My son is a very mathy kid who does math problems for fun. He is going into 8th grade and will be doing PreCalculus this coming Fall. PreCalculus in 8th grade is not unusual in my area where there are many kids who are advanced in math.
We would be applying to private schools for his 9th grade year. I am looking at both Harker and Proof school for High School. More specifically, I am looking at their post-AP math program. I see that Harker offers the usual Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Discrete math and a few other topics. I looked at Proof school and they offer a lot more options for post-Calculus level (obviously, because they are a math oriented school). My son ultimately wants to double major in physics and math when he goes to college. He has zero interest in math competitions and has instead spent time participating in university Math Circles, reading fun math books and working on challenging math proofs as a hobby. Given this temperament, I am wondering if he will thrive in Harker where the math department seems to be oriented towards mentoring its top talented students for competition success. I am not sure if he is mathy enough to get into Proof School given that he has a rather broad exposure to various areas of math rather than a deep focus on any one area.
Could anyone help me out with information on how a mathy but not very competitive kid might fare in the admissions process in both of these schools?
Hi, I can’t speak to the admissions process as we didn’t apply to those, but we did tour Proof a couple of years ago. I was under the impression that Proof was for curious, inquisitive kids and that you don’t have to be competitive. My kid did not apply – too small. What about Nueva, have you looked at that?
DS went to MathPath a few years ago and one of the instructors was from Proof School, Sam Vandervelde. Pretty amazing guy and my son could not stop talking about him and his classes.
If he is still at the Proof School then I would definitely go there, although admittedly I am not familiar with the Harker School. Best of luck!
Curious how things turned out for your son? Our son has a similar profile, a year behind yours. Would appreciate any additional insights you gained this year.
My son attended Harker for 3 years. Be careful. The kids are not good in STEM because of math teachers. Purely outside parents pushing or the outside math they do. We ultimately ended up at Stanford Online and are much happier. Also applied to Proof but my son did not get in. They tend to prioritize female applicants since boy heavy. My son took AP calc in 8th grade and loved his math teacher at SOHS. I’d also look at Nueva. Proof kids are very different than Harker kids. To be honest, Harker is more a school for asian population to socialize with other Indian or Chinese families. We found reverse racism. Not a heathy or diverse enviornment.
one more item to note…Harker would never allow AP classes in 8th grade like SOHS. They work hard to hold kids back until they get to high school. So better to enter in High school when already advanced. I know brilliant students that were not allowed to advance in math classes there. They would put impossible standards–must have a 98% and then teacher takes off for ridiculous clerical things and student can’t place into an appropriate class. Proof is the complete opposite from what I could tell. They are looking for intellectuals not “hoop jumpers.”
It’s so strange to hear about racism at Harker school. My best black friend studied well there. Perhaps such situations are rare?
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Proof kids are very different than Harker kids. To be honest, Harker is more a school for asian population to socialize with other Indian or Chinese families. We found reverse racism. Not a heathy or diverse enviornment.
I believe they were implying that whites were discriminated against. That’s usually what is meant by the phrase “reverse racism”.
It is amusing the value that some place on taking calculus before high school. I do not recall any real mathematician being dismissive of another just because they didn’t take calculus at a young age.
Sometimes this may be a reaction from White people finding themselves in what may be the unfamiliar (to them) position of being one of the apparently lower-performing racial/ethnic groups, especially if White people are obviously a minority there.
But that is hardly unique to a few specific private schools.
I don’t know if “lower-performing” is perhaps the most accurate term, here. (And I think your posts are always tremendous, and well thought out.) Not personally calling you out at all, just pointing out what I perceive to be a bit of a semantic discussion in general, in terms of maths.
My child is in a local math circle, and is literally the only type of student of their kind represented out of dozens, if not over a couple of hundred kids. Generally I dislike mentioning my kid’s ethnicity or sex online for many reasons - but the most important one being, it shouldn’t matter. So our family, and our kid, doesn’t take the “lack of representation” personally.
