DS took AP Calc B/C (only for this year being IB student). He and his friends thought it’s a difficult one. However you need 60% to get a 5 I believe.
@MotherOfDragons …I take that guy with a grain of salt. It’s a “smile and nod” situation. He saw me in scrubs and said “where do you work as a Nurse’s Aide?” Smile and nod, smile and nod. They are so caught up in the frantic race for the top I don’t even jump in that game. D doesn’t play with that crowd either although she does have a few friends at the tippy top and those few are taking a more quiet approach in hoping for a top school and that is an approach I admire.
D is at a large public school and it is somewhat competitive but I know for a fact it is nothing like the Woodlands, Westlake and Plano West/McKinney areas.
@srk2017 D says her class also thought the BC exam was harder than usual. She said the non-calculator section was hard and there wasn’t enough time for that section, the calculator section was easy, and the free response was fair. Around 60% should be a 5.
The ranking game is kind of “interesting”. My S’14’s GPA was (very slightly) pulled down by the fact that he took a non-weighted class as a incoming freshman and we didn’t know enough to select “Pass/Fail” for it. Back then, his high school did what I called “pseudo-ranking”. Individual ranks weren’t published, but some percentile bands were. I think they published the weighted and unweighted gpas of 95-99, 90-95, 80-90, 70-80, and 50-70.
Now this is all I see in the school profile:
SPECIFIC DATA FOR THE CLASS OF 2016
Weighted Unweighted
Highest GPA 4.7838 4.000
Highest Possible GPA 4.8000 4.000
D’17 will have very similar stats to S’14. It is impossible to compare two students, but I doubt the change will hurt or help.
As far as being inclusive, let’s not forget that some of us who have high achieving / high stats kids in some years have other children with different profiles other years. Every voice can be helpful.
@srk2017 Yep, my D said she did “sooooo bad” on the Calc BC test today, which usually means she did OK. She thought it was pretty hard, too, though. We shall see. Can’t believe we need to wait so long!
So busy today!
@greeny8, thanks, I couldn’t agree more. I want to celebrate all the kids!
@srk2017 congratulations! That is exciting news!!!
@Mom2aphysicsgeek I would caveat my statement with the following. YMMY. It will depend on the field in question as well as the company. Some are MBA hungry, to the expense of the applicant pool where great candidates can’t get an interview and marginal ones with the magic letters, may. Because of that, in some areas there is saturation and the MBA’s are having a hard time getting the interviews as well. Liberal Arts in general, can be hard and the value of the network, much greater.
STEM is a bit more straightforward, depending on the field. Some majors will translate quite well at the bachelors level (Engineering) and some really may need to continue to find a better career path (Physics). In most cases…it is getting that first job that counts, after that, employers are as (or more) focused on work history than whether you graduated from North Dakota University or Eastern Kentucky or Indiana. Several of my PhD’s did their undergrads in places like those…and then went on to the “money” schools…funded.
On the social side of homeschooling I guess what I have always wondered about is how able the child is to voice what it is they want to try and do and then how difficult it is to find that for them. I know my children have found loves through school that I might not have ever thought to suggest or have them try. They also have some that are very much apples off of the tree. At the end of the day, I couldn’t do it, I don’t have the patience (or the intelligence). Heck, they wanted me back at work when I did try the stay at home gig.
@Agentninetynine that’s a depressing college statistic! I’m not able to get that information for our school. They publish post graduate plans (% of 4 year, 2 year, vocational, military and other) and I can see public data on the percentage of the class of 2014 that enrolled at state 4 year schools but that’s about it
@carachel that’s just sad on every possible level. At least you still have wood shop! When I was in HS we had power sewing, complete with sergers and relationship with Roffe for their ski jacket patterns. I made so many jackets over the years! And learned to sew without pins. Only my S17 knows how to sew a thing and that’s from stage crew and working as a dresser for one production. He would get so frustrated has he had to redo a lot of the girls work!
@2muchquan that is about where are at trying to figure out ranking so I don’t bother. Just hope for the best I guess, it’s all you can do.
@dfbdb that is ridiculous. S17 has the option to include, or not, 8th grade Algebra on his transcript. The only benefit to doing so would be if he had an A in the class, which he did not and so we will not include it as it would bring the GPA down. S19 will have the same option but with a total of 4 classes. We will carry over 1 and leave the rest alone but the fact that he didn’t get A’s in MS French does mean he’s taking French 4 so at least he can show 2 years at the HS level since the other 2 will not be on the transcript. Crazy.
