<p>MassMomm, your sophomore daughter sounds like mine. She loves learning and will find interesting classes on school breaks and weekends but many times won’t do her hw. She is happy getting A’s & B’s instead of all A’s. Next year she chose to take all honors classes with 2 AP, History & English. I’m hoping she will do her hw.
If you are in MA, then prehaps your daughter has enrolled in some of the Splash/Spark programs at Harvard or MIT. We are always looking for summer and school break enrichment if you know of others in the area. I googled Breadloaf but that’s too expensive for us especially with college 2 years away. Any other suggestions?</p>
<p>Mass- take it from an old lady- don’t start with the “she’s not the type to…” kind of language or thinking. First of all, because you can’t predict the future. Second, because I know DOZENS of kids who were not the type to… (fill in the blank) and reality came roaring at them. My niece who was not the type to live at home and commute to the local state U (not a flagship). But mom was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer and there were younger sibs at home who needed another person with a driver’s license and who could make a lasagna so that’s where she went. And graciously, not grudgingly. The kid who ended up with an athletic scholarship at a fantastic place but first an injury sidelined him and them the scholarship evaporated and then they couldn’t afford to keep him there. The kid who just doesn’t get into anything but the dreaded safety school. Or the kid who gets in everywhere but the only place they can afford is that same dreaded safety school.</p>
<p>Etc.</p>
<p>You don’t know what type of kid you have. And more important, the message to this kid needs to be, “there are dozens of colleges where you can get a fantastic education and thrive and learn and pursue your dreams and which we can afford. And it’s our job to find out which of those colleges make sense for you and you will end up in one of them and we will be so proud of you”.</p>
<p>If you start sending the message now that Wellesley or Wesleyan or WPI (just to pick on the “w’s”) is not the place for her, or you don’t approve of it, or you don’t think she can hack it or even get admitted you will regret it in January of senior year. You might be one of those people with a list of exactly 5 colleges your D is excited about (and maybe you can afford them, maybe not, you won’t know for a few months) and a random safety chosen because it takes the common app and your D will get a merit scholarship which you think will make it within range. I know lots of kids like that- you are posting early enough to avoid that!!!</p>
<p>Your D sounds great. To answer your Q- for sure, take the class that interests her. And I can’t imagine it will impact her in any way going forward.</p>
<p>Arizona State is a great school for a smart kid who “doesn’t want to play the game.” With her scores, your DD will be competitive for the Barrett Honors College.</p>
<p>Excellent post, blossom.</p>
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<p>First, there’s nothing about bad grades in the OP’s post. </p>
<p>Second, sure it’s easier to get into the schools you name–for everyone. That doesn’t mean that they use a wholly different process or are more likely to admit kids who have mediocre grades in mediocre courses. </p>
<p>I had to laugh at some of the suggestions here and the thought that there’s a lot of stress at the Ivies. </p>
<p>While it’s an old book, Greene’s “Inside the Selective Colleges” or some such title asked students at different colleges whether they considered their classmates “cut throat.” Zero pecentage said yes at Wesleyan. One half of one percent said yes at Brown. Roughly 40% of Johns Hopkinds students–the highest of any school surveyed–said yes.</p>
<p>^Hopkins still like that esp. in the engineering dept. :)</p>
<p>Mine, a highly decorated composer at 15, published writer with an 800 Verbal SAT at 13 (and math not far behind), ditched the Ivies for Smith, spent a year in Italy and became totally fluent, and now has a 5-6 fellowship at Princeton in Musicology/Italian Renaissance Studies.</p>
<p>When my son decided for his senior year of highschool to forego math and science in favor of two “more interesting” humanities classes, I feared that he was committing admissions suicide, but everything worked out okay. Colleges, even the most selective, are looking for interesting kids who do interesting things, and who can justify their choices both in words and deed. This is true of HYPSM and especially true of selective LACs.</p>
<p>Massmom, there’s not a college or university in the country that would blackball your daughter because of a missed AP opportunity. I’m sure the counselor is well intentioned but it sounds as if s/he may be too focused on statistics and not up to date on the nuances of selective school admissions.</p>
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<p>I didn’t read the whole thread, but I think this sentiment is completely wrongheaded.</p>
<p>There are plenty of opportunities for those who take Honors English instead of AP English. </p>
<p>Sheesh.</p>
<p>I will also add that our high school doesn’t even offer AP English. I’m guessing adcoms know that a Russian Lit class (for example) can be as demanding as AP English, whereas an AP Physics class will always be more rigorous than college prep Physics.</p>
<p>A hs friend of mine dropped out of AP Calc senior year because the amount of home work was interfering with his EC - an editor for the school paper. Four years later, he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Crimson.</p>
<p>My math and science oriented son took AP English Lang Junior year but is dropping back to Honors Senior English next year because the reading and writing is just too time consuming and took him away from his other AP’s this year. Next year he is taking Physics C and Calculus BC. He is concerned that it “won’t look good to colleges” that he dropped back to honors instead of AP but, he needs to put his focus where he is interested and stop being concerned about what looks good or not.</p>
