I only recently learned that high school guidance counselors are asked to check off a description of the level of rigor of a college applicant’s schedule. My DS is now a sophomore at a well regarded public high school. We moved here right before his freshman year and when we met with the guidance counselor (not the college one, but the one assigned to kids based on last name), she said they recommend that kids not take more than 1 or 2 honors classes a year. That sounded odd to me given that my husband and I had always taken all honors/accelerated/AP classes, but I didn’t want to be Tiger Mom and my son didn’t want to be in over his head in a new school so he signed up for 2 honors classes (out of four possibilities - language did not offer that option). This year he is taking the hardest schedule he could given last year’s schedule (3 honors classes) except he chose not to take AP US History because even though social studies is one of his strongest subjects, APUSH at his school is known to require a tremendous amount of reading and he has ADHD and was worried that the class would put him over the edge. Unfortunately, his school doesn’t offer honors social studies this year so he is stuck in regular. Next year and senior year he will be taking all honors and AP classes (wherever available so AP Eng, AP Lit, AP Calc, some AP science to be determined, AP Gov, and AP world history) as well as band and the school newspaper which means his schedule will be so packed that he will have to take some required electives (like health) over the summer. I asked the college guidance counselor whether she would describe his schedule as the 'most difficult" for college app purposes given that it will be the most difficult he could choose for junior and senior years and she said she would describe it as “very difficult” but could explain why in the attached letter.
I’m a little irritated that we were advised to have him only take 1 or 2 honors classes when he started without any mention of how that might be perceived by colleges and despite the fact that he had a great academic record in his middle school from before we moved and high standardized test scores (achievement, IQ, etc. that we provided to the school) and now having followed that recommendation, he might be penalized by it.
Do you think I should try to convince the college counselor (obviously, this isn’t a live issue until two years from now) to check “most rigorous” and then clarify in the letter, if she so desires, that it was not the most rigorous freshman and sophomore years based on his guidance counselor’s advice, but has been for junior and senior years or is it not that big of a deal? My worry is that some colleges might sort applications by that check box without anyone reading what the college counselor writes in the letter.
Nobody sorts by check box. Adcom’s will refer to 'most rigorous" if there is a concern about grade inflation, a kid who has a 4.0 GPA but relatively low scores on standardized tests, etc.
What happened freshman year is water under the bridge; it sounds like you’re trying to get the guidance counselor to make it up to you for what you consider to be her blunder that year. If his schedule isn’t the most difficult, then it just isn’t. Trying to shoehorn him into a group where he doesn’t belong isn’t going to fool colleges-they’ll see the on level APUSH.
Before you get upset with me for disagreeing with you, my daughter is loading up on IB physics, IB Bio, lots of AP/IB HL stuff next year, but she’s dumping APUSH in favor of an on level history class because she’s not interested in it (or foreign language-that was dumped entirely after 3 years), and we’re not interested in hammering her into the “perfect student”. I’m sure the guidance counselor (who is as sharp as a sack of wet leather) will not put her as one of the top students, but we don’t care-she’s doing the courses she wants, and we believe she’ll end up in the right place.
If there’s one thing to take away from this thread it’s don’t trust guidance counselors and don’t expect them to have a clue what they’re doing-they don’t have your kid’s best interest at heart most of the time and they don’t know them beyond a student number.
Thanks everyone! It sounds like the consensus is that the schools don’t do some sort of auto sort by check box which allays my concern. In the college guidance counselor’s defense (who actually does seem pretty good), it was a different guidance counselor giving the class advice. I think that’s the problem. There’s a disconnect between the regular counselors who advise re course selection and the specialized counselor who advises re colleges and such.
Also not interested in making my son be something he’s not! And don’t even know that the colleges he will be applying to will be the most selective, but just didn’t want his options curtailed because of a check box.
The counsellors here tell the same thing to parents of incoming freshmen, so it can happen even without moving. I heard counsellors and numerous high school teachers at a parent meeting say not to have your child take more than a couple of honors classes for 9th grade, they are two + hours of homework per night, even an Einstein would struggle, etc. My D came home telling me she wanted all honors. I tried talking her out of it but she told me a couple of her friends were, including one with an older sibling who already did it. I then decided to investigate and contacted a few parents, only to find out there are quite a few high achieving kids taking all honors, the homework is not two + hours per course each night, and they would all do it again. I’m just so grateful there were other people I could ask, but I am now fairly distrustful of the school advice, which is one reason I started looking at CC. Anyway, I hope it works out for you.