I think weighted gpas are only meaningful, not in the number they show (as it varies so widely) but in that if a school does rank, it at least provides a “fair” methodology for doing so.
@Dave_N absolutely correct, different kids,different stats, different needs. We have 4 very different fish in our house. It’s been a completely different college path for each so far, S17 is our third to begin this fun journey in earnest.
It’s funny. One of my early posts was asking for help in creating a list for S17. It was not in this thread but in the main parent’s one. I received a message basically telling me that this was not the place for a B student and I wouldn’t get much help in that forum. Thankfully that did not play out that way at all and I did receive some very valuable input that helped us. I’ve received input elsewhere in the forum on other topics that has been less that supportive or helpful and so perhaps I’ll just stay in this yard. Not all but some. The joys of social media and anonymity (and yes, superiority at times). No fun feeling that you’re your child has been insulted (real or perceived) but in general I personally learn something from it all, including the bad.
Thanks to this this group in particular, I have dug deeper and harder looking for fits, defining what a fit really is for my child, and for merit money. The latter of which I had discounted as really being available for my B+ kid. That is not the case.
While I agree that it’s a shark tank, it is partially so as we allow ourselves and our kids to get sucked into the game. Only individual families and students can decide if it’s a game worth playing…and enabling. Do you want to teach your kid how to game the system or teach them how to be the best most interesting person they can be, that suits and fits them? Yes, it’s a cutthroat world and kids do need to learn how to survive but…jeesh.
Which brings me to ranking and weighting. Our school did away with ranking as of last year. Because we do not weight, I think this is a very very good thing. I have one single data point from 2015 with the class average gpa. All I can say definitively is my child is in the top half of his class as I can’t see the average changing that much from year to year with class sizes around 300. The school will not provide any additional data points for you to even guesstimate at percentile. I also think this is a good thing. I want my children to take the classes they want because they actually want to. Not to game the system. Or worse, compete in an unhealthy way with classmates. If those end up being honors and AP, great. If they end up being music because the passion for that is real and that means no doubling up on science or math or whatever might impress a school? I am all for that. Reading some of this makes me even more grateful for the general supportive nature and non cutthroat culture of our semi large public HS. Which is not to say they don’t celebrate academic success, they certainly do but I am very very glad they (and I) do not feel pressured to drop things because it may drag down their gpa. In fact, generally speaking the advice is that colleges would rather see a B in an AP, then all A’s in mainstream. Is that true? Who really knows. I do know that it will be a total crapshoot for S17 as some of the schools on his list have never had more than 1, if any, applicants from his school. They will have zero benchmark. For those that do…well we have Naviance and Scattergrams and know where we stand.
Will not ranking impact our ability to get scholarships? So far it has only come up at once school as a possible hindrance. Our school will not budge and the school in question has assured me that in the end they will look holistically despite not having that data point. If S applies there and merit is awarded then I will know they were true to their word. You can look at the CDS for each college and actually see how many applicants reported rank. You can also see how much it is weighted by the school for admissions. Which might imply that not having it means it works against you. I suspect it is much more complex than that and completely unique to each school in question. Because schools do weight so very very differently I cannot imagine what it must take for the schools to weed through it all and take their own stock of where the applicant pool really falls. That does NOT sound like a fun project whatsoever!
Heck as a non CA parent just trying to figure out how the UC/CS schools would interpret my kids gpa was enough to give me a major headache! Throw out 9th grade, only include certain classes…blah blah blah!
In our AP testing update today…apparently moving AP tests to the school to avoid kids skipping has not worked out as planned. The AP Lit test yesterday apparently endured 10 minutes of noisy activity it the gym next door, was given a time extension and the opportunity for a retest. Too bad the AP Physics gang won’t get that opportunity.
Suffice to say, all of next weeks tests have been moved to the District Center. So much for no driving to the test center. Something else to add to the calendar. @HiToWaMom you might find this one interesting.
My mathy son said he though the calc B/C test was ok. The free response was the easiest section for him The no calculator MC section the most difficult. He felt pretty good coming out, except it gave him a headache.
Just want to say an early Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms here, especially if your kids can’t do anything this weekend for you as they need to study for APs.
It takes someone strong to make someone strong!!
Yes…Happy Mothers Day to all the Moms on the thread. =D>
D17’s private school does not rank, her class has only 68 students in it. Had to look it up in the handbook, but it says that they add .03 for AP classes and .02 for Honors classes. BTW, every academic class is at least an Honors class. Still not quite sure how the math works out, because her transcript through first semester junior year shows her with a 3.96 UW, and 4.61 W GPA. Valedictorians typically have 5+ GPAs at graduation.
