It’s been great reading about your 23’s and all the huge variation in school systems! Our district gives .25 bonus for honors classes and .50 for AP or college/dual enrollment courses. Generally, freshmen don’t take any AP classes, sophomores are usually eligible for 2-3, then juniors and seniors on the accelerated track have almost no choice but to take a nearly all-AP schedule because our small school doesn’t offer multiple tracks of most courses (it’s regular or AP - no honors or anything in between.) There are definitely kids here who (or their parents, or both) are already plotting the “weighting game”.
My D23 is not quite done with her first semester yet - report cards come out next Friday. So far, so good! She’s actually had quite a bit less homework this year vs. middle school which has allowed her to keep up her grades and her major activities (ballet, clarinet, coding) without too much stress. Things will pick up in the next few weeks because regional honor band and then All-County rehearsals kick in along with the Spring ballet gearing up, but they’re all things she really loves so she’s pretty determined to make it work!
@bgbg4us My D23 does band so that takes up her elective slot. S21, however, has sampled a few different things since he doesn’t do music. Audio-video production freshman year which was a great choice - he’s made use of it in various class projects, is now on the audio crew for school plays and runs the sound board for our church once a month. He took psychology which he enjoyed and this year is doing graphic design.
@bgbg4us@Dolemite@Happy4u@mountainsoul Thank you for all your advice! D23 will need to sit down with her guidance counselor and talk about options. I believe her school doesn’t weight GPA because they are all honors level (they don’t even label any of the courses “honors” because of that), so I’m pretty sure they consider them all the same weight, even AP. Also, GPA is out of 100, not 4.0, and pretty sure they don’t rank.
The added problem with comparing her relative to her classmates is that her performing arts academy is one of 5 academies at the larger umbrella magnet school. Each academy has its own specialty, and as you can imagine, the academy for IT and academy for math/science and academy for health education (doctor/nurse related professions) will have more “rigorous” looking courses. And though students have the potential to take classes from other academies, the likelihood of that happening really depends on how the curriculum is set up within the academies, and as I mentioned before, she has very little wiggle room with hers. So I don’t know if she will be compared to students in the other academies or just her own. So complicated.
Of her freshmen class, there are only a handful who placed out of the freshmen math course (combined Algebra 1 and 2), and she is one of them, which is the only reason that she will be one of the few from her academy who would take AP Calc junior year and probably the only AP class before senior year. I did look at the website for the college that she wants to go to, and they list the same things that some you guys said (looking at how students make a rigorous schedule given what their schools offer), so I guess we have to find out whether colleges will be looking at what the larger magnet school offers versus what her academy allows her to take.
I mean, it’s so rigid that I don’t even think she gets to class selections for next year because she just takes the next course that follows each subject: Theater 1–>Theater 2, Biology–>Chemistry, World Lit–>Early Am Lit, Geo/Trig–>AdvAlg/Pre-Calc, World Hist–>USHist 1, Spanish 1–>Spanish 2, and PE.
My S20 is just finishing up applying to art schools, and I thought I was finally going to relax and not think about college prep for a while. LOL!
Also what are her options of taking more classes at the local university and is this a major research university as opposed to a CC? My D was able to take classes at 2 local universities both being major research universities. She could have started as a junior if I had been more informed about her options. If your D could supplement with a couple of classes like that on top of her high school schedule I would think that colleges would see the rigor in that.
@Graphitemovermom can you also ask the GC for a copy of the “school profile” that they show to colleges ? That may give you some insight into how much they do or don’t emphasize the different opportunities available to students within the individual academies.
Oh snap! Y’all started without me! Hi, @dfbdfb , we’re back in the rodeo way too soon, if you ask me
Hi, I’m Gatormama, and my D19 is happy as a clam in college and now I’m starting to work on S23, and boy, will this be a different journey!
First off - for us, money is always the #1 concern in the college search. We live in the NE and while our income places us solidly/upper middle class, our costs are woefully high.
With my D – an awesome kid but not an academic superstar-- I lived in the Parents of 3.0-3.4 GPA thread for a reason - I had nothing to glean from the “regular” 2019 thread, hahaha. She did great in the end, though. We were lucky with a full-tuition scholarship and are able to cash-flow the rest.
S23 started high school at boarding school after deciding he wanted to take a scholarship test and winning half tuition/board. We were surprised and encouraging, but dubious, not the least because of the finances. (We are paying the equivalent of our mortgage to send him there, even with his scholarship.)
We also thought he would deal with a steep learning curve after coming from a not-particularly-challenging middle school … but he got straight As in his first semester. He says he wants to go to Stanford and study law. Or be an actor. Sigh. I’m not too worried about that aspect right now; it’ll all shake out.