Thanks @mom2twogirls I think the moving part just impacted my lack of any networking contacts to find out that kids do take more than 2 honors classes. Oh well. Live and learn.
What is 2 hours homework for one kid is 15 minutes for another. Yes, all kids en masse shouldnt take all honors courses, but some kids definitely have the ability to handle that. Remember that counellors are giving advice to the median kid and not to the kid in the top percetile. So, decide for yourself what your kid can do.
Also, note that there is a difference between “We recommend that students not take more than X honors classes a year” and “School policy limits students to no more X honors classes a year.”
I never asked our GC what got checked, but neither kid took AP English senior year, nor honors either and one got into Harvard and the other into at least one top ten university. For whatever that’s worth. Not much IMO.
If I had known more when my kids were freshmen, I’d have advised them differently, but things generally seem to work out reasonably well.
I do remember in middle school that half the parents used to complain there was way too much homework while others complained there wasn’t enough. I wasn’t complaining, but my kids, especially my eldest, seemed to have very little.
Absolutely. It will be the kid taking the classes, not the parent, not the counsellor, not some other CC parent with an opinion. The kdi should probably talk to some older kids of similar academic ability though to gauge for him/herself what’s practical and doable.
He didn’t take APUSH because with ADHD, the reading was going to be burdensome. So how is he going to handle all the reading in all those AP classes next year? And if APUSH was going to be too stressful, it might help to think about how rigorous a college program he might be comfortable with. I have a kid with ADHD and college choice was very much impacted. That is not true for all kids with ADHD, and accommodations through the disabilties office can help too (does your son have a 504 plan in high school?). Anyway, though it can be exciting to get into a top college, you also have to attend and do the work
He doesn’t have a 504 plan because he never wanted special accommodations, nor were they really necessary. My son has yet to understand and accept that work that others (kids, high school teachers etc.) may say takes them hours to do doesn’t take him hours to do. So when older students tell him that APUSH was horrible and they were up until 1 in the morning reading . . . and/or when a teacher or guidance counselor recommends against it, he gets worried (he has anxiety as well as ADHD ). Even if as his parent know he can handle the work, as he rightly points out, I don’t attend the school, so it puts me at odds with the recommendations of others who would presumably know better and so we back off. HIs class schedule is ultimately his decision. He chose to sign up for AP English and AP Gov for next year (AP Gov is not supposed to be as text heavy as USH and it’s a topic he’s more interested in - he is a news junkie) and I’m sure he will do fine. He has straight As in everything except math (now he has an A, but that grade dips down as it is not his strongest subject). As for college, I think he will do fine wherever he ends up. He’s faced a lot of challenges in the past and has become a very organized, efficient, and effective student as a result. He may not choose to attend a “top college,” and that is fine as well, but I just want him to be able to make that choice and not be screened out because as a thirteen year old he followed the advise of his guidance counselor!
This seems to me very typical. In our school district student are advised to only take 2 honors classes as well. It might be in a class or workshop that GCs take, that is better for a student’s stress level or such…
Anyway, all good students do end up taking mostly honors though. They just do not listen. The only problem in our school is that honors classes do not coordinate among themselves and often everything is due the same day. Kids sometimes complain but the teachers have the attitude of “then you should not have taken all honors…”. So the kids suck it up. In all, the work load is no bad, just that there are still lots of projects and quizzes all due the same day. I hear that some “better”, more rigorous schools that expect the majority of student to be in all honors classes do a better job with coordinating and avoiding busy work. In our school there is a fair amount of busy work and silly projects even in AP classes. I am still shaking my head that last May the week of AP exams my kid had to make a poster with pictures of family members and their “stories” to celebrate in the classroom (for AP history). Kids complained but the teacher said, that this is a college level class! Now, how often does this happen in college?
The question the common app secondary school report form asks – at least now, who knows what it will ask in the future? – is whether the applicant’s course selection, compared to other college preparatory students at the particular high school, has been “most demanding,” “very demanding,” “demanding,” “average,” or “below average.”
