Do you think the college you end up going to (especially a top 20) is actually determined as early as by how good of a student you were in middle school?
Obviously colleges don’t actually look at your middle school grades per se, but middle school performance determines what classes/track you get put on freshman year of HS and the circle of peers you surround yourself around. It’s VERY hard to turn this around even as early as freshman year as it very early on shapes your “track” which determines the level of classes you take in the coming years and the performers in your classes.
I am now a college graduate (transferred into top 15 after freshman year of college), but I’ve been doing a lot thinking about my high school years. I was a bad student freshman year but tried my best to turn things around second semester of freshman year but it was really too late. Since I wasn’t placed in the honors classes with the smart kids, I was in the regular classes with average or below average performing students. I was not in the “circle” of top performers, and this carries over to sophomore year and then junior year, etc. Sure there are things you can do, but it’s hard or impossible depending on the school system to get on a AP track.
One example: I think for IB programs, you apply in middle school.
You can take almost any student at one of the elite universities in the USA (one of the eight in the Ivy athletic league, Stanford, Caltech, MIT, Duke, etc etc. etc) and then trace backwards to when the student was in 5th or 6th grade and you will see the “Markers”. In the large part, The kid was on track. She/he did not have a master plan, they were just “on track”. They did a lot of things and they did them well.
What you’re saying is true, but the types of classes you take won’t make or break your application. Also, you probably can get quite a few APs on your record without taking accelerated MS classes. If you take regular bio/chem/physics at most high schools, you’ll be eligible for the AP course in a following year. Also, eligibility for AP social studies/english is determined by how well you do in high school courses for those subjects(unless you’re trying to take some as a freshman, which is unusual). Some schools offer APs as open enrollment regardless of how well you do. The only courses I can really think of that are affected by your middle school work are the math classes.
If you’re a bad student freshman/sophomore year and try to turn yourself around,that might be hard. If you’re a bad student in middle school and turn yourself around the moment you hit high school, no one will even know.
Side note: I don’t know much about IB but I do know the diploma usually doesn’t start until junior year, so it seems weird that they would have you apply in middle school.
We are not in the public system but one of the things I wrestle with is whether it is absolutely necessary to be in all honors/IB or AP. What about the kid with all As in regular classes, a couple of honors or APs and a 2350, assuming your school does not weight which ours does not. Does he have a shot? Does he have a better shot than the kid with a 2250 and As, a handful of A-s and even a B+ in honors or AP?
In an area public district, some kids just take IB classes but do not get an IB diploma and according to rumor (not sure if it is true) they do better than the full IB diploma kids with lower GPAs.
While this may not be a popular opinion, it may also depend on much your parents helicopter. If they are going into school insisting you are placed in honors classes, in SOME places this will happen, in other places not.
In states where Algebra 1 is done in 8th by the better students, it is important to get into that program, otherwise you may not be done with Algebra 2 and Trig until 11th which is too late for the ACTs, same with 8th grade science if you are interested in science. I would say that is the only place where you can be limited by middle school.
Otherwise you start fresh in high school and some colleges such as Stanford do not count freshman year.
Hindsight is 20/20. A little too much survivorship bias in this line of thought, IMHO.
The people I went to both MS and HS with, who achieved at the same level – applied to and attended a wide variety of colleges. If you’d looked at us in 7th or 8th grade, I don’t think that among those of us who were higher performing and more likely to attend college – that you could have predicted anything.
There were all sorts of kids around me with similar markers. But they didn’t predict anything. Going backwards and finding similar characteristics does not mean our middle school environment determined anything.
It does seem like the 9th graders have to be on a certain track in 9th grade in order to reach the top 20 schools, for the most part. If you are not taking the most rigorous academic schedule your school offers it appears harder to get into these schools. Your overall GPA suffers from not cranking out the hardest courses early on. If you don’t take some of the more advanced math classes your score on the sat/act can suffer because you don’t have the knowledge needed to answer some of the questions properly.
Depends on the school district. If you attend a small, rural school, or a financially strapped, inner-city school, there may be little to no differentiation in the curriculum. If you’re in an affluent suburb in a highly ranked, competitive public or private HS, an early start towards an accelerated course of study probably helps.
Also some schools do not rank and do not weight GPA. The GC will still indicate degree of rigor, though.
I volunteer with a program targeting getting low income kids to college. We select students going into 6th grade and start working with them all summer and Saturdays during the year in middle school. They get continued support in high school and help with college applications. I think the middle school starting point is critical to building basic academic and study skills, getting them on the honors track in at least some subjects, and helping them develop a college prep mindset.
As another poster said, middle school is important if that district tracks kids into the accelerated algebra and earth science courses for 8th grade. In our district, if kids aren’t doing Geometry and Biology in 9th grade, it will be extremely difficult for a child to get the most rigorous schedule in the rest of their high school years.
I was above average and took algebra 7th grade, geometry in 8th, but I cared more about video games than school and got terrible grades throughout middle school and high school. I barely passed just enough credits in high school to graduate and was absent at home playing video games almost as many days as I was actually there.
