With few exceptions, you don’t need to take 10 AP classes, regardless of your post-HS goals – selective college or not. You can find related quotes from admissions at selective colleges earlier this thread, along with information about acceptance rate by number of AP classes.
California has a wide variety of public high schools, with different AP offerings and different rules about taking them. For example, the nearest school to me offers more than 20 AP classes. Some of those classes have no restrictions in who takes them – any grade, no prerequisite classes, etc. Others recommend specific grades, specific prerequisite classes and/or grades in prerequisites (min grade may be as low as a ‘C’), etc. There is an alternative smaller, public nearby that offers no AP classes. Both HSs are well rated and both had kids who went to Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and similar selective colleges last year.
Going back to the original post, there’s no doubt that high school kids today are stressed out to the dangerous and toxic level like we’ve never witnessed before. When I was in high school, it was all about exploration of what’s possible and having fun. Remember the popular TV show, “Happy Days”? The iconic movie, “American Graffiti”? Really. Stress? I didn’t even know what that meant. It was never a part of my vocabulary then, not until I got into a 9-5 rat race. Over the decades, however, I’ve slowly witnessed the educational scenes transforming before my very eyes. As an Asian-American, one thing I remember noticing was that the American educational system was starting to become more like Asian educational system. I marveled at this interesting phenomenon that left me quite dismayed at the same time. I truly believe that what we’re seeing today is a cultural response to all those favorable Asian educational success stories that the popular media was drooling over at that time, placing these “role models” on a high pedestal. I remember clipping newspaper and magazine articles of such Asian success stories in the 80’s and 90’s in order to study common themes, the “secret,” as it were, or at least what the Americans were fed by the media to perceive as the secret. One particular story that I still remember was about this Korean mother of a Cal-Berkeley student who’d come to his dorm on a weekly basis to do her son’s laundry, and the newspaper featured this story as one of the virtues of parental sacrifices that was to be credited for her son’s academic success. Later, Amy Chua’s popular and controversial book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” further pushed the limit to what a crazy Asian mom wouldn’t do to get her kids to Harvard.
Just as there are no simple solutions in Asian countries with cultural roots so ingrained in their educational system, we’re also stuck with the cultural power that has so gripped this nation for the past two decades or so. Today, there’s no way out of the stressful environment that is pervasive. Our kids are stressed out by their parental pressure, many are stressed out by peer pressure, yet many others are stressed out by pressures put on themselves simply because of the cultural air they breathe day in and day out. Asian-American students are particularly prone to such pressures in spite of the fact that they’re brought up in the American soil. The article that the OP provided features the tragic cases of the price many unfortunately pay today.
We as parents have to examine the cultural shaping and the power it exerts in today’s educational environment that our kids are living in. I believe that parents are the key to stopping the current madness, and we need to be ever vigilant about what we say and what we do in the presence of our kids. Their health and well being is the greatest gift that we can provide them with. They’ll take care of the rest. Do you know what “success” is? Not HYPS, not Wall Street, not Silicon Valley. To me, success is living until filthy old age. No high school kid should walk in front of the train.
The overlooked “secret” is that the pre-1965 Asian American population was small, so the post-1965 immigration that favored skilled workers and PhD students added a large highly educated cohort to the Asian American population. Similar cohorts highly educated immigrants from Europe and Africa were small compared to existing European American and African American populations, so they did not define the public image of their racial/ethnic group as the highly educated immigrants from Asia did. Of course, educational attainment, for various other reasons, tends to be highly transmitted to the next generation, perpetuating the image of high educational attainment as an “Asian” thing, rather than a “skilled worker or PhD student immigrants and descendents” thing.
It wasn’t just the high educational attainment of the Asian but the “myth” of how they got there that the media was enamored with and perpetuated to the point that it took a cultural flight of imagination. While the media was gushing with admiration of the Asian educational system, I was bemoaning the tragic dark side of the system. The teen suicide phenomenon due to pressures associated with college entrance has been long known and experienced in Asia. Unfortunately, it’s now started to become more common in this country. I detested Amy Chua’s book for this reason. She knew not what harm she’s caused.
Regarding the “Asian educational system”, the percentage of adults in China and India with bachelor’s degrees is significantly lower than in the US (probably around 14% and 9% of the people age 25 and over respectively). The highly educated immigrants to the US from China and India (50% and 70% with bachelor’s degrees respectively) are a highly selected subset that is not representative of their national origin populations.
The limited access to higher education in China and India probably means that many who could benefit themselves and the economies/societies of those countries by getting more education are unable to do so. Of course, that may be the reason why those who do pass the (standardized test based) admissions gates there may end up with an “elite or nothing” viewpoint and/or an excessive focus on standardized tests.
But the US is a long way from that. There are plenty of perfectly good non-elite-admissions universities, so “elite or nothing” only really applies to a small number of post-graduation goals (e.g. management consulting, Wall Street, or law with respect to law school), and standardized testing is far from the only thing that matters in university admissions.
“The reality is many that are incapable of succeeding while taking 2 or 3 AP classes simultaneously just to gain admission into top schools will not have the skills or ability to succeed at those same schools. So far, and thank goodness, AP classes haven’t watered down to accommodate the lesser student. Hopefully they never do as they stand for ADVANCED placement, not average.”
