D should now be done with 4 AP exams and 1 state exam with 3 to go. So far so good. But she is driving me a little crazy with her sleep schedule. I’ve been forcing her to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. She has been so worried about AP tests that she’s been staying up later and later. Last night I went to sleep at around 10 and told her to go to bed by 11-11:30. She didn’t go to sleep until 3:30 because she was completely wired. I’d have been really worried had it not been the BC Calc exam today. And with APUSH tomorrow, I’m going to have to stay up to ensure she goes to bed since she’s worried about the APUSH most (the FRQ really…been getting near perfect on all practice MC).
Btw, I think someone upthread asked about the curve for BC Calc. I don’t think I can post links, but Google AP Pass and you’ll see a fairly accurate breakdown for each exam. Looks like the curve is around a 63% for a 5. That AP exam is also skewed as mostly very strong math kids take the class, so the average score is very high and most kids get either a 4 or 5.
Common Core - I don’t believe Texas has adopted the common core. I’ve been fairly happy with the education D has received in our public school district. We moved a long commute from my job for the schools. My only complaint has been the writing curriculum. D is a good writer, but there is lots of room for improvement as I disagree with some of the things being taught as good writing and I’m having a hard time breaking her of some of those things. I ordered a Duke TIP online writing course for her one year, but her summer schedule has been so crazy that I haven’t been able to get it in yet. She will probably place out of first year English in college, but will greatly benefit from a few writing intensive courses freshman year.
SAT II’s - D is signed up for Chem, Math II, and US Hist., but I haven’t heard great things about the history exam, so told her to review a sample test, and unless getting close to an 800, skip it and only take Chem and Math II. The few schools on her list that want SAT subject tests only want 2.
@RightCoaster At D’s school and neighboring districts where kids are competing for top 7% (UT cut-off), you really have to have a game plan starting in middle school to be competitive. It’s gotten rather ridiculous where the tippy top kids are foregoing the arts and sports because they are included in rank and unweighted. To be competitive for a high rank, the kids need to take honors language and honors Algebra I in middle school. The real gunners then take PE, health, speech, and a fine arts course during the summer because summer courses don’t count in the GPA. Then its all honors and AP from there. D really loves languages and wanted to start French sophomore year. Her school, however, only offered regular French for late starters. Though she got an A, it dragged her GPA and rank down quite a bit, and she decided to drop it second semester as a result. Sucks!
@greeny8 I agree. I think it’s awesome when ANY kid succeeds regardless of their academic status.
For the record,my kids are just 2 normal kids who like to play sports, play video games, watch stupid stuff on youtube, enjoy school and clubs,and like hanging out with friends. They are not designing nuclear subs on the weekends or traveling to Mongolia this summer to work on a cure for cancer. They do pretty well in school, but that’s where it ends. They have not bugged me to attend some summer long educational program. They have no delusions that they will be accepted at any Ivy or top 25 school.
I like to read the stories about other people’s kids, whether they are striving for the top schools or some other school I have never heard of.
@itsgettingreal17 that is crazy. I just don’t think that is productive for anybody. If you don’t make top 7% of your school you can’t go to UT? That’s brutal. That would also probably make me not want my kids to play that game and just strive to go somewhere else.
In our case, I just didn’t realize it was such a rigged game so early on in a kids educational career. I’m not complaining by the way, I am just fascinated to learn how the process plays out nowadays. Definitely different from when I was kid.
This site has been eye opening to me.
@greeny8 - Well said! I am one of those “average” parents. Grades or which college you attend itself won’t make a person successfully and/or happy. As a parent it is our duty to encourage kids to try their level best, but not look purely at the results. Each child has their own strengths or weaknesses. The purpose of this group is to help each other by sharing information, past experiences etc, so no parent should feel that their child is “average” and be shy to participate in the discussions.
@itsgettingreal17, I was the one who said 50% for a 5 on the AP calc test. You’re right, it is more around 63% for a 5. I believe S said it’s the physics C tests that are closer to 50% for a 5. Yikes!
And as far as kids and colleges, I agree each kid has their own strengths and weaknesses and the parents should be aware of them and embrace them. D15 is a go-getter and thrives in an environment where she is not the top and is pushed to succeed. S17 is way too laid back for her kind of environment. I see him being able to succeed at a school where he is at or near the top to start. He will be so much happier w/o the pressure and stress. The only down side is that all of the schools we visited for D are off the list for S. I was hoping for some overlap and, therefore, fewer college visits this time around!
