My DD is a new freshman at BS. She is happy and adjusting socially very well. Due to her marginal executive function (forgetting to turn in homework sort of thing) she did not apply to the top, say, 15 schools. I was afraid that managing the workload as a young freshman (she is young for grade) could be too much. Her SSATs taken with zero prep were 90+% with ISEE higher than that and her grade school preparation was very good. In areas the school allows upper level placement she is in those higher level classes, though many classes are required of all freshmen. With the exception of an upper level language we knew was a stretch she reports her classes are “too easy.” Teacher comments suggest the same. We heard directly that she is the best writer in a humanities class, and the top physics student in the grade, not just her class. I’m sure some of the feedback about easy courses is due to the fact that it is very early freshman year. OTOH both teacher and DD’s comments are playing into my concerns when we made the choice to be safe with a less competitive school that she might need a more challenging school/peers. Thoughts welcome.
That would worry me, but it’s still very early. It’s not too early to discuss the issue with the school, though. I would talk to her adviser and then probably to the academic dean to find out how similar students there have been and are being challenged academically. And if there haven’t been and aren’t a significant number of similar students, then I might think that it wasn’t the best place for her.
Based on personal experience and knowing dozens and dozens of kids at various BS (some with learning issues) , the main difference in difficulty from one school to the next is not what they are studying it is how much work they have. The quantity of work at Exeter is unbelievable. We have friends/family that have gone through a variety of schools and now know kids at most of the top schools as well as other schools that would be considered well below the top 15 in admissions difficulty and this seems to be the main difference. Freshmen/ 9th grade is often an “easier” year for many as the schools try to ease them into it. So I wonder if this will be a year of confidence building for her where she is maybe outgrowing some of her difficulties OR the manageable work load is enabling her to succeed. It is possible she could handle more but what is the line? Not sure I would mess with it this soon.
Can they move her up to move advanced classes? BS should have enough academic options for each student or be able to create them on a case-by-case basis if none exist currently. Consider also that your daughter may have had similar experience in a “top 15” BS too. Based on what I hear from my kid (in a “top 15” school), there seems to be a huge range of academic skills and preparation levels.
@Center, I would have thought the difference was not so much what they were studying - or the quantity of work assigned - but how they were studying it and what standards they were being held to.
Have you attended parents weekend yet? That can be a good time to get the full picture of what’s going on.
Some thoughts:
-
Is your daughter also involved with extracurricular activities? If she’s doing the minimum in such activities, she obviously has room to increase her participation in activities which appeal to her. It may be that the “too easy” courses are not so easy when she has more demands on her time.
-
Freshman year is often a time for schools to remediate lack of preparation for students who arrive at school with academic “holes.” If the school has many required freshman courses, it could be that her “too easy” feelings reflect her better preparation.
-
It would be appropriate to ask how the school will keep her challenged in academics over the course of her time in high school. Sometimes advanced students will be given permission to take more courses than the norm, for example. If she has “frees,” could she pick up other courses in that time next term?
-
It could be that as she matures, her “marginal executive function” is improving. That’s a very good thing. It might be that the school which was a perfect fit is now not so perfect. However, it could also be that she is thriving academically because you found a supportive environment. In other words, switching to a very demanding school might crush her. I agree with Center that the amount of work at a few famous schools is overwhelming for many students.
As @Center mentioned, it’s a lot about workload. An easy English course become challenging when you can’t make time to edit essays that you have to finish every week. For my daughter, this is done by taking 2 Ap courses in freshmen. Those are easy Ap - es and micro - but they still add plenty of workload.
Each of you has given me food for thought. And action! We did attend parents’ weekend, which is what inspired my post and concerns - the feedback on her relative position in classes came from DD, teachers and even other kids who said that she is the best student in class X. @Periwinkle you are right I suspect on each point. She toned down her participation in a major extracurricular that takes place outside of school to allow her to adjust. This was a mistake in hindsight, but one that can be corrected. On executive function she is older and more together than when we had to narrow down school choices and secondly the teachers at her school seem better organized than those are her previous school.
@center She doesn’t want a school with a huge workload in part so that she can keep giving time to that activity.
Bravo to your DD! To me this ^^^ is the bottom line. I think you’ve gotten some good advice, and with the EC adjustment it sounds like ur DD will be in her sweet spot.
