8 classes is a full load. JROTC is a class, it is held at a neighboring school because we have a joint unit with them. He takes a bus over there (there are about 30 kids from our school and 70 from the other) first thing and misses homeroom, then gets back a few minutes late for 2nd period. We have 9 class periods. One of those is lunch. I think you could graduate with enough credits if you only took 6 classes a semester. Last year and Freshman year he did 7 with one study hall. He will have way more credits than needed.
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Mine did this morning. He thought it easier too. Do you know when they get scores?
Yeah, the schools D25 is aiming for are large, in-state publics and large, OOS publics. There are 2 private reaches on her list, but when push comes to shove, she will not be competitive for them unless they really need a full-pay language/linguistics/maybe math major. We’re not chasing merit. This is my smart but wants to blend into the crowd and not get called on in class kid. Her practice SAT score was 1120. She does not do stellar with high stakes, timed tests.
Our local three high schools (~15 mile radius) are sold out of SAT space up through December. Welcome to hyper competitive Bay Area.
D25’s schedule is
AP Calc AB
AP Lang
AP Comp Sci
AP Physics
Language III
History
PE/Study Hall
I think AP Physics is a mistake and have tried to talk her into the regular class, but she thinks I’m doubting her.
Is it AP Physics 1 or C?
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AP Physics 1. (But I had to look it up, so good question!)
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My daughter said they’ll get their scores in 2-3 weeks.
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Physics 1 doesn’t require calculus knowledge (unlike Physics C) and is the equivalent of the college course in physics usually offered to students not intending a major that requires physics.
FWIW, I relate entirely to your dilemma on advising her. We had the same issue – any suggestion of moderation was seen as doubting our son’s ability from his POV. Every situation is unique, but for the most part he turned out to be a better judge of his capacity that we did. In fairness, ours was based on his previous patterns and he had a better leading sense of his evolving maturity than we did.
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I think Physics is essential for my son for the academy apps, so hoping lack of AP there doesn’t hurt, although we do have AP Physics 2 at our school with a different teacher so maybe he should take that senior year.
I figured WTH and emailed the counselor last week and got a response the very next day. She thought we had a legitimate concern. Phew! His current class selection wouldn’t work any other way so he dropped down to regular physics and was able to move H pre-calc to earlier in the day. He admitted he was pretty worried about his workload (with year-round athletics plus a PT job) so I’m really happy with how things worked out.
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We’ve been in the lower 48 this week moving the older sibling into an apartment at her Deep-South college after a trip earlier in the summer in the not quite so deep South, and have verified that as we suspected, C25’s migraines are triggered by, among other things, intense heat.
So that means the child’s initial list will probably look the exact opposite, in geographic terms, of C23’s, since C23 needed lots of sunlight and loves heat/hates cold.
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Thank you, illnever! That was helpful. We will take a trip to Barnard either over Christmas break or next summer.
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Well, the first week of 11th grade is behind us. S25 seems happy to be back with buddies and had a good first week. They just started a new block-schedule this year, but it seems fine so far. Schedule includes:
Honors English III
Honors Pre-Calc
APUSH
AP CS A
AP Physics 1
Comparative Religions
Spanish I
Honors Band
Advanced Ensemble
Study Hall
A number of S25’s friends are taking 5 AP classes, but I think 3 will be more than enough for him to manage. He’s starting SAT/ACT tutoring soon, so I know that will be time consuming for him.
Hope everyone enjoys the last bits of summer/beginning of school!
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General question out of curiosity. When schools call classes things like “honor band” or “advanced ensemble” do they include it as weighted in the GPA? I’ve seen “honor band” quoted in a lot of places before and wondered about that.
Our school doesn’t weight anything
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D21 was a 2 sport athlete, with a lot of competitions in both of them during the last couple blocks of school.
It didn’t always work, but we tried to get study halls and easy classes for the last block when possible. Even though that was clearly on the “not allowed” list of changes, they were always happy to at least try to do that for her. It’s a pretty legitimate reason, especially for a student that is taking a bunch of hard classes.
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At our high school the “select” orchestra, chorus, band, etc. show up with that qualifier in the transcript, but do not affect grade weighting.
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In our district, AP/IB courses are weighted, full stop—not even DE courses get a bump.
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Our hs doesn’t weight the honors bands even though they’re competing in our region. One very ambitious mom was just saying to me how unfair that was because her kids can’t take in school music/theater classes and have a chance for Val/sal. My D doesn’t care about being top so she’s taking the instrumental classes and will take AP music theory her senior year which is weighted. I do feel a little for that mom because the weighting is screwy. Her son did an associate in engineering at a cc with a transfer agreement to an ABET engineering program. If he had gone to that uni he would have full junior standing in the program. But his credits didn’t carry as much weight at the hs as the Val who only did AP classes. He did get into an ivy so it worked out in the end.
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Uh - okay, in our school, the music practices were before (!), or after school. While there were also group instrument lessons each week, those were pull-out lessons, and scheduled in a way that they never affected the same academic class for at least three weeks.
There was a class about Theatre Arts - but it was just a regular elective offering, an “easy A” counting towards English studies, and not related to the after-school Theatre Club which put together all the performances.
In fact, having been active with an instrument and in chorus since before middle school helped her getting into AP Music Theory earlier and without having to take the normally pre-requisite class.
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Our school seems more like @MistySteel27 . To be in band, orchestra, choir or a school play you must take a corresponding classes. They have both class time and after school rehearsals but you can’t choose to just do the latter. This has several implications including, as other noted above, lowering weighted GPA because none are weighted, and also limiting a student to not more than two arts activities. Even two is only possible if they forego all other electives, since there is only room for two per semester (and most classes are full year courses). For example, it would not be possible for a student to do both band and choir or theater and choir and still take classes like AP Marco and Micro Econ, or to do those electives and take a sanctioned DE course. And it would not be possible to skip the arts class one year to take another academic elective and still perform and compete with the band.
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