If you were a counselor, how would you determine “most demanding” course rigor? (versus other options of “very demanding”, “demanding”, “average”, “below average”)
Assume that you work at a high school where a full range of college-prep academic courses is offered, honors courses are offered in many subjects, and advanced (e.g. AP, IB HL, college) courses are available for students ready for college-frosh level material.
The actual question appears to imply a competition or ranking between college prep students (which may be part of the reason for the concerns about hyper-competition within a school): “In comparison with other college preparatory students at your school, the applicant’s course selection is: …”. Would you use relative ranking within this year’s senior class, or base the answer on some sort of absolute standard regardless of whether this year’s seniors chose more or less demanding courses than previous years’ seniors?
without too much thought, if the premise is ib>ap>honors then I’d assign a point system for each type of class taken and sum up the points. So maybe
honors = .5
ap = 1.0
ib = 1.5
I would use an absolute standard but regularly review the standard.
I would indicate where a particular student stood wrt total number of courses, and number of weighted courses.
I am not sure if or how I would handle breadth. A student who is taking weighted courses in only one area of the curriculum by concentrating only on STEM or only on foreign languages or reading/writing intensive classes is a very different type of student than one who has sampled from more than one area in choosing weighted classes.
Another issue that might come up is whether a student should be given extra points for having reached the highest level of instruction offered in a subject such as math or a foreign language. That is, should a student who has gotten to BC calc or beyond if offered, be deemed to have taken a more demanding schedule than one who has only gotten to AB, but who has taken advanced classes in foreign language or AP studio Art, etc?
Keeping in mind that what a counselor, supporting 20 students at a private school, has a completely different outlook on this than a counselor, supporting 600 students at a public high school.
In general, I think they set loose standards for each range. For example, if the school offers and IB program, that would likely fall under most demanding. Then, if a student took X number (which varies by school) of AP or DE classes, they may also fall under “most demanding”, though most kids would fall one step behind the IB kids. AP light/honors would then be next, and so forth.
I think counselor’s would give the benefit of the doubt to the student, when assigning this ranking. If they are close to “most demanding” give it to them…while still trying to be fair to all of the students.
It’s not necessarily competitive within the students. I interpret it as “given the options that this student had and the classes he or she could’ve taken to graduate, what is the level of rigor of the classes he or she actually took?” There’s no hard and fast standard. A mix of IB and AP classes can be very demanding, as can a selection of all AP classes. IB classes aren’t always more rigorous than AP classes - it depends on the course itself and the teacher(s).
Breadth doesn’t necessarily matter, in my opinion - a student can have a very rigorous courseload that spans across the curriculum or she can concentrate in a particular area. I don’t think those students are “very different types,” either - students are individuals. (Besides, I think it’s difficult for students to concentrate in high school anyway.)
At some schools, IB is not a good fit for STEM students. (Ours only offers SL Math and SL Biology for STEM subjects.) I suspect that at our HS (large public), students get the “most rigorous” checkmark for both IB and STEM AP heavy schedules and for schedules that include dual-enrollment classes after the courses offered by the school.
@juillet That’s how I would look at it. If Jessica has a choice between regular, honors and AP, does she consistently choose AP? Does she only choose AP in certain subjects, and regular in others? Does she consistently choose honors, and not stretch to AP classes?
@quietdesperation though it’s possibly a subject for another thread, there’s not a consensus that IB>AP, except possibly at IB programs. I’ve heard the question asked specifically of admissions reps over the last two-three years, and they’ve been consistent in equating AP/IB (and in some cases have included AICE, though some have also expressed that they’d just as soon not see dual enrollment).
From what I have read, AP and IB HL are given similar levels of advanced placement by many colleges, with variation by subject, though IB seems to have a much higher minimum workload. Seems like AP is a more efficient way of getting advanced placement, though IB may better train time management (at considerable time cost).
Correct, although top colleges that give AP credit for a 5, often only give IB credit for a 7, and statistically, it’s harder to get a 7. For this reason, students in some subjects, like Calc BC, are often better served, from a credit perspective, to take the AP exam in addition to the IB.
