“Real attributes,” kids need to be able to dig for, nit the hierarchical thinking I mentioned. After all, we’re talking top schools that like thinking skills. And superficials are many of the usual preoccupations on CC.
The point isn’t to parse words."
The reason you consistently talk in vague generalities is because the process for college admissions is random from the outsider’s perspective so you can’t figure out what the top colleges want. When Stanford says 18% of our class is first-gen and your parents have Phds, that’s not going to be easy to focus on.
I think I understand what @lookingforward is saying, and my perception is that, no, it isn’t dismissing test scores and academics. Those are simply a given. My guess is that it is the rest that is being discussed…the many students trying to figure out some magical formula that leads to acceptances instead of being authentically themselves. Instead of pursuing their passions and making an impact simply bc that is who they are and what they do, they try to imitate what they have seen as successful in others.
Outsiders see them get accepted and then think, “Ok, doing x, y, and z leads to acceptance.” No, it isn’t that simple. It is that bc that student was who they were that got them accepted and who they were was exemplified by x, y, and z. It may sound like an insignificant difference, but it really isn’t. It sort of like the difference between genuine and faux. One is coming from the inside and the other is trying really hard to make themselves into a replica.
I’m late to this game, but I really want to second ucbalumnus’ post #28. All this APs are no good assumes a level of resources for alternatives available to only a few elite schools. My kids are in a school district rated around tenth in our state rated about tenth in the country, and even here, APs are key to having some challenging classes. Putting it slightly differently, in a large majority of cases, teaching to the AP test is better than the alternative.
And I completely share the cynicism about the motives of the anti-AP movement. The reality of an elite school is it has to constantly fight against the democratization of education and make what it can do that others can’t valuable to college admissions.
My S18 hs dropped all APs a few years ago and now just sends kids on early college paths. It’s great for shaving a couple years off tuition but then challenge becomes only a couple years of college, it’s hard to bond in dorms because everybody else is in freshman classes, and it’s tougher getting into a study group because they’ve all formed by Junior year and there is an age gap - they go out to celebrate and you can’t get in the door.
Some families do that here on their own, but the logistics of it are challenging, and there are enough advanced high school kids to fill up AP classes. My view is it makes more sense for most kids to take the class with other likeminded kids of the same age than to go to away from HS to a nearby college with older kids doing different things.
Unless the student in the early-college program is extremely advanced, s/he likely takes college-frosh level courses in the early-college program. These are the same level courses that most worthwhile AP courses emulate, so the early-college student may start college with similar advanced placement as a student who took AP courses and did well on AP tests.
Super-advanced students who want to take courses more advanced than college-frosh level courses while in high school (e.g. math beyond single variable calculus or AP calculus BC) need to look to local colleges for those more advanced courses, regardless of whether they took college-frosh level material in an early-college program or in a high school AP course.
I don’t know how one defines ‘extremely advanced’ or ‘super advanced’ but it’s becoming more common for the kids to end up with an AA (basically knocking out all gen eds req) before their hs diploma. They began limiting this option to 30 semester credits a year, but added 7th and 8th grade eligibility.
The real goal of the Mastery Transcript Consortium is for more slots at selective colleges to go to private and boarding school students instead of public school kids. With GPA, it’s a mathematical fact that half the class will be in the bottom half of their class, and colleges can roughly estimate class rank even when it’s not explicitly provided. If the criteria is some vague character trait like adaptability, boarding schools can rate all their students as exceptional.
@BuckeyeMWDSG That article really skims the surface on a pretty major key point, academic readiness. While some college courses do not require pre-reqs that prohibit their access to younger students (history 101, for example), some courses are going to require significantly advanced students in order for them to be ready to take the courses. Not many high school students are going to be ready for calculus, cal-based physics, etc in 9th grade.
An AA or AS is slightly different. Even so, many of those credits may or may not be transferable to a 4 yr institution. Early college is not always better. College grades follow the student. A student jumping into DE without the maturity or academic readiness for college level work cannot leave the grades behind like high school level courses.
Thelonious, when I say to get away from stats and focus on the rest, why do you quote more stats?
I do know what a number of top schools look for. I do not spill full beans on a pubic forum to kids who who want an easy shortcut, “tell me,” without having researched their match (from the college’s perspective.) If they feel qualified, they should be looking at what the colleges, themselves, say, what they offer, the sorts of kids they tout. Not what some other hs kid says on a Chance Me or some parent venting about crapshoots and declaring how slanted it all is.
