I didn’t know this thread existed until tonight! D25 is our first kid, so we’re just starting this wild ride. She’s pretty academic thus far, but her passion is ballet, which she spends ~17 hrs/week doing. We’re struggling a bit looking forward, as we’d like to keep her rigor up, her mental health positive, and somehow allow her to sleep and get her work done. (I know others on other threads seem to think 25 hrs/week of EC should be “easy” for a strong student to do and keep straight As. My kid really likes sleep, so I’m not so sure.)
She hasn’t finalized her schedule for next year (meets with the counselor in a couple of weeks), but thinks it will likely be:
Alg II H
English 10H
Chem (her school dropped honors chem 2 years ago, unclear why)
AP World
AP Spanish Lit [this is the wild card–she’s taking AP Spanish this year, but we’re really unsure if 1) the class will be offered; they technically offer it every year, but rarely fill the class; and 2) if this is an appropriate class for a 10th grader]. If it’s not offered, does she try to take Spanish Lit at CC? AP Spanish Lit online? The Latin American history class that’s offered in Spanish at the school?]
Drama
She’ll take PE over the summer to not need 7 classes next year.
The caveat to all the above is that D25 has asked me to consider homeschool/online school/something other than her public school next year. We’re talking/praying/researching/putting her in lotteries, etc. I find this very stressful. We’ll need to make some decisions by the end of the month, I think.
Does your D want homeschooling so she can focus more on ballet? I have a friend whose daughters did an online school on and off until graduation so they could focus on competition cheer. I’m too far away from her to know how academics went for them but they’re both world champions and have tons of other medals. One was invited by an Australian team to cheer during their season. It definitely opened doors for her girls. The older one went to Texas A&M for a while.
@dadof4kids --Thanks for the welcome! Actually, she’s not trying to get away from any issues, which is why I’ve sort of dragged my heels about making any changes. She is just concerned that with a likely increase in dance hours over the next few years and an increase in the amount of homework that she has with the increased # of AP and honors classes available to her that she won’t be able to get it all done well.
@MistySteel27–yes, she wants to focus more on ballet. I think the underlying issue for me is that I don’t know if this is going to be a “deep EC” or if this actually could lead to her doing a stint as a pro dancer for a bit at a regional company. If it’s the former, I’m nervous about pulling her from the tried and true school; if it’s the latter, I don’t want to be the one that is holding her back from her goals. What, me question everything? Why would you ask that? Sigh.
That’s such a hard choice, hugs. Before you all make any final decisions could she do an intensive summer dance camp to see how she feels about the daily rigor? It already sounds like it’s more than an EC to her. Maybe check out the dance major link for other parents who have been in your position and what the outcome was. Good luck with this!
How can we be in the tail end of 9th grade?!? Kiddo just came back from a bucket list spring break tour with the band, and it struck me this morning that he has two months left of his freshman year. It feels like this year has flown by, and I’m astounded by how far my quirky, scattered kid has come since last August. (Still quirky but slightly less scattered.) I can only imagine how quickly the next two years will go before we’re neck deep in the college admissions madness. We’ve spent the last few months cheering from the sidelines for our nephew as he went through the process, and the entire family felt the disappointment of him not getting into the state flagship that we thought would be a slam dunk for him. After some initial disappointment, our nephew rallied and ended up choosing a great university where he has a three year ROTC scholarship. Gave me hope that kids will end up where they’re supposed to end up. Hope everyone else is well and buckled up for the last few months of the school year.
Right…this year is moving at warp speed! I am definitely trying to enjoy it now while the pressure is not that intense. Congrats to your nephew. Our experience last year with D21 is they absolutely wind up exactly where they belong, even if it not what one originally hoped for. She is thriving.
On our end it’s been a long couple of month trying to get medication for our S25 for his ADHD. Lot’s of hiccups along the way and getting increasingly more desperate for help. I did find an incredible executive function coach that he works with, but it is so abundantly clear my son also needs the meds. He finally started with his first dose today so I am anxious to know if it helps him today. He’s been struggling so much while also trying to be patient and trust the process. He so deserves to have things be better. It will also be a huge weight off of me as well, because I’m always so stressed for him.
Hope you can find the right medication for him. It was a game changer for our son. I’m not sure how he could get through the mountains of homework he has without it. Sending good thoughts that the first medication is the right one.
