<p>Question regarding choice of class for daughter -senior year--she is interested in taking
AP English
AP Physics
AP Statistics
Latin II- along with General History, Theology(catholic school)Art, PE.</p>
<p>She is skipping AP Calculus and AP Spanish(has 4 years of Spanish already) and AP Gov(dislikes teacher)</p>
<p>Her school is offering AP Spanish and AP Physics for first time. She has already taken AP Euro/AP World/APUSH.</p>
<p>I thought Spanish and Calculus more important (she is looking at Chicago/Rice/Dartmouth) among others.</p>
<p>What do you think? Is she OK? Will she be penalized for her choices?</p>
<p>Thanks for reply Steve. She is interested in BioChemistry, Chemistry, Physics. Loves English and Science —History, social science not so much. Good at Math has so-so teachers that she doesn’t click with. Taking Latin II-- bored with Spanish</p>
<p>All of the science majors will require calculus, so taking calculus in high school will be advantageous. If the high school calculus course is taught well*, she can start in more advanced math courses in college; if not, then at least she will have previewed the material before taking it in college.</p>
<p>Additional Spanish may help with placement into a higher level of Spanish course in college, if the goes to a college with a foreign language graduation requirement.</p>
<p>*After matriculating to a college, she can review the final exams from the college’s freshman calculus courses that may be skipped to see how her knowledge compares to the college’s expectations.</p>
<p>Another thing I would do is ask your daughter’s HS counselor what courses she would need to be taking in order for them to check “most difficult” on the common ap form the counselor completes. The schools you mentioned would all want to see her in this category, and for some HS counselors the lack of even one certain course in a students curriculum puts them into the lower category.</p>
<p>Calculus AB is going to be the stronger choice over AP Stats for the schools she is looking at. At those schools she is going to be competing with students that have Calc AB, Calc AB & Stats, Calc BC, and Calc BC & Stats. Having just Stats is going to be a disadvantage if she had Calc AB available and didn’t take it. Are students admitted with Stats and not Calc? Sure, but it’s simply not as competitive an application.</p>
<p>I agree, AB Calc at least, BC would be better. What are her stats? Are those schools realistic for her? Does she have a good set of matches and safety schools. Just want you to be aware that those schools have a 6-8% acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Teaching Ap Physics for the first time would give me some pause. Has your daughter taken Honors Physics? Who is teaching the Ap Physics class? AP Physics with no calc background…hmmmm</p>
<p>What other sciences has she completed? AP Chem or AP Bio? Especially if she is interested in a science major at those schools, and how did she do in those classes?</p>
<p>The AP Spanish is up to her, I would be more concerned with the math and science. AP Stats is in a different league than AB or BC calc.</p>
<p>oldfort–really? After all of your years on here you haven’t seen new posters come here and say that their child is a 4.0 with a 24 ACT and they want to go to Harvard, really? It happens ALL the time and the fact that this girl wants to opt out of the hard classes senior year prompted me to ask that question, which is a very reasonable question.</p>
<p>No, not parents, especially when admission stats are posted all over the internet, and a small catholic school would tend to have college info session fairly early on. They may not be as aware when it comes to FA, but when it comes to what it takes to get into those top tier schools, they know. Most people who are considering that caliber of schools are rather sophisticated about requirements, especially if they are worried about class selections. It doesn’t appear to me that she is opting out of hard classes, but rather not wanting to take first time offered AP courses, which shows me that the OP and his D are no dummies when it comes to college application.</p>
<p>There are few little things that may not be apparent to first timer, but when it comes to GPA, test scores and admission rate, everyone is aware of those numbers. What we usually find is the grandparents, friends, relatives, who are not involved tend to think it is easier than it really is. Parents and students tend to be very aware, especially ones who would come to CC.</p>
<p>Here Government & Econ (AP or otherwise) are graduation requirements. So if she were to skip the AP class she may have to take the regular class.</p>
<p>I am looking for advice for my daughter as to what class she needs to take BEFORE she takes the SAT Subject Test for:
Literature (she is scheduled for AP Lang/ Comp in her junior year and AP Lit her senior year)…but she needs to take the Subj Tests after her junior year to apply ED.</p>
<p>Chem (her school only has Chem SL and not AP Chem)</p>
<p>Math 2 (can she take if after PreCal H or is it a must that she take it after AP Calc AB?</p>
<p>The SAT subject tests cover high school level material, not AP or IB HL level material.</p>
<p>So math level 2 covers up to trigonometry and precalculus (not calculus) and chemistry covers high school chemistry. Presumably, literature covers normal high school English literature through 11th grade level.</p>
<p>Your kid should find out if her school’s chemistry course would properly prepare her SAT II. My kids’ school said that their biology course didn’t teach to SAT II material and advised all students to not take SAT Bio, whereas they told the students to go ahead with Chem. </p>
<p>Literature is not an easy SAT II, according to my humanities kid. She wasn’t able to get close to 800 even though she scored very high for CR and Writing.</p>
<p>She most likely only need 2 SAT IIs, no need to take more than that, even fore highly competitive schools. I would have her take one math/science, one English/history/language. It is a good idea to be done with all testing junior year.</p>
<p>I would second the history and the Math II after precalc, she should be fine. Bio would be after an AP bio, just because there is so much new vocab.</p>