I think this idea of a logical plan (I’ll take bio in 9th and AP bio and AP English in 11th, etc,) is different than “planning” a kid will have superior stats, how to wedge in 14 AP, etc, and then focusing on "top 20 colleges"and “improvements” a few weeks into 9th.
x-post w/rom
Oh, I agree. There is nothing wrong with a plan. But that plan appears to have pushy parent written all over it. Which is why I suggest the parents back off and let the boy think about what plan actually interests him.
Planning is good. What isn’t is the content of the plan - if the parent follows through, it will actually be counterproductive and the kid will not get into any Top 25 and is iffy depending on the top50 chosen. This strategy will work for a flagship’ honors program as long as it’s not UMich, UVA, unc, nor some top honors (not Schreyer for sure, but perhaps Barrett.)
I suggested ways to improve the plan: fewer AP, an actual foreign language in addition to heritage language at upper level in college, a9th grade of discovery followed by a choice of activities in 10/11 that include one competitive and one non competitive.
Note that schools in CA colleges require art/music so it needs to be taken too.
Keep in mind that the parent may wish for a kid to get into a top 25 but CANNOT SAY IT ALOUD. The parent’s job is to help the 11th grader find what characteristics appeal to him at Stanford, look for schools that have the characteristics and take him visit the other schools.
Right now the kid doesn’t " have a passion for Stanford" - it’s the same as kids who say they want to be astronauts. Not based in anything real. It’s a dream. Something cool to talk about. A healthy parent will not let this become an obsession and will identify appropriate outlets (let’s visit Nasa in Texas and see all the jobs there in addition to astronaut :-)!) Modelling the idea many paths are acceptable is essential, too.
I am a little confused by all the talk about exploration of interests with regard to high school course selection. Once the student covers all the required core subjects each year, and then adds in the state and school requirements for phys ed, health, the arts, and technology / “21st Century skills,” there aren’t more than one or two slots available over the 4 years…at least at our high school. This is absolutely the case with college bound kids who take AP sciences, since AP Bio, AP Chem and AP Physics require a lab section too, which eats up the chance for an elective. Granted, to fulfill the state arts requirement the student can choose instrumental or vocal music or fine arts, but in general the kids who did band or chorus in middle school continue them, and the rest take drawing art or graphic design or cooking. The high school curriculum is not like community ed classes where you can dabble in bonsai, or jewelry making or flipping houses. I guess your schools are different?
PS. D has AP Bio this year, so she had no room for an elective. To make room, she had to take a personal finance class over the summer, since that is a state graduation requirement that the high school mandates kids take junior year. In addition, she was required to take global studies junior year, so that pre-empted her preferred choice in her field of interest: history. So, only by PLANNING and going out of her way was she able to fit in the course she was interested in, and it’s just AP Euro. Nothing that sounds like it was an exploration of passions or anything.
In post #77
You were countering some of the points in Blossom’s post #74.
You missed the point. Those polled kids who missed their dream schools? If Blossom’s kid had not gotten into MIT, he might have given the same answer. Read what you wrote again in #77. Don’t you see how preposterous the answers are? Do you think those who got into the dream school never slacked? Do you think that “slacking” was the only reason those who missed the dream school admit got rejected? You don’t even SEE the irony that the answers depended on the randomness of a coin flip? But now you’ve developed a worldview because of those answers. Confirmation bias much?
But IN HINDSIGHT, Blossom’s son is absolutely convinced that:
I’m in the same boat. I got lucky and got into every school applied. If I hadn’t been admitted to my eventual college, I’m 100% positive that I would have loved EVERY single one of the schools that admitted me. @raclut (#97) and @mathmom 's(#98) stories are the same. What’s the value of a disgruntled 17 year old’s opinion vs the 24 year old or 48 year old? But armed with those rotten answers to your near-sighted question to the HS counselor – you’re determined to push your “no slacking or you fail” agenda to your kid, this 14 year old, and everyone else who’ll listen. Pfft.
But this is just whispering to a tornado. You won’t be happy until you find people who agree your worldview of colleges and “worthiness” – your previous long discussions have all flowed in the same direction. I wonder what you hope to gain by posting here. I haven’t read every reply of the ~100 but I haven’t seen anyone say “wow californiaa: you make a great point!”
Even the way this plan is being presented is odd. Why are all the APs written in capital letters? Where are the elective classes? Where is physics? Also, I have no idea what colleges would think about a bilingual kid skipping learning a new language. Seems like a missed opportunity to me. Didn’t he start a new language in middle school?
Regarding exploring interests in high school: Our high school runs an 8 block schedule. We have a wide variety of electives in arts and special interest academic areas. My STEMy kid took lots of STEM classes. My aspiring writer is taking writing plus some related classes. Obviously a kid in a 6 block school won’t be able to take many electives. But that kid has only 6 classes. Either they’re getting a lot more instructional time than our kids, or they have a lot of study hall time at school. Either way, they can spend a lot more time outside of school on ECs and pursuing areas of special interest. (But less so if they’ve been pushed into a laundry list of all possible AP classes that they aren’t interested in).
