<p>Kelowna, Sorry to hear that the meeting has to be rescheduled- frustating when things get changed at the last minute.</p>
<p>thank you for your warm welcome.I have learned a lot from you all here in this past month.</p>
<p>I was looking at the schedule for your son, a promising one. May I ask, what math is he doing now? HL IB Descrete math- is that also called math options? </p>
<p>Here, in my son’s school, they haven’t started any thing with scheduling for next year yet. But my son started thinking about his possibilities. Guess we have to wait till march to figure out!!</p>
<p>S did AP Calc BC as a freshman, this year he is taking AP Stats (sleeps in class), next year will have to take some math class at the local college and then IB Math senior year.
He was looking at the college math this year but nothing suited his schedule, so he is taking an equivalent to Physics C there.</p>
<p>I think that the course is actually called Higher Math by IB, but in our school they call it
IB Math Higher Level/Discrete Math. While his school is not a math/science magnet per say, it does have a history of having very strong math students. My son is not the only one advanced in math in his grade ;)</p>
<p>Kelowna, Thank you for the info. AP STAT seems to be an easy ride for my S too. He is taking AP CALC BC and AP Stat this year. He is also looking for what kind of math he can do next year. I just learned that in his school, the independant study will not be graded as an honor’s class. I am wondering how that is going to affect his GPA. The option was just to have him and few others go into MV CALC as an independant study and we were fine with it. But thinking that it would not get the same status as an honors course is shocking. I will be scheduling a meeting soon with his GC. Any thougts on this? Anybody in teh same boat?</p>
<p>Well, it was shocking for me to find out that the classes taken at the local college are taken at face value. So taking MV Calc and getting an A is going to give you ultimately a lower grade than taking Pre-calc at school and getting an A. But I am at peace with it now.</p>
<p>I wonder if S should consider adding the Physics he is taking now outside of the HS to his HS transcript???</p>
<p>AP Stat at my D’s school is not very difficult either. At least it wasn’t when my S took it. D has not taken it as of yet. I wish my D’s school offered MV Calc with any form of weighting. After she takes AP Calc next year, there is only one math class left available to her for senior year…AP Stat.</p>
<p>There’s a point with all of this where you have to not worry about the actual gpa. If you have a child with aptitude well beyond the norm in a subject area (and I’d definitely say that a student who took Calc BC as a freshman would fit in this category they should follow their bliss in their subject and not worry about marching to the beat of the school drummer. An adcom looking at their transcript isn’t going to focus on the class rank as much as looking at how much advanced math they’d done. I mean as long as they’re in the top 10% or so. The typical “high achieving” math student isn’t taking Calc until their junior or senior year.</p>
<p>For D’10 her MV Calc wasn’t weighted at all because they deemed it “beyond AP” - didn’t make sense to me either but wasn’t worth worrying about.</p>
<p>I agree with RobD, when the courses are already beyond their peers, the marginal difference to GPA won’t matter to adcoms!</p>
<p>RobD - this is an extremely competitive school, extremely.
S has a classmate, albeit only one (that I know of), who took BC in 8th grade and has been taking college classes (state flagship) ever since in the subject. There are quite a few kids taking BC this year, so they will also have some college classes under their belt. Kids at this school take science, computer science at the college. I was thinking that my S is really crazy to be taking four APs this year, but…it turned out he is far from being the only one. The thing is that not all the kids get straight As in the classes, but some do, making it very competitive when it comes to ranking.
