“Asking my daughter’s school counselor about what qualifies to be checked off as “most rigorous” has made me a persona non grata at her school.”
@LeastComplicated - you are not alone. My oldest son is graduating HS this year and I realized that much of his success in college admissions was due to luck and his personality guiding him to make certain choices early instead of any sort of reasonable approach or plan of action. My youngest son is starting HS this upcoming year and since he’s been very aware of his older brother’s trials and tribulations in the college app process, he wanted to make sure that he was planning courses that would allow him many college options. Sounded like a smart idea. We talked about the “most rigorous” endorsement that that GC can give on his recommendation and suggested he show the GC his schedule and 4 year rough plan to see if it would qualify for the “most rigorous” designation.
No dice.
Even though this is a magnet school that’s ranked the #1 public school in our state and where every kid goes to college, the GC office treated DS2 like he was crazy for asking such a thing. After trying three times to make appointments, after finally informally talking to one GC and the GC acting like he had no idea what “most rigorous meant”, I had to get involved. Still didn’t get fantastic help, mostly vague answers similar to what you received. Either there is no official system to determine what is “most rigorous” or the GC is making a judgment call on the fly… comforting.
“My daughter’s schools’ counselors met individually with students with their parents early junior year to discuss exactly what they send to colleges, the criteria for rigor, reviewed the individual students’ class standing/rank, etc… IMO, the GC should be providing that information to help guide the student on how to make their college list.”
That would be fantastic, but again, not remotely what is available at my kids’ school. (Which again, is the top public school i the state, usually listed as one of the top 20 in the country and has 100% of the students going to college, so it’s not like there are huge discipline issues or that college isn’t the standard goal.) Starting in 9th grade, there will be occasional grade wide information sessions - maybe 2 per year - in the auditorium where a school official gives some general guidance about being college ready. No individual counseling given or available. My son who just graduated had a total of 3 individual sessions with the GC as follows:
Session #1 - August/September of senior year each student is allotted one hour of time with the GC, you’re welcome to bring a parent. I went with my son to this session and we brought a list of 15 possible colleges of interest divided into safety, match, reach. We wanted the GC’s input on whether the list was realistic and what should be removed from or added to the list. Instead, we spent the first 45 minutes waiting patiently while the GC read DS’ file and asked some intro questions since they’d never met and GC had no idea about any of DS school record. The next 10 minutes contained accurate but very generic talk about how the admissions landscape has changed and how competitive it is now and during the last 5, the GC glanced at the list, shrugged and said it looked reasonable. Nice guy, but totally useless. And at exactly one hour, we were ushered out and the next student waiting in line went in to have a similar meeting.
Session #2 - October (next available appointment, after many EA deadlines had passed) son went alone to this one. One hour review of son’s app. Sounded about as helpful as the first session.
Session #3 - December - brief meeting to discuss some issues with Common App formatting.
And that was it. I now understand why so many of the families hire private admissions counselors. And why low and middle income families fall through the cracks. And why for such a good school (the school sat average is just under 1400) so many of the students end up at our state schools.
Milee, on CC , a lot of adults have a funky reaction when kids post, asking if their planned schedule will earn a “Most Demanding.” Posters seem to consider it premature and focused on the wrong thing, early in hs. Just saying.
So how does one figure it out? I think the concensus is get through 9th grade, see how it goes, before planning on the college tier. And by then, presumably, the student has both some academic record and some relationship with the GC.
I had a similar question, lol, at 8th grade graduation (and the GC was a friend.) She kind of looked at me cross-eyed.
Yes, I understand that reaction. It can be an indication that parents are pushing too hard and creating unnecessary stress.
The problem arises when the school isn’t providing enough information for the students to make their own choices. As we’ve seen on this thread, there are certain courses that have prerequisites; if you want to or need to take a course, can’t happen if you haven’t taken the prerequisites. If nobody is telling the 9th graders about this when they choose their schedule, it’s very easy for them to make an omission or error and end up not being able to take needed courses later. Math especially.
I was so proud of my younger son when he made out a rough 4 year plan to make sure he could get some desired courses by junior/senior year. But the only reason he knew to do that was seeing some of the problems his older brother had in his schedule. The school should make its policies clear so students have the info they need to make good choices. Whether they make those choices or not is then up to them, but if they’re not given the info it’s unreasonable to expect that things will just somehow work out without a little forethought.
I found this in a blog by Dr. Anna Wulick (for SAT prep) but think that it may help explain why it’s not so clear cut as we’d like it to be…
“Your transcripts should show how you’ve taken full advantage of the challenges available to you at your school—but always within reason, of course. This means that you should take progressively more difficult classes in each topic each year rather than jumping from intro class to intro class.”
The idea/short story (fairly long article) is that you take increasingly harder courses for YOU. In subject areas that are of interest to you. That the courses become more challenging as you progress in a subject.
So there is no one “most rigorous schedule” that would pertain to every student since students all have different launching points, abilities and interests.
Then on top of that you need to show a “balance” of EC’s and can (in my words but what I gleaned from the article) show you can still be happy at the end of the day with your chosen workload.
In this scenario it makes perfect sense that a school curriculum has prerequisites for higher level courses of the same subject–that automatically qualifies in the “most rigorous” category. You don’t need to take every AP available–just increase the challenge level of the subjects you take.
Another part of this is to maintain a balance with some EC’s that keep you sane.
I’m feeling super grateful for my daughter school and counselors right now! We had to make a tentative four year plan when she initially registered for her freshman year classes.
Sometimes, it does make sense, such as for chemistry and physics C. The college chemistry and calculus-based physics courses that AP courses emulate commonly list high school chemistry and physics as prerequisites. Of course, calculus AB or BC requires precalculus as a prerequisite.
On the other hand, some other AP courses, like the English and history ones, are typically offered as alternatives to the regular high school courses (e.g. AP US history instead of regular US history).
While forcing all calculus students to take a slow pace AB then BC over two years does not make sense (any student advanced enough to take calculus in 11th grade or earlier should be able to handle all of BC in one year at college pace), there are high schools that offer a year long physics C mechanics course.
The kind of response you got seems tailor-made to cause a parent who hears/sees it to believe that there is no consistency or guideline at best, or that there is corruption and favoritism at worst, in this highly important aspect of the college applications.
How well do college admissions readers understand the “luck of the draw” in the quality of the recommender, as opposed to the quality of the student, showing through in the recommendations that are part of applications?