Yes with 4-5 AP/Honors classes, I recall homework taking up 5-6 hrs per night for 10/11th grade. My S took non-AP USH to lighten the load a little, but then took the AP test and got a 4 anyway with no extra study. That’s an option. He still had a ton of homework from his other classes though. I don’t believe many colleges if any will give AP credit for more than one History class anyway.
If literally true, that’s one terrible, useless assignment. The HS teacher is just asking for junk and plagiarism if he/she assigns a one-week time frame for the development, research, and drafting of a 25-page paper. No college professor would ask for such a thing. It makes me wonder, again, how truly “equivalent” AP classes are to college coursework.
^ No kidding. PhD dissertations (i.e. YEARS of work) tend to clock in somewhere between 100-200 pages.
MommaJ.
“In regard to dinners, there was no time for dinners, I was warming up her dinner in microwave at work and she was eating it mostly in a car, we did not have time to stop at drive in.
@MiamiDAP, I find that very sad, and I think many here would agree that they don’t want their family lives to follow that path, no matter what kind of medical superstar gets produced at the end. It certainly would never have been permitted in my family.”
- We do not seat down for dinners in our family on a regular basis. It is not how we spend our time together, even now when kids a long gone. Nope. Now, we have seat down dinner with my H. only on Sunday. We prefer to walk together daily instead, it works much better for our health than seat down dinners.
My younger son regularly wrote 20 page history papers in a weekend, though the research took longer. They were pretty good, though I thought they could have been better with another draft. (He wrote an outline, a rough draft and final draft in that time.)
It’s always interesting how other families spend time together. We’ve always eaten together. We used to hike lot on weekends.
carachel2,
Thank you for all encouragements and I completely agree that different people thrive in different conditions.
In regard to your comment " I just can’t imagine that we need to teach our kids that working 14-18 hours per day is the norm and what it takes to get ahead in life" - Yes, sometime we do not and sometime it is invaluable experience earlier in the lives of those who are forced to have 30 hours hospital shifts after they are done several 12 hours shifts and being solely in charge of the entire hospital floor with some 25 patients while being freshly out of Med. School and in their mid. 20s. These experiences are teaching how to hold it together while maintaining the clear head, professional attitude and great focus when people’s lives are in your hands.
I still say that no matter how much homework in HS, a kid can still plan her week to avoid 3 hrs of homework on a daily basis. Working that much is also isolating, they need to be able to relax with their favorite activities and yes, spend hours on a phone with friends or whatever social media or other social ways they use. It is essential to have a satisfying life, develop as a person and 3 hrs of homework every day in HS will be on a way and isolating, no doubt about it.
And enough sleep is also absolutely essential, my rule of going to bed at 10pm was pretty much cut in stone. If they tired next day, they cannot perform, not in classroom, not on track, gym, pool or sitting at the piano.
I disagree that we need to prepare teenagers that are 14-18 years old for grueling medical school or residency shifts. There is a whole lot of maturing physically, mentally and socially that goes on in their lives during those years before medical school.
@carachel2 Are “14 hr + days @ age 16” the norm?
14-16 hour days definitely the norm here Mon to Thurs, for HS sophs and juniors especially in athletic season. But that is only say getting up at 6:30 and going to bed at 10:30 (for the 16-hour day). Not every minute of that is school work, it includes getting ready in the morning, eating, sports or other EC, and some down time. I think what some are talking about are much longer days - 18 hours if a kid gets up at 6:30 and goes to sleep at 12:30. At our HS I think that is extreme, even for the highly motivated, super ambitious kids. The night before a big paper is due, perhaps is a late night, but not day in and day out.
My son’s APUSH required outlining as well. He didn’t seem to mind it, but he loved history. I too wondered about the complete lack of research papers in that class. The DRQs were all short. When I took APUSH, we had to write a research paper each marking period. But that is the structure of AP. Our HS does not have an honors alternative for USH part 2 so it is AP or regular.
All three of D’s AP History classes, as well as her current AP Gov class, requires outlining of chapters. Then “notes” (these are not notes imo, but just outlining) are checked regularly.
IMO, she takes too many AP courses, especially for the colleges she’s applied to. I checked their requirements, and she is way beyond what they require (non-flagship state schools). Hopefully, she will be well prepared for college…
Last night, she got four hours of sleep because she decided she would complete all of her homework due for today. She normally gets about six. Any more than that, and it’s because she did not complete work for school.
It’s often a question of homework or sleep.
This is her own choice, though, to take the APs and the number of them… Her GCs at school, and her peers, encourage it. There is much peer pressure, among the college prep crowd, to take on as many APs as one can handle.
The problem is, not all of us are type A workaholics. The ones who aren’t struggle to keep up and all are in a constant state of stress.
My D played volleyball her freshman year, but did not try out after that, because of all the hw in advanced classes.
I’m not a fan of high school sports teams anyway, so I didn’t mind, as her parent.