Texas sounds like the Hunger Games of high school - yikes!
When our oldest was filling out college apps, every single one asked for her [bold]unweighted[/bold] gpa. Weighted didn’t seem to matter. The common app lists their classes and thus shows rigor.
Something else to factor into the college search is the amount of rigor your child wants in their college. Are they burned out? Or are they itching for a more challenging environment? And how much time they are willing to devote to their studies. We often read about how well (or not) students acclimate to freshman year. But it gets increasingly more difficult, especially in STEM majors.
And this relates to one of the drivers of Common Core (or similar ideas, where there’s effectively a single set of learning outcomes nationwide)—educational publishing companies find it much, much easier to prepackage curricula when there’s a very large (read: near-national) single market for it, and then they can pitch said curricula to cash-strapped districts as a cost savings. The problem, though, is that too often it turns into cases of teachers being effectively cut out of the educational process, with them simply turned into providers of curriculum rather than providers of knowledge and method (since that’s the curriculum’s job).
And, to make it even more dire, there’s starting to be pressure on post-secondary education to act similarly.
I think you will find now that a lot of colleges care about rank very much, especially for scholarships. For example, D really likes Ohio State. Their top scholarship, which is a full ride plus a lot of perks, requires top 3% at a minimum, and many have said that the lesser scholarships are mostly given to those with a rank far above what is published as the minimum. Also, schools that are really focused on climbing US News ranks tend to use weighted GPA and report their average incoming class stats on a weighted basis. College admissions is one big, complicated game.
I’m sitting in the parking lot waiting for D to finish the second day of ib comp sci. She had ap calc ab this morning and was worried she wouldn’t make it to the off-site Ib test I time. She was right to worry; the calc test ran a full 30 minutes over. I was quietly freaking out. Luckily the ib coordinator was aware of the issue and they bumped the start time ahead 30 min to give all the kids time to get here.
Since others are giving test updates: My oldest is annoyed at feeling like she totally biffed the last of the three AP Lit essays, but she feels like she did well on everything else. She’s predicting that she ended up somewhere on the 3/4 bubble.
AP Stats is next week. At least that one’s not a 7:00a start time up here—it’s still an hour earlier than the rest of the country, but that one’s the afternoon sitting, so 11:00a in Alaska.
@RightCoaster We are “accidental homeschoolers” I never thought I’d homeschool but when faced with dd’s situation, I gathered all my courage and atrength and forged ahead! She was in fourth grade, crying every single day about going to school. She told me she hadn’t learn anything new at school in a year, that she was self-teaching with library books and her older siblings’ textbooks and their conversations over homework each afternoon. In my defense, my mother had been terminally ill all of D’s third grade year. I honestly had no idea.
I’ve spent the last six years trying to stay ahead of her needs. It’s been a crazy, wonderful ride! I cannot believe we just have one year left.
D wanted to take wood shop. We encouraged if. It dropped her rank down 5 slots no kidding!!! But by golly she can use a table saw, apply her math, pick out the right tools like nobody’s business! No regrets here.
For real though, the dad of one of the highly known “class gunners” (gunning for rank by loading up on weighted classes and is highly vocal about it on social media) gave me a real sympathetic look when D got an award for wood shop of all things!
@eandesmom Not mom2 but a homeschooler so I can answer the social question from our perspective.
D has no homeschooled friends, just acquaintances and Science Olympiad teammates. Her friends and other activities do not revolve around the local homeschool group.
She has been with the same ballet company since creative movement classes in kindergarten. She takes 7-8 hours of classes a week and has rehearsals (Nutcracker plus a second full-length ballet) most of the academic year. She is on the local Y’s Model UN delegation and their Youth in Government delegation. She learned this year that she is the only homeschooler involved in YiG in our state. She hopes to change that next year with some active recruiting in the fall
Her dearest friend moved to Texas a few years ago which was very difficult. However, they text all the time and skype a few times a week. D spent two weeks there last summer; E will be joining our family in WDW in August.
Aren’t we almost halfway done with APs now? It’s 2 down and 1 to go for us. Does anyone know how long it takes to get scores?
@Mom2aphysicsgeek That article is scary. I had a hard time reading it. It doesn’t help that my company announced upcoming cost-cutting measures are going to be taking place. Great! Just in time for the first one to go to college!
Our HS does not rank, either. I’m seems I’m always told “it doesn’t matter” for scholarships if your HS doesn’t rank…but I have to wonder.
