@Momof3B My D21 is taking AP Bio now. If your sons know their chemistry very well, then that helps a ton. D21 took AP Chem as a freshman (as will my D23), and she says knowing chemistry at that level before taking AP Bio was incredibly helpful. So if your twins want to have an easier time of it this fall, having them brush up on their chem over the summer might be a good idea.
(Hope you don’t mind the unsolicited advice). 
@Momof3B @JanieWalker I have actually just found out that my D23 may be eligible to skip Regent’s Biology and be placed into AP Bio next year, so this convo perked up my ears!
Hm, my D23 has had Earth Science but no real chemistry in school up to this point (just whatever is in all the geeky science videos she watches on YouTube, lol.) Would you say there’s enough chem content in AP Bio that it should give me pause in signing her up? Or do you think it’s the kind of thing where if she did a Kahn Academy overview during the summer (which she was planning to do for their AP Bio material anyway) it should be okay? This will be the only genuinely difficult class she takes next year, so I’m not particularly worried about her overall workload, but I don’t want to be setting her up for grief, either!
@thermom I just asked D21 - she says the Kahn Academy overview should be fine. The chem portion was in the beginning of the year for her, and having just come from AP Chem, she felt that was a nice easy start to the course for her. However, she doesn’t think that not having chem first should deter a motivated student. Some prep over the summer should be helpful though.
@JanieWalker Thank D21 for me! That is good to know. We’re not going to find out until the end of this school year whether the AP Bio thing will happen because the HS wants to evaluate any incoming 9th graders individually after their final 8th grade marks are in, and also make sure they have room in the class after giving priority to upperclassmen. I hope it works out, she’s very excited about the idea and she loves science.
@JanieWalker thank you for the advice! I already have a summer tutor planned for them (it’s a yearly thing we do!) with a neuroscience college student we know who has been tutoring my boys for about 4 summers now. I had asked her to start introducing concepts to them as well as help them with the precourse work that will be assigned over the summer.
Both of my twins are Science nerds so they’re pretty excited about the challenge (and doing something their elder brother didn’t do lol…he took PreAp Bio as a freshman).
I’m excited to see this thread and grateful to see so many on here that have been through this before. D23 is my oldest so it is all a bit new to me, although I’ve worked in higher ed since before she was born. So I have some knowledge at least.
My D23 turned in her requested classes for next year back in early February. We are just waiting to hear back on those. It should be interesting as she is currently involved with multiple music groups in MS and wants to continue all of them in HS. She plays trumpet in the band, viola in the orchestra, and sings in the choir. Our understanding is that it is difficult for students to fit in even one musical group in our HS so D23 has decided to do some of her other required coursework through our state online public charter school. This summer she will take one of her PE classes and probably Spanish II online. Apparently the online PE is popular but rigorous! No idea what that is going to look like.
D23 is also heavily involved in dance and musical theatre. She takes 9 dance classes a week and is a student helper in a 10th class. She also helps out with a theatre group for young children in addition to her own theatre group. Between these activities and her music that pretty much fills up all her time outside of school each week. Fortunately she seems to be able to keep up with her school work as well and has maintained excellent grades in MS. She does sometimes get very stressed about her grades and I’m worried that will intensify in HS.
She was recommended for Honors in Geometry, English, and Earth Science and signed up for all three. She also has a required Civics and Econ class that doesn’t have an Honors offering. There are no AP classes for freshmen at our HS. She wants to be involved with the HS drama club and requested a Theatre class. Our HS also has a Career and Technical Center attached and she requested a Clothing Construction class there as she loves costuming and is considering pursuing technical theatre after HS. I think I’m missing another class too. We have modified block scheduling at our HS which I think is part of what makes the performance groups tricky to schedule.
I look forward to chatting with everyone as we help our kids through this transition to HS and then to college!
Hello everyone! I am very happy to discover College Confidential and thanks to @thermom for informing me about this thread.
I have S23 who is doing well academically and plays sports. He plays tennis, basketball and runs track. The sign up paper for classes to take next year as a freshman was given yesterday. He will be honors Math, Science,Language Arts and Social Studies. We will be cutting down in sports as he starts HS. I want him to focus on academics and play one school sports. He is interested in keeping only tennis and basketball. He is aware how important it is to focus on academics as we will be relying on possible scholarships and merit aids for college. He likes science and math but at this time he does not yet show interest or passion for specific career or profession.
Last summer they tried educator.com for math enrichment. They seemed to liked it. I thought it was good as well. This summer we will be going back to Khan Academy as they are more user/kids friendly and well put together.