Appreciate that so much. This is the second one he’s tried. The first one was horrible. I’m fully aware how the right one can make all the difference. I’m glad it’s worked so well for your kid, gives me hope.
D25 has picked her 10th grade courses. A good student, she’s running the honors gauntlet (english, pre-calc, chemistry), and is taking AP U.S. History. S22 avoided AP U.S. History, as it’s reputed to be a lot of reading for every class. Fingers crossed D25 will handle this schedule well. Looks like a grind to me.
Ok, trying to finish up this post. So…if the school gives no indication to colleges about rigor aside from the school profile, how does that go over? While I understand some of the mentality that chose this–kids were getting really stressed out about whether or not they were in the top decile–to give no indication if 1 or 10 APs is considered “normal” for a highly academic kid seems ludicrous to me. I wonder how many colleges that don’t know our school just write our kids off because it’s another hoop to jump through on their end. There’s nothing I can do about it, so I’m going to move on, but I did find it interesting. (Also, does that mean that they don’t even tell UCs which kids might fall into the top 9%? Truthfully, I don’t see my kid going to Merced, so it doesn’t really matter to me, but wonder if other kids or parents would see it differently.)
D25 continues to sound stressed about next year’s schedule and dance. I continue to drag my feet about making changes. We are number 350(!) on the waitlist for a public charter school, so I had mentally ruled that out until I heard they went up to 600 at the start of school last year. The online private school that I think would be good would actually be more classes, not fewer, as they would require three years of theology to get their diploma. I’m on vacation now, so aside from writing it here, I’m not going to think about it for another few days.
Hope all of your next year plans are going smoothly and that you’re enjoying your spring break (whenever it occurs)!
I can’t remember what your kid is targeting, but for the vast majority of colleges in this country, the rigor checkbox means precisely nothing.
And for at least most of the rest, if they are aware that they rigor checkbox isn’t used at a high school (which is information that should be included on the school profile), then they’ll simply ignore it in their calculations.
(And there are enough high schools out there where—by practice if not even policy—the effective opposite is done by checking the rigor box for every student that I’m honestly surprised it’s still even a thing in any admissions committee’s thinking anyway.)
If she is stressed, can she drop an AP or another class from honors down to a regular class? I work at a college. And I see so many kids who take every AP there is still being denied by their “dream schools.” I wouldn’t sacrifice my kids mental health so that a GC could check a rigor box. She will land where she needs to.
A few thoughts. Have you looked at the school profile? I have requested a copy of ours, when S19 was sending it to a few coaches (so probably either late soph/early junior year) and again fall of 2020, so I knew what was going to be sent to D21’s schools.
I don’t know what boxes if any our school checks. My kids that wanted competitive schools were in the top 1% of rigor at our school, so I didn’t bother asking. I do know that our profle could be best be described as sketchy fluff. There was minimal useful info in there. So I can tell you at least Amherst is ok with that, because D21 got in ED. S19 was an athletic recruit, so I can’t use him as a reference because it’s a different process. But I am guessing that they are annoyed with your school, not your kid, and will do their best to make a judgement. If they just ignored kids who have a worthless profile from the school, none of our kids would get in anywhere, and we have a few Ivy and similar schools every year (which is probably the bulk of the competitive kids who actually apply from here).
I didn’t dig too deep, and I can’t recall the name of the school. But S19 did get info from an online school that definitely would not have been more difficult than our public. He was wrestling pretty intensively, more so in the off season Olympic styles than HS, frankly. So in some ways it would have been a smart move, and we know a kid who did that because HS was interfering with his training. If you are interested I can message his dad and get info on what that school was. But I’m 99% sure it was not that rigorous. It was designed for kids who are practicing/competing/performing on a very high level, who have limited time for actual HS. Again there are different rules for athletes, but that kid ended up at NC State, so it isn’t like it is a disqualifying thing to get a diploma from there.
I think many schools who “don’t rank” will actually make exceptions where it is needed, for admission or scholarship purposes.
I know that it is a moving target, but what type of schools do you think she will target for college? Because honestly that makes a huge difference. If you aren’t looking at the highly rejectives, and she is dedicated to dance, I would back off of the academic rigor. You can’t do everything. My experience is in athletics not dance, but I have seen so many kids just get burned out from trying to do too much. Life is to short for that. And again, for 95% of colleges, it won’t matter anyway.
