My younger son did not want to take AP Lit. He looked into Honors English and said from the syllabus it looked like it would be even more work than AP. He ended up taking a class in reading and writing mysteries. It was a pretty easy class, but it was also the first year he thoroughly enjoyed English. He got accepted at places like Tufts and U of Chicago. (He did have plenty of other APs under his belt in science (2), math (1) and history (3).
It’s also worth noting that a B in a rigorous prep school may not be the same thing as a B in your average public school.
Thank you so much for all of your thoughts and responses.
A little background…my son goes to a rigorous private school where there are only 53 kids in his entire grade. All classes are fairly difficult with the AP’s being very intense. All students must get multiple signatures of permission to take an AP class- from teachers to department heads, to the course selection administration.
Science is his strongest subject and where his interest lies. The only science course offerings for juniors are Marine Bio, Forensic Science and then all AP classes (AP Bio, APES, AP Chem, AP Physics). He wanted to take AP Bio this year but the department head thought that while he might do well in the class itself, the amount of work would take away from his other classes which in turn, could take his GPA down. The college counselor said that he would rather see my son’s grades stay the same or improve w/no AP’s vs taking one and having the GPA fall. He is now in Marine Bio.
I understand the logic but I am afraid, esp after doing so much reading on cc, that this may be a mistake. He would like to try for either AP Bio or APES next year if he can get approval.
Because he goes to such a small school, he would like to go to a bigger state school that gives him lots of new opportunities, club sports options (golf and/or fishing), football and/or basketball games, etc… We are looking in the Southeast so he can enjoy the outdoors for as long as possible. I have posted his list of possible schools on another thread but here they are again:
University of Delaware
Virginia Tech (in state)
JMU (in state)
University of Kentucky
UNC-Wilmington
Clemson (huge reach)
College of Charleston
U of South Carolina
Furman (smaller, but it has so much of what he wants, we will visit ‘just in case’)
Auburn
U of Alabama
U of Georgia (huge reach)
Florida Gulf Coast U (far, but has a lot of what he is looking for)
On science, will he complete all three of biology, chemistry, and physics (not necessarily AP) by high school graduation?
It is certainly possible that if a student has uneven strengths and weaknesses (e.g. A+ in science courses that s/he thinks are easy and not much work, but struggles for B or C grades in some other subjects), then he may be ready for AP level courses in his/her strong subjects, but not in his/her weak subjects.
My son waited to take his AP courses his senior year. He had the opportunity but decided not too. He did take three honors courses every year of HS throughout his 4 years. The great thing was that he kept a high GPA for his applications and showed rigor by tackling the AP courses his senior year BC calc, CS and Physics. He ended up getting accepted into 6/9 competitive schools including Purdue, VT, Northeastern and Lehigh. I think your son is in great shape with the colleges he is focusing on. Don’t sweat it.
I agree…AP Psych and AP Econ are courses that if you do well on the AP test then you can easily get credit for in college. And if you don’t do well, it doesn’t matter.
Most of the schools your son is considering have admissions are focused on gpa and test scores. I would put time and effort into earning a high gpa in regular courses. I would also have him work on SAT or ACT practice and try to get a solid score on that. Maybe he could get involved in a science club or activity to explore his interests. Be sure he is taking math and English classes too.
He has been working with an SAT tutor since the beginning of summer and will continue with him until the beginning of his senior year so that part is going well. His school does not have AP Physch or AP Econ so those options would not work.
I had to laugh today when my ‘I only want to go somewhere warm’ son got a pamphlet from the University of Vermont in the mail and after flipping thru it stated that he was definitely applying there! The pictures they included were quite beautiful I have to admit.
How does your son’s school weigh AP courses into the GPA? At D’s high school, AP and DE classes score 6.0 for an A and 5.0 points for a B. Honors courses are scored at 5.0 and 4.0 respectively, so getting a B in the AP course would result in the same GPA as getting an A in the honors version.
I would look at how the colleges your son is interested calculate GPAs. Most of the colleges we visited do some method of internal GPA calculation with their own weighting methods in order to normalize scores. Some colleges only look at unweighted GPAs coupled with an indicator provided by the GC as to how challenging the student’s course load was. Some only consider the core classes that they look for (math, science, foreign language, language arts, etc), others consider every class taken.
I just saw on the calendar that the PSAT’s for my son are Oct 19. So curious to see if almost 5 months of SAT tutoring will have made a difference. On another note, was excited to learn at Parent’s night that his pre-calc teacher will meet with him in late March to help him choose whatever math class will suit him best his senior year. That seems to make so much for sense than me trying to help him decide.