<p>I don’t know about SAT subject/ACT overlap - we are on the East Coast so it’s SATland anyway. I did some looking around about the subject tests and talking to the college councilor at our school. A goodly number of good colleges want two SAT subject tests, and a somewhat random smattering want three. (Oxford wants three if you don’t have APs as well.) A somewhat random smattering want particular tests - Harvey Mudd wants Math 2 and any other. Reed will take any three as optional info. Rice requires two “In the area of propose study”. NYU requires any two. Northwestern has a complicated policy , requiring : 3 from home schoolers (one of which must be math) , chem and math for the medical program , and chem or physics, math and one other science for the science program.
As far as I know, no college requires APs - many schools (both great and terrible) don’t offer them. AP test scores are good to include, if you have them.</p>
<p>I agree with MNMM, but there are some tricky bits.</p>
<p>If your school offers Calc AB and Calc BC and DE - you look like a slug if you only take regular calc. Where as if your school only offer Calc, you look brilliant. Its crazy.</p>
<p>If the school offers AP English or Honors English, but you only take regular, then you are at a disadvantage. However, if you take regular English and score a 4 to 5 on the exam you elevate to a higher level. Taking a mix of AP classes plus regular classes that lead to AP exams is a way to manage your workload. Homework and reading load for APs tends to be insane, which is why some schools limit the number of classes (but not limit the number of exams) that you can take.</p>
<p>If you take an AP class, but don’t submit the score, colleges may assume that your score was embarrassingly low. </p>
<p>As a freshman do you need to worry about this now? YES! Parents and students need to keep the door open to these higher level tests and classes by selecting or influencing course selection in the very early years. Teachers respond to perception and expectation. If parents make it clear that their student is on a top track, the teachers and advisers may go along; parents who are absent or of the “whatever makes my honey happy,” may see their child tracked into low conflict, low pressure (and low college expectations) tracks. Help the school by knowing the game and setting appropriate expectations. </p>
<p>Speaking of tracking, prep school college counselors are measured by how many students get into their first and second choices. By guiding students to choose less then top-50 schools as their first and second choices, the school boost their metrics. If the school touts that 70% of all students are admitted to their first and second choice, you had better look carefully at what schools the students choose. Sometimes “fit” is a code word for “lower your expectations.” </p>
<p>These prep schools are awesome, but parent have a job too.</p>
<p>All this gives me a headache.</p>
<p>I have one comment - APs – These top schools who created the APs initially now are no longer offering AP classes. How many years before we see all schools drop AP?</p>
<p>I agree with the schools not offering AP since it has gotten to the point of teaching to the test rather than learning process. </p>
<p>How many colleges actually give AP credit? I’m talking tier 1 & 2 schools. My understanding is more colleges are using the AP as a placement test and not as issuing “credits” toward graduation. I am not a counselor and am just getting my feet wet, my understanding is formed by speaking with college students and those applying. I haven’t spoken directly to colleges.</p>
<p>Thoughts/comments?</p>
<p>I couldn’t agree with you more, Toadstool. When we received the info to select courses for our daughter last year at Exeter, the first thing we did was contact the school and ask them who was going to help us with the course selection. It is a mistake to try to do this on your own. The dean of students office ended up helping us with it and we put her into the high academics realm through our choice of science course. The course recommended for preps was a low-level biology course and we were advised that if she waited on biology until her lower year (10th grade) she would be in a higher level course. They advised that she take physics as a prep instead of biology. Now that she is nearly done with prep year she has been asking us why we put her in physics when most of her friends are in biology. You need to contact the school and get your child placed correctly from the get-go. Don’t just go by what the coursebook recommends. </p>
<p>The second piece of advice they gave us was to have her take her required courses first, before anything else. A lot of things come up over the course of four years that can get a kid off track - i.e. study abroad. They won’t graduate if they don’t take all the required courses.</p>
<p>My understanding of AP scores at the elite colleges is that they are used for admissions - not anything else. They do give credit for some courses but most the students don’t take it - they would rather take the course again. But they are necessary to get accepted.</p>
<p>Excellent posts, toadstool and PhotoOP! Hugely helpful. Please keep them coming!</p>
<p>Okay - one more thing - the PSAT. Your child can take the PSAT prior to Junior year as a practice test to the SAT with no penalty. The score is not retained, is not sent to schools etc. Most of the schools encourage or even require Sophomores to take it - but Freshmen can also take the test. You will most like have to get special permission from the school but it can be done.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there is can advantage to having a new 9th grader take the same classes as the other freshmen, then having them do well and move up. I knew how rigorous prep school would be for one of my kids coming out of public school, based on the experience of older siblings. They started out in the regular program with most of the other kids, which was a great bonding experience. Did really well, and will move up to Honors in the next course next year. A lot of the kids who started out in Honors science this year will move down. Math, of course, is a different case- believe the placement tests and take the class that the school recommends.</p>
<p>Colleges dont use APs for admission, if you are coming from bs/private schools. If a student is brilliant and has all 5’s on their APs then its a plus to differentiate yourself from other students. But its the least of the equation, unless you are pursuing merit aid. Colleges will use them as placement and sometimes to get you out of some requirements, ie language. Its helpful to take an SAT2 (subject test) starting in June of 9th grade, since it frees June of 11th grade for SAT/ACT.</p>
<p>A few scattered thoughts:
PSAT - schools never see the scores, no matter when you take them. Only Junior year (or equivalent for homeschoolers) scores matter for National Merit and other honors/scholarships.