I absolutely hate to be thinking in those categories, but some of the parents at the school are insane. One family got their kid on TV for scoring perfect on ACT. </p>
<p>blueshoe, what you said is the reason why my D will take AP Stat next year and then Calc BC senior year. Unless the student would pursue another course above Calc BC somewhere else, the HS seems to think it makes more sense to take calc as a senior. My D is not interested in taking an online or college class above Calc BC when she is still in HS, so she will do Stat as a jr.</p>
<p>Mamabear, my D is in precalculus this year so it doesn’t make any sense not to take AP Calculus next year. Regarless, the teacher would not recommend any other course for her.</p>
<p>Kelowna…you have brought up several times how competitive this school is that your son attends. It seems to me you are more concerned with the competition than in your son making the most of the educational opportunities presented to him through school. You are blessed to have a child who loves to learn and is highly motivated. Why, then, do you spend so much time worrying about how your child stacks up to his peers ?<br>
Our school this year had 10+ students score perfect ACT’s – I’d like to think my children are with peers they can relate to academically and how lucky we are to be in such a great school district. Did you not realize there were other students how there or at least at this school there were academic peers to your son? Would you rather have at a school that does not have this caliber of student? Maybe you are just venting in an anonymous forum but it seems to me you have been knocked sideways by the discovery of that there are other very bright and motivated students…and believe there are plenty all across the country! Your son will do very well for himself . Think positive!</p>
<p>leftrightleft - I am not a big fan of such academic “competitiveness.” In fact, when we first moved to this area (with one 2yr old and another on the way) we specifically avoided the suburban districts that were known to be competitive. Why? H and I were both NMF with six degrees b/w us from top unis - so we know what it is like to be among competitive kids and we both hated it. It used to drive me crazy when kids would compare grades and test scores in thinly veiled attempts to brag. </p>
<p>But…despite being in a very non-competitive district, my kids have found something in which to be competitive - for my kids it is the arts. Kids like to win and like to be “better” than the other guy. Some more than others. So, if Kelowna’s kid (and Kelowna herself apparently) have picked this sphere in which to compete - more power to them. Just be careful not to denigrate anyone else in the quest to be the best (IMHO)</p>
<p>Leftright - I am venting I am also frustrated because I did not realize that the school is so competitive until very recently. It has nothing to do with kids being smart - that part I knew and this is why I want my kids to attend this school - to be among intellectual peers.
But the competitive part is simply insane. Kids do not brag here, at least I am not familiar with it, but they are very secretive, trying to “outwin” each other. An example I brought up a short time ago was PSAT result. Of all the kids that have asked my S about his score, not one would tell him theirs. S had no problems sharing his score when asked because he did score high and generally he is a very open kid. But he was surprised when not even his “close” friends would reveal their score. He is learning how to handle himself in these situations , but they are strange. </p>
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I don’t think that I worry about that. I am simply trying to learn all that I can to help him not to miss some opportunities. Without going into details, there are some scholarships that he had already missed the deadline for as he is new to the school (almost all his classmates have attended the school since 7th grade) and they are simply not advertised until it is too late. Yes, the info is there somewhere but you have to know where to look for it and what to look for.
I love the fact that the school is full of bright and motivated students, what I am used to though is the atmosphere of openess and healthy competition. I am taken by surprise that things seem to happen here “behind the scene”, IYKWIM…</p>
<p>Kelowna - maybe your son can be the stealth achiever. That was my MO in HS - to fly under the radar and then, BAM, surprise everyone when they announced top ten graduates at awards day. It was really fun to see everyone turn to their neighbors and say, Who? It was the best revenge on all the snooty overachievers in my HS.</p>
<p>blueshoe, mine is in precalculus this year too. I think our HS reasoning is this - it makes as much sense to wait a year for calculus as it does to take calc as a junior and then not take any more calc until freshman year of college.</p>
<p>Mamabear, I guess high schools look at this differently. I can see the logic behind both viewpoints now. However, my S who is a bio major has not had to take any math in college because of his AP Calculus and AP Stat credit. He’s good with that. :)</p>
<p>As I was sweating on this thread a while ago about all the etiquette, I think I am slowly becoming well versed in the subject. It is a girl’s choice this time and to say “yes” S was composing a piece for a violin, bass and a boy’s chorus - some rap singing involved too
They are practicing right now at his friend’s house and are supposed to walk to the girl’s house shortly. He will start by playing the theme on the violin, then his friend will drive over on a car, roll down the windows and the bass will be on his car stereo. Then the group of boys will materialize and start singing as a chorus. I wish someone would record this…</p>
<p>Winter Formal here. It is girl ask guy. A sweet girl that we have known since kindergarten asked my son by having the math teacher put it on the overhead projector. Two days later while my son was on the way home from his basketball game, the doorbell rang and someone dropped off a cake and balloons (and on the cake it said “formal?”). My daughter and I were horrified that some poor girl had gone to all this trouble and he already had a date, but it ended up it was the winter formal at another high school in the area. So he is going to one dance tomorrow and another one next Saturday. We just finished finals so the timing is perfect.</p>
I am feeling so eleated having found this site…A treasure of information!</p>
they should follow their bliss in their subject and not worry about marching to the beat of the school drummer. An adcom looking at their transcript isn’t going to focus on the class rank as much as looking at how much advanced math they’d done. I mean as long as they’re in the top 10% or so. The typical “high achieving” math student isn’t taking Calc until their junior or senior year.</p>
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I am also frustrated because I did not realize that the school is so competitive until very recently. It has nothing to do with kids being smart - that part I knew and this is why I want my kids to attend this school - to be among intellectual peers.