<p>I am taking Honors Geometry this year and got a B in my first semester and am considering transferring out second semester into a regular Geometry Class, which is an easy A. I was wondering if it is really better to get a B (not guranteed) in an Honors Class than a A in non Honors class. My Geometry teacher is crazy and I am nto sure I can pull off at least a B second semester, but my mom is making me stay.</p>
<p>Advice?</p>
<p>Stay in Honors. Switching from AP to Honors or Honors to Regular can be seen a a sign of weakness or a sign that you don't really want to try or you give up easily. Stick it out and give it your best shot. A B in honors is better than an A in regular IMO.</p>
<p>Or - switch down to the regular geometry now, and do some summer programs through a summer school, community college, or independent study to catch up or get ahead. Colleges understand that you're busy during the year.</p>
<p>Keep the honors class, get an A. How? Well, one thing they never seem to tell you in HS (or college for that matter) is that you are not forced to rely on the assigned textbook. If it isn't clear enough, or some other circumstances exist in which it is not sufficient, then you need to take the initiative to look elsewhere. Nobody every tells you this, but I just did ;)</p>
<p>You have some of those other circumstances. Your teacher isn't doing the job. Well, believe it or not, there are people that learn math, economics, physics, etc. all by studying on their own. If your teacher isn't doing the job then figure you're doing self-study in which teacher controls the pace of the class and what you study, but you control the learning. And for a structured subject such as math it won't be too difficult to succeed. All it takes is some initiative, and colleges like initiative and determination. I even sense a great response coming out of this to an interview question or essay along the lines of "tell me about a problem you faced in school and how you solved it".</p>
<p>So make a deal with mom. You keep the class, she invests $20 to buy you a workbook called "Geometry - Plane, Solid & Analytic Problem Solver". For each chapter assigned in your school text, you read the text and try to understand as much as you can. Then you turn to the chapter in the workbook covering that material and try to solve the problems. Each problem has a full worked-out solution. If you get it wrong, study the answer until you understand it, then cover the answer and repeat it. You might also want to go to your school or public library and look for books about geometry just to get another explanation of the material.</p>
<p>Colleges care about whether students have challenged themselves. Honors classes are one way to show this. You say the regular class is "an easy A"; do you think adcoms don't know this too? Buckling down and figuring out a way to learn geometry, on your own if you have to, is what you should do. </p>
<p>And I've just begun to scratch the surface of what you can do. Have you tried setting up a study group to go over the material, or meeting with one friend from the class to go over it? Reworked your tests to get the wrong answers right, or is it just that once they're done you can forget that stuff forever? And so on ...</p>