S19 thought AP Calc BC was easier than honors pre Calc. lol. But our honors math classes are brutal. It’s known that they are twice as difficult as regular level because the tests are nothing like the homework so you have to really know your stuff and getting over a 90 percent on one of these tests is just super difficult. The AP classes use practice AP questions for the tests and they practice those types of questions for homework so, in AP Calc AB or BC, the questions on the tests are familiar.
D21 has to choose her senior classes in a week. Like @homerdog 's D, she would rather take APES than Physics. Her three lab sciences would be Regents Earth Science, Bio and Chem. But, since she is not on the accelerated math track, so won’t have Calculus . . . I’m thinking it might be risky to not have Calculus or Physics, even though she’ll definitely be a humanities major.
So her classes will be:
Either Physics or APES
Pre-Calc
AP Lit
AP Latin
AP Gov
Honors Research (special class, students must be admitted)
Econ (required)
Gym
Physics would be a grind for her because she struggles with multi-step word problems, and math in general. I’ve no doubt she’d get through it, but she’d actually enjoy APES. She loved Bio. Will see what her counselor says but would love to hear any thoughts y’all have.
Schools she interested in: Skidmore, William & Mary, Franklin & Marshall, Lafayette, Dickinson. Maybe Conn College, Bryn Mawr. According to Naviance, she looks great at those schools, but of course you can’t tell rigor by Naviance.
@3SailAway you know what else I just confirmed about Naviance at our school? The ACT and SAT scores are highest of one sitting even though most kids applied to colleges that superscore. So we can’t even see the super scores they applied with!
I wish we had Naviance or something like it. We don’t have any of that information and when I asked S counselor about Naviance she never even heard of it.
Pre-calc at our school is known as the hardest math class, whatever level. D actually drooped it this year for Stats. She wants to study psychology so stats us actually the better math for her anyway,
D hasn’t picked her schedule yet, but it will most likely be:
-English (the only required subject)
-Forensics (not offered as AP or honors but she’s truly interested in this topic so rigor be damned!)
-AP Human Geo
-AP Euro History
-Senior Math Topics (no clue what this is but it’s the only option outside of Calc)
-Publications/Art (required)
She is definitely not killing it with rigor, but she’s on track for the schools she likes thus far. She also tends to be a little ball of stress so i’M letting her call the shots!
@nichols51 Your son sounds absolutely AMAZING!
@Momof3B I always wanted to be a “Band Mom”, D’s boyfriend is the marching band. What hard workers they are.
No class schedules here yet.
S21’s classes for next year:
AP Physics
AP Econ
AP Calc BC
Comp Sci (dual enrollment)
Senior thesis (required at our school)
World religions (required)
Drama
He does a varsity sport every season (not a star, just a solid player) plus student council and Interact (our school’s main service organization). He will likely be president of one or the other next year.
My S doesn’t register til next month, but this is his plan:
AP Calc BC
PLTW - Aerospace
AP Lit
AP Physics 1
AP Physics 2
AP Env. Science
free period (most seniors take a free 1st or last period; it’s possible he’ll do an elective but I think most likely he won’t)
Next year will be an almost all STEM year – but this year he has two history classes, AP Spanish, Lang, math and no traditional science – just comp sci.
@homerdog - interesting about Naviance. I suppose it’s impossible to ensure each of those checkmarks is 100% accurate in context of each application. It’s such a great tool, but definitely can be a little misleading. I wish there was a purple check for ED - that would help so much with perspective/analysis. I’m always skeptical of the chances when it says - 20 applied, 2 accepted, 2 attended.
Our school doesn’t use superscore in Naviance either. Naviance could be so much more helpful…with superscores, if they included ED/EA/RD, gender (so much lower rate of acceptance for females at many schools), and our summary stats on the top (applied/accepted/attended) never tie out to the scattergram…turns out a lot is missing from the scattergram.
Our Naviance uses superscore - the test score section lists the superscore and the little blue guy is at the superscore spot. Ours also says gpa is supposed to be 6-semester, but the little blue guy for older kid is at the spot of the 8-semester gpa (with no checkmarks representing this kid at the 6-semester gpa spot).
One issue with ours is that the scattergram data goes back more than three years. I intend to ask the GC how many. Also, it will have the same student for both ACT and SAT, though presumably the student may have chosen one or the other to submit, not both. I like to look at the unweighted gpa version, because the weighted will be over-weighted if it includes 8-semester gpas as I suspect.
@3kids2dogs I know other schools’ Naviance do show ED but our does not. When we were looking at schools for S19, I flat out asked our GC to tell me how many of the accepted kids for each school were ED. And how many were recruited. Because he was looking at small schools, this info was super important and, while she wouldn’t tell me which dots on the grid were ED kids, we still got a sense of what percentage went ED. In a few cases, all accepted kids were ED and athletes. (Single digit info here because so few kids apply to LACs from our high school.)
One can use a little detective work to see how many went ED if the pool is small enough. We had ten kids apply to Wake last year, three got in and only one went. So, that tells me that at least two of those three went RD because they were accepted and didn’t attend. Can’t figure out their stats but I can see that no super duper high scorers even applied so those kids must be one of the green checks in the ballpark where I hope D will end up.