That being said, the circle, visually-speaking, is overwhelmingly male, Asian, followed by East Asian/Indian, followed by some Asian females, Indian females, and not a ton of Western European representation, a bit more Eastern European. It’s a competitive process to enter. Many kids are rejected. Why? They are not on an advanced enough math track in school, at an early age.
Personally, my kid was rejected before being accepted, for this very reason. School placement.
Many foreign-born parents (and for my American-born kid, that means both parents, who legally emigrated here a few decades ago) discover something that American parents do not about the school system. Advancement in maths and sciences is important, because the American track does not really tell you this, but expects it of applicants to the most competitive STEM schools now.
So, in my personal experience, it’s not that “White” parents have lower-performing kids. It’s just that tech jobs in the past two decades have been both offshored, while hiring a large number of H-1B visas domestically. Western countries, particularly America, have taken in a massive number of these workers, while retiring and firing domestic applicants. (Seen this personally in my spouse’s company - my spouse also is an anomaly in the tech field; it bears no impact on their technical skill/job competence.)
The Asian/Indian applicants have tech parent immigrants (again, similar to our family) that want success for their kids. The culture has changed radically due to this tech employment fact.
To say that long-term American families of Western European descent are lower-performing isn’t quite accurate, IMHO, simply because raising kids in the Western world has often embraced a more holistic view of general childhood development. It’s why so many people globally would risk it all to get here.
More and more parents are being caught off-guard about how hard it is to get into schools now, due to the increase in population, and adding foreign students to the mix.
The kids of immigrants are taught to start tech work easily. Used to be more common that tinkering, curiosity and giftedness led to engineering school. Now, increasingly, it’s just more direct training at a young age.
No arguments here.
That has been my observation as well.
Some people I know are willing to be liberal/antiracist in theory, but reality is another story.
While people look at the more obvious differences in race / ethnicity and try to draw conclusions from that, what is more likely behind what is seen here is that immigration is selective. There is also a self-selection process in immigration, in that immigrants are likely to have higher motivation than others in their origin countries.
Consider that immigrants from the US tend to be among the following groups:
- Laborers for agricultural, hospitality, and construction (some unauthorized, heavily from Mexico, generally lower educational attainment than the general population in the US or Mexico).
- Highly skilled people coming on work visas that select based on job skills and employer sponsorship (from various parts of the world, heavily from Asia due to the large population there, but also some from various other parts of the world, but somewhat fewer from rich countries because people in rich countries have less motivation to move).
- PhD students coming on student visas (from various parts of the world, heavily from Asia due to the large population there).
- Family unification (similar to immigrants who came previously within a generation or so).
Obviously, groups 2 and 3 tend to have high educational attainment – more than half of immigrants from India and China have bachelor’s degrees, which is far higher than the general population in the US, India, and China. It should not be surprising that their American kids are much more likely to be high achieving with such a parental situation that confers both nature and nurture advantages in terms of educational achievement. But you will also notice, among White and Black people, an overrepresentation of recent immigrant heritage among the high educational achievers, for the same reason. But, because their numbers are small compared to the overall White and Black populations in the US, they do not define the stereotypes for their races.
This is obviously an old topic, but it does not look like anybody replied from the Proof perspective. Proof is an obvious choice if your kid loves math, but the range of kids who thrive at Proof is vast. The main requirement is that they love learning. Proof history, literature and other STEM classes are as rigorous as the math classes. The school is small and very welcoming. The kids are incredible and love to learn, not just math, but nearly anything. There is a strong emphasis on collaboration and collaborative learning and on kindness as a virtue. Although they perform well at math competitions (and chess and robotics) there is no pressure to compete and no favoritism based on competitive performance.
Just stumbled upon this forum, and while this thread is old, I’d like to chime in by saying we are new to Proof as a 9th grader. My son was interested in Proof because he’s one of those mathy kids. But what really impressed me after we started Proof is its rigor programs outside of its math curriculum, including literature, art, humanity and science. While we have only been at Proof for less than 3 months, at this time I can comfortably say we came for its math but if we stay, it’s because of it’s overall outstanding academic programs.