@SincererLove and @mtrosemom thanks for the happy Mother’s Day wishes! I too wish all the wonderful caring moms here a joyous day. Sad that this is our second to last mothers day to be with our '17 kids. Sigh
Sigh… Enjoy while they are near.
Happy Mother’s day!
@RightCoaster wrote
It’s so crazy. I also wish our school would stop ranking.
@mtrosemom I think I agree with you about colleges stripping the weighting off. I’m amazed at how different the grading and weighting is between HS’s in the US.
I know-I think this is practice for waiting for admits/rejections next year. I do remember older D texting me from summer camp asking me to look up her score on Human Geo a few years ago-her friends at camp were talking about getting their scores and she was like, oh yeah, I forgot about that! I had forgotten about it too. (she was a freshman). How times (and stakes!) have changed!
I feel bad for the people who equate intelligence with worth. I can’t imagine how much happiness or experiential life they’re missing out on.
I’ve rubbed elbows with celebrities, geniuses, and billionaires. They still put their socks on one foot at a time and they feel the same insecurities, loneliness, and triumphs as regular people. There are fundamental differences conferred on them by their positions, but (in my opinion) it isn’t necessarily for the better. The lens that they appreciate their life through is potentially as flawed as anyone’s.
Ohh, I went all meta, sorry.
To bring it back around, my younger daughter told me there’s a new euphemism for having your period.
“Shark Week”.
I about died laughing! 
We are waiting for two results for tomorrow, one long shot scholarship finalists and another Chem Olympiad nationals!. Both are nice to have accomplishments but not holding breath 
I have been homeschooling for so long it is hard for me to separate our normal way of family life and homeschooling. Homeschooling truly is a way of life for us. I started homeschooling back in 1994 completely by accident. I had never even heard of homeschooling before. There were only 5 homeschooling families in our entire county. I had no intention of continuing; it was only supposed to be for that yr. But, once we started, we fell in love with what it meant we could do.
In terms of voice, that one probably makes @whereismykindle chuckle! She has known me for many years. I am an incredibly strong advocate of letting kids drive their educations and have even written a book for homeschoolers on how to design their own courses. My kids are definitely NOT limited to studying things within my realm of comfort. I do not know any physics at all! I don’t know Russian, French, or Latin. My math skills pretty much stink after alg 2. What I am incredibly good at is finding the best possible resources for whatever it is that they want to pursue. We find a way for them achieve the goals that they want to attain. (My kids are all very different, but with the exception of our autistic adult ds, they have all completely taken charge over their academic studies.)
Our homeschool does not really resemble a traditional school at all. But, when you remove the ceiling, the sky is the limit. That pretty much is our philosophy of education. (ETA: I should also add I equally embrace the sentiment that Pope Francis recently made which is that education is not neutral. Bc that is so true in all dimensions.)
And I love watching them blossom. Dd met with her French tutor today (a Francophone with limited English skills.) Dd turned in an essay in French on several of Guy de Maupassant’s short stories. Her tutor told her that she thought it was on par with what her adult kids had were doing for school when they were her age. She asked dd if she could keep it bc she wants to show it to another recent immigrant who was a high school French teacher in France what she thought. She also told her they are going to spend the summer reading Hugo’s Les Mis (not the entire thing, but main selections, in French.) Dd was beaming from ear to ear. 
Les Mis! That’s child abuse! 
LOL! Not from this kid’s perspective. That is the type of lit she loves.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek I think it’s a beautiful thing that you can empower your children like that. I fear I’d find myself in a situation of forcing content that is not at all what they’d like to pursue (but “should” study) and not being able to provide them with the tools to figure out what it is they do. It sounds like an amazing amount of research and work to do it right.
S19 would be thrilled with Les Mis. S17 would take The Communist Manifesto. S14 would prefer a Biology textbook and if that wasn’t available, some vampire thriller novel and S11 would…
pick up his guitar.
Sigh. They do all blossom in their own way
How do you do quotes? I have not been able to figure that out in this forum and it drives me nuts.
to quote you type [ quote ] at the beginning and [/ quote ] at the end w/o spaces. If you want to include the name of the poster, type [ quote=name ].
BTW, if any of you want to see the FRQ from any AP exam your kids have taken, they are all available here 48 hrs after the test: http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/exam/exam_information/index.html