<p>I'm posting this regarding my brother; I've tried posting about his situation in other parts of this forum, but never got responses, so I thought I'd try here.</p>
<p>My brother is a junior attending a STEM charter school that has an alternative program compared to what's found in most high schools. They're also new and not so established, and constantly changing graduation requirements, so it's hard to tell how exactly colleges will view his transcript. Most students in the school attend public colleges in the state, which makes it even more difficult to predict how other colleges will react. Some of the difference between his school and most other schools include</p>
<ul>
<li><p>All of the core courses required for graduation are expected to be completed in the first two years, but this is just the bare minimum. Which means 4 credits of Math and English, but only 3 of Science, Social Studies, and Foreign Language. Additionally, none of the courses are considered to be honors.</p></li>
<li><p>All students must get an A to get credit for the class. This causes most students to have to repeat courses. Luckily my brother has passed all his courses so far. It used to be that the transcript was done with the public high school (which has honors courses), but this has changed so that now the charter school takes care of transcripts, rankings, etc. I'm not sure how ranking is done if everyone gets all A's however.</p></li>
<li><p>It used to be that their last two years, students would take college courses, but too many students weren't doing well, so now they've also required a group of transition courses their junior year before going on to take college courses their senior year. My brother was able to take just college courses this year, but is taking a smaller load than a typical college freshman, and we're still not certain whether or not he needs to take these transition courses (these courses are a whole issue by themselves).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Does anyone else have experiences with these types of high schools, or have any tips or advice on how to make sure he doesn't get shortchanged in the admissions process?</p>
<p>This sounds like a very specialized program, that is why you probably haven’t gotten any responses yet.
I am familiar with charter schools that have a regular college prep program, but not anything like this.
What about the college counselor or guidance counselor? It is their job to help these kids continue their education. Have you talked to them?</p>
<p>My D goes to a similar school, though it isn’t a charter and they don’t require A’s to pass. Every single senior last year was accepted to college-some of them to several, although some went into the military and some to CC to get the basics out of the way. They have a dedicated college and career counselor who walks them through all phases of college applications, from making sure they have their ACT/SAT scheduled to the essays and even parental education on financial aid.</p>
<p>The colleges seemed to have no problem accepting the kids-first graduating class, so no stats to look at from previous years. I would expect your school is doing some outreach to colleges so that they know what environment the kids there are coming from. I know ours does.</p>
<p>At our school there aren’t honors or AP’s, but rather the kids are allowed to reach as high as they can and the school will make it possible, whether that’s taking college-level courses in high school, starting college a year early, taking classes at other, larger district high schools, etc. It seems to work quite well.</p>
<p>I work at a STEM charter school that has some features in common with what you describe. I don’t work in the High School, but I look on and worry about the outcomes for kids. We haven’t graduated our first class yet, so my thoughts are all speculation. </p>
<p>They’ve reinvented so many things and I wonder how our students are going to come across to admissions officers. I particularly worry about our kids’ access to merit aid for college. We serve mostly low income kids, and we’re in DC, so the instate option is incredibly limited. My understanding is that many state schools don’t give a lot of needbased aid, beyond federal aid, to OOS kids so being able to get merit aid is essential, but it seems like a lot of merit aid is based on formulas that include test scores (which benefit high income white kids, and not kids like ours), and traditional GPAs and class rank. If our kids don’t have the latter, how will they compete?</p>
<p>Do any states around DC have some kind of recognition for DC kids? Perhaps treating them as if they are in-state? If not, they should! Seems unfair that DC kids wouldn’t have some affordable public options :-(</p>
<p>DC TAG is great for middle class kids like mine. But for a low income kid, especially one who isn’t an academic superstar, $10,000 a year still leaves a huge gap and without other aid which is generally reserved for instate kids. </p>
<p>For private schools it is $2,500 a year and limited to schools in the metro area or private HBCUs anywhere in the country.</p>
<p>I will ask about the specific role of the guidance counselor. However, even if she does involve herself in the college admissions process, I’m not sure how much of a help she would be. Fortunately, my brother’s school has a very close relationship with our state flagship, which I think helps with admissions to that college, and most people from his school seem to go there. But my brother is definitely planning on applying to schools out of state, which I don’t think very many people from his school apply to.</p>
<p>Some charter schools have a **college **counselor whose sole job is to help students through the whole process of selecting colleges, applying, applying for FA, making sure they sign up for testing, etc. They don’t have to deal with the other aspects of the guidance counselor’s job.
I’m not sure why you are assuming the guidance counselor would be of little help?</p>