If you were a counselor at a high school, how would you determine whether to indicate whether a student asking for a counselor report for college application chose the “most demanding” course choices?
Assuming an AP curriculum and relevant honors offerings: 6 AP classes and a total, adding honors, DE, AICE, and AP together, of 16+ classes over 4 years.
IB is automatically “most rigorous”.
I think it would vary by and be unique to a given school so hard to pinpoint. What are the most ambitious students doing in that school? I think it needs to be judged in context to the norm and the overachievers as well as just considering IB/AP, etc. Some schools of many options, some very few.
^Yes, but whe you have a wealthy school with overarchievers, you don’t want to play into the AP arms race.
For schools that have few options, it’s paradoxically easier, since the most rigorous choice is usually pretty evident in that there are few choices.
The dicey part is whether the school offers honors/accelerated as a level between regular/CP and AP. When they don’t, it becomes harder to evaluate rigor, since you have to take into account type of classes taken in addition to their level (whereas at schools with lots of offerings you can assume core classes have been taken).
My daughter’s GC once told me that she evaluated whether a student had taken an AP in every core (English, math, science, history, world language) for the most rigorous designation. This is a school where most kids (even those who are at the top of the class) do not take AP classes until junior year.
Obviously, it would depend upon the school and its curriculum. However, I would think that with the exceptions of HS’s at both ends of the spectrum (Andover/Stuyvesant at one end, East Dubuque Vocational Tech at the other), the rigor levels should follow some type of bell curve. If not, then just like for some classes, adjust the curve.
This would really vary by school. If I had to look at our school and break them into categories from easiest to hardest it would be: 1) kids who are in all regular courses (maybe 40% of the class); 2) kids who are in half regular, half honors with maybe an AP or two in an area of strength (maybe 30%, my S19 falls in this category); 3) kids who are in all honors and take more APs in more than one subject area (maybe 20%, this is where my D16 was), and finally 4) kids who always take the highest level of everything including every AP they could (maybe 10%). At our high school I don’t think anyone can fit more than 9 APs due to restrictions on when you can take them and prereqs.
Our school puts into writing how many Pre-AP, AP, and/or IB classes are required to be taken to be considered “rigorous.”
Similar to @tutumom2001 our school spells out, a student must take “specific number” AP classes to be considered most rigorous.
The GC would know his/her own school. At my kids’ HS it was about # of AP and “pre-AP” courses, at my own very small private school, there were a couple of courses we were told colleges expect serious applicants from our high school to take, so we took them.
Agree that this is school specific and something that should be discussed with the guidance counselor.
@me29034 So would only the 10% in group 4 be labelled as having taken the most rigorous or would the 20% in group 3 also get that designation?
@adlgel My post was complete speculation on how I would do it. The question was "If you were a counselor…"So in my world only the top 10% would get most rigorous. But I don’t know how they really do it.
Most schools are not transparent about it. I’ve posted the following example before:
[url=http://www.trinitypawling.org/uploaded/Amy_Foster’s_Resources/Trinity-Pawling_School_2015-16_Profile_for_website_101815_ver_10_(1).pdf]This[/url] is an example of a school similar to mine:
[quote]
Most Demanding (13%) ≥ 4 AP classes
Very Demanding (20%) 3 AP classes
Demanding (29%) 1 or 2 AP class(es)
Traditional College Prep (37%) No AP classes
My son’s high school defines most rigorous as 8 honors/AP classes in 4 years (it’s one of the following Bay Area schools-Gunn/Paly, Saratoga, Lynbrook/Monta Vista). Of course most kids end up taking 10+ honors/AP classes.
For those high schools that just count AP courses, do they make any provision for completing the expected college-prep curriculum for highly selective colleges (where the “most demanding” designation matters)? I.e. if a student runs up the count of AP courses with human geography, psychology, statistics, and environmental science in place of precalculus, physics, and foreign language level (year) 3 and 4, would a counselor at such a high school still mark “most demanding”?
You know @ucbalumnus , at some schools AP Stat and Enviro and maybe even - gasp - Physics, Psych, languages and Human Geo - are very rigorous courses.
I know your yardstick is what AP replaces a semester class and what replaces a full year, but that seems to vary from college to college and for sure the difficulty of the class varies from school to school.
But then the question remains, should a counselor still mark “most demanding” if a student avoids some of the normally expected college prep curriculum (e.g. precalculus, physics, foreign language level (year) 3 and 4) in order to run up the count of AP courses?
@ucbalumnus , If a counselor did it, which seems is likely based on a few posts with their school’s policy, then the colleges will still see the lack of the normally expected curriculum during the curriculum review anyway right?
Counselor can mark it but the college will see if the courses chosen reflect what they want. Most of the ones we discuss here on CC seem to want the Bio-Chem-Physics series, 4 years English, 4 years math, 2+ years foreign language, social sciences including US History or whatever it is they specifically ask for. If a student has those plus 4 “easy” APs and got the “most rigorous” checkbox, so be it. If they took only those APs and not the rest of what hte college asks for, the college will see that too - regardless of the “rigorous” check.