Course Rigor Question

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Michigan
21

<p>“How many kids from your school last year got into Michigan taking 3/3 APs? I’m curious”</p>

<p>Not sure, but I’ll find out when school starts o_O I’m curious too lol. There are only 100 students total, and not many take the 3rd AP class (AP bio) but yeah I’ll figure how many were accepted.</p>

<p>“Anyway, I don’t think it’s a moot point that you haven’t gotten in yet. It doesn’t make your opinion worthless, just less of a voice. Honestly, if you’re worried about how tough your math class is gonna be, would you rather ask someone who took it last year or a kid a grade below you who hasn’t taken it? Seriously, answer that”</p>

<p>Ok, I pick the guy who’s taken the class O_O Someone who’s taken a math class obviously knows all about it. Someone who gets accepted to U of M doesn’t know any more about admissions than someone who got rejected.</p>

<p>“So in essence you are saying Michigan is punishing the first student because his school has more options, and he did as much as he could (still a ton) and rewarding the second student because his school is small?”</p>

<p>Nah man, they’re not punishing anyone. If the OP took 9 AP courses and that’s the best he can do then he’ll be fine. If he took the most APs in his class, then that’s even better. The other guy took 2/2 AP courses and that was the best he could do so he’s also fine. But yeah, if someone takes 6/12 APs while his classmates are taking much more, and another guy takes 2/2, then yep, I think the latter has a better chance. I merely think that they’re judging each individual based on what’s available to him.</p>

<p>“Students are not compared to their peers.”</p>

<p>So you’re both saying someone with 3 APs has an advantage to someone with 2 APs regardless of the situation, yes or no?</p>

<p>“But seriously, what was the point of answering that bike thread when you had no idea what you’re talking about? If you don’t know anything about it, don’t answer it and claim it to be fact.” </p>

<p>A friend and I actually went to central campus for a tour, and when we realized that the tour didn’t include north campus, we rented bikes and biked there. But seriously, what was the point of claiming I have no idea what I’m talking about when you had no idea what you were talking about when you said I had no idea what I was talking about? Oh right, you disagree with me on a completely different topic and feel like putting me down. Fail.</p>

22

<p>All right, for the sake of fairness, how exactly would you evaluate my situation yosup? (Please read all my posts first)</p>

23

<p>Ladies and gentlemen, yosup is right. People who thought 2/60 APs and 2/2 APs have equivalent chances are WRONG. </p>

<p>This is coming from someone who attended a HS that is heavily recruited by Ivy League schools. Admission officers come to our school to give presentations all the time and one of the most important things they tell students that they look for is the extent the student has taken advantage of the opportunities available to him. For example, the kid who attended a crappy HS but took advantage of all the resources stand a much better chance the kid who only took little advantage of all the resources available to him. This concept can be found in “Acing the College Application” by Michelle Hernandez. And if you try to disprove her point, then your really stupid.</p>

<p>IMPORTANT: To all lurkers and current members, I strongly advise you not to listen to everything said on College Confidential. Many posts are made by ignorant people. If you do need advice, at least ask some credible source.</p>

24

<p>^ Lol hmmm, I think you’re fine. I actually think you were fine weeks ago when you made a chance thread and everyone said UMich was a safe match, and have no idea why you made this thread in the first place.</p>

25

<p>A girl got into Harvard and she only took like 5 or 6 AP’s. Off Topic ~</p>

<p>Anyway. Yosup: I think you are missing the point. Your point does make sense in some ways. I’m not trying to bash you in anyway, but how is a university supposed to find out how many AP’s a student took in context to their high school peers? They can’t (Unless they call the school and ask for the student that took the most AP’s, which I doubt). Everyone is different. Some can handle more work load than others. Colleges can identify students that took the hardest courses they possibly could, while maintaining stellar grades. Some can manage 9 AP’s and get A’s, but some can’t. Colleges look at the whole picture.</p>

<p>Challenging yourself is what matters. It’s not how many AP’s you take. Its about challenging yourself. People take many AP’s and do poorly in contrast to those that take two or three that perform well. Are you able to handle the course load? Prestigious universities don’t base a person’s academic rigor on the # of AP’s they take, however they do base rigor on the curriculum and the amount of AP’s offered. However that isn’t the full picture. For example there is a girl I know. She got accepted to UNC out of state. She only took 3 AP’s out of the 15-18 or so that my school offers. She got accepted over someone who took 7 AP’s. There’s no magic formula to determine rigor. </p>

