@Ynotgo, My son entered his own scores into Naviance. He had access to do that, I didn’t. His GPA however gets entered by the counselor. You might want to see if your S can enter his scores into your Naviance.
@Ynotgo, doing both FTC and FRC seems to be overreach esp if both are rookie teams. Each has it’s own advantages but seasons do overlap. Robotics takes lot more time than most kids anticipate and esp with need to participate in multiple local tournaments, state and super regional tournaments to qualify for world championship. I was a coach and judge and some times I wondered if it’s worth putting that much time even though my son did enjoy his time, learned a lot and had a personal milestone of becoming one of the Dean’s list finalists (for FTC).
An interesting article from a MIT student on college admissions
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/an-open-letter-to-mit-applicants
@mtrosemom and @srk2017 I know it’s unrealistic, but he won’t admit that (yet). His list of ECs is kind of crazy even besides this, but he has given up some activities over the years to make room for others.
We know from watching other kids how much time the seniors put into the old FRC team. (All of it, basically.) This new FRC team will likely not go to world championships and is so far only budgeting to participate in one regional. They aren’t using the old team number, so that’s less pressure, too.
The FTC team has two tournaments scheduled, and they are a long drive for us with one in late January after FRC build season is well underway. There are no other FTC teams anywhere nearby, so no local tournaments. The coach has coached FTC before, so at least she knows how the organization works.
S has only done FRC, so I don’t have a very good yardstick to judge by. They are already at work designing their mascot, raising money, teaching the new kids about tool safety, etc. It is a huge commitment, especially at build season where the kids are work 4-6 day/week. S is part of the electrical and programming teams. Last year, because the team was small, the kids had to participate in all of the build. He didn’t really like the construction part so he isn’t doing mechanical this year.
Robotics is addictive 
Not sure how much it helps with college admissions, if team doesn’t have good results to show. I guess as long as there is no impact on other ECs or grades it’s a good activity. Now my S is trying to do robotics event in Science Olympiad even though he has other ECs which take good amount of time.
If your kids gave you one-word answers to “How was the PSAT?”, the LA Times has info at least about the Twitter posts it generated:
We were just talking about FRC, so…
Weird, FIRST has released the title of the 2016 FRC challenge–FIRST STRONGHOLD. There have been clues before, but always oblique until the January kickoff.
http://www.usfirst.org/frc2016
Looks medieval. My favorite comment on their FaceBk post is “Perhaps, if we built a large wooden badger.”
Re PSAT jokes: I heard about the weird dinosaur name, and how Herminia (at first I thought it was Hermione, but no) wrote incendiary poetry for El Nacional. My D didn’t tell me anything about fish farmers or wolves.
She thought it was “hard.”
Re college visits over the summer: I did that with my older D and I don’t think I’d do it again. The big point of visiting a campus is to get a sense of what the student body is like, I think. So you have to visit during the school year. Even if it’s a larger school where there are some classes over the summer, it’s still not going to be anything like how it is during the regular academic year.
@Ynotgo, looks like game involves robots climbing up and reach the top of the castle. Even FTC has similar theme.
Yup, looks like Capture the Flag with climbing, and yes similar to FTC. Glad it isn’t (yawn) stacking boxes again.
@Ynotgo Our district is ideally suited to offer a full complement of Physics C yet only one HS offers the full course. They allow kids who were accelerated 2 years in math in ES to take Algebra in 7th grade so they can then take BC Calc as a junior and be well prepared for Physics C. Most HS’s including ours only offers Mechanics but my S16 has been allowed to take the full course at another school. My D17 would love the same opportunity but all of the classes she plans to take next year are offered once except lots of AP Lit sections so the odds of it working out are extremely slim. So few schools really give credit for 1 and 2 they’re really obviously not equivalent to a college course.
Our state universities give the same credit for a 3 in Physics I as they do for a 3 in Physics C: Mechanics. (introductory physics de-emphasizing calculus). Getting a 4 or 5 in Physics C gets credit for Physics with Calculus. Physics I is a good choice for majors that just need a physical science.
I think that Earth Science is probably a better choice for majors that just need a physical science credit. Physics was much harder and less fun than Geology 101 (says someone who majored in Earth Science).
