I would dare to speculate that kids who take all AP/Honors courses with an A-average plus keep a significant sports/other EC load are in fact aiming for what is known in CC as “tippy-top” schools.
I may be wrong.
I have a kid who got in everyplace she applied two years ago, including UChicago (with merit aid), Swarthmore, Harvey Mudd, and a host of other lower ranked colleges with nice merit aid packages. She had a 3.7 UW GPA and no hooks. Her high school only offers a few APs, but she also did some summer college credit courses with good grades in her areas of interest.
She was one of those genuinely intellectual kids, and her application reeked of it (ECs, recommendations, and essays all showed it). The colleges ate it up. Grinding head to head with the other 20,000 vals and sals isn’t the way to go.
That’s the impression I got as well from reading Amanda Ripley’s excellent book, The Smartest Kids In The World And How They Got That Way. Per the book, in countries like South Korea kids study a lot for sure, but they don’t also have to worry about playing sports, joining the orchestra, running for debate team captain and volunteering at the humane society. In Finland and Poland soccer is strictly an outside school activity, only played at the local soccer field after school, with no adult involvement. There’s no such thing as Select Soccer that includes traveling out of state from 3rd grade on. Most kids who came to the US as exchange students could not believe the amount of emphasis our high schools put on ECs especially sports.
In our high school only kids who do the IB Diploma plus doing a whole host of ECs or kids who are athletic recruits go on to elite colleges. Unless you do the diploma, you don’t get that “most rigorous course load” check from your counselor. The IB diploma itself is already enough of a soul sucking, time consuming endeavor. Imagine also being in the orchestra, marching band or a sports team, holding a part time job(to show non-privileged background), volunteering for minimum 150 hours, traveling with the debate team, newspaper editor…good lord, makes my head spin just thinking about what our kids have to do.
American high school kids really do have the worst of all worlds, and it really is up to the parents to put a stop to this, which is the subject of Julie Lythcott-Haims’ excellent book How To Raise An Adult. I fully intend to be just one of these parents. I want to enjoy time with my children before they go off to college, and I also want them to enjoy their childhood before they go off to the stressful realities of adult world. Going to an elite college is not the only way to succeed. The playing field is a lot more level than most people think.
NYS requires gym all four years. My kids just did gym class, which eased the time crunch a lot. They each took a lot of honors and AP classes, but did not take every one offered.
Older one (comp sci guy) did AP Comp Sci, AP Calc BC, Linear Algebra, the three major AP sciences. He took another honors science as a senior which turned out to be very easy (Astrophysics). His non STEM APs were AP Latin (easy for him) APUSH (I made him take it pointing out it would likely get him out of a college gen ed which it did and it also gave him an easy non-science SAT subject test), and AP Econ which he chose and liked. He signed up for an English elective senior year instead of either the honors or AP English. I was a bit concerned, but it didn’t keep him from getting into Harvard or Carnegie Mellon SCS. He had lots of time to pursue his real interest, computer programming, outside school. I think his demonstrated ability in CS had a lot to do with his acceptances.
Younger one, not a science guy, but he likes science, took the three AP history courses (World, US, Euro), AP Bio and AP Physics C, and AP Calc BC. Also no AP English - his senior English elective - mysteries - was one of the most enjoyable courses he took in high school. Best decision he ever made. He was in two orchestras. He got into U of Chicago, Vassar and Tufts.
Another thought regarding choices and time: I think a lot depends on what EC’s you choose. A sport (and I’m sure there are others that are similar) is a tough one because there are events and practices where you have no control over and I suspect not a lot of down time where you can sneak in some studying. They are very demanding. My kids EC’s were much more flexible. Oftentimes they had choices as to when and whether they would participate. For example both did journalism-they could write their articles on their own time, or decide which event they wanted to cover that fit their schedule. They did a lot of volunteer work where they could pick the schedule they wanted (and occasionally, when it conflicted with school work, could miss it). My D did theater. That is the closest thing to sports that either of them did (regular rehearsals, performances), but because a lot of rehearsal time is waiting for your turn on stage, she was able to get a lot of home work done there.
I think this is one of the reasons my kids survived, did well, had a social life and managed to get a decent amount of sleep most of the time.
@ChangLa, Our school doesn’t have Naviance, but I am pretty sure that fewer than 20% of our honor students apply to “tippy-top” schools.
Let’s see. “Across the United States there are 26,407 public secondary schools and 10,693 private secondary schools.” Princeton “Total Applicants: 27,290”. You really think 100 of them came from our school?
Part of the problem is inferring a meaning which was not originally intended. If you have a specific question to ask an AO, best to ask the question directly instead of trying to read between the lines.
