Interesting about the public v. private pass rate - at our public the pass rate for AP Calc tests is about 95% every year and most get a 4/5. Granted, it’s a self selecting group of very strong math students!
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My kiddo was quick at math and self-studied in the back of the classroom in middle school to accelerate. Biking daily to pre-calc at the local high-school was the highlight of 8th grade. Now the challenge of biking to partial differential equations at the state flagship is the antidote to senior-itis. The acceleration helped keep boredom and frustration with middle and then high school at bay, but also resulted in a couple of Bs. It was 100% self-motivated and not what us patents pushed for or wanted. Plus, the Bs may hurt with college admissions—waiting on decisions now. Our big public schools can be difficult places for some advanced learners who aren’t interested in doing more school work outside of the school day. Sometimes math acceleration is simply a means of coping with or surviving a relatively uninspiring high-school experience.
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I don’t want to go into the curriculum at our school; I haven’t seriously paid attention to it, but I think to some extent kids can test out and do whatever level they want to do. My younger son in 12th grade is doing BC now. The older guy did BC in 10th, number theory and discrete math in 11th, a bunch of vector calculus in the AP EM course (the school has its own syllabus - there is a lot of math in the Physics course), other random topics in a post AP course in 12th grade called Math 6. The summer of 12th grade he self-studied a bunch of proof based math etc from the infinite napkin etc.
Coming to the benefits of acceleration, being advanced in a bunch of areas meant there were some external research awards and a school nomination to a prestigious summer camp. I think it also allowed him to a) do a bunch of advanced CS courses in high school, starting with AP CS A in 9th, algos / data structures in 10th (about 60% of the content of a T5 CS program data structures course), advanced topics like ML/AI and CV in 11th, do self-proposed research on NNs in 12th etc, b) read and understood a bunch of very advanced theory CS research while in high school – and TAed this material to the 12th grade class in a module that he designed, c) and eventually gave him the mathematical maturity to take half a dozen or so grad classes in math and theory CS by his 6th semester at a T5 school. Some of these courses were advanced algo classes by a Turing medal winning prof in the second semester of college. This allowed him to walk into an Amazon internship interview unprepped sophomore fall. Or to go into a quant finance internship interview unprepped in Junior fall. Two semesters of research with renowned faculty in CS etc … Useful if you want to go into grad school in theory CS. Advancement helps, if you can comfortably manage it. Your peers are also at the same level – in his case, perhaps 5-10% of his CS major class is at this level. There are reasonable benefits.
When you write to the honors program at UT Austin or to the honors program at UIUC for CS that you read a bunch of research by their young and bright faculty, and discuss particular papers that you liked in some depth, they tend to take your application seriously. It is not a chance event anymore. The director of the UT Austin honors program offers to introduce you to the faculty you mentioned if you come to the admitted student event. These are of course minor comforts. It is what you get to do with your math comfort in college that is the major benefit.
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My son took Calc BC junior year & AP Stat senior year. Not easy taking a 42 credit course load. You risk hurting your gpa. I recommend planning out the 4 years in advance. Looking back I would not have placed him in accelerated math freshman year. My daughter took Calc BC senior year & it worked in her favor. She’s a chemistry major at a top liberal arts school.
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At my kids’ public high school, the HS itself offers math classes beyond AP Calc BC – linear algebra and multivariable calc. Additionally, we’re in the same town as a prestigious university that has a program (not one of these for-profit ones like many colleges) that allows select kids to take course there if they have completed every class offered at the HS first with an A- or better, 5’s on every applicable AP test and various other requirements (pretty long list). The program is free but they are selective about who they let in and they force students to drop 2 classes at the HS to take it so it’s a big trade off. Nonetheless, there are hyper competitive kids who push to take a bunch of summer course to get through AP Calc BC by Sophomore and in some cases Freshman year, and Linear/Multi by Junior or Sophomore year so they can do a year or two of math at the University.
In terms of whether this is the kids or the parents pushing, I think it really varies. There’s definitely tiger parents but sometimes kids push themselves or just reach a maturity at different times and suddenly surge. And of course there’s always a small percent of true prodigies.
Interesting topic and something we are trying to figure out for our last kiddo going to college.
Our first child was not on the middle school advanced track. She has a reading speed issue and when the 6th grade test was given did not finish all of the questions… they did not give her extra time since it was a “special advancement test.” Fast forward to high school where the public school allowed anyone who made a B or higher to get on the honors track. Senior year she took both Calculus BC and Physics C scoring a 5 and 4, respectively on the tests. She did not go to the most vigorous school because she decided to also pursue her sport as a D1 athlete. However, she was at the top of her class as an engineer, and was able to really enjoy the process. She went to a public university.
Our second child went to a top 10 university also majored in engineering. Same track as his sister in middle school… although they did not even offer him the opportunity to take the “advanced math test” because he was inconsistent in his effort. He stayed at the private high school and because of the rules about honors and such was only able to take AP Calc. AB and Physics B… scored 5 on both tests. College for him was a real struggle. Most of the kids in his program came to freshman year with very advanced math and retook all of the basic calculus courses. Because of the grading he was always middle/bottom even if he had a “90” on a test. He graduated with his degree but it definitely was not the academic experience he wanted.
