<p>“that does not answer how the top students at a highly competive school take so many AP’s starting their freshman year”</p>
<p>Because our school district offered a pilot advanced math program that started when my son was halfway through 3rd grade. He tested well enough to be admitted into the program which consolidated 2 years of math into one for the remainder of elementary school. By the time he started middle school, he was 2 years ahead of most of his peers and it gave him a jump start in math once he entered high school. Math only,though…no other subjects.</p>
<p>hmmm Mom2Kids: now that you mentioned calc BC… I do know of one student who took this AP as a freshman… but that is just one out of hundreds in my grade… but ya, there is pretty much no one, even an advanced student, that would take an AP their freshman year, unless they are, indeed, like you say, especially bright.</p>
<p>I did not take AP courses until sophomore year, when I took two, but I know of at least one school in Dallas that REQUIRES that their freshmen take AP Human Geography. I know people who took the Calc AP as a freshman and I believe that DISD’s science and engineering magnet has a “double track” in math for those who’ve already taken Geometry before 9th grade to take AB Calculus as a freshman.</p>
<p>It definitely exists in Texas at competitve magnet schools and at suburban high schools.</p>
<p>Yeah that definitely wasn’t true for my high school. We took Algebra and Geometry in middle school( a group of like 20 of us), and we still didn’t start taking APs till Junior Year. I took AP Stats, Calc AB, Calc BC, APUSH, AP Physics, and AP Gov. Those were all Junior/Senior year. The only AP courses people took at my school before Junior Year is Spanish. People take pre-ap classes or w/e, but those are not AP in the least.</p>
<p>Most students is not true, but there are many students who take actual AP classes and AP tests as freshmen. I would say most competitive students start taking AP classes as sophomores.</p>
<p>I proctored AP exams the last 2 weeks at my son’s high school. We had 122 freshmen take the Biology exam and 75 take the Human Geography exam. So yes, there are students in Texas public schools who take AP classes & exams as freshmen.</p>
<p>To the original poster…your best bet is to probably avoid the metroplex entirely, but if you did your math correctly then both schools have you in the top ten percent…really if you want a good atmosphere without the cutthroat mentality of Plano, you should probably look into more southern Texas, like San Antonio (Northside ISD and A. Heights is really good), Laredo or even the rural areas because the top ten percent tends to be really smart and only competes with themselves (at my school, the top 30 or so are really good students, but only 15 are in the top 10 percent). But trust me, from my impression of how suburban metroplex kids are, they’d look down on you if you came and took their right to go to UT. Come to south texas where things are alot less cutthroat.</p>
<p>Good god, Plano West? Your rank will plummet.</p>
<p>Plano East, there’s a better chance. I’m an Eastie, I should know. Your rank would definitely be top 10 percent here, but way on the low end of it.</p>
<p>And pposkypor is wrong. I took Honors Alg in 8th grade, and a lot of my friends took World History and Human Geo AP freshmen year. We start early.</p>
<p>I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I doubt the OP had much choice in the matter of moving…most high school kids don’t just get to “stay in Kansas,” they have to go wherever their parents and their occupations take them. If they’re looking at Plano, they’re probably going to be working in the Metroplex. They can try to influence their parents decisions to move and where to buy a home, but they have little control in the end.</p>
<p>That being said, Plano West is an exceptionally competitve school. Plano East is a very good school, but has a larger class size and is considered to be less rigorous, so it will likely be easier to make it into the top ten percent there. Plus, with the IB program it’s a very easy school to transfer into.</p>
<p>Not really. UT’s admissions process is very formulaic, so it’s pretty easy to give a chance to a kid if they present the right numbers (class rank, SAT score) and give an accurate description of their extracurricular involvement and writing ability.</p>
<p>You really just plug the numbers into a formula and see if the result is high enough for the student, after considering how many Top Ten kids UT will be forced to accept.</p>