As mentioned by someone else earlier, there are many kids that are not aiming for “tippy-top” schools. As an example, a pre-med may be better served attending a less competitive undergraduate school in order to present a higher GPA for med school admission. YMMV.
@ChangLa My son is highly ranked , will graduate with probably 30 AP credits, has many ECs, is an Eagle Scout awaiting his BOR and has a weighted GPA of 4.98 and not one Ivy on his list. Many students are motivated to do well school and challenge themselves. Maybe my son is the exception , but I doubt it.
“good lord, makes my head spin just thinking about what our kids have to do.” This is the problem. They don’t “have” to do anything. If they don’t love doing their EC’s they shouldn’t be doing them.
@mathyone - I really don’t know anything about your school so I will take your word for it. I was making a general comment, that the workload for high achieving US high school kids is eminently unsustainable, that the elite undergraduate institutions through their public pronouncements encourage the unsustainability, and the college counselors in competitive US high schools add to the feeding frenzy and wreck havoc on the psyche of parents and students with aspirations to the “tippy-top” schools. Like you, I also speak from personal experience. I hope that we can both respect and accept our individual experiences without any need for challenges and counter-challenges.
OP here, I think the reason that God gives us more than one kid is to convince us that it is not all about us. In this kid’s case, we see an important part of our job as facilitating her passions while insisting on balance. I don’t think she is blinded by Ivy mania, and we tell her on a regular basis that she should be taking coursework and doing activities that she enjoys without regard for the college choice. She knows that DD1 was very happy at her college choice, and it was a second tier at best. That said, I think she gets a lot of double messages, and it is evident from the postings above that we do as parents as well.
If I WERE thinking about college selection, I would think that her loss of ECs if she continues this pace might hurt her more than a few less AP/IB classes. And yes, our school is a school that has both AB and IB. She has already decided not to do IB, as at our school students who are into science aren’t as well served by that curriculum.
Just want to point out that dropping out of running might free up not just family time, but perhaps also time for an EC which the OP’s daughter prefers. My daughter ran year-round last year but is planning to drop running after XC to concentrate on things she is more interested in but hasn’t had enough time for. This should restore some balance (at least until she has to make up that PE class…)
So much I want to say. But I’ll just leave this here. We really do have choices.
Oh please. Don’t blame this on the common core. Your school and state have always had standards to meet. The common core is just a different set of standards.
My kids graduated from HS in 2003 and 2006. Both had similar amounts of homework. Both just did the work.
One was a musician who took two instruments outside of school, and played in two ore college ensembles and a brass quintet. These took many hours of time a week.
I don’t see anything unusual about your daughter’s course load and work. The good news is that cross con try is a fall sport which should be ending soon. This means she won’t have those practices and meets every day after school, thus freeing up some time everyday.
Agreeing with mathyone post 71…what about your D trying a less demanding sport? My S played basketball freshman year. It was a huge time commitment plus having to stay to watch varsity, the bus rides home after away games, and it was a 4 month season. He decided to try tennis instead last year and absolutely loved it. He had fun every day, practices and meets were never done later than 6pm or so, and the season was only 6 weeks.
Not just your school; that is a shortfall IMO of the IB curriculum.
By the way…neither of my kids were in accelerated math, and both only took three AP courses each. Both got accepted to great schools…and graduated from the colleges of their choice.
Oh…and the musician dropped all high school sports after sophomore year because they interfered with his outside music pursuits.
The other kid was on the swim team which is the never ending sports season. She managed to balance swim team time, and her academics from early November to late March every year without issue.
I’m going to advise against this, unless DC can get into AP English Language without Honors English. AP Lang is IMO the most valuable class in HS because it is so writing intensive. Good writing is not only a solid life skill, but the class will be invaluable when it comes time to write essays for college apps.
S16 got a D in AP Lang, but he got a 4 on the AP exam. My wife’s parents asked him why, and he said that he didn’t like the questions they gave him to write about. S18 is doing fine in Honors English, but there are always assignments he chooses not to do. They have way, way more assignments than I had in high school. They both probably spend less time on homework than the majority of other students in their programs, but probably spend as much time working outside class as I did in college. I get the impression that they like the status of getting into these programs, and actually love key some of the classes. Still, doing really well requires more work than they are willing to do. I told S18 that if he can’t do B level work without stressing himself out he should drop out of the program. I wouldn’t be disappointed in him dropping out, but I would be disappointed if he failed to take care of himself.
I agree. IB sucks. Many parents were extremely upset when our high school decided to drop AP and only offer IB. The district also made it extremely difficult for kids to transfer to the other high school that offers AP, requiring a one-in, one-out transfer. Almost all the transfer requests are in one direction, from the IB school to the AP school. I think those who made the decision to drop AP for IB should be fired.