<p>That must be a super-elite high school where the norm in math is to be two grade levels ahead of the high school norm in the US.</p>
<p>Just because the student is “behind” a group of super-elite math students does not mean that he is “behind” in general, even among potential applicants to highly selective universities.</p>
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<p>Even the student who will only complete precalculus and trigonometry will still be on track to complete a math, physics, or engineering major at a good university, starting from calculus 1 as a first semester frosh in college.</p>
<p>Because, unlike the SAT, AP exams typically are administered on weekdays by local high schools, and they are set up to serve their own enrolled students. </p>
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<p>Again, to provide some local context, at the top college prep high schools in what I believe to be the OP’s district, roughly one-third of the class is on the track that starts algebra in seventh grade. Perhaps they’re all “super-elite,” but it doesn’t feel that way when you live in the middle of it.</p>
<p>I.e. two thirds of the students are not on the two-grades-ahead-in-math track.</p>
<p>But this seems like the thing that Malcolm Gladwell may be trying to say in the college selection chapter of David and Goliath*. Perhaps the OP and student feel bad because the high school is filled with super-elite students and the student is not at the top of the class. But is that really such a bad place to be, if the student is still at the top end of math and science achievement overall?</p>
<p>An analogy would be, should the median student at Caltech feel bad because s/he is not at the top of the class there in math and science?</p>
<p>*I don’t agree with everything he says there, but there seem to be hints about what he is trying to get at in this very thread.</p>
<p>No, and I haven’t argued otherwise. All I’m saying is that I can empathize with the anxiety it creates when you realize there may be 150 kids just in the class at your own school “ahead” of you for placement at the most selective schools or even in the honors programs at our flagship.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s meaningful to consider what minimum admission standards are at colleges. Colleges recognize that some high schools don’t offer calculus or AP physics at all, and they don’t want to slam the door in the face of able students who come from a less-advantaged background. But plastered all over this site, and repeated in every single college admissions session I attended is the statement that top colleges will evaluate students in the context of their school and what opportunities were available to them. Telling him he doesn’t need to take AP physics is just bad advice. And if he LIKES physics, why on earth wouldn’t he want to take it? My daughter was sad to drop out of chorus, but she just liked physics too much to miss that AP class.</p>
<p>This kid has already scored higher on his SAT math than the average high school junior will, so telling him that there’s nothing wrong with being on the track that average students take is hardly helpful either. No, it’s not the end of the world, but clearly he can do better, and I think it’s worth trying reasonable approaches to correct what I think was a placement mistake (not holding him back a grade, but maybe a summer class or simply co-enrolling in geometry and alg2 next year). Those kids in geometry are not super-elite outliers. There must be a class of, say 25-30 of them or the school system wouldn’t offer geometry in the middle school. If his middle school is more typical than enormous (ours is 150 kids per grade) that’s about the top 20% of kids. Are you really telling me that a kid with an SAT score in the 99 percentile for his grade level doesn’t belong in that cohort?</p>
<p>I hate to break this to you, but taking geometry in 8th grade is not some kind of super-elite outlier. By definition, anything the public schools can offer to an entire class full of kids is not catering to outliers. My daughter was in precalculus in 8th grade and I know of kids more advanced than that.</p>
<p>No one is saying that. What I am saying is that the student’s current track leaves open the option of taking AP physics in senior year, if the student so desires (and the student probably has elective space to take a second AP science as well on his current track).</p>
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<p>I was not claiming that. What I was stating was that a high school where taking geometry in eighth grade is considered “behind” (rather than “ahead”) is an outlier of a high school.</p>
<p>When I was in high school (a public school where about a third of graduates then went to four year colleges), that was about the top 10-15% of the high school class. This is similar to the current percentage of graduating high school students who have taken an AP calculus test, so apparently not much has changed since then. Students more advanced than that came through once every few years when I was in high school.</p>
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<p>She is obviously an outlier. Should the OP’s son feel bad because, even if he goes through all kinds of schedule maneuvering, he will not be as advanced as your daughter in math?</p>
<p>@ucb, no, but it’s wrong to call the top 20% or so of kids “outliers”. They aren’t. That’s the normal honors track in that school system, as it is in ours. Ours is more aggressive, pushing maybe 40% into that track (and I think it’s too aggressive, but that’s another story). We are not a magnet school or anything, just a middle class public school in a fairly well-educated community.</p>
<p>Where 99% (or some other percentage much higher than the typical 30-35%) of the graduates go on to a four year college?</p>
<p>Schools like that are outliers; the double-advanced math students may not be outliers in those schools, but are outliers compared to the overall high school population (or even the college-bound high school population).</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus, if only your fantasies were true. Reality–5% drop out. Of the graduates, 11% don’t go to college at all. About 2/3 attend a 4 year college. Of course it’s better than average. You would expect that from the community I described, middle class with a fairly well-educated population. If you want to portray our school as some kind of outlier because you’re trying to discredit what I’ve said, go ahead. “Great schools” has our data and no reason to be biased and they rank our high school 7/10.</p>