Universities my D is looking at value APs in the lab sciences, even APES is seen as slacking off. Funny how Geology is good enough for a college credit, but not rigorous enough for HS.
Speaking of AP courses, how valuable are college board awards/classification (National Scholar/State Scholar etc…) for college admissions? Is it worth for IB students to take several AP exams? I keep hearing won’t help much with admissions.
Sorry CaucAsianDad, I meant for first year college, not HS. Not many HSs have good ES lab classes. At the college level the ES classes that involve field work/field trips often are fantastic.
@srk2017, if the student doesn’t get the recognition until after the college aps are completed, I don’t think it is worth much more than bragging rights and not worth the stress to your IB student who will have enough testing already. If the recognition comes out before senior year, then it might be a good thing to put on the college ap awards section, but again, you’d have to judge how your child will react to additional tests.
I was a geophysics major for about 1.5 years until I switched to (science) journalism. I still buy the “Roadside Geology of ____” whenever we go on a trip.
My son took the Intro to Earth Science class this past summer at our local UC. He enjoyed it, but it was not particularly difficult. The 2 field trips along with the labs were fun and interesting. There was a fair bit of memorization, but not nearly as much as AP Biology. He got an A+, which wouldn’t be common at his high school in any subject. He said the test averages were in the 70s, and he was pretty surprised at that. But, I guess a lot of the students were looking for an easy science credit. (For California folks, geology does not count as a lab science “d” credit, even if you take it at a UC and it has a lab.) He’s seen his geology professor when walking around campus this semester, and she remembers him by name and that he’s a high school student.
He took the class mainly because he’s interested in astrophysics, and planets have geology, at least the rocky ones. (And the icy ones–Pluto!) I’d talked some with him about various discoveries on Mars, and he’d been interested to learn more, since it’s clear that many of the scientists at JPL have some background in geology. (Also, geology is always a topic in Science Bowl.)
He’s taken AP Physics B and AP Chemistry, and is taking AP Bio, so he’s pretty much run out of HS science (except for senior engineering classes), since he’s not very interested in APES.
@mtrosemom My S is a junior now in an IB program. In Sophomore year he took 3 AP exams and now thinking of taking 5 APs this year to earn National Scholar. In addition he has to 2 IB exams and also planning to take 2 Sat IIs and has multiple competition level ECs. Some of the APs have lot different curriculum than IB, so it involves additional studying. I told him it may not be worth the effort. Not sure how valuable AP awards are.
@srk2017 I also don’t know how valuable such awards are. On other threads, people argue about the value of AP scores reported on applications, since the AP scores are self-reported on applications and not officially reported until after admission. I don’t think I’ve seen a definitive answer. Certainly if your kid lists 8 AP scores of 4 or higher, it’s obvious that they’ve earned National Scholar, so I don’t know how redundant it is to list that as an award. And, the marginal value of 8 over 7 doesn’t seem that significant. I’d guess that National Scholar just translates to “8 good scores” in an adcom’s head (but I don’t know that for sure).
Data about how many awards of each level are given per state for each grade level are here: https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/ap/ap-scholar-counts.pdf For example, in CA last year, there were 621 who got the National AP Scholar award based on testing by junior year. (CA is generally about 10-12% of the US.)
My son is only taking one IB class, Spanish SL. I don’t know if this is normal, but here SL classes are one year and HL classes are two years. Since the IB tests can only be taken senior year, forgetting content is a real risk for the IB kids. I don’t know how they deal with that. But, a number of kids take the AP test for their 2nd language as juniors if they don’t plan to continue on to HL. I don’t know what they do for the IB SL classes for which the school doesn’t offer HL (math and biology, I think).
The Spanish AP would be the 8th for DS, but he’d have to get a 4 for Scholar with Distinction. I don’t know how difficult that is for a non-native speaker. A one-semester AP class like an Econ or US Gov’t is possible in the spring, because he’ll have finished the PE requirements, but it would require an empty seat during the right period, since seniors have priority.
You might look at the lists of IB and AP credits given at some colleges where he may apply. That could tell you whether AP credits in particular subjects could be especially useful. I’ve read that credit is rarely given for SL classes.