I have never seen any data that implies that not doing all that great at age 16 in a certain class that is structured around multiple choice and short answer test taking skills correlates to college outcomes.
I went on a full ride to a college, studied history and English, and I can say with certainty I would fail today’s AP US history test. I would have to learn how to take that test and I find the test has little to do with whether or not one can learn US history or should have a seat at the table in college.
The other thing I find surprising about AP is the parents who think a “4” means their children mastered what the AP thinks should have been what they learned about the subject. When 1/2 wrong on the test is a “4” and only 1/2 the students taking the course can achieve that - it makes me question the validity of the test. It’s as if the College Board admits the course doesn’t prepare the students or the test is unsound and uses curves to make up for the deficit.
I would never let my kids rest their laurels or fret about college readiness looking through the narrow lense of College Board standardized test outcomes. I sat my son down and said that getting a 4 or 5 is related to a distribution curve of how other peers performed but his takeaway should not be that he mastered the material or didn’t master the material. He needs to gauge how he believes he understood the material broadly reflecting on his ability to self study, his comfort level with understanding what the teacher presented, his performance on teacher made tests, etc.
I would never stress out my kids by tying their sense of educational worth to their ability to take tons of classes where the goal is to take a nationally normed multiple choice/short answer summative assessment. A few is fine, but only because if they can read and understand the course work content deeply, they are getting a strong content foundation for frosh/soph years of college in areas of interest.
There have been at least a couple of comments suggesting that an exam with low average scores (e.g. in the 60s or below) suggests people did not properly understand the material.
I could not disagree more. Unlike US high schools, much of the world routinely has tests where averages are low and score dispersion is high. This allows real separation among students that understood the material really well relative to their peers and those that did not. In contrast, the US grading system, where an A+ requires 97% accuracy, pushes for perfectionism at the cost of learning.
Fortunately, my D’s college seems to understand this, although they may have taken it to an extreme. The average for her first Econ test was a 30, with the highest score only in the 70s.
So how does the message that you only got 3 out of 10 right on an econ test tell kids that they are degreed and credited in Econ? I don’t get it. I am not saying A+ but if a test is a measure of competency should likely look for at least 2/3rds of the material understood and I would suggest part of the process should be a follow up to review the % not understood.
I go batty when my kids don’t get their tests and assignments handed back to them to reflect on what they didn’t get right and think about the source - was the question ridiculous, did they not understand the material, do they see an area of weakness they need to build.
In my job, I can’t get 50% of project deliverables wrong and be known as successful or rated as a “5” running the project. Mastery is measured to a much higher standard with practical set of problems to solve that don’t have a multiple choice answer.
My point is - I think AP is great at covering a lot of what kids will be seeing in college and provides great foundational skills they need on content/study skills and should preview some of it = but by no means should they need to take 10 to 15 of these courses or make much of the crtieria used to measure mastery whether a 5 or a 3.
The college is known for its strength in economics. It has both a regular sequence and an honors sequence, but even the regular sequence is considered rigorous. This course was an introductory Microeconomics course that does not actually fulfill any requirements, but gives students an idea if they 1) Are candidates for the honors sequence, 2) Are candidates for the regular sequence, or 3) Are not really suited for economics at this school.
As I said, I think they took it to the extreme. I would prefer a median score in the 50s.
Isn’t the academic stress limited to kids who want to go to top colleges? I know teachers in less competitive districts who struggle to get students to come to class, do their homework, or study for tests. Those kids may have stress in their lives due to family situations or poverty, but they certainly are not stressing about how many AP tests to take. The vast majority of students even in the US go to public universities or start at 2-year colleges where admission is not that competitive.
My HS was competitive, especially among the kids in the top classes. Many kids were aiming for top colleges and there was certainly some pressure to achieve in my NYC suburb even back in the late 1970s. The pressure was even higher on those of us that needed financial aid as most of the top colleges were not need blind.
That being said, there was not the same pressure to have outstanding achievement beyond the classroom in order to get into a good college. That is certainly bringing more stress to kids today. But if they are willing to look beyond the top 20, most kids with decent grades and a few AP or honors classes will get into a good college. Even those with mediocre grades and no ECs will find a spot somewhere.
The point some of us are trying to convey is that in some regions, districts and high schools the system is set up in such a way that a student can’t simply DECIDE, in a relaxed fashion come junior and senior year, to sign up for the 3-5 AP’s that some of you deem reasonable pressure-wise and adequate for even elite college admissions. What we are attempting to explain is what is required for AP placement in terms of early tracking in elementary school, perfect grades in 5-8 grades, teacher recommendation (which can take into account the staff’s perception of the student’s home support and socio-economic background), an application and essay for each AP desired, and so on just to be admitted into said AP classes. When you have a well-educated population living in the district, many intelligent and highly motivated children, but yet an insufficient public school budget to fund enough prepared teachers who even know how to do college calculus or physics themselves, then there will be fierce competition just to gain entry into the few AP sections that are offered.
Due to the demand, getting into AP’s requires not only natural intellect but advanced planning in the form of outside education and tutoring. A student might have to write in his application that he went to the local university on Saturdays for their youth science program, or that his poem was published in a