<p>There are very few public schools that don’t offer calculus. In fact, I don’t know any and I know a ton of public high schools (online, offline). In any case, if the HS doesn’t offer a course, they will let you take it at a nearby college, community college, online courses etc. and it won’t be a show stopper in terms of having to go to a 2nd tier BS, seriously.</p>
<p>Well, I know of one. It’s not the worst in our state, so I think once you start looking at high schools in rural areas, you’ll find a few more schools which don’t offer the courses they should. A cousin managed to craft calculus as an independent study. The school’s official line on that issue is that “not enough students are capable of calculus.” Having met my cousin’s friends, I believe more students would do well in calculus. Of course, it would help if the school tried to prepare them for calculus.</p>
<p>Local community colleges are fully enrolled, after the crash. It can be difficult to get a seat in a calculus course, as so many majors require it, and the CCs give preference to enrolled college students. </p>
<p>Taking a course off campus can work, but you must work out transportation.</p>
<p>Very few people come to BS from rural high schools that don’t offer calculus. There are a lot of high quality online courses that you can take even from Tenney, MN if that mattered.</p>
<p>Yes, CTY is the saver, and it seems they are offering more and more FA. Btw, we start receiving fundraising calls from CTY… So, pulsar, how many schools have you applied? All top tier?</p>
<p>Only HADES minus S.</p>
<p>At a girl!</p>
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<p>I had to laugh at this, pulsar. Good luck getting a cash-strapped rural public school to pay for anything that is not state-mandated. Yeah, they’ll let you take it - after school or in the summer, and only if you can pay for it. I am very happy for you that these types of public schools are unfamiliar to you. But the reality is that often, schools will have to spend all their dollars on mandated remediation programs like Academic Intervention and GED programs, so they don’t really have much energy for the kid who wants to take calculus, or discuss literature.</p>
<p>Here’s a little story to give you an idea. I know of a nineth grade English class that just spent the last eight weeks reading Romeo and Juliet out loud in class, stopping after every four lines so that the teacher could explain what was happening, essentially translating the language from English to English. This is not an “inner city” school where a high percentage of the kids are English language learners, but a school that ranks fairly high in the region based on its state “report card.”</p>
<p>I wanna know if Pulsar is planning to open her own acceptances/rejections, or if dear parents are on the hot seat for that maneuver. :)</p>
<p>RBGG: Sorry you don’t like the bean dip. Maybe some guacamole?</p>
<p>Pulsar’s point is valid in my home state; as long as parents are willing to transport the kids to CC, high school students are able to take all or some of their classes at the CC, and the state money follows the kid–the school has no say in the matter. However, they have to be 16. Lots of people here homeschool their kids and then send them full-time to the college.</p>
<p>As a homeschooler, I’ve heard from lots of parents in various states who have cobbled together rigorous high school programs for their kids, using a variety of on-line, ps, CC, and home study coursework. It takes a huge amount of effort and savvy on the part of the parent, however. Still, it was one of the possibilities we were juggling last year, and might have been a better option than a second-tier school–hard to say without taking a closer look at that choice.</p>
<p>I’m curious-
How many kids/parents here would say "If I can’t get into an Ivy League school I see no point in applying to, say, Middlebury, Wesleyan or Emory. I’ll just go to my flagship state U… My guess is that it would be a whole lot more common in states with strong and varied state systems such as California than in states with mediocre options.</p>
<p>p.s. This isn’t meant as a snarky question. I’ve seen many students make this decision and be very happy with it.</p>
<p>^^I think it’s somewhat like boarding school app process - it depends on what public college options one has. If it’s UCB, UCLA or even honor programs of some lesser known state colleges, the likelihood of choosing the public college option over a non-ivy private school that cost way much more is high. The difference is that in college scence, many families may expand their list of “great” or “acceptable” list of private colleges to include some non-ivy colleges, which makes sense because there are way more colleges than boarding schools to choose from in the first place.</p>
<p>Update: I asked my daughter what she’d prefer in terms of “who should open the admissions decision packet/email”, and she said that she would get the mail from the mailbox that day…to not even bring it to school at the afternoon pick up. I guess the same goes for email/online notification…</p>
<p>There are plenty of schools that don’t offer calculus, or only have one class, or won’t let kids skip over other classes to get to calculus. I know a boy in a good school who got mis-tracked in 6th grade and never was allowed to advance up.
Some schools allow kids to take courses online but that may be only if the parents pay for it and do all the arranging. I did that for mine in middle school and it was a lot of work. If I hadn’t been a very savvy mom, it would not have happened.
Some schools allow kids to take classes at a local community college or four year college - if the parents can manage the transportation issues which presumes either a kid who drives or a parent who is at liberty.
Small high schools often don’t offer calculus. Some are terrible at teaching it too. I looked up a school I know about. It offers one section of calculus. 75% of the kids who took the AB calc exam failed.</p>
<p>Way to go daughter of SevenDad!</p>
<p>Bravo, Seven Dad!!!</p>
<p>I’m impressed you asked and her reply sounds pretty clear and decisive how she wants to handle it.</p>
<p>BTW, I like bean dip and guacamole and didn’t get the word play, double entendre, but then again I am pretty concrete.</p>
<p>I understand different strokes for different folks, I’m good with that. I think the conversation with the adolescent needs to happen though and not just parents decide unilaterally what they’re going to do with the letters.</p>
<p>@ThacherParent/RBGG: While it was never part of my SOP, I appreciated the “other” POV shared by some parents on this thread, and asked her over dinner. I wasn’t surprised by her response, but I think she was surprised by my support of it.</p>
<p>Agreed. I always benefit from someone with an opposing perspective on things commonly expressed here, and I know from parenting two different kids that one size doesn’t fit all.</p>
<p>I would prefer however, that those who disagree not take it to a personal degree and start claiming that the reason for their point of view is because they have a closer relationship with their child, i.e. putting down the other person’s viewpoint by suggesting something is wrong with the relationship between the other parent and child.</p>
<p>That’s just uncalled for and seems overly defensive.</p>
<p>Sorry for not being more direct RBGG–the pass the bean dip allusion means, more concretely, now that we’ve learned (usefully) that we have different families, different kids, different levels of caring about who opens what mail, maybe we should move on to something less likely to bring out judgments (veiled or overt) about one another’s parenting styles and choices. Even comments like “Way to go…!” might be read as a veiled criticism, never mind the ones you mention–so why not agree to disagree and meander our way back to the original thread?</p>
<p>Anyway, that’s what I was trying to do…except… Just a heads up for those of you who have kids who want to be the first to open up the mail–the acceptances that were directly emailed to us were emailed to parental emails, not to kids’. You might want to make an advance plan for how to handle that. In our case, my son and I sat down together, I opened my email, and he clicked on the message. I’m glad I was there–I’ll remember that smile for a long, long time. </p>
<p>Oh and a related note…Exeter’s emails often seem to end up in junk mail, so don’t panic if there’s nothing in your inbox on March 10!</p>
<p>For us, only Exeter’s came to parents. The student looks up the decision on Go Choate. Deerfield and Andover both sent packages/letters. </p>
<p>Which ones specifically sent parents emails please besides Exeter?</p>
<p>Oh BTW the Bravo…i.e. “way to go,” was for the discussion that took place with the teen, not because their was a decision either way about whether the teen opened the mail or whether the parent did.</p>