Yes, I was a victim of that.
I was hospitalized the day of the Mathematics state test (For 9th graders) in 8th grade. I was then shut out of all AP classes every year thereafter until I transferred high schools. I explained it to the AP Coordinators, two allowed me to enroll, the other two didn’t.
Not to mention that many people have woken up one day say at age 19 and really applied themselves at community college and gone on to get a bachelors in a field of their interest and then a good job.
Not to mention all the other career paths that can end up with a good paying happy life.
I would not call a life not perfected at age 12 a lost cause.
While I do think it can be limiting for everyone not to be in the advanced math in 8th, I think it is a much bigger concern for the future STEM applicant. If you have a kid who is a brilliant writer/history student, yes taking science will look more impressive but it will not be the end of everything since that kid probably is not applying to CalTech anyway. I know of people with 800s in verbal and 600s in math who did fine in admissions, not HYPS but Top 20s or close to it.
@WISdad23 test prep is online now, plenty of good to great options. While you can certainly blame lack of money for paying tutors, in this day and age, for the parent or child that has the ivy league as their goal (for better or worse) and can afford to pay for test prep, distance is not a limiting factor.
My best student was my best student from the moment K1 entered nursery school. My second best, K2, was mediocre in nursery-1, bloomed in 2nd and then ran out of steam in late middle school. Holding own in high school but just barely. I see that K2 does not have the work habits that K1 had nor does K2 have the same ability in math and reading. However K2 is ambitious and wants to attend a selective college but without the drive to back it up. As a result K2 requires more help, some tutoring, encouragement and still does not quite do as well as K1 did without any of those things. K1 was accepted at a Top 10 school, I am hoping K2 will be accepted at a school ranked 20-30. I do not believe K2 would thrive at most sub 20 schools and only certain 20-40 schools would be suitable for K2.
K3 is a late bloomer so I hope it is not too late! For K3 it is poor work habits, some disorganization and a lack of confidence in math due to frequent careless errors which lower test grades. However, K3 has shown some recent aptitude and willingness to work so who knows but still is not intuitive in math fortunately has no interest in STEM.
In my district, your middle school grades do determine your high school track. And you can only start the IB track in 9th grade. But I don’t think that will determine what college you will end up at. People end up at all types of schools for all types of reasons.
Very few colleges state that they require or heavily favor calculus in high school before college. The ones that I know of are:
Caltech
Harvey Mudd
MIT (recommended)
Cornell (engineering only)
Penn (engineering and business only)
Princeton (engineering only)
WUStL (engineering only)
It can be helpful for a student who is ready for the advanced math track to take the advanced math track that leads to taking calculus in high school, since it can make scheduling in college easier for some majors in college. But it is not absolutely required at most colleges.
Middle and high schools that exaggerate the importance of a single test to determine all future middle and high school placement do a disservice to many students who could otherwise move between placement levels, or who may have different placement levels in different subjects.
@SeekingPam Can you say more about the ACT and math? Let’s say you take Alg2 and Trig in 11th grade and you take the ACT in 11th, are you at a disadvantage, because you haven’t had calculus yet? Can you take the ACT in 12th grade or do most people take it in 11th? Thx
In our HS if you didn’t take Alg in 8th grade you take it in 9th, then you take Geo in 10th, Alg and Trig in 11th and Calculus in 12th. I assume the kids who took Alg in 8th end up having the option of taking AP Calculus instead of regular Calc. My question is whether it’s that big a deal to take Calc instead of AP Calc if you are not planning on going into a Stem field.
As for middle school, I have seen interesting things amongst my daughter and her friends. She knows many kids who were doing great in middle school, but since coming to HS they are smoking pot and drinking and acting out. They aren’t the same students they were. Maybe they will turn things around. My daughter was always a good student, but now that she’s in HS she has become the best student she’s ever been, very driven and wanting to get the highest grades she can. I’m hoping it lasts. I think the peer group plays a big role in this. She has friends who talk about getting into certain colleges and trying to get internships, etc. The kids she knows who are floundering are associating with other kids who aren’t taking school seriously. Smart kids in middle school will continue to be smart teens, but the emotional stuff they go through can sometimes take them off the right course. Hormones, substance use, family problems play a big role in who excells or not, imo.
What would non-AP calculus be like? AP calculus AB is already a slower paced version of college calculus, so a non-AP calculus course that is less rigorous than the AB course seems like it would have to be modeled on a less rigorous college course, like a calculus-for-business-majors course.
Some fields not thought of as STEM will find more rigorous math helpful. For example, philosophy (a humanities major) includes logical thinking, so rigorous math will give practice for that. Various social studies subjects can make extensive use of statistical analysis, so a strong math background can help (and calculus will make probability and statistics make more sense).