His advice to his little brother is take as much advanced math as possible and get ahead. If he had it to do over he would not have retaken any math classes he could place out of at that school. No matter how smart you might be there are a whole lot of other kids that spent middle school and high school prepared for this type of rigor and school.
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By the way I am not a fan of summer courses :-). You won’t have proper foundations. Also the core courses should not be skipped.
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This “race to calculus and beyond in high school so that you can repeat it in college” is strange. If the college will allow advanced placement*, it can be advantageous to do so, in allowing more schedule space to learn additional stuff in college.
*The student may want to try the college’s old final exams for the course(s) to be skipped to check knowledge of the material.
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Alway sage advise. The advantage of being ahead can be huge if the student has the foundation.
For most of the kids in his college math classes it was a way to make sure they had the highest GPA. Additionally, the entry-level math classes were taught at a theoretical level way beyond the “regular high school/AP” because of the type of students taking the class. Our son was one of the top students in his high school but really had no idea what “top” really meant.
Pre-meds, or students aspiring to get into majors with competitive secondary admission?
If they were at a significantly higher level, wouldn’t the college specify that AP credit cannot substitute, or require its own placement tests for advanced placement?
Generally from my son’s experience, the pre med and pre law kids carefully manage GPA because they have to. The physical sciences or math kids don’t hold back and take soft math classes to increase the probability of an A, because the incentives are not structured to favor such behavior. GPA is not super critical (ie don’t need close to a 4) for physical stem (eg physics or engg) or math kids. Outcomes depend either on research you do in college (for grad school) or interviews (for jobs) as opposed to a 4.0 gpa in college. 3.8 is fine. 3.6 is fine depending on the job or grad school. Below 3.5 you will start losing some opportunities. One reason kids retake the math is because the university requires it. The university requires it because often the university course is far more rigorous than the AP. Also, at a university, there are often 3-4 tracks of math starting freshman fall, catering to kids with different needs.
Right time. Absolutely appreciate this discussion.
While I think my child can handle acceleration (suggest by overall school performances and teachers). I am hesitated to encourage that. Still discussing with school.
My concerns.
- It is done via taking summer programs/after school programs before skipping one whole year of work.
- I have seen kids failed Algebra 2 in 8th grade and had to retake it in high school (to avoid bad mark in transcript)
- Not able to judge how solid the foundation will be later on studying Calculus by skipping a year or two.
The advantages I was told:
Acceleration in math will facilitate subject such as Physics earlier especially Calculous. Not sure how true it is.
Entering college having already had the equivalent of first semester calculus will allow starting the calculus-based physics sequence in first instead of second semester at many colleges. This could relieve some schedule pressure in some majors (e.g. engineering majors).
However, this advantage mainly shows up going from the +0 to the +1 track. Algebra 2 in 8th grade would be the +3 track, where the returns of accelerating beyond the +1 (or +2) track diminish other than for those students with very high academic strength in math along with very strong interest and self motivation in math.
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This is definitely my fear. Even if they do so well in school at the moment. It does not mean they are rock solid in these topics. (the depth) It is hard to tell from my perspective, the linkage between school performance vs ability to jump straight to advanced topics.
Based on my older kids, at least some colleges make kids take their own homegrown placement tests for math and science even if they also accept AP credit. My oldest had two take a couple online tests over the summer before his Freshman year, no prep or context for the test material, even though he wasn’t requesting to take any math or science course first year. FWIW, the test validated exactly the level of math he had completed (through AP Calc BC). He didn’t take a math class at college until second semester Junior year and started in Linear Algebra and did just fine. So at least in his case the HS courses, AP test and college course all seemed to be well calibrated with each other.
This is really helpful to know. Thanks. So for kids interested in CS, this is something to consider.
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I don’t know if there was a path there. It just happened. Fairly random. Starting sometime in 6th grade on both the math and CS journey. Lot of mucking around - factoring large primes, Ramsey theory, writing games in Python, Mesh networks, crypto kitties, Project Euler etc… The parent is just an observer… If I ask him now what he is doing, he’ll say that he doing a lot of counting. That is combinatorics.
In the school district my son was in at the time, they assessed students at the beginning of 2nd grade. A handful, that year 7, were tracked a year forward. When math hour rolled around, they walked down the hall and joined the 3rd grade class, replacing the 3rd grade kids that did the same to 4th, etc. By the time 6th grade rolled around parents, my wife and I included, were brought in to lead 7th grade math. This allowed him to be +2 on the @ucbalumnus scale. He started in Calc III and Physics II in college. That had advantages allowing him to walk with a thesis based MS in 5 years, while occasionally taking a light schedule.
I think it matters though when the tracking is done. It’s a lot easier to compress schedules in less complicated math.
I think it’s also important to realize that he would have still been able to get to advanced math classes like tensor calculus, numerical methods, etc. had he been on the normal track, which is +1 on this scale. He could have even done it if he’d been at 0. They just would have taken him a little more time.
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This gets me really nervous…
We have to decide to accelerate before summer. Ah I am really struggled to make such a decision. At one end, I think my child will be fine, but I do not like the fact that it will cost the summer time for academic reason :<