When it comes to universities with multiple colleges, Naviance gets even less helpful. Can’t see who applied to business or engineering, etc.
Anyway, it could be worth asking your GC for more specifics if you think it will help. Maybe she will divulge more info that you think she will.
Wow, a lot to catch up on!
D21 does not have to figure out next year’s schedule until March, so no idea other than APBC , APFrench, and AP Eng, and the required senior history class; another science, for sure, then electives.
The Naviance differences are interesting: ours uses superscores, does indicate ED, EA, RD, DeferED and all of that, but does not indicate gender or athlete, and oddly uses the end of Sr yr GPA, not the GPA they applied with, which confuses the data interpretation. (It uses weighted gpa, and due to most H/AP severely restricted until 11&12th, the GPA at the end of junior year could be a lot lower than the end of HS gpa, or it could be very similar). Still though, it is a helpful “ballpark” tool.
I’m very impressed with a lot of your kids’ schedules, which are packed with AP classes. Do your kids who are taking so many AP’s have colleges/universities in mind, and if so, which schools?
@Mwfan1921 I was told that a student “applied” on Naviance if they put the school in the “applied to” category on Naviance even though lots of kids don’t follow through on sending those apps in. In the case of Davidson in 2018, it showed that four kids applied and none got in. After asking more about it, the GC told me no one actually sent an app. Those kids started the application but never sent it. So that’s why there always seem to be more kids applying that dots on the map!
@evergreen5 the dot does move every time the student gets a set of grades. While S19 applied to schools with his six-semester GPA, his current dot is his final GPA from high school. So there’s another thing. From what we know from S19’s friends, most GPAs go up senior year.
@homerdog Exactly. That’s why I think the description in our Naviance of the dots supposedly being 6-semester gpas is potentially inaccurate (although some people’s unweighted gpas go down, with the combination of more APs and apps and senioritis…).
The Naviance information is so helpful! Our Naviance supposedly does indicate ED applications, but after looking at dozens of schools of all kinds (and many LACs), I’ve only ever seen one ED “dot.” It’s hard for me to believe that is correct. The idea that students don’t end up following through on applications is interesting as well and puts a lot of the information into better context. My daughter and her friends tend to discount Naviance, saying that the school always talks about how great it is, but that most students don’t use it. That is frustrating, though I suppose not entirely surprising when you factor in that each GC has around 500 students on their docket.
D’s schedule isn’t set for next year, but they’ll start deciding soon. She’s taken Honors Physics/Chem/Bio and AP ES (she got some HS credits in 7th/8th), so she’ll likely take AP Psych, though that is technically a Social Studies course. She could take AP Bio (she has some interest in nursing), but it’s a double period, which would knock out something fun. She took Honors Calc this year, so I’m not sure she’d want/need more Calc. Also, I know plenty of kids take 5-6 APs senior year, but it doesn’t seem right for her. She works hard but is a laid back kid, and we both want her to have some time to enjoy senior year!
So her potential schedule looks something like this:
AP English Lit (taking AP Lang this year)
AP Spanish Language
AP Psych
Choir
Math (AP Stats? Financial Algebra?)
Teen Mentoring Program (instead of PE)
Something fun - Theater production? Astronomy?
I have heard about a new platform that is an alternative to Naviance called SCORE. Are any of your schools using it?
Classes for next year? No idea, except for AP Chem. There are lots of honors electives available in senior year as well as the usual AP offerings. D is excited to have some choices!
@H0llyw00d, I didn’t want my D to feel pressured to take a ton of APs for the sake of it.
But what I realized is that, at her school, if a student has already completed the school’s non-core graduation requirements (such as health and financial literacy) and taken the basic core classes, there is really not much else to take other than APs senior year without going backwards to those non-honors classes that tend to be taken by underclassmen… or starting something entirely new (like French 1 or art 1). We’re not a wealthy school district and we don’t have distinctive electives like “film studies” or “British Literature” or “accounting” that might attract solid students. The one we do have that is great is “historical research methods” where students research a single local/regional history topic each year as a group and publish a book about it. They dig up old original documents and artifacts, and interview elderly people with first-and second-hand experience with the topic. Very cool class that D will likely take!
Some students who know they are going to community college or the local directional (many good students do for economic reasons) just come to school for half a day senior year. Some go on to jobs or community college classes. But if you’re bound for the flagship or another somewhat selective school and need to show a full schedule, APs are almost the only way to go. With some classes, like physics and calculus, there’s not even a regular or honors option. My daughter is taking AP physics this year ONLY because there is no other physics. There weren’t enough students taking AP Spanish or AP physics 2 this year to have separate classes for them, so they’re sitting in with Spanish 4 and Ap physics 1 students and doing a lot of their work more-or-less as guided independent study.
Here is a link to SCOIR, a Naviance alternative. https://www.scoir.com/
So far, our school doesn’t have plans to switch, but it’s good to have competition. Naviance pulled out of the international market this past year, and their customer service is definitely not as good as it should/could be.