^ As someone who did fine academically 30 years ago without taking any math in college or Calculus in high school, I can say there are certain fields where in the application it does not matter. I do great in logic games and related material but was a terrible math student. As a credential it matters for those graduating now.
I never took the ACT but my kids tell me that there is Algebra 2 and Trig on the test. You can learn it on your own but it helps being done with the subject. There are several different options past Algebra 2. In some schools you take AB in 11th and then BC in 12th. Another option is to take PreCalc in 11th and then depending on your ability AB or BC in 12th. You do not need Calculus for the ACT I am told however PreCalc, as a review of Algebra and Trig is beneficial.
My kid had their best ACT in October of Senior year despite having taken Algebra 2 and Trig in 10th. It is best not to wait that long if you can and take it earlier.
I think there are differences based on how different high schools handle it. In my kid’s district, there is advanced math and science in middle school that certainly gives extra opportunities to those kids ready for high school level material. But I think that what starts to really become obvious in 5-7th grades is a child’s work ethic and study skills. I think those are a much bigger factor for the kind of high school student s kid will be than academic tracks that begin in middle school.
That said, out high school allows things like doubling up in math or science (maybe not all districts do so?). My daughter had a friend that transferred into the district later in middle school and didn’t accelerate in math then. However, since our district offers a paired math of Algebra 2/ PreCalc, she will be caught up to the accelerated kids by 11th grade.
Our high school offers recommendations for classes but doesn’t prevent kids from taking classes that aren’t recommended.
@citymama9 - My D took Calc instead of AP Calc. She started out assuming she would be a humanities major, so none of us really concerned ourselves with whether or not it was AP. She still managed to test out of Calc 1 when she got to college and as it turned out, she fell in love with math and physics and declared herself a physics major. She’s doing fine and even tutors others in math.
So, it’s not a big deal even if you are planning to go into a STEM field…besides as pointed out there are very few colleges that expect you have any Calculus at all.
@ClaremontMom that is fascinating. Hats off to her.
@ucbalumnus You can add Georgia Tech to that list. They don’t say it’s required by they make a point of saying 97% have taken AP Cal. Which to me reads we are not saying it’s required but really it is. lol
Still, wouldn’t taking AP Calc(and getting a decent grade) be a huge plus towards admission compared to not taking it? imo AP Calc and AP Physics are the hardest classes in high school so there has to be a bonus for taking it right?
Absolutely! You want to show rigor in your courses. I’m not recommending NOT taking it, in fact I would recommend it if you can. (And my D did take all sorts of AP classes, including Physics. ) I’m just saying it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have it. Most colleges don’t require it, and you can still take the courses when you get there if you need them.
Not taking calculus (or taking a watered down version) in 12th grade after completing precalculus in 11th grade can look worse than not taking calculus in high school because your middle school math placement led to precalculus in 12th grade. The former reflects a conscious recent choice to take a less rigorous option, while the latter reflects a placement decision made in middle school years ago for reasons that may no longer be relevant.
To answer OP’s original question: for my oldest son, it was obvious the course he was on because he was so advanced (but meandering in his homeschooled education), beginning algebra in 2nd grade. However, we weren’t looking at selective colleges until we realized he’d taken too many college math and physics courses to go to the Christian colleges we’d looked at. It was only in his soph/junior years in high school that we realized he needed schools that had advanced math and physics. He began studying Calculus in 7th grade, but took it formally in 8th. He’s graduating from MIT soon.
For my middle son, no way would his middle schools years have predicted that he’d be attending an Ivy! He was behind, late blooming, and dealing with a host of health issues. I wasn’t sure he could even attend college as late as sophomore year. However, he had some natural abilities that rose to the top, one of them being tenacity. He did not do APs (took two, but bombed them); he did CC classes in junior and senior year. He took Calc I in spring of senior year. He was considering STEM, but with his math disability, he moved away from that.
While Math is certainly cumulative, in general I don’t think this is true.
Both my kids were late bloomers and are both going to top schools.
My ability to pay for those top schools is probably more relevant in the result.
They both did OK as Fresh/Soph but hit their stride as Juniors in HS, getting As.
What they did all along was participate in very meaningful EC all along, from middle school.
But academically they went from good to great students, only Junior year.
One is in an ivy, the other in a top ranked tech school.
Can one go from Alg2 and Trig right into AP Calc the following year? Dc’s school does not offer pre-calc. In 12th you have a choice between Calc, AP Calc AB, AP Calc BC or AP Statistics.