My daughter is entering her Junior year of high school and she currently has 7 courses on her schedule. I’m a little worried that it will be too much, but she wants to keep the rigor high enough that she has a chance at some of her reach schools.
She hasn’t taken the SAT yet, but we’re hoping her reaches will be schools like Notre Dame and Boston College and her matches will be schools in the Lehigh, Richmond, Villanova, and Bucknell tier.
Here’s her current schedule:
Honors PreCalc
AP Chem
AP US History
Honors English
Spanish
AP Computer Science Principles
AP Stats
I think she should drop AP Stats and change from AP CS Principles to AP CS Programming.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Will schools like Notre Dame and BC consider 6 classes rigorous. I might call them, but my experience has been that schools won’t give you a direct answer to questions like this.
Stats is one of the easier, more straight forward AP courses and shouldn’t be too challenging. Chem and APUSH are the two course that stand out to me as having a heavy work load but she isn’t take AP language so I think her schedule looks doable.
FWIW, it’s not the colleges you should be talking to regarding rigor, but the school guidance counselor. He/she is the one who will be checking off the course rigor box on your daughter’s transcripts.
Also, Lehigh and Bucknell have acceptance rates under 25% and should be considered reaches.
Ditto for Computer Science Principles.
Yup. S/he is the one your daughter needs to ask.
As long as she’s on track for Calc in senior year, she can drop AP Stats without any issue. It wouldn’t hurt to call the colleges, but as others have posted, this should be discussed with her, you and the GC. I’ve heard from enough adcoms that AP Stats is not considered rigorous vs AP Calc, AP Physics, AP Chem, but that doesn’t mean that adcoms everywhere think that. Maybe ND and BC adcoms think it’s rigorous. Good luck!
I don’t think it matters much as long as she has similar rigor to others and what does she want to take?
AP CS principles is better than programming because it is specifically designed to introduce students to the various fields related to CS rather than being straight programming (which, for some students, can be a big turn off when done on itnosn, without the broader context Principles provides).
She could drop AP stats and take a free period -6 academic classes including 3 APs would be considered quite sufficient for the universities you’re talking about.
Agree that CS principles is a better first CS course than CS A, whether or not she may choose to major in CS in college.
Sorry for the very long(6 months!) delay in responding to this thread. Junior year for my daughter has been a whirlwind for her, and for me. It’s been non-stop.
She did end up dropping AP Stats and switching from AP CS Principles to AP Java. For the benefit of other kids faced with this decision, I’ll give a little background. My daughter had already had a half year course in Java before Junior year, so she already knew she liked programming. She likes AP Java a lot and feels like she made the right choice.
I guess Principles would be a good intro for a kid who isn’t sure if programming is something they’d like, but I haven’t heard of a single kid who has liked it. It might just be our school, but I know of a student at another school who also didn’t like it. He had programming experience too, though, so that might be the common thread.
Thanks very much for the replies everyone. I remember reading them 6 months ago but I got swept back into the whirlwind before I had a chance to reply.
Just a note on AP CSP - my daughter and her friends are certainly enjoying it. While it touches on programming through JavaScript, a lot of time is spent on cyber security, internet operations (IP, DNS, etc), and the basics of data structures, algorithms, etc. I think it would provide good background knowledge for many students, and a good underpinning for those interested in coding.
They’re all freshman, which probably makes a difference, and that’s probably the right time to take it. She’s had some Java/Python and will be taking a programming class next year and then AP CS as a Junior.
Lehigh is going to be a reach…and they will reject her if they feel she is using the school as a safety.
@RichInPitt, that’s good to know. I forgot that they cover Networking and Security. I agree that those topics are good to know. I wasn’t trying to say it isn’t a good course. I just think it could be a step down for a kid who wants to get deep into programming while in High School.
A lot of kids at our school take an intro non-AP programming class in sophomore year. And then the guidance counselors really push AP Principles on them for junior year. I don’t like that because they won’t know enough Java to do anything substantial until after senior year, which rules out doing meaningful projects before college application time. I’m saying this is true for the average kid. Kids who are really into it will probably learn enough on their own to do substantial projects.
I like what the kids at your daughter’s school are doing. Take Principles as a freshman and then you still have enough time to get to AP Java and do something impressive before college application time(if the kid takes to it).
@twogirls, I agree. I wasn’t saying Lehigh would be easy. Just that it might be easier than the schools on her other list.
I know all about Lehigh. It’s one of those schools that rejects kids all the time if they aren’t serious about it. I’m pretty sure a boy who was second in his class at a school near us got rejected by Lehigh.