I look forward to learning about everyone’s experience and reading about anything you all share!
@2boysmom84 and @Starski - welcome! Looks like we will have a fun group to make this run. Our DS’23’s school advises that the kids take Honors Chemistry before trying to tackle AP Bio. He will have to sit for some diagnostic math test for math placement. We will get it all figured out this summer.
Does anyone else have a kid who just can’t deal with Mondays? Lately every Monday for D23 ends in tears of frustration, usually over homework. It isn’t that she has a lot of homework or that it is particularly difficult, it just seems like she hits a wall every Monday where she can no longer problem solve effectively.
Tonight it was while she was practicing trumpet - she took her valves out to oil them and when she put them back in she couldn’t get the trumpet to play correctly. It just turned out that she had one valve in incorrectly, something she has probably done and fixed 100 times before, but on Mondays she just can’t work her way through that kind of issue without a breakdown.
Mondays are busy for her - she has dance classes right after school through early evening typically. But today 1/2 her dance classes were cancelled and she was home early so I was surprised that she still ended up in tears. I have suggested to her that maybe she should cut back on classes but she is adamant that she doesn’t want to do that, and that dance actually helps her deal with stress.
These episodes tend to pass quickly but I’m worried that they will only intensify with HS next year. She’s my oldest so I have no idea if this might just be teenage hormones or what, and maybe this will soon pass. Has anyone had a similar experience or have any insight to share?
Hi everyone - single mom to an incoming freshman daughter. The high school search process was exhausting so I am not looking forward to the college process. We live in a northeast ohio suburb and D23 has attended a small catholic grade school for k-8. she has always tested well and is in the two honors course (math and english/reading) that they offer but she tends to get one or two 92% B+s per report card due to not turning things in on time and she struggles with organization so high school will be a transition. She applied to and was accepted into 3 catholic high schools and a public IB school. The school she finally settled on awarded $10,000 in scholarships after lots of essays, tests, and interviews but she is happy and i think it will be a great fit. It is a Jesuit High school with a solid reputation and we both felt comfortable and at home there. She plays clarinet and does well making regional honors band and sits in first chair but doesn’t want to do marching band so I am not sure how long she will continue in high school. Other then that she is a high level soccer player (mainly GK) and plays for a nationally recognized club team that results in 4-5 nights per week of training and 2-3 weekends a month of games. She will play in HS for at least her freshman year (the HS has a nationally ranked women’s soccer team and she is hoping to be a starting JV GK). As of now she wants to play in college but she is not top D1 level talent so maybe looking at NAIA, D2 or D3 type schools if she continues to want to play at that level. Right now she wants premed/bio and an urban school. She loves the pacific northwest and Chicago so Loyola is a top choice. We are visiting Xavier in Cinci this weekend since we are traveling south for soccer. I look forward to following all of you and leaning on those of you with more experience as i try to navigate the college process and enjoy the ups and downs of HS.
Hi to the new people!
@Starski My D23 has been having some tough Mondays lately as well. I think it’s a combination of being tired out from school and activities and some of that lovely hormonal stuff that is happening to these kids simultaneously!
I would say I’ve felt a little concerned about D23 potentially overloading herself, especially looking ahead to HS. My D17 was a more laid back kid - she did her dance and her art and some volunteer/community work, but she was capable of self-regulating and pulling back when things got to be too much. My D23 has a much higher intensity personality, just naturally. She wants to sign up for everything, and her interests are so varied that I do worry about time management / burnout. So, while I don’t want to put the brakes on any of her genuine enthusiasm, I do think about how much she can be reasonably be expected to handle without cracking.
I say this while enjoying the first night out of the last 5 in a row that she hasn’t had a ballet rehearsal for their upcoming Spring show. All-county orchestra was a couple of weeks ago, science congress is next month, music solo evaluation in May which requires learning the most difficult piece she’s ever tackled, student council and jazz band are ongoing… I’m exhausted from all her running around, and all I have to do is drive! I guess for now I feel like I’ll just keep a close eye on her. Fortunately, school work has come easily to her. The volume of homework can be a drag at times, but she doesn’t find it difficult. Next year might start to be a different story, especially if she does get placed into AP Biology. We shall see, I suppose. I’m prepared to step in and make her pare some things back, but I hope I don’t have to.
Hello @2boysmom84 and @GKmom23 Glad to have you in this thread.
