Has anybody’s school year started yet? Ours began on Wed of this week. Hard to believe my kid is in 10th grade now!
Not enough students signed up for Comparative Gov’t & Politics, so that class got cancelled. D26 is disappointed about that. But she’s in a drawing class as an elective instead…which is ok because it’ll fill her fine arts requirement.
Other classes she’s taking this year:
AP English Language
Spanish
AP European History. She said yesterday that she can’t wait for the WW2 portion of the class.
AP Bio
Honors Chemistry
AP Precalculus - the math teacher for this class is awesome. Same teacher she had for math last year. He’s 1 of my favorite teachers in the whole school.
D26’s BFF is in all of her same classes except for the elective AND they have the same lunch period, so the 2 of them are happy campers about that.
D26 had day 1 or her all day varsity cheer stunting clinic today. They had to be on the bus at 7am this morning and got home at 6pm. She came home super happy and excited for the season. Last season was terrible- she got a concussion early in the season and missed all three competitions. The team is much stronger this season and she is really positive about it. They do it all again tomorrow. Pre season starts on 8/21 where they will be practicing daily, and classes start 8/5 but she was excited to see all her teammates and friends she has not seen since end of June.
D26’s history teacher from last year is the faculty advisor for the mock trial club at school. At the ‘Meet The Teachers’ event at school yesterday, the history teacher was really encouraging DH to have D26 sign up for it this year. D26 is an introvert, but is interested in learning more about careers in the legal profession.
We are three weeks into Sophomore year and S26 has a really easy schedule. We have block schedule, so only four classes per semester. He has:
Civics
Algebra II Honors
Spanish I (10th grade is the earliest you can take a foreign language in our school district!)
Soccer PE (mandatory for school soccer team members)
I almost regret letting him not take AP Gov and take the easier Civics instead. But D22’s AP Gov class was so boring and tedious that S26 now profits from that experience. Oh well, he is not the studious kind and appreciates the easy route . He is a smart kid but doesn’t care about grades, so he’ll will probably be in the 3.1 - 3.5 GPA group.
He found is dream school over the summer, Furman University. We were in Greenville for a soccer tournament and swung by to do a drive through. We did not have time for a tour and there were no students on campus. He was impressed that the school had a separate soccer stadium, you have to have priorities The whole campus looked like a country club, so well maintained! I have been on a number of college campuses but have never seen anything like Furman. Bad news, I had to tell him that Furman is above budget, so he better keep looking. We are really not planning on doing any tours yet, he has seen a few when we toured with D22 and it is too early for him.
I can’t believe sophomore year has started! I also can’t believe your sophomore is allowed to take AP Bio @sbinaz. Our public school in Marin lets kids take one AP sophomore year—AP World History. As well, they are super strict about the science curriculum progression. Physics in the Universe, Living Earth, Chemistry in the Earth Systems, in that order, no exceptions, no taking classes outside of the school. For STEM kids, this is incredibly frustrating. These classes are also prerequisites for all of the relevant APs (ie, you can’t take AP Bio until you’ve completed Living Earth, no AP Chem until Chem in the Living Earth is done). I’ve gone round and round with the school on this.
We are in week 2 and so far so good. haha. S26 moved to an online calculus class due to conflicts with another class. Part of me is glad because I have heard nothing good about the in-person teacher. But part of me worries because he did online math in 7th grade (covid) and it was such a struggle to get him through. Hopefully he’s matured enough to make it less painful.
we had to do summer trig/algebra to make it to precalc but you can go from precalc to calc BC junior year. Similar spot as he can only take AP world history. It’s the same for all the students unless you came from a private middle school in which case the rules seem to be different.
For UC GPA calculation honors and AP both count as 5 so while I would rather he take a few more APs he’s taking as rigorous a course load as possible.
I know private schools are a bit different, a friend’s daughter had 11 APs by the time she finished sophomore year.
Not all HS Honors are UC approved for the extra weighting so check this website and HS to confirm. My son’s HS has Honors English 10, Honors Bio, Honors World History that were not weighted by the UC’s or CSU’s but only by the HS.
I had no idea! turns our Honors Pre-Calc does count while Honors English doesn’t, at least sophomore year but in junior year Honors English suddenly counts. Honestly every time I think I have a handle on things I learn something new. No wonder people feel overwhelmed and go to counselors although the two I talked to seemed to know less than I did about the admission process and I just learned from the community here.
Yes, it is really confusing. I found out the hard way with my older son whom took Honors English 10 and Honors Biology. Neither UC approved for the extra weighting. My younger son took Honors Algebra 2 Freshman year which is a UC approved Honors course but as a Freshman it is not weighted in the UC GPA calculation since 9th grades are not included. So many different things to consider when your student applies to colleges.