Anyway, I’m reading back pages and trying to get caught up. Hopefully we all make it through the next 3.5 years unscathed!
Who knows anything about University of Michigan? The kid has expressed interest and I know zip about it other than I think it’s one of the really hard state U’s to get into and isn’t known for good aid.
@Gatormama - Correct. Really selective to get into, and really, really selective for merit aid. They do offer out-of-state financial aid, but not much.
Had a talk with my S23 last night - his wheels are FINALLY starting to turn on what he needs to do and started writing down his goals. He wants to take care of some classes over the summer - mainly English as he’s adamant about “getting it over with” and not taking any English his Senior year. He said he would rather make room for more AP CS/Math/Science courses. He is going to ask his counselor about taking his sophomore English this summer, and then take some dual credit courses in the following summer (inc English 2, 3 & 4). He also expressed interest in participating in Math UIL competitions but he’s concerned that basketball will interfere with that schedule (only one month left anyway). I encouraged him to talk to the adviser anyway as I pointed out that others may have conflicts and they may work around it. And he wants to participate in the robotics chapter in our area - he wanted to last Fall but it was his first HS semester and he couldn’t find time to get to the meetings.
I also encouraged him to ask his counselor about volunteering experiences and how to find them. I want him to take the wheel in looking for opportunities - find things that pique his interest.
Anyway, I felt like we had a very productive conversation last night - I am thinking about looking into bullet journaling for him - just worried that it is too overwhelming for his ADD/Executive functioning disordered brain. LOL My daughter (biochemistry/genetics major at TAMU) just started doing it and loves it - but she’s way more OCD and organized than both of my sons.
She says it’s time-consuming to set up but so very helpful in long run - she loves posting her goals and inspirational stuff in it as well. When she looks at it every day, she is reminded of not only her daily reminders but also to persevere and look at her academic as well as personal goals.
@Happy4u - thanks for the info. I tried to (gently) talk him down from this idea. Told him how early it was to be fixated on any school. And that we don’t have money for full-pay so his chances of going there were slim to none.
As for bullet journaling, wow @JaceyK - I passed on the link to my kids but omg, how much time is she wasting on literally recreating a calendar.
@Gatormama I thought same thing - she was influenced by another lab assistant in the lab that she works/researches in - they told her it was a game changer so she got one too. I’m asking her to elaborate on how long it takes and how much it helps. We will see
Edited to add - she needed something. She’s got 5 classes, splits her time between working in lab and doing research (for credit), volunteers at the hospital AND she tutors HS kids 1-2 nights/week. Forgot to add, study for MCAT (which she is scheduled to take in June).
@JaceyK, I haven’t tried it but have heard wonderful things about bullet journaling! What a great way for your D to stay organized in the short term while focused on longer term goals.
@Gatormama - Ask him what he likes about UMich? Is it the sports/fan culture? A big university appeals to him? It is great he is starting to form opinions - this is a great way to start! You can then locate schools with the characteristics he likes in your budget.
My Twins finalized their 10th schedules yesterday…well, one did lol.
Thing 1 is very methodical, knows what he wants and doesn’t want, very linear thinking…done!
Thing Two…he is still trying to fill one open spot with an elective…but nothing offered is appealing to him…except a .5 credit Social Studies class on Holocaust Studies. He LOVES history & science. Since we are on accelerated block scheduling, we only have 4 classes a semester…each semester is 2 nine week grading periods. This class is a 9 week class, so he would have to find another 9 week class to fill. He’s already signed up for AP Chem & AP World History, he’d be very history heavy if adds two social studies classes…I told him to figure it out with his counselor, I’m not opposed to it, I love his interests in History…just don’t want him to get emotionally overwhelmed with too much heavy content. He has the options to take Personal Financial Literacy or Money Matters as well (both 18 weeks long).
He asked me if Majoring in Physics and minoring in History “is a thing”…I said Sure! but I don’t even know if that makes sense lol…thoughts? How would that correlate career wise?
It doesn’t have to be a thing if that is what he enjoys and I’m sure it won’t matter career wise. He might major in Physics and work as a Software Engineer or go to Law School. Who knows. My D is majoring in Astrophysics with a minor in Russian born from a love of Russian Literature. It looks like all the Astro majors at her school either go to grad school or work as Software Engineers.
You are also talking about a kid that is 14/15 so who knows what he’ll eventually choose. If he is like many kids that aren’t 100% sure of the area they wish to study then he’ll need to adjust his school list to cover his bases to make sure he’s not locked in to anything.