@dadof4kids and @dfbdfb ,
If I knew which schools my kid was targeting, that would make things easier. I’ll be honest; my guess is that she’ll be targeting at least some highly rejective schools. The dance thing throws me, but it looks like many dance programs are highly rejective, too, but based on audition, not academics. (I do understand that students have to be accepted academically, too.) My kids have had it drilled into them that they have to have safeties that they really would be happy to attend and that that’s where the list needs to start, but if they want to shoot for the stars (and have the stats to back it up) for a couple of apps, I think that’s fine, too. It’s good to hear that colleges will manage her school’s rigor boxes, or lack thereof. @dadof4kids , I’ll reach out if she needs a different option online; this one actually looks rigorous but because they have fewer in class hours and more done on their own time she can manage her schedule a little more easily. I have looked at the school profile and it does explain no ranking. I don’t see anything about rigor.
@2plustrio , I don’t want to sacrifice her mental health, either. The issue at play at her particular high school is that there’s a chasm between AP and regular classes. Homework for AP European History: 60-70pgs reading/wk + 2 research papers a semester, etc. The non-AP class: <8 pages/week not from textbook, 85% done in class; 2 papers in spring semester, etc. I’m sure not all the classes are that dramatically different, but it gives me pause. She took AP Spanish this year (no honors are offered to frosh, but the kids that did Spanish immersion can take the Spanish class) and what she likes about it is how motivated the kids are to participate and actually engage.
All the above may be a moot point shortly, though. I mocked up a sample schedule at the online school, and she thought it looked really good. We’re going to pursue it for now. (Gulp.)
This is very tough. I agree with others that for 95% of colleges it will not matter. However–just some anecdotes from a company-affiliated ballet school : While they have an excellent track record of placement into auditioned dance programs, the high school girls who leave their HS midday (to do the 30 hr a week apprentice program) or switch to an online option have not had success with the highly rejective schools and even the less-rejective state flagship in some cases: they just cannot take the AP /rigorous load a kid in school all day can. The ones who do the “less” intensive ballet(range is 15-20 hrs a week)that happens after 3pm have been able to take their HS’s “most rigorous” courses and have had some outstanding results at highly rejectives. However, to your point, they have not been the ones who were aiming for possible professional careers in ballet right after HS. Your D is early in her HS career–I would recommend keeping as many options open as you can and make a change if what you decide for next year is not working. Hugs to you: we have had very similar discussions and thoughts on all of this, with one of ours.
She sounds like she’s get along with my D25 B student, who right now wants to move to Japan and be a professional V-Tuber, which is when you stream on Twitch or YouTube, but as an animated avatar.
Just wrapping all this up with my D22. It’s been exhausting.
And to complicate it further, if she’s really focused on dance and wants to major in that and all, then the places people usually think of as “elite colleges” (however defined) may or may not be elite for dance—and in fact, may even be quite meh for her major. (Of course, that’s true for pretty much any major, but it’s especially true for the fine arts.) Similarly, there may well be colleges out there that most folks here on CC would look down their noses at, but that have top-notch dance programs with good placements and so on.
Coming here to share a win for my son. He is still trying meds for his ADHD and pretty frustrated because they aren’t really helping yet despite tinkering with doses. To top it off it’s just next to impossible to even get quick med adjustment appts so unfortunately we will not have this figured out before this school year is over.
That being said he currently takes an honors biology class that is just known for being really tough. Several of his friends dropped the class the first few weeks of school when they weren’t getting the grades they had been accustomed too. He wanted to stick with it and I whole heartedly supported his choice. In fact, this class was the only B his older sister ever got in high school.
He finished first semester with a C that was just one point shy of a B. That was definitely a hard pill to swallow for him. He really wants to get a B for second semester. What I love about this class is it drives him and motivates him, because by nature he’s just very relaxed and not a really academically driven person. He had a test this week that if he did well enough it would push his grade to a B for the end of third quarter. He texted this morning a screenshot of his updated new B grade and said in all caps “F%^# YES I DID IT!”
I had myself a sitting in the parking lot crying proud mom moment. I’m so happy he can head into spring break on a high note and I’m willing to bet he’s gonna keep the stamina going so he doesn’t loose his current B status. I’ve seen him grow between first and second semester. I used to help him study for his bio tests and when second semester rolled around he wanted to be independent. I can’t tell you how good it feels to not help him anymore and see him do just fine on his own. It’s been such a long time coming for both of us. This class may be challenging but I think it’s worth it.
worth it.