I believe that, originally, in order for a course to be designated as UC honors, the course had to be “junior level or higher.” Criteria have changed over the years, but it makes sense why your school’s sophomore English does not receive a bump, but junior English does. In the link that @Gumbymom shared above, you can search by course. If you look up Algebra II (or 2), I don’t see it counting as a UC honors course in any district.
We are about a month into sophomore year and my daughter is loving it! And is super busy…
She is doing HS Varsity Gymnastics a switch from HS cheer. She is still cheering on an all-star team and jr coaching a tiny team of 6-year-olds. She is also a jr ccd teacher at a local church.
She finished out the year ranked 5/ 294 - we are so proud and hoping this year is as successful.
This year she is taking:
English 2 - A level
Spanish 3 - A level
Algebra 2 - Honors
Chemistry - Honors
US history - AP
Concert Band
Wellness / Drivers Theory
Sports Medicine - Honors (course 2 of a 4-year sequence)
What type pf college conversations / prep are you and your student doing this year? She is my 1st so unsure when to really start…
We aren’t doing too much yet for my S26, though we are gently suggesting he look into more ECs, both as a way to get to know more kids at school and because he will want them later when he starts to think about college (less to impress, more to figure out what kinds of communities he will enjoy most). Next month his school offers a practice PSAT that sophomores usually take, so he will do that.
In the spring or into summer we may check out UC Berkeley, Davis or Santa Cruz since they are in our area. We did this with my older D22 when she was a sophomore, and she was so excited to start thinking about her future.
We did the same. We took a spring break road trip and visited Merced, Davis, Berkeley, Santa Cruz and SLO. It helped my student start to figure out what they liked in a college and what they didn’t. It also gave us time to do the southern California schools during junior year. In the end, my student was really interested in Davis and SLO, so we took a (non college) vacation but included re-visits to those schools at the end of junior year.
D26 is our second (with D29 yet to come). I think sophomore year is a good for big-picture thinking: What do you really like to do with your time? What kinds of things do you enjoy learning about? Is there a particular area where you’d really like to live for awhile, or really don’t want to live for awhile? Summer after sophomore, we started the Big Spreadsheet for D22 with her long list of possibilities tracked by 20+ different metrics (including “proximity to museums with dinosaurs”).
We actually did a couple of college tours with D22 right before sophomore year, mostly because we happened to be traveling near schools that she had heard of. In hindsight, that might have been a little early - she became obsessed with one school that would’ve been a terrible fit as she evolved over the next few years. But at least it does get them thinking about what different colleges might offer, which has some value. And the summer following sophomore year is really a prime opportunity for visiting campuses.
Lately w/D26, it’s mostly been encouraging her to explore her interests. Because of D26’s older sister, D24, D26 went w/us on some out of state college tours/visits earlier this calendar year. So D26 got an intro to some colleges. She said that she really liked one of the out of state ones that we went to and 1 of our in-state schools is on her ‘definite maybe’ list. We haven’t taken her on a tour of an in-state college yet.
But realistically, I think for my kid, anyway, going on a bunch of colleges tours isn’t something she’s ready for yet. In 11th grade? Definitely. For D26, it’s too early.
We have had a few conversations about it. Specially when S26 is on his phone all the time. Music takes up a ton of his time, he auditioned and was accepted to a Jazz ensemble, it was a big transition from the normal HS band and he had to put in some time to catch up to the other kids.
He’s asked about working part time, told him summer is a good time to do it but also depends on his plans.
Some of his friends have GFs now and of course that takes up even more time. He’s talked about going to school out of state and I suggested we look at some international options. Overall I just can’t believe how fast the time went by it still feels like it was just 2-3 years ago he would go out trick or treating and was just a lil kid. Him going to college is going to be harder for me than for him.
We did talk about college a little bit recently. D26 has so many interests. She wanted to know if there was anywhere she could go where she didn’t need to have a major and could just study whatever she wanted. I told her that generally she’ll need to graduate with some kind of major (or combination of majors / minors), but she has plenty of time to figure that out, and that there are lots of schools and majors that would give her time to choose and declare after she starts school. However, D26 is notorious in our home for never being able to decide anything, so she is nervous she will NEVER be able to decide and will end up as a senior with no major… I just tried to reassure her that it will work out…
. He is a smart kid but doesn’t care about grades, so he’ll will probably be in the 3.1 - 3.5 GPA group.
The whole campus looked like a country club, so well maintained! I have been on a number of college campuses but have never seen anything like Furman. Bad news, I had to tell him that Furman is above budget, so he better keep looking. We are really not planning on doing any tours yet, he has seen a few when we toured with D22 and it is too early for him.