Thanks @thermom that helps a lot. Sounds like our kids are pretty similar. My D23 also wants to sign up for everything. Only actual time overlaps keep her from doing so sometimes. This also means though that she is good at a lot of things but doesn’t have the time to put into any one activity to become really good at it. I know from a college prep standpoint I should encourage her to focus on one or two activities and get them to that next level but I would rather let her enjoy her varied activities. She will have to cut back eventually so I’ll let her enjoy them as long as possible.
Fortunately she doesn’t have a lot of homework and the work she has seems to get done without much issue. Right now she is stressing about her upcoming math placement test and her class schedule for next year. She’s in Algebra this year but the students in Algebra in our MS don’t get to move on to Geometry automatically at the HS. They have to be recommended for it, which she was, and they have to pass a placement test. Word is that most students from her MS Algebra will take Algebra Honors in 9th grade but we don’t know if that is because they don’t get the recommendation or because they don’t pass the placement test. So she’s anxious about that.
And then once that is done, her schedule will be finished and we will get to see it - hopefully by the end of April. She has requested three music performance classes but we have no idea if that is even possible to do in our modified block schedule HS. So that’s causing some anxiety too. Hopefully by May, she’ll be over her case of the Mondays, or at least it will be a bit better.
Hey all, lots of familiar names here. I have S18, close to wrapping up first year at SJU, D21 killing it at a private Catholic high school. S23 joins her there in the fall. He’ll be in the honors program as the others were. That can mean different things and we’ll see what it does to him. Thing 1, extremely bright, lazy under achiever. He’s hitting is stride a bit more in college. Thing 2 classic ocd, Queen of time mgmt. Thing 3? Time will tell. Doubt I’ll post to much here for a while, lots of pages and groups but I’ll be sure to check back once in a while.
DS’23 has to sit for a Math placement exam this afternoon. Not a big deal, but there are a lot of test/ exams this time of year.
My D23 has her math placement test coming up on Tuesday. Good luck to all of our test-takers!
Hi @glido and @Starski - I have not heard of Math placement test for my S23. Is it only given on specific states? We are from Ohio. I apologize for my ignorance.
@2boysmom84, at least in my S23’s case he’s taking placement exams for high school. It’s a private school and helps them place kids properly or allow kids to test out of certain classes.
@VikkiG5 Thank you.
For us, (public school—don’t know about private schools, and we don’t have a strong private school tradition here anyway) students only need to worry about placement exams for math if they’re trying to skip a level. My kid is taking geometry, so as long as she passes it with a C (or B? I think it’s a C) or better, she takes the next course in the sequence (Algebra 2) next year.
Where we would have to worry about a placement exam is German, since she’s coming out of a German-immersion K–8 school, but it turns out that German 3/4/5/IB/AP are all small enough classes that they all meet the same hour in the same room, so she’ll just go into that class and the teacher will worry about what class she’s technically in based on classroom observation. Placement exam stress magically avoided! 
The placement exam process for us is frustrating to say the least. Our public school advanced math 8th graders take Topics in Algebra. However, most of them go on to take Algebra I Honors in 9th grade. To “skip” Algebra I, you have to take Topics in Algebra, be recommended for Geometry and then you have to pass the placement test.
My D23 is taking Topics in Algebra, was recommended for Geometry and took the math placement test today. She needed an 80% to go on to Geometry. She earned a 77%.
I’m frustrated that this system exists in the first place. Most other schools that I’m familiar with offer Algebra I as the advanced math in 8th grade. As long as you do well in that, placement in Geometry is automatic. How I wish our school worked like that!
My D earned a grade of A+ for both 1st and 2nd quarter in her Topics in Algebra class and an A- for third quarter with a different teacher (maternity leave), scores in the 97-99th percentile in math in the state mandated standardized tests since elementary school, and took the SAT last year for CTY and earned a math score of 520 before taking any Algebra. I just can’t see the benefit of her repeating Algebra in HS.
I’m not sure what we’ll do next. Right now I’m just frustrated on her behalf. We had heard that most students did not make it to Geometry and when we asked about that, we heard (from students and parents) that the issue was that the test was given in April for scheduling purposes but not all material had been covered in class yet. So my D took the initiative of asking a friend of ours, a college math professor, to tutor her in the remaining chapters. They’ve been meeting weekly since January. Our friend (the math prof, whose daughter took the test last year) thought she would do fine.
Worst part is that D doesn’t know yet. She’s going to be devastated. I want to be sure she makes choices about next steps based on what she wants, not what she thinks we want. I don’t want my frustration with the process to be misconstrued as frustration with her or have her use that as a reason for what she does next. So I’m venting here. Thanks for listening.