<p>Anyway that is my opinion on the issue. OP: You shouldn’t worry about it. 9 AP’s is spectacular, especially since you were able to maintain a high GPA. I think you will get accepted, but then again, if you feel like pushing yourself further, just ask your counselor if its possible to take harder classes.</p>

26

<p>“Anyway. Yosup: I think you are missing the point. I’m not trying to bash you in anyway, but how is a university supposed to find out how many AP’s a student took in context to their high school peers? They can’t.”</p>

<p>This is a perfect example of ignorant people here making posts and think they’re right. When HS counselors send a counselor recommendation and transcript, what most HS students don’t know is that they also send a HS Profile, which describes the HS’s curriculum, courses, average grades, grading system, etc. Again if you want source, check out the college admission book written by Richard Montauk.</p>

<p>"Challenging yourself is what matters. It’s not how many AP’s you take. Its about challenging yourself. "</p>

<p>Exactly. The kid who took 2/2 APs will look like he challenged himself all the way while the kid with 2/60 APs look like a ■■■■■.</p>

<ul>
<li>Number 1</li>
</ul>

27

<p>I know HS counselors send a HS profile and all of that information. In that profile they don’t specify, which student took the most AP classes. </p>

<p>I also don’t think I’m right. I’m just expressing my opinion on the issue. I got accepted to UMICH and only took 3 AP’s. </p>

<p>I can give you numerous examples of people that take less rigorous courses, but still get accepted into prestigious universities.</p>

28

<p>^ True they won’t get an exact number, but I think what your counselor marks on the rigor section will give them an idea of how you did compared to your peers. I think finding out a students APs compared to their peers is exactly why they ask counselors for the rigor in the first place. But yeah, I agree with you that colleges look at the whole picture. But when we’re just talking about rigor and excluding everything else, I still think someone with 2/2 APs in a crappy school has a better chance than someone with even a 5/30 APs because the first person did all he could with what he had, while the second person didn’t.</p>

<p>Of course there are many other circumstances, I’m only talking about 2 identical people with the same APs, one who had 2/2 APs and took advantage of everything, and the other who only had, for example, 2/30 APs.</p>

29

<p>So a person who has gone through the college application process and has been accepted/rejected (my actual point was you haven’t gone through the whole process yet) doesn’t at least have a better feel for things than, say, a new applicant? I’m being completely serious when I say I know a whole lot more, gotten a feel for the peers in my year, found out what helps/doesn’t and I can honestly say I’m more knowlegable now as a soon to be soph than a soon to be senior in HS (if thats what you are, not sure). Maybe you’re different. Maybe you’re dad is an admissions officer or something, who knows. If you honestly know as much as everybody else does, what’s the point in starting a chance thread? </p>

<p>And I don’t know why you keep changing the argument. The original argument was, and still is, 9/12 vs. 3/3. Not 6/12 vs 3/3. And if you still think they’re the same idea I’ll also throw out 9/12 vs. 1/1. Fair? I see you’re point, and I do think if everything is square UM may look more favorably upon “Most rigorous.” But really how is that different than rank 3 instead of rank 4? It’s miniscule, if that. But still, 9 (NINE!) APs. That is a sh !tload of APs</p>

<p>No, I didn’t “not know what I was talking about.” The facts are there, cross campus is not 4 miles. If you biked hey sorry. I apologize for you not knowing the right distances. But you just reminded me of one of my hallmates who claimed to know everything the first week he was there (movie theaters-wrong, streets-wrong, restaurants-wrong). The fact was he was wrong about every single thing about the city of A2. And I’m just being an @ ss because I’ve been doing this project all day. I do realize I’ve been kind of a d !ck, sorry man. Let’s just agree to disagree</p>

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<p>Entertainer, you wrote </p>

<p>" High Schools simply can’t look at the number of AP’s a person takes in context with what their school offers. Every school is different. For example my school offers over 15 (Probably closer to 20) AP classes, but you aren’t allowed to take anything other than AP history your freshman and sophomore years. There is no way for anyone at my school to take more than 10 AP’s. The reason schools offer many AP classes is to create a broad spectrum of classes that appeal to many students." </p>

<p>If you knew that counselors send a HS profile, you wouldn’t worry about students not allowed to take APs fresh and soph years, and colleges can’t put the student in context.</p>

<ul>
<li>Number 1</li>
</ul>

31

<p>What I mean by “bigger picture” is this: Example:</p>

<p>My school you can only take 1 AP freshman and sophomore year. So basically you can only take AP’s junior and senior year. If my school offers 18 AP’s how is someone supposed to take that many AP courses and qualify for graduation (You are supposed to take Arts, Physical education, Industrial Arts, etc in order to graduate). Its not about the number. Like Number 1 said, counselors send the HS profile etc. (Bigger Picture) to admissions officers.</p>