[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
D’s school offers an IB diploma and some AP classes. My understanding is that students need to take the full diploma to say they have taken the “Most Demanding” course of study. (This has not been laid out formally for the students or parents. I get the impression that most of them don’t recognize that this is something counselors are asked to do.)
I never asked our school where they drew the line as I was fairly confident my kids probably took enough APs to qualify.
Older son took Calc BC and Linear Algebra, 4 science APs (including CS as a freshman), AP Latin, APUSH and AP Econ. I don’t think anyone took more APs than he did, but it would certainly have been possible since he skipped out on the English APs.
Younger son took Calc BC, 2 science APs (one was Physics C), and 3 History APs.
I also believe GCs will be generous and I believe that high school staff and administrators know which classes are more difficult than others and which teachers are tough graders.
I definitely would not quantify courses- assigning relative values numerically as suggested by one poster. The idea is to tell admissions that a student consistently or rarely took advantage of the toughest courses available, or somewhere in between. Admissions wants to know if the student had mainly regular courses because that was all that was available- so as to not penalize students who lacked opportunities others had. They want to know if the student usually went the regular route when the more advanced classes would have worked. btw- some HS’s do not use weighted grades or plus/minus qualifiers. I know scheduling conflicts meant my son chose some “lesser” choices to be able to take some other courses.
The details don’t matter to college admissions- they want a simple above/average/below average type answer without needing to spend time on the details. Likewise the guidance counselor has the leeway to acknowledge that student X did the challenging work instead of the safe path for grades. GC’s see so many profiles they know if a student stands out in the crowd (and most students won’t, by definition). They will see the number of AP’s but need to know quickly if that is the norm for the school or outstanding.
If it were me I would have enough data from the school’s students to see the curve for numbers of AP, IB and Honors to know what is one, two or more standard deviations from the norm. I would not need to know how tough the teachers are/are not. I would know why the student took French and another required English class instead of the AP version because that student’s conflict would have stood out when they were scheduling classes. The only wiggle factor is in how generous to be- too many can’t stand out from the rest.
I would take a literal interpretation of “most demanding.”
In order to be classified as “most demanding” I would look at every case where the student has a course choice and they would have had to choose the most difficult/demanding/advanced course in every case. The student would also have had to take the maximum permissible course load during the course of their academic career and there should be no case where a non-academic course (e.g. physical education, study hall, etc) was taken when an academic course could have been taken instead.
I wouldn’t generally just count AP classes – a student who took 5 lighter weight AP’s (Psych, Gov, Geography, Stats, Calc AB) didn’t have nearly the degree of challenge taken on by students who took AP Calc BC, AP Lang & Comp, AP Lit & Comp, AP Chem and AP Spanish.
By that metric no one in our high school’s performing arts program would have had a most demanding schedule. That would be a pretty sad little world. NYS requires phys ed every year which makes it more difficult to overload on academics the way I see some students here doing. I think you should have time in high school to daydream, read for pleasure, play in a band or whatever else floats your boat. That doesn’t mean you can’t take a reasonable load of APs (say 8 to 10 over 4 years), but it doesn’t mean you have to take every single AP your high school offers. My oldest got into Harvard without AP English, younger one (with slightly lower scores and grades) got into Tufts, U of Chicago and Vassar doing the same.)
One should also remember that many AP courses will only be offered in one time slot. Both my kids were forced to take a regular instead of honors course at least once because of schedule conflicts.
Wow for a counselor with 600 seniors, that would be a lot of work! Imagine trying to figure out when each kid had a choice each year. Or that a kid didn’t take class A because that year it conflicted with class B and took something less rigorous. I think a general pattern would suffice. I think “every case” is a bit much.
And no case where a non-academic course is taken? What about extra curricular classes like choir, drama, journalism, year book, band, sports?! (At least at our HS these take up a class period to participate)
I would call the student into my office and assess the size of the bags under the eyes to determine if the amount of sleep deprivation was sufficient to warrant most rigorous designation. After seeing dozens of students, you kind of get calibrated.