Parents of the HS class of 2010 - Original

<p>I just looked back through this thread and don't think I posted the schedule, shame on me :) I tihnk I had posted it in the "old" thread but I'm not going back there to look. Anyway USH is common here for juniors. in 9th grade they take a non-euro based history class: middle east, china, japan. That used to be optional but is now required. 10th grade optional class in modern euro. Required to graduate are the non-euro and US.</p>

<p>So 11th grade D's schedule is
Precalc
APUSH
Mythology*
Ap Latin Lit
Chinese II
Honors Physics Mechanics</p>

<p>*trimester English elective. Required to take composition during one of the trimesters, she signed up for winter. Think she signed up for a class on the bible for the spring.</p>

<p>There is only one level of precalc, some kids drop math having fulfilled the grad requirements of through Alg II</p>

<p>and scualum, I am glad to see another student taking only 6 classes. I saw your post above that there are 7 periods and upperclassmen can cut back. Do many typically do that and is there pressure to load up or do they feel the higher level classes give them so much work that having the break is necessary?</p>

<p>I just want to vent that as the classes get more advanced, the books become more numerous! Since we are at a private school we buy our books and I just finished the ordering of my two D's books for this year. APUSH has 8 books plus the two summer reading ones, two are listed (and priced) as textbooks. I hope many are the same in two years when my younger D gets there, I usually luck out and only need to buy a few English books for her and maybe one or two text that has changed. At least I feel better when I compare my shopping to the price at the official booksite, this year I spent $505 vs $798. And there will be more English books later in the year as she is taking trimester electives. I am about 50/50 on new vs used and have been raising the standards on condition on some of the used I buy, esp. if we get two years out of them. The expensive textbooks I was able to get good used versions this year, I am happy with the physics text I found for 1/3 the price of new which doesn't seem to have ever been opened.</p>

<p>Next year I am going to have D do the first pass comparison shopping and then go over her findings with me to prepare her for doing this in college when hopefully I will be out of the textbook buying business for her.</p>

<p>Here in California, US History seems to be the social studies class for all juniors. I see from the above that many of your students are not taking US as a junior class - did they take it as sophomores or is it not required?
^^ Mine is taking AP/IB HL US History. Sophomore year was Euro.</p>

<p>S took APUSH as a sophomore. Our IB classes seem to be somewhat limited and I think they only offer World History HL. The other high schools in the city do world in 10th grade and US in 11th.</p>

<p>Our school falls somewhere in the middle on how many courses you can take. My son is part of a performing arts program so he takes an extra period before the normal first period.</p>

<p>His schedule (assuming no conflicts we haven't heard about yet):</p>

<p>Perf. Arts Orchestra
Regular Orchestra
Pre Calc honors
English honors
AP US History
AP Bio
Bio lab alternating with PE
Latin 4 honors (the only flavor it comes in)</p>

<p>My older son only took six academic courses every year and got into Harvard. He did have a lot of APs having gotten a year ahead in math and science early on. (Math in middle school, science by doing a fastpaced high school course through CTY one summer.)</p>

<p>Like other New Yorkers kids in our school are required to have a semester of gov and a semester of econ. They get around it at our school by designating the AP Gov class as AP Gov with Econ, or AP Econ with gov. or you can take regular level courses, or you can do Model UN or Model Congress and pass some exam. At some point in the econ course my son wrote about election machines which was part of the gov. requirement.</p>

<p>D took Honors US History in 9th grade. I suppose she could have taken it AP but it was her first year in HS and we were not sure what to do at that point. Heck, the administration was trying to dissuade her from taking honors let alone AP. I fought tooth and nail for math honors (because she was so far ahead of everyone else) and let it go on everything else. She wound up being transfered to honors within one week by teacher recommendation for English, History, and Science.</p>

<p>also on the history question- I forgot to mention that the wealthier town that we moved from just opened up a new high school this past year. Sophomores have the option of taking AP Eng Lang/APUSH instead of "American Studies II" I would assume most would not take USH, AP or otherwise, as a junior as it would just be an additional class on the same subject.</p>

<p>S1 took USH Honors in 9th (they didn't allow AP), AP Gov't as a soph. S2 (different school) took AP Gov't in 9th, and AP USH soph year.</p>

<p>Not sure how a student could handle more than 6 courses and extra currics too. Sleep is important! Son will take:
AP Calc AB
APUSH
AP Physics C
Eng H (could have taken AP, but 3 is enough)
Spanish IV H
Music Theory H
and continue XC, track and bass lessons. I have warned him that the next year and a half will be extremely stressful, and I hope we all survive.</p>

<p>D's school has a bunch of requirements in addition to the traditional academic ones - 4 years of PE, 2 sections of swimming, an art class (could be art, music, band, orchestra, chorus, or theater), a semester of health, a semester of technology, gov, and econ. They also require 20 hours (I think) of community service to be done senior year. Maybe some other stuff that I'm not aware of yet. I don't really know the academic requirements because I'm sure D's surpassed them or will by the time she graduates.</p>

<p>dufay - I hate to say this, but it's true that kids here regularly take more than 6 courses. It's a very competitive high school, kids feel that in order to compete, they have to do as much as possible. I've listed my D's courses for this year somewhere on this thread, and she does a large number of ECs, most of which are very time consuming. I'm reluctant to name them all, but she does a lot. Also, she manages to have a pretty active social life - with a lot of friends, and until recently, a longterm BF (they broke up about 2 weeks ago because he's leaving for college).</p>