As I understand it, the question IS fairly important at the 20-30 most selective colleges, and it is pretty important that the GC check the “most demanding” box (or at least the “very demanding” one), unless maybe the kid is an athletic recruit, a famous actor, or something like that. To be sure, the importance probably varies with the extent to which the admissions staff at a particular college is familiar with the particular high school. If a college is getting 40 applications a year from a high school, the relevant admissions officers will not have to rely on the GC’s characterization to understand how one applicant’s curriculum choices compare with those of other strong students. But if you think your kid may be the only kid at this high school applying to, say, Caltech or Stanford, you should care about which box the GC will check on that form.
Beyond that hyper-selective layer of colleges, I doubt the question matters much.
This, from you, led me to believe that he took more time, rather than less, to do assignments than others:
“This year he is taking the hardest schedule he could given last year’s schedule (3 honors classes) except he chose not to take AP US History because even though social studies is one of his strongest subjects, APUSH at his school is known to require a tremendous amount of reading and he has ADHD and was worried that the class would put him over the edge.”
If he has that worry, then having a 504 plan might help his anxiety. He doesn’t have to use the accommodations. I am little confused because your last post appears to take back the stated problem and say that his worry about all the reading was a symptom of anxiety rather than a reasonable decision based on ADHD.
So is he not anxious about his course load next year? I don’t understand. I hope he isn’t loading up next year just to get a box checked. Senior year is very, very stressful for everyone and may not be the best year to load up. Just from my experience with three kids…
The guidance counselors here are like that too (at first I wondered if you might live in my district but I think that is common). My kids always thought it was because their guidance counselors were not very good students themselves and can’t imagine students wanting all honors courses. My kids wanted honors courses because they usually had the better teachers and more motivated students. It sounds like he is taking a heavy courseload going forward, so I wouldn’t worry about it for admissions.
Thanks @campmom for your concern. I understand your confusion because my son is confusing to me as well! He does have both ADHD and anxiety, but he is also very bright and good at prioritizing his time. He learns information quickly and (unlike my DD) is good at figuring out what stuff he can blow off. However, he gets uncomfortable reading dense (not necessarily hard, just small print, large blocks of text, etc.) texts. He can do it. He just hates it. Also, while he wants to do well, he doesn’t want to do more than is necessary as he values his free time. For that reason, if a teacher or counselor tells him he shouldn’t take a certain class and nobody other than mom or dad seems to think that might negatively impact him in the future, he favors the voice that he considers to be more “expert”, especially when that voice cautions that he might be overwhelmed with work if he doesn’t. I think now that he is a sophomore he realizes that he can handle the work load just fine and has plenty of free time even though he lost his study hall this year because his schedule is too full. For that reason, and because he has now met with the college guidance counselor and so has a slightly different view of the process, he is choosing the most difficult courses.
Just don’t understand why all these school districts are telling kids not to take too many honors/AP classes when they know that they need to do just that for certain college admissions. I totally understand not pushing kids who would be in over their heads, but for the students who performing at a high level it just doesn’t make sense and really hurts those kids (like my son) who don’t realize that the other top students are not following that advice. I didn’t want to be Tiger Mom so I didn’t push back against the school, but it will be sad if that limits his choices in the future. Also not great for the high school as this is a kid who did really well on the practice PSAT this year with no prep and so stands a good chance of being in National Merit contention. Why wouldn’t a high school want to make sure that smart kids end up in the right classes?
Fortunately, my son does not care about status and has no interest in being at an Ivy league school, but there still may be schools that he is interested in that might overlook him because of the box that the college counselor ends up checking.
). Even if as his parent know he can handle the work, as he rightly points out, I don’t attend the school, so it puts me at odds with the recommendations of others who would presumably know better and so we back off. HIs class schedule is ultimately his decision. He chose to sign up for AP English and AP Gov for next year (AP Gov is not supposed to be as text heavy as USH and it’s a topic he’s more interested in - he is a news junkie) and I’m sure he will do fine. He has straight As in everything except math (now he has an A, but that grade dips down as it is not his strongest subject). As for college, I think he will do fine wherever he ends up. He’s faced a lot of challenges in the past and has become a very organized, efficient, and effective student as a result. He may not choose to attend a “top college,” and that is fine as well, but I just want him to be able to make that choice and not be screened out because as a thirteen year old he followed the advise of his guidance counselor!
I think now that he is a sophomore he realizes that he can handle the work load just fine and has plenty of free time even though he lost his study hall this year because his schedule is too full. For that reason, and because he has now met with the college guidance counselor and so has a slightly different view of the process, he is choosing the most difficult courses.