From my perspective, you don’t get accepted to a TT for just “being yourself.” It hinges on being the sort of kid the colleges want. One easy example. If the college likes kids who will test their boundaries and engage, don’t go off presenting yourself as a unilateral loner and expect them to fall all over you. You can’t hide behind passion, lol.
I don’t think you anti-Mastery folks know where it’s growing.
Also, do you realize CB does not issue curricula for AP. They set criteria and resources, but teachers are able to somewhat modify, then submit for approval. (Or follow a sample, yes.) You can dig into AP audit.
And boarding schools do not pull for each and every kid in the same directions. Sheesh.
As for something like adaptability, the kid either shows it or not. It’s rare a middling app can be saved by an LoR. Or that a kid who doesn’t get it can suddenly turn out a super essay (on his own.).
The test score optional thing is interesting. I have read that colleges benefit from it not in terms of opening up access to kids who may not have had the means for test prep etc but because only high scorers with submit scores then said school can use data for their own gain…can report a high average and raise status. Also too I’ve read if you want merit aid submitting high scores to a test optional school is the way to go. I guess in the long run test optional does help some kids which is great but makes me a bit suspicious is it about opening access or a marketing boon for a school? Seems a bit disingenuous.
@ucbalumnus The latter in your post #34. For the ones who never took APs to begin with, the discussion of APs or no APs or less emphasis on APs seems pretty irrelevant to this discussion as elitist as that might sound.
It is possible to construct rigorous colleges at a public high school without the AP framework - and its associated costs and stress, both of which seem high IMO.
The real reason more top boarding/private school kids get into selective colleges is because they are self-selected and academically more homogenous. APs/a mastery transcript, etc. are driving those college decisions. The reality of greater ability and high school preparation and the recognition of such by colleges drives that. The private schools aren’t driving the process, but responding to what colleges want more of - deeper thinkers and mastery, not regurgitators. Again, read up on criticisms that college officials have to much of the AP curriculum. This isn’t being spoon-fed to them by boarding and elite school officials. Again, not some big conspiracy or master plan.
Can you give me examples of “It is possible to construct rigorous colleges at a public high school without the AP framework - and its associated costs and stress, both of which seem high IMO” at public high schools with enrollments over 1000 across the country? I’m serious. One of the reasons I’m skeptical of the anti-AP stuff is all the alternatives I know of that come even close to being similar in terms of challenge are in very atypical environments - elite private schools, special public academies, etc.
I don’t agree that the AP criticisms from college officials have much to do with actual academic preparation. Students who come in with a lot of AP credits are a problem in other ways (fewer tuition dollars among them), but bumping up the required AP scores took care of any evidence I’ve seen that AP credits were given too easily. Put another way, as someone who teaches courses that require calculus, a 5 on BC is good enough.
Some of the more selective private schools do not give much credit units, subject credit, or advanced placement for AP scores, but they may be even stingier with respect to college courses taken while in high school, and probably even stingier with respect to similar (or higher) level high school courses that are not dual enrollment or otherwise designated as college courses. So while they may criticize AP, they may be making the alternatives even less attractive for the advanced students.
However, public schools may be more generous with credit units (though not necessarily subject credit or advanced placement) for AP scores, since most of their students are subsidized in-state students, so getting them graduated as quickly as possible may be among their motivations.
@turtle17 So you’re a teacher? Do you find it not within the abilities of you and your fellow teachers to implement a curriculum for advanced calculus for high school students away from AP structure and testing? Is it really that hard to replicate?
There’s work involved in submitting one’s own syllabus for the AP approval, too. Why can’t one borrow from the AP criteria, when creating a non-AP alternative? Presumably, we’re talking committed and properly educated teachers. Or are we going to sashay to pubics where teachers aren’t competent?
If @turtle17 is a high school teacher, does s/he have any incentive to design a single variable calculus course that has significantly different material coverage compared to AP calculus BC, for the typical one-year-ahead-in-math students who may take such a course in 12th grade? Seems like that would be more work for him/her, but less benefit for the students, who would be less likely to have the option of getting any credit or advanced placement from a high school single variable calculus course without any AP or other external validation.
Now, you could make that argument for some of the lower value AP courses like human geography and environmental science, but calculus is the subject where this argument is the weakest.