<p>Every school is different. For example Yosup, your school only has like 3 or 4 AP’s. You couldn’t take AP’s if I remember correctly, till your sophomore of junior year. Since your school only offered such a limited number, it was possible for you to take all the classes. In some schools students can’t take all the AP’s or nearly All the AP’s that your school offers, while completing other requirements for graduation.</p>

<p>This is what I’m basing my opinion on.</p>

32

<p>“So a person who has gone through the college application process and has been accepted/rejected (my actual point was you haven’t gone through the whole process yet) doesn’t at least have a better feel for things than, say, a new applicant? I’m being completely serious when I say I know a whole lot more, gotten a feel for the peers in my year, found out what helps/doesn’t and I can honestly say I’m more knowlegable now as a soon to be soph than a soon to be senior in HS (if thats what you are, not sure). Maybe you’re different. Maybe you’re dad is an admissions officer or something, who knows. If you honestly know as much as everybody else does, what’s the point in starting a chance thread?”</p>

<p>Just b/c you went through the process does not mean you know more. You can only know a little about the process and still go through it. And if you really want to talk about experience, I really don’t think you’re in the position to debate against me, one who listens to Ivy ass. directors and admission officers who come to our school to give presentations and read tens of admission books.</p>

33

<p>Really? The Ivy associate directors told you more about how to get into UM than I know. That’s intersting, I thought they would’ve stuck to Ivys.</p>

34

<p>“Really? The Ivy associate directors told you more about how to get into UM than I know. That’s intersting, I thought they would’ve stuck to Ivys.”</p>

<p>Read my posts, when did I ever say they told me how to get into UM? I was talking about a concept in college admission.</p>

35

<p>^Read the thread. I can see why you mistook what I was saying by taking it out of context. I was replying to the tone of yosup’s argument:
“Sorry, but what does that have to do with anything…? Ooh right, you got accepted, you’re smarter than me, and an admissions officer told you everything there is to know about U of M admissions.”
Even if not stated, I meant UM. Do you really want to argue with me about UM admissions? I’m not going to get into an argument about your privelages and mine, with you because you just took a post out of context. This is explainable because I think you just picked up mid-thread and wanted to sound important with your ivy league stuff. So be it, but really, read the whole thread before picking out petty things.</p>

<p>I’m gonna state my points because I’ve now actually read other posts in this thread, before I was just debating with yosup. And there seems to be several arguments that I want to just set straight.
1.First of all, I’m just gonna have to say I disagree with subroutine in the same APs taken argument. I just realized this now but it looks like the two of us vs yosup. It’s really not, I don’t know him/her or anything. If everything is fair and balanced, I already agreed that a 2/2 and a “more rigorous” will have precedent over 2/50. But this is not what I was arguing…
2.My main argument was with this:
“If a student at a smaller school took 2 APs because only 2 were available for him and got “most rigorous” the lucky guy with 2 APs probably has a better chance of admission then the OP too.”
The OP took NINE Aps! This is NOT 2/2 vs 2/50, as the argument seemed to change to. This is 2/2 vs. apparantly 9/12. You cannot say that 2/2 makes 9/12 look like a ■■■■■, as Number 1 has stated. Seriously, 9 APs at your prep high school, or a smaller school offering just a few APs and someone taking all of them? There’s gotta be a point where it’s fair and balanced, this certainly cannot be it. Do I claim to know that point? No. But this is beyond reason. 3 APs each year soph-senior year sounds at the very least, challenging. </p>

<p>Hyperbole is a writer’s best asset. I don’t know if you were trying to just throw out an extreme example to prove a point but this is the “ignorance” that someone said is not necessary on these boards. From your inference, the OP may have the impression this “most challenging” he’s asking about is the end all be all when in actuality, he will get in either way. You can see from the first reply to the OP shows my stance on this nonissue. Yosup continued backing away from his/her original claim, and slowly dwindled to arguments like 3/3 vs 6/30 then 2/2 vs 2/30 (which ARE NOT 2/2 and 9/12). At best don’t make the original claims if you aren’t going to stick to them.</p>

<p>If you read the OPs original thread about his/her chances, he’s most likely getting in. I actually just noticed you posted this there:
“Dude your ECs are great, but U of M doesn’t really care about them.”
This is news to me. UM doesn’t care about ECs? Where’d you hear this? It’s not GPA huge, but it’s definitely a part of the process, moreso than the essays. Maybe you were saying they don’t matter for OP, if so my bad.</p>