Regarding the number of AP classes being taken: I am not sure how it works at other schools. At our school, AP is the upperclass honors curriculum. We don’t have such a thing as honors 11th grade English or history. If you’re in the top quarter or so of the class, just taking the honors track in the academic subjects, you will graduate with 8-9 AP classes from that alone, and plenty of kids take a few more AP classes in areas of interest. I think parents are mistaken if they think a lot of APs is going to wow the schools.
I would have the boy look over the curriculum for all these proposed APs and decide what actually interests him. Remarkably, my daughter managed to get into quite a few top schools by pursuing what interested her and without AP HUMAN GEO, A.P. MACRO, AP ENVIROMENTAL, A.P. PSYCHOLOGY.
This morning’s posts are spot on, each in its own way. There is a ton of comprehension behind them. That’s where OP needs to catch up.
This is not as simple as what someone wants to plan for a child, how one feels a bright kid is a lump of clay to be pulled and formed. The top colleges can and do expect more than rigor and more rigor, stratospheric stats. And certainly not that the kid then started a club or a charity.
Where’s the spark?
Where’s the sense the kid has drives of his own, the awareness and energy to pursue them? OP is trying to tool a machine. That’s what she’ll get, not what the top colleges hope to cherry pick.
I think she really doesn’t get it. She would need to let go of so many preconceived notions, to help her kid as both an individual and an applicant.
And yes, among thousands of well qualified applicants, who took on the challenges and made something of them, the lack of a true foreign language can be an issue, no matter the level of college classes in the native language.
OP needs to be willing to learn what the colleges are looking for. Let go of her own singular ideas, what worked for her, years ago, what secret sauce she thinks it is. Otherwise, these discussions are futile.
Don’t do any activities for the express purpose of enhancing a college application. He should engage in activities that he truly enjoys.
Yes, the proposal that he do a science project he isn’t particularly interested in just to impress colleges is also thinking about this wrong. Surely there must be something this kid likes, or has he been so pushed and suffocated by overbearing parents that he’s never been allowed to figure this out? Isn’t it odd that a kid who is supposed to be so interested in his education that he wants to attend a top college doesn’t seem to have any actual academic interests?
As a parent, in helping my kids plan their academics, I’ve tried to look at what my kids do in their spare time, as well as listening to what they say about their classes. Does this kid like to build stuff? Does he like to read (or write), and what? Does he follow international news, politics? Does he draw or make movies? Surely he must like to do something and that is where to start planning, not with a magic number of AP classes attempting to impress top colleges.
re #105 Exactly. My kids didn’t take a lot of non-basic APs:
My kids took 1st year of foreign language, Integrated Math 1, and High school biology in middle school. Older one also took level 2 of Math.
Our system is set up so it’s hard to take more than 6 courses because of required gym, health and extra time for lab sciences unless you took the honors art program before school.
Older son then took:
Freshman Year: English, Physics (regular honors was a sch. conflict), Global Hist 1, Latin 2, Math 3 honors, AP Comp Sci AB, Arts Elective (required)
Sophomore Year: ( Honor chem summer before to avoid schedule conflicts), English honors, AP Bio, Global Hist 2, Latin 3, Honors Pre-Calc
Junior Year: English honors, AP Physics C, APUSH, Latin 4 honors, AP Calc BC, Health
Senior Year: English, AP Chem, AP Econ with NYS government req thrown in (he basically had to take both econ and gov in some form for a NYS requirement), AP Latin, Linear Equations, Astrophysics
Younger son:
Freshman year: English, Honors Chem, Global History 1, Latin 2, Math 2, Regular and honors orchestra
Sophomore year: honors English, Reg Physics, AP Global, Latin 3, Math 3 (regular because of sch. conflict), Regular and honors orchestra
Junior Year: honors English, AP Bio, APUSH, Latin 3, honors Pre-Calc, Regular and honors orchestra
Senior Year, English, AP Physics C, AP Euro, AP Calc BC, Regular and honors orchestra (tested out of the econ and gov requirement.), Health (I think he had a study period senior year.)
Older son with better grades and scores got into Harvard, CMU. Younger son with iffier grades and scores got into Chicago, Tufts and Vassar. 8 APs plus one post AP for older son. 6 APs for the younger one.
All three of my children’s schools didn’t allow AP until the junior year. They offered “honors” advance courses for freshmen and sophomores, while juniors and seniors had the option of AP or attending the college instead of high school classes.
At my daughter’s school, the honors sophomore year classes were so demanding and soul-eating, the year after my daughter took them the school board made a rule to ban students from taking more than 3 honors-level academic classes. Honors-level music courses were still okay.