She has kept her other ECs which were not as time-consuming as the volleyball.
I think they should have two college prep lanes - one for those who want to try and get into Ivy or similar level - and one for those going to the all the other colleges and universities. But it seems because a few kids want to strive for really selective schools, everyone is judged by that standard. That seems to be the case in our district anyway.
Wow, that is very intense BeeD. She really as to do homework every night until after midnight?
Does it make sense for her to apply to the flagship and maybe some privates that will give her money (assuming her stats are there).
The question schools have to ask as well is whether the typical student with 4 or 5 APs is spending 6 hrs a night on school work. Or are some kids just doing much more than is needed. and so not getting any sleep? An A is an A whether it is a 95 or a 100.
She often is in bed at midnight, or shortly after. (she gets up at 6 am).
I should add that D is a slow and thorough worker - sometimes too much. She’s tried to use strategies for speeding up her work, but she has always been slow at getting work done. (She is actually good at getting big, long-term project done and paces herself well - it’s the daily busywork she actually struggles to get done.)
She also does not get started right away. I understand why she doesn’t. But she generally doesn’t start hw until 5 pm. Then she’ll eat dinner, take a shower, (which takes her a long time - I’ve encouraged her to cut her long hair!) etc. then finish up hw. I’m pretty sure she texts friends before going to bed too… so it’s not ALL hw. But given the amount, most of the time is spent on that.
There are indeed nights where she is done by 10pm but it’s rare.
She actually does not want to go to a flagship - too big. I think small private would be ideal for her, but she thinks they’re too small. When we visited schools, she found the mid-sized state schools just the right size… We’ve tried to encourage her to consider the smaller schools, but in the end, I don’t want to nag her or talk her into choosing something she wouldn’t have otherwise. We think she’ll be fine where she’s headed.
I just hate that she takes on these really hard, time-consuming classes, stresses herself out, still can’t seem to excel at them and finish all the work, and - it really seems like she doesn’t have to do this.
The students at the top of my DDs’ class did not go to Ives nor did they want to. Most went to the flagships or other instate schools. Having two lanes would not have been best for them or the rest of the class.
BeeDAre,
My D’s district outlines two paths for college bound students, Scholars and Scholars with Distinction. Scholars with Distinction is is described as follows: " This very rigorous Pathway will challenge even the most talented and dedicated students to an even higher level of academic accomplishment." Scholars will get you into “a” state university, Scholars with Distinction will get you into the more competitive state schools.
However, if you want a better chance to get into the state flagship you need to follow the unpublished “Most Rigorous” pathway. Based on standardized test scores and classroom performance about 5% of the class is directed into the most rigorous courses by the GCs. It becomes not the number of AP but the most rigorous APs possible. No dropping down from APUSH or skipping AP Calc for AP Stats.
Totally get it BeeD, but seems that is how she is wired. She may know she doesn’t have to do all this for the schools on her list, but does it anyway. It also sounds like she could be in bed before midnight, but makes other choices that keep her up too late. It is not clear, however, if this is happening because the school is giving too much homework.
Well, she’s taken both Calc and Stats! She didn’t need the Calc, but insisted on taking it, Idk why… All but one of her schools require just 3 years of math, and she already started as a freshman with Honors Advanced Algebra which was a sophomore/junior level class, so she was still probably ok if she didn’t take Calc. And of course, it killed her GPA, that and AP Physics (another class I begged her to drop and take the regular version. Nope. Sigh…)
She did actually drop APUSH but only because I made her choose an AP to drop last year, from 4 she originally signed up for, to 3. Her GC argued that she should keep the 4! She chose APUSH to go, I guess, because she knew after taking AP World and Euro, there would be tons of reading and outlining… but she would have done better, grade-wise, than she did in Calc and Physics. Oh, well.
She has been accepted into one college already and is an auto-admit for another she applied to… The third school she applied to will probably accept her as well. (She is also very frugal - gets that from Dad, not from me, lol, and these schools are VERY affordable for us. She’s also thinking ahead to being able to afford grad school…)
Again, it is just painful to watch her constantly juggle and stress over it - but at the same time, it’s been her choice, and, yes, she has always pushed herself to do the hard thing even when she doesn’t have to.
I’m actually surprised she is NOT trying to get into a reach school, anyway, based on that but - I also think her strategy is to set herself up at a college where she can succeed. I think she figures she has a good chance of getting good grades at the regional publics.
BeeDAre, how about a consortium school? One of the Claremonts – best of both worlds. LAC sized classes and attention, with the benefits of 5,000 students across the 5 colleges and cross registration at the other schools. The colleges are right together physically.
Is all of this stress an east coast thing? I havent really noticed it to such an extent on the west coast
Um… there are certainly high schools in CA where this is prevalent. And there are a couple public and a couple privates in our Midwestern city that are like that, too.
But intraparent would you pretty much agree it is primarily an east coast thing