<p>And finally, I just want to say this about the whole UM admissions process thing: This is how I, friends from the same school, and friends from other schools dealt with the process around this time: Already knew basic stuff, didn’t start the app until around now, met with counselors to talk about minor details when school started, asked questions, admissions officers came in and answered questions, called UM for any other qs, finished the app, done. Now you may have completely finished the app, I have no idea. If you did, cool. But has school even started for you? Have you met with the counselor to make sure all things are in order? Because for me, at this point, I still had some small things that I needed to find out (and so did a lot of kids, lines were ridic). So I did. And this is why I have the sense that going through the app process may be completely different for everybody, but do you truly believe you know everything you need to know? School hasn’t started, I assume your recs haven’t been collected, haven’t met with teachers for recommendations. And this is why I don’t want people to say certain things, it may be misleading because you honestly don’t know about them.</p>

36

<p>Well there are people that haven’t gone through the college application cycle yet that make misinformed post’s in other peoples threads, but they are trying to learn as as much about the process as they possibly can. No one can blame them for their curiosity, however the information they provide may be misleading. With that being said, there are people on this forum like Alexandre, Bearcats, Piston and others that are here to provide correct information.</p>

<p>Like I was saying earlier the number of AP’s doesn’t necessarily matter. A person who took 2/2 AP’s out of what their school offers is great, but that doesn’t mean he took more difficult courses (course load) in comparison to another person who took 9 out of the 12 AP’s his school offers. The person who took 9 (assuming he did well) is more likely to handle college level work than the person who took 2/2 AP’s. Colleges want to see people that took advantage of the courses offered to them as well as students that are prepared academically to handle college work. The person with the 2/2 AP’s utilized his school’s offerings and so did the person who took 9. The question is, who is better prepared to handle college level work? That’s a factor when admitting an applicant.</p>

37

<p>For the sake of coherence (and also of covering my butt) I’ll concede that 2/2 looks better than 2/30.
Pistons summed things up better (and less angrily) than I would have.</p>

38

<p>“Read the thread. I can see why you mistook what I was saying by taking it out of context.” </p>

<p>I did read the thread. I agree with yosup that the kid with 2/2 APs stand a better chance than the kid with 9/20 APs. </p>

<p>“Even if not stated, I meant UM. Do you really want to argue with me about UM admissions?”</p>

<p>UMich also recruits from my school. And concepts in college admission applies to most colleges, though each college has their own system. Its not like Harvard wants smart people and UM wants stupid people. They all look for the same thing. </p>

<p>“This is explainable because I think you just picked up mid-thread and wanted to sound important with your ivy league stuff.”</p>

<p>You were the one who tried to play the “who has more experiences game” in post 29.</p>

<p>Now: 2/2 AP vs 9/12. I think both have advantages.</p>

<ol>
<li> The guy with 2/2 APs will present himself to the admission officers as a guy who took advantages of everything available to him. Admission officers will assume that he will continue to do so in college.</li>
<li> The guy with 9/12 APs will present himself as a guy who took a lot of hard classes but did not exhaust the resources available to him since the counselor checked “very rigorous” rather than “most rigorous”. This guy may have more rigorous classes, but the officers will think that he will not take full advantage of opportunities that will be available to him in college.<br></li>
</ol>

<p>Since college admission is not an award game that rewards students for their past accomplishments (the way that Pistons think), but a game of who will do better in the future, many officers will take the 2/2 over 9/12 because the 2/2 seems like he will take full advantage of opportunities in the college that will be available to him.</p>

39

<p>I changed my argument a little so I could argue against points like these:</p>

<p>"No discernible preference will be given to a kid with “most rigorous " over a kid with “very rigorous” given that they both have the same course load. What your counselor says is worthless.”
and
“My school offers 30 APs. I only took 8. That’s what, 27% of the total? You think the guy with 8 APs from a school which only offered 8 would get preference over me? Stop kidding yourself.”</p>

<p>I still stand by what I said earlier, and completely agree with Number 1. 2/2 has an advantage over 9/12 in the course rigor category because the former shows he did the best he could and took advantage of all his school had to offer, while the latter didn’t. </p>

<p>Simply put, one person took the most rigorous classes possible, while the other didn’t.</p>

40

<p>So what happens when a school offers 20 or more AP classes?</p>

<p>Are you supposed to take 20/20 AP classes in order to be on par with a student that only took 2/2 AP classes?</p>

<p>I’m just wondering if you can clarify these questions for me. The principles are the same.</p>