<p>I will make one correction though. I think the percent coming in to the high school with geometry is closer to 30%. Middle school enrollment is a little higher than I thought.</p>
<p>mathyone, I’m confused. Where I live, a school where 89 percent are going to college and only five percent drop out school would an elite school.</p>
<p>But we have just two regular high schools. I am less than 45 miles from silicon valley. My kids went to a “private school”, and don’t have that profile.</p>
<p>@shrinkrap, our college-bound students average around 1660 on SAT. If you go to [Top</a> Average SAT Scores - California Schools Guide - Los Angeles Times](<a href=“http://schools.latimes.com/sat-scores/ranking/page/1/]Top”>Top Average SAT Scores - California Schools Guide - Los Angeles Times)
you can find a list with about 100 high schools in california which do better. (#1 on the list, Lynnbrook High in San Jose scores 1999, and there are plenty more schools in silicon valley and elsewhere which vastly outscore our school). I didn’t say our school system is not good. But I wouldn’t consider it a statistical outlier or elite school.</p>
<p>I’ll check it out; thanks. Perhaps more to the point, our two publics and one “private” had I think a total of six, maybe eight AP’s, and no more “honors” classes in 2011.</p>
<p>California is a very large state. There are 1304 high schools, plus 223 alternative high schools and 486 continuation high schools (total 2013). And that is just the public high schools. So those 100 high schools that do that well are only 5% of the total number of public high schools.</p>
<p>Also, many of the top high schools in that list have somewhat unusual demographics:</p>
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<li>Silicon Valley engineering/CS areas (lots of highly educated parents here).</li>
<li>Very wealthy areas.</li>
<li>Schools where university faculty kids attend (e.g. Palo Alto, Gunn, Berkeley).</li>
<li>Charter schools (where the mere motivation to attend separates the students from the general population).</li>
<li>Selective admission schools (e.g. Lowell).</li>
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<p>@shrinkrap, that’s unfortunate. They don’t sound like very good schools to me, but perhaps they have other redeeming qualities. The number of AP classes is going to depend somewhat on the size of the school. Obviously they can’t afford to run classes with just a few students. Ours is fairly large and offers most, but not all, of the AP classes.</p>
<p>I think another measure of how “elite” a school is, is to look at where the parents are sending their kids. We have enough parents opting out of our school to support several private schools in the area, and even some sending their kids to another public school. If our school were seen as that highly desirable, I don’t think many eligible kids would be sent elsewhere.</p>
<p>^ I didn’t think it was unfortunate until I came to CC. I thought we were alright. Husband went to Brooklyn Tech, and Columbia, and had a different opinion, but not strong enough for us to quit our jobs and move. Not that I could. We met working in an ER, and I was military. Husband said my D should take an SAT class, and take it again. I thought that was crazy. I googled it and found CC.</p>
<p>It would take at least one bridge, a car and driver to get to “better” public schools, and I am not convinced the privates ( one “Christian” and one Catholic within 50 miles and no bridges) offer something much better.</p>
<p>@Shrinkrap, well if it’s any consolation, I think the atmosphere at some of these top schools can be quite stressful and hyper-competitive. Reading the comments of some of the kids on here who go to schools which rank everyone was quite sickening to me–all the jockeying for school rank and the backstabbing climate. </p>
<p>You and your husband seem like well-educated people and I’d just do your best to try to keep some intellectual engagement and high quality reading for your kids. Some summer programs or online classes might also benefit them. Good luck.</p>
<p>Thanks! D graduated from Duke in 2012, and son is a junior in ME at Loyola Marymount ( a real roller coaster!). Their high school graduating classes were about 84 and 64 respectively. I went to a school in Queens which was shut down because it was a persistant problem and couldn’t graduate 50 percent of its students. I had more than 1000 in my graduating class, so they didn’t care that I’d already left for Howard. I met husband at Yeshiva! Haha!</p>
<p>@ucb, ok so by the SAT measure, our school is around the 95th percentile for california schools. There are perhaps 1000 schools in the country offering physics C (estimated based on the 17k test-takers), and ours is not one of them. But if you want to call it an elite outlier, ok. When I think of an outlier, I think of something that’s a bit more off the curve. More like some of those top silicon valley schools or the magnet schools.</p>
<p>None of this changes the fact that the OP’s son is behind the honors cohort in his school and would probably be better off if he can join them. This is assuming that he is finding algebra1 quite easy. Maybe the OP’s son doesn’t care, but to my kids, being in a class or group with a good group of peers makes a huge difference in their experience and enjoyment.</p>
<p>Nothing prevents him from taking the honors (or whatever the most rigorous version) math courses he is currently on track for. For example, he will be in geometry in 9th grade; he can choose the most rigorous version of that. In 10th grade, he can choose the most rigorous version of algebra 2, etc… In any of these cases, he will be with the honors cohort, though such a cohort may have a mix of students who are 0, 1, and 2 years advanced (i.e. honors algebra 2 may have a mix of 9th, 10th, and 11th grade students).</p>
<p>I.e. there is no reason to do scheduling contortions to go from 1 to 2 years advanced for the sake of finding an honors cohort in his math courses.</p>