<p>Wayneandgarth - My S found his passion during winter of freshman year while looking for soph elective. He was considering programming but wasn’t that excited about that and stumbled upon our robotics program. Everything clicked from there on out. He was a year ahead in math so he was eligible for higher level sciences and chose to learn the programming through robotics and use his elective space for an extra science. His school offers physics honors which he paired with Chem honors sophomore year ( and Math Analysis/Calc H) now taking AP calc BC, AP Physical Mech and AP Chem. Will take E and M next year since we offer it, and Adv topics in calc. Three yeats of physics before engineering school. Chose not to do AP world or AP us even though he enjoys history. His 6 classes, varsity sports, music and robotics were plenty. Kept the Honors and AP English though, for writing skills and SAT prep. He does not regret it. His friends found the AP history demands huge with extra science courses. I’m sure an extra programming course would have been great, but he chose to go a different route. Balance is good. Looking at selective ME programs, as he’s a builder not a programmer.
Also did some great Engineering summer programs like JHU’s Engineering Innovations at a satellite campus. You won’t find many summer programs in August; giveup baseball for one summer or cut the season short as painful as that may be.
You are smart to plan this out now! Good luck.</p>