I would not see this as an issue for several reasons. Boarding schools take kids from all kinds of backgrounds and have to make sure that they have a solid foundation for what comes next… I recall that my son’s math class was a review for most of the class for about a quarter while for him, it was all new material. On the other hand, he had three classes that ALL freshmen took – no differentiation --which were the basis for the level they took the next year. For many kids, simply being away from home (or even in the case of a day student, being with a new cohort of classmates and having to be much more independent) creates an organizational or social challenge for them. Some schools deliberately overwhelm the kids at the beginning (and many of those don’t give grades the first term) while others try to ease the students in so that they feel confident, happy, and able to participate beyond the classroom. I would be far more worried about a student who struggled as a freshman – knowing that by junior year, the workload would likely be 2x more in both quantity and difficulty, than a student who was doing well.
It sounds like your DD has hit the ground running. If she has the bandwidth to take on a little more outside the classroom, encourage it. It sounds like she’s in a great place. If she’s bored, she should definitely think about more advanced classes, but if she’s simply placed right and has figured out to manage, don’t borrow trouble! I do think that it’d be good idea to talk to her advisor about this before she picks her classes for next year so that she is challenged properly, but there is nothing wrong with getting off to great start as a freshman.
This has also been a concern for us. Some things that have helped for us:
- When courses can be leveled, go for higher level. Is your student in algebra based intro to physics or calculus based physics? Regular or AP? My child finds peers in the upper level courses who love the subject and are advanced and excited about it. The courses everyone has to take have been far less demanding.
- When courses cannot be leveled as in English, seek out better teachers and/or getting in the same class with peers who are also advanced. There has been some adjustment of the work when it was really inappropriate – time-consuming but utterly without educational value for our student.
- ECs can help take up lots of time and cause growth in other ways even in there are some academically disappointing courses. This was quite helpful in 9th grade.
- I disagree that it’s all about the workload. If you have a child ready for calculus who is taking algebra instead, there may be 45 minutes of algebra homework each evening, and this leads to being busy, but it doesn’t lead to any academic growth for that child. Our student is happy doing challenging homework and hates the waste of time of inappropriate work, which leads back to 1. The key is course selection in those courses that allow leveling. I’m not aware of any boarding school that levels for English and history, which have worthless for my child, but science, math, electives, and foreign language are placed according to need and helps this problem.
A lot of good thoughts! I would like to add a few things.
My daughter’s school has Honors levels for English, History and Foreign Languages. And it seems requirement is much higher in terms of both quality and quantity. Workload mattered for her because it could allow 10 minutes or 2 hours to revise each essay. Being not used to write a lot and write fast, she finds the 9th grades honors courses harder than two AP and Trigonometry courses.
This may be school specific, but most schools don’t allow teacher shopping/requests for a specific teacher.
My father flunked out of a HADES school (the same one I graduated from), and Geometry was one of the courses he failed. For his senior year he went to a small BS that I’ve never even seen mentioned on this site. Anyway, he repeated Geometry there and was practically teaching the class it was so easy. This was the case with all of his other classes, as well. It’s probably way too early to tell, but if this continues you might consider having her apply to a more rigorous BS. Just a thought.
Periwinkle says that going to a more demanding school may crush her, but what I found was that I appreciated the demanding nature of my school. It was a terrible crush to my ego when I got there, since I was a very big fish in a very small pond in middle school, but in hindsight I wouldn’t change my experience for anything. Also, my father never talks about the school he went to for senior year but has very fond memories of the HADES school, even though he flunked out!
Better to get adjusted to academic rigor while in high school than having to do so as a freshman in college, IMO.
So true @doschicos
Does your DD want to apply to different schools? Has she been doing any research on where she might want to attend?
Sounds like she is not being challenged enough. I agree with previous posters to try for harder classes next term. Also I agree that most BS take it easy on students the first term.
I would like to agree. To me the big difference between so-called “top” name schools and the very next group: more work. Not necessarily more learning. “Top” NYC independent schools have > 5 hours nightly. At times much more. Nothing “better” about that approach.
I have tried to see a downside… but I can’t. To be the top of your class AND have plenty of time for extracurriculars doesn’t seem so bad to me. 