APs - You won’t even have AP scores taken as a senior at admissions time so those scores will have no affect on anything but placement anyway. Of course, mid-year grades for AP courses will show up.
Course selection - it’s not crazy. It’s pretty straightforward - colleges want to see that kids are taking hard classes. Some course selections as freshman can lock you out of things, but most schools are pretty good at helping you through this - and there is some flexibility. The trickiest thing is math since most (but not all) students will find it difficult to skip over a year of math to ‘catch up’. If you aren’t a math/science type, don’t worry about not taking calc BC or diff eq! Calc or calc AB is probably just fine.
AND what the heck is wrong with steering kids to schools outside of the ‘top 50’? Those top fifty are a pretty darn artificial construct, and there are a ton of great schools that are excluded. (Including the increasing number of schools that are opting out of sending data to USNews.) Finding the right school for your kid is the point, not getting the splashiest decal for your car.</p>
<p>To clarify - my reference to taking the PSAT starting in 9th grade is in order to practice for the real deal in 11th. The more a student is familiar with the test in real test conditions, the easier it will be when crunch time comes.</p>
<p>Not all boarding schools will have honors courses in all subjects. It depends upon the range of academic preparation/ability in the student body. If the range is narrow enough, there is no need to divide a grade between levels.</p>
<p>This means that students and parents researching schools should consider the range of courses offered, before deciding that a school’s SSAT score is “too low.”</p>
<p>Most schools will have their own placement tests in at least math and languages (modern and classics) which your child will take over the summer. They will then recommend where the child should be placed for these courses. English/humanities, history and science are pretty standard the first year or so, although you may choose to reverse the order of the sciences (e.g., physics before chemistry). That leaves the electives as the only real choices for many new students. If you are coming in later than ninth grade, you will need to learn now what are your school’s elective requirements to graduate because you will have fewer semesters to complete these.</p>
<p>As I read the posts on this thread, I am filled with sadness. Why can we not let kids just be kids, like in the old days? Where is this insane drive to get ahead coming from?</p>
<p>And no matter what you do someone will always be ahead of your kid- my son was “ahead” taking algebra in 7th grade and geometry in 8th only to be “behind” another kid in his school who is taking calculus in 9th grade. How young will this get pushed I wonder?</p>
<p>I was pleased to hear that at one Prep school, the administration has hulted the One-size-fits-all approach in freshman math and science classes. Instead they are testing, reviewing transcripts, and consulting with parents to immediately move students to the correct levels. This opens up opportunities for more students to move quickly to upper levels of math and science classes. Nothing is more tedious for a talented math or science kid than to be stuck in a deadly boring, slow math class. They could stay at public school if they wanted that.</p>
<p>toadstool – I thought that was common practice. Are there schools that place all incoming freshmen at the same level? I thought most independent schools would offer honors level in science and math starting at the freshman year. Also, most have placement tests. Anyway, I’m surprised that you found this noteworthy. It has not been my experience.</p>
<p>And for New England/Mid-Atlantic parents following the PSAT, you may be surprised to learn that boarding school students from schools in this region have a higher bar. They need a score at the MA semi-finalist level, which I think is usually the highest in the country. For some reason, they are grouped together by the National Merit organization, and the state within the group with the highest National Merit semi-finalist score is used. As a result, the state your child is from and the state of the school your child is in does not count. Some boarding schools with large populations from one state, generally schools with large day populations, are not placed in this group.</p>
<p>Burb Parent, I don’t understand you post. Apparently there’s some background info I missed. “They need a score at the MA semi-finalist level…” need it for what? And what is the grouping for? Sorry for my ignorance on this whole thing.</p>
<p>I am referring to National Merit semi-finalist recognition. In the Junior year, students take the PSAT. Based on those results, some students are Commended or Semi-Finalist. Semi-finalist approximates top 1% or less in a state, and this varies state by state. Commended is a national number based on the lowest Semi-Finalist level nationally. </p>
<p>Boarding school students are placed together by region rather than by home state or the state their school is in. The region with the highest hurdle consists of Mid-Atlantic and New England boarding school students. They must achieve scores at the Massachusetts level, which is the state with the highest PSAT scores for National Merit Semi-Finalist. </p>
<p>This was a surprise to me, so I am just alerting the parents who follow PSAT, Johns Hopkins state awards, etc. Unless you live in MA, the National Merit Semi-Finalist hurdle will be higher. </p>
<p>If none of this makes sense, don’t worry about it. You can google National Merit or search for more threads on CC in other forums.</p>
<p>I know just enough about the National Merit program to understand your post. Thank you for your clarification.</p>