@typiCAmom - both S19 and S20 participate in debate. I can’t speak to how much time is involved in starting a club but I can tell you the work involved in just participating depends on the event. My oldest has mainly focused on public forum debate and congress. There are new topics each month that he must research and prepare cases/legislation. He recently decided to add an event - original oratory and that required researching and writing a 10 minute speech and then an inordinate amount of time memorizing it (no scripts allowed). He has also been captain 11th/12th which involves creating and delivering “Captain’s lessons” for the other kids. S20 has been working on public forum debate and value debate. Some events do not require prep - 1:1 Value, impromptu, etc while others require a significant prep. Meet days require getting up at the crack of dawn for travel - they need to be at most meets at 7:30am – and then they often don’t return till extremely late (sometimes 1am). Debate meets are ALL day events and sometimes awards don’t even start till dinner time or later. That being said - both of my guys carry heavy AP/DE loads and have maintained high GPA’s. You have to know your kid and the workload required by courses at their school to decide what makes sense. If she needs to lessen her academic load, I think the benefits of speech and debate more than compensate and will add to her resume.
S2 is definitely a fuzzy, but he doesn’t do MUN or debate. He would love to, but his outside commitments make it impossible. I think as @mountainmomof3 says that the time involved for debate can vary a lot. MUN, on the other hand, is huge.
We have another couple of weeks before he has to nail down next year’s courses, thank goodness. Lots of conversations ahead.
so i grew up in a rural very small school (22 kids in my graduating class). Some of these courses sound so cool! wish i had those opps – like metal sculpture! My S20 feels like he’s put his time in this year with hard classes and wants “early out” next year. He’ll take
calc 3,
AP lit,
AP environmental science,
AP gov,
a computer class of sorts,
academic decathlon, and hopefully get out or start early. No way could we talk him into AP Chem!
so rant of the day: he has 5 AP classes and 2 non-honors this year. Pulled all A’s first semester, yet his class rank dropped. Again. Drives me nuts!
** called the counselor and asked about “playing the ranking game” for my 8th grader. She gave me the details; daughter loves competition and is very motivated. But i also know there’s no big prize at the end for a high rank really.
@bigmacbeth @VickiSocal At D20’s school the accelerated Alg II/Trig/PreCalc course was recently renamed “Analysis of Functions” which the kids promptly dubbed “AnalFunc” :))
We’re going through the same thing. But, I like the fact that my kids like to spread their wings and expose themselves to different things. Next year, she’s giving up AP Lit to take either multicultural or international literature.
@bgbg4us At our school they no longer do rank, but magna cum laude and summa cum laude. The only way to get Suma is to play the game, particularly if you are in band. So my D20 gets to take one class a year as pass/fail. So as long as she gets an A it will not negatively affect her GPA. Its silly that unless you know that you can do this being in a Art type class is detrimental.
Our high school doesn’t publicly rank. You find out if you are in the top 9% (I think that’s the number you need to be assured a spot in a UC) and then you are considered one of the valedictorians if you have an unweighted 4.0 but there’s no game-playing around dropping band or adding just one more AP or whatever. I like this system because it keeps the smart kids in the arts classes longer, and fine if you really want to take that 5th AP in a given year because you are genuinely interested in all 5 of those classes but don’t feel you have to just to maintain your class rank.
I used to not care one way or another about schools ranking UNTIL this past year made it evident how cut throat some kids are. Everyone is required to take a certain unweighted class but the valedictorian last year somehow was exempted and allowed a weighted class. After graduation, this student posted “If your not first, your last,” on their social media account. Tacky. This year my S19 has been hopping around 3rd in class. The #2 in class actually “jokingly” offered money to two of his teachers to give him a “B” - S19 found this out from the teacher. For the record, S19 doesn’t really care about his rank because it doesn’t really matter for his purposes or in our state. But he gets annoyed when students make it their mission to move up. S19 is happy that the likely valedictorian is a great guy who just happened to make it there because he is a genuine math genius and took more weighted classes earlier on than others could. I like the method as described above by @washugrad.
I thought the trend was to get rid of HS ranking. I wouldn’t be surprised if rankings are pretty much a thing of the past in 4 years, and that most colleges will be test-optional.
Admissions will then be determined by height.
My kids go to my high school and to my knowledge it has never ranked. No Val or Sal either, then or now.
Grad speakers are by audition.
@VickiSoCal same here (well, I didn’t go to their school). From the stress others are describing, I’m kind of glad no ranking at ours.
Ranking is alive at our HS. D20 is ranked 14 with a 4.4w/4.0 uw. I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon.
D’20s high school ranks. The top 10 spots are sort of a big deal. D was bummed that her B in AP Calc AB last semester probably dropped her out of the top 10, but now she’s over it. I’m a glad she’s out of that race now, as worrying about staying in the top 10 used to really stress her out…
My kids’ school still ranks and I really wish they’d at least change the system to only base the rank on core classes. It definitely discourages kids from continuing in unweighted classes. They also don’t actually tell the kids where they are until the end of junior year so there’s a ton of speculation and angst as people try and figure out who has more weighted classes.
@Darcy123 If they did only core classes then there would be a sheet-ton tied for #1.
I’m sure it’d vary among schools. There’s still a fair amount of variability in the number of AP/IB classes kids take at my kids school in each core class. Quite a few kids don’t get to AP in foreign language and math would narrow it down significantly based on when you’re able to start taking weighted classes. But I’d still rather have 10% of the class all ranked one versus kids dropping band and art for a free period as it helps their weighted GPA.
Our hs does not rank officially (they wouldn’t give out rankings on school profile/transcript), but will award top 10 kids, so I guess there is a ranking somewhere. I kind of like this. I really don’t believe ranking per se is that important, as we all know the difference between Val and number 10 could be less than 0.1GPA.
Art/music classes are very actively pursued by most kids as the school has exceptional 2d/3d art sdudios and active jazz scenes. When the chasing of GPAs/test scores are long faded from these kids’ lives, the influence/culturing of arts/music will sure live on.
@makemesmart As it should be!
Anyone have some good advice as to how to get your son or daughter engaged in this search?
We are doing our first college visit in a couple of weeks so hopefully it makes it real for her. Right now it feels like I am making a list and just telling her how it’s going to be and that’s not what I want.
Our school district still ranks based on weighted GPA but only core classes are used for that. Also, starting this year, only top 10% will have class rank on their transcript because…Texas lol. Anyone outside of top 10% will have to request to have rank on their transcript.