<p>My D turned 16 over the summer and got her learner's permit. She's signed up for driver's ed this fall and is anxious to get her license although she won't be able to put it to use here until she turns 17. That's fine with me because I'll make sure she gets in plenty of practice this spring.</p>

<p>I'm with you Dufay - I know that kids do take more classes in other parts of the country - but I don't know how they do it. With my DS, who graduated in June, he was at school from 6AM to 7PM between his 6 classes and athletics. He would then have 3-4 hours of homework left to do before it all started again the next morning with the 430AM alarm bell. (we live 30 minutes from school). On a bad night, e.g. before a calculus test, he would get from 2-3 hours of sleep. Add another class in - I just don't see how.</p>

<p>S2 attended an intensive summer program at UChicago where a quarter is compressed into 3 weeks, for which he earned college credit. Prior to the course he was somewhat ambivalent to the whole college application process. He refused to even consider college beyond he would go somewhere, he didn't care where. The program turned out to be life changing, he loved it. He loved the studying till 2 AM every day, he loved his fellow students, he loved the prof, and he loved the subject matter (American law and litigation). He was actually sad when it ended. Now he is much more motivated, will be applying to Chicago and is actively looking for colleges where he can recreate the academic experience he had at Chicago. He took the PSAT cold last year, no preparation, and scored very high, but he will still do a little preparation this year.</p>

<p>Courses this junior year:</p>

<p>AP Calc AB
AP Language Arts
AP Spanish
Honors Chemistry
Honors US History
Jazz</p>

<p>He plays in a Jazz Band which travels and performs internationally, is the leader of the school drum line, is a varsity lacrosse player, tutors elementary school music students, and is an assistant Chinese martial arts coach (holds black belts in three different arts and has competed internationally). </p>

<p>He is a busy guy (including that learning to drive thing), but is easy going, never appears stressed out and it all seems to come in stride. We will be watching carefully this year and will ask him to cut back if it gets too much. He still doesn't care where he attends, he's not a fan of the Ivy League, and doesn't like the state flagship U (too close to home). We will be visiting colleges this year. It will be interesting to see how it all unfolds. S1 paid even less attention to college, did nothing purposely to prepare, did not even spend 10 minutes in test prep, and it all turned out okay for him, so we are not really too concerned.</p>

<p>welcome new posters! I agree I dislike the arms race and that is part of the reason our school tries to keep some sanity in the day to give kids a free period to catch up etc. There are several that do get behind and the counselors say that stress is the #1 health concern with the kids. So I was ambivalent when D was pushing and working the system to take 7. I was glad she was advocating for herself and going to the administration and writing articles in the school paper, but I am also glad that she is taking the official max at 6. We'll see how it plays out. The downside to the 6 is that she is limiting the fun classes she might explore with an extra period available, but I could see the arms race forcing another acedemic class in there.</p>

<p>I ordered textbooks for my S last night! Honors PreCalc, APUSH, APFrench, english 11, and Honors Chem. He's also taking an art and a music class ... school requirements for graduation.</p>

<p>Today he is off to Cornell for an info session and tour of the Hotel School, and look into international relations programs. </p>

<p>Our summer is going slower than planned -- although he has almost completed his Honors Algebra 2 class, he has passed his driver's license written exam, and he's catching up with all his friends that his missed while in France.</p>

<p>Jackief and others - I also dislike the "arms race." At my D's school which has 10 periods, the highest achieving kids feel obligated through junior year to take a full, rigorous courseload because of the competition. The heavy courseload plus the crazy EC schedule does put a lot of stress on the kids. For the most part, D handles things beautifully - but there are times when it just gets to be too much.</p>

<p>Forgot to welcome the newcomers - so, welcome.</p>

<p>We are in a very competitive school district that sends a fair number of kids to Ivies etc (no Harvard last year, but all the others). With the weird schedule, there is no room for more than 6 (and PE). Schools look at the 5 basics (English, soc studies, science, math, foreign language) and anything beyond is somewhat fluff. Our HS counts only the 5 basics in the cum. average.</p>

<p>According to our GC, all classes except PE are counted in the cum average, but most top schools will remove art and music classes when they recalculate the GPAs. </p>

<p>Dufay, are you saying that your school district won't count classes like journalism, AP Psych, AP Art History, etc. in the cum. averages? Or maybe those classes aren't offered? How about business oriented classes (accounting, business law, marketing, etc.)? Our school offers a huge selection of courses, but I wouldn't consider most of them "fluff." Some are, of course, but most are not.</p>

<p>
[quote]
but is easy going, never appears stressed out and it all seems to come in stride.

[/quote]

I know a nice girl -- attractive, smart, witty, accomplished . . .</p>

<p>Our school counts everything in GPA, including PE. I know colleges supposedly recalculate, but I never understood how and why. It is very possible to have an academic PE (where they learn about muscle groups, exercise theory, vascular system...) and a really fluffy academic class where teachers give out As like candy.</p>

<p>I asked the Stonybrook rep and he told me that they pull out the five core classes and unweight. He also said that things like academic electives would be added back in. Personally, I'd love for her electives to be added in. She's editor of newspaper and lit mag, so she has a class period every day to work on those and will get a grade from a teacher known to be very tough and demanding. Also, one of her IB HL classes is art, which is REALLY demanding and intense. I hope that one counts because it directly speaks to her life plans. Then she'll have one elective by actual chioce and this year that will be Latin (unless the teacher doesn't hold the class) and next year heaven only knows. Her school only goes to the third year of Italian and a bunch of her schools want four years. I think language is important for Classics (or medieval studies in her dark moments!) and it might be a problem if she had only three years of Italian and no Latin. Please excuse my babbling.</p>