<p>Taking Honors over AP for one class is not the end of the world. Some adcoms I’ve talked to have said that they would prefer it if schools offered less APs since they judge you based on how many you took out of what was available to you. By offering a lot of APs, high schools essentially obligate their students to take most of them to be as competitive for certain colleges. It’s a trade off, I guess, since people going to schools that accept AP credit can save a lot of money.</p>
<p>That said, I mostly view high school as a rite of passage. If I took a couple less APs next year, I could take a handful of interesting electives or an honors class (economics is honors at my school). But by taking AP classes, I improve my chances of getting into schools I want to go to, where I will have the opportunity to study all of those electives with far more depth and rigor.</p>
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<p>Maybe because she is not an athlete. At Stanford, athletics comes first, grades second.</p>
<p>It’s great that some kids can choose their own path at a very early age. It’s great that someone heard an admisisons officer say they don’t want kids to take lots of AP’s. Or that some kid made it, despite what seemed like a risky choice. </p>
<p>It can make the adcom’s job easier, if a kid doesn’t follow usual expectations. Then, either the kid performs superbly elsewise or he/she doesn’t get bumped to the next level. It’s that simple. They have plenty of applicants who fit their expectations well.</p>
<p>There is no “Oh, wow!” moment when they see a kid who cuts across the grain. The kid has to be attractive otherwise, as shown on the common app. This is hard for parents to judge. Until you’ve read apps, you have no idea how many thousands of kids are choosable and how small the distinction becomes between super candidate A and super candidate B. Adcoms don’t say, “Ok, both are extraordinary but B is a free thinker.” But, nor do they say, “But A took more APs.” There’s a holistic judgment.</p>
<p>There is no problem substituting honors Engl for AP Lit. OP’s D is at a rigorous, well-respected hs. I would bet honors English is tough and better than at many lesser high schools. In contrast, at schools where honors Engl is a joke, any kid would be better served by attempting the AP level. </p>
<p>ps. adcoms don’t judge you based on how many of the available APs you took. They judge your choices as a whole, vis-a-vis the opportunities at your hs. When a kid declares a potential major, there can be a logical expectation he would take class X; if it’s missing, they try to understand why. What replaced it, academically or otherwise?</p>
<p>Ahh folks, may it’s just me, but a kid with a transcript full of APs dropping down to take an Honors level class doesn’t exactly strike me as “The Road Less Taken”. The guidance counselor is selling fear and doubt. “The only chance you have is if you do this”; “If you don’t take all APs then you might be giving up your chance at…”. The problem with all those warnings is that they don’t come with any guarantee that if you do all this stuff you will get into your dream school. Follow that logic long enough and you’ll be upset that you didn’t sign them up for Suzuki Violin lessons when they were in the womb.</p>
<p>It may be human nature to overstate the outcomes and repercussions of certain decisions (If you think about it it’s why we buy lottery tickets and why some people don’t want to “miss out” on the world ending later today). But I just have a hard time envisioning the Admission Committee meeting where a straight A student is rejected because they “only” took 11 out of 12 AP classes and substituted one with a lowly Honors class. Maybe it does happen but personally I wouldn’t have my kid to go to a place that thought that was a good business practice.</p>
<p>The D of a friend was an independent thinker, good in school, great test scores, but not noted for being a “joiner” or accumulating ECs. Her mom was worried about her prospects but she got into Kenyon College EA, based largely on her phenomenal writing & critical thinking skills.</p>
<p>So I wouldn’t worry.</p>
<p>Placido and OP, I wouldn’t count out Stanford. We’ve known several non-athletes who have gotten in to the Farm in recent years…and while they were accomplished in other ways, they hadn’t invented the cure for cancer.</p>
<p>Agree with PghMomof 2. Of the 6 or 7 kids that I know personally who were accepted to Stanford from the SF Bay Area this year, NONE were athletes. All great kids, good students, etc… The one thing that they did all have in common though was that they all applied EA.</p>
<p>In junior year of high school, I felt a lot like your D. I wanted out of the game, and decided to take a regular level English class whose subject matter interested me a lot, over the expected honors level class. English was my strong suit, so this had nothing to do with trying to avoid difficulty. I’d say now that it was a mistake. Yes, the topic could have been extremely interesting and the teacher tried valiantly to make it exciting, but the class was very dull. The other smart, open-minded, interested-in-learning peers were all in the honors class, and so the quality of class discussions was really poor. I could tell the teacher was frustrated, because inevitably the class argument always broke down along the lines of 24 people asserting an idea in line with the popular wisdom of television shows, and 1 (me) with a contrary thought. Similarly, my kids who’ve been through high school have asserted that they have never taken a single non-honors or non-AP class in high school that wasn’t a complete joke and waste of time, and even some of the honors classes weren’t too challenging. So unless your D’s high school is uber-smart, I would advise her against taking the lower level class.</p>