I turned it around in CC and got accepted to UCB and UCLA(among other campuses) in Statistics. It obviously would’ve helped if I put in a decent effort my whole educational career but I didn’t take academics seriously until after a couple quarters of CC and I turned out fine.
If the title of this thread was true, then there’s no way I’d even be at my school right now, lol. I’m what you call a late bloomer. Had a hard time from 7th-10th grades (partly due to my family’s financial situation from the 10th grade on) but turned it around in crunch time in 11th grade and got a 2000 on my SAT first time in addition to having an upward GPA trend. Eventually got into six schools in as many states, and was blessed enough to be able to pick the best of the six, academic and otherwise. At the end of my first year of college, I’m doing better than I ever did in high school. With hard work and determination, you can certainly turn it around.
Interesting post… all I can say is my sons MS top 3 all were top 3 in HS (same order even!) and all were admitted to IVY/Top schools … hmmm definitely know lots of late bloomers though that were accepted into excellent schools too…
Parents of bright students instill discipline & responsibility from a very young age. Middle School students with high marks are likely to be bright kids in the future but I don’t think you can estimate what college a student will go to because Academics aren’t the only factor that play into choosing a school. Bright kids can be found everywhere.
Oh, and yes. Late Bloomers attending top schools do exist but I think it depends on the timing, haha. If a student bloomed as late as I did, you can kiss MIT/HYPS goodbye. Even in the 9th grade it’s dangerous but maybe possible, never heard of it though.
Yeah I believe so. I know that in order to even be able to take Calculus in high school you need to be placed in an accelerated program in middle school so you can take Algebra 1 for high school credit(or even geometry). But also to be placed in the accelerated program in middle school you need to have done well in elementary school or do really well in 6th grade. And for colleges like Caltech which requires Calculus to even be accepted, you can cure cancer but you won’t get in because you don’t meet the requirements.
I agree with he survivorship bias comment. You are looking at the kids who made it to the college. What about their middle school peers who were in the same academic cohort who experienced a downward drift?
A better marker than college acceptance might be college outcomes. It might be a good idea to exclude “big city kids” who tend to start resume building and standardized testing prep very early. Where we live, it is almost unheard of to do ACT/SAT prep classes - none exist locally. The high school sponsors 3-4 sessions which are really for kids on the bottom end of the scoring spectrum. There are no college coaches, no schools where multiple students go to Ivy League, etc. My point is that some of the well-bred middle school students end up being paper tigers whose admission to a selective school is more of a climax than a beginning.
It really is about the “track” you’re put on, usually decided in middle school imo. In my district, performance in seventh grade math determined if you took algebra or pre-algebra in 8th grade (and thus, decided whether or not you’d be in the advanced track and take calculus senior year). Most kids, but not all, selected for advanced math were also put in advanced science and took earth science instead of the standard mish-mosh 8th grade curriculum (but you couldn’t be in advanced science but not math).
I was selected for the advanced math track, and I wasn’t originally selected for advanced science but asked to be on a “waitlist”, and was ultimately admitted when another student declined. Friends of mine that weren’t picked (and the cutoff seemed pretty arbitrary for selection) felt as if they were behind their entire high school career, and being a year behind their peers competitive for top colleges in two subjects made it near impossible for them to compete. On the flip side, families and students not “in the know”-- often, if the child was the oldest in the family and his or her parents didn’t know about the program-- sometimes declined the offer to be advanced for a multitude of reasons (student didn’t think they were ready or wanted to be challenged, didn’t want to wake up extra early for the advanced science class which was held before school started, etc.) By the time the student got to high school, they typically realized that a decision they made when they were 12 years old significantly affected their high school class schedule and as a result limited their options for college.
Yes I think that usually the trajectory is set early but not just because of tracking. After all, students can take summer school and change the tracks they are in with a lot of effort. In contrast to the middle and later 1900s, tracks today are fairly fluid but students who want to move up must sacrifice a summer or evening to accelerate.
But by and large, student aptitude, motivation and drive to learn/explore/conquer is apparent pretty early in life. Yes, kids develop at different rates and some are late bloomers. But, those that are really driven to understand how the world works often start trying to do that in grade school or for those with strengths in abstract and conceptual thinking, by middle school.
Top 20 colleges is pretty rarefied air, so a typical middle school would have what one or two kids per year who really are going to end up there … So if I pick 3 or 4 kids, half may make it … and I could say they need to be in advanced math and GT classes and get As in all their classes, and be somewhat social (ECs in their future), OR maybe athletes or other talent … OR hooked, URM, stars at their urban middle school, etc. The other 95%, not going to happen …
Now if you ask if people who are on grade level and getting say Bs or Cs in middle school and can get say into a top state school or top 200 school or LAC … vs all the kids who are trying a bit harder … well, I would say only if they wake up one day, sooner better than later, and start working harder.
Top 20 school might need some advanced science starting in middle school, but honestly you can get in a top 200 with just good high school performance on normal track (maybe 8th grade algebra, but that is almost standard fare for 40% of students, not “special”). Get As … do some good ECs, do some varsity sport or be in a play or band / orchestra … just sort of put some effort in …
Or do you really end up at not even a directional but one of the dread (small city) State Us or community college ?