favoring 4.0. Some stats for Princeton are at https://admission.princeton.edu/applyingforadmission/admission-statistics . Their admit rate by GPA is below. Also note that there is no control for a variety of other relevant admission factors that are correlated with GPA, so we are also seeing effects of additional admission criteria that are more likely to occur in the 4.0 GPA applicants such as better scores, LORs, major awards, etc.
The school profile can make a difference. At some schools it is very difficult to attain an unweighted 4.0, even among NMF’s with a string of 5’s on AP tests.
When frazzled kids were applying to colleges, several peers got into multiple “top 10” schools without having straight A’s in all AP classes, and none of the students with straight A’s who did not go the ED route got admitted everywhere they applied. Actually, no more than a couple of students each year fit the “straight A in most rigorous schedule” profile, but many, many more got into schools that boast of turning down valedictorians.
That said, students seemed to find that on the whole, admissions results at the most competitive schools improved when the school ditched class rank, although tbh there were some complaints from parents of students who got high grades in honors/AP classes without correspondingly high scores on standardized tests.
The cynic in me suspects that colleges are more likely to practice holistic review of applications from students without outstanding hooks when they do not have a hard number indicating where an applicant falls in their high school class. (Or when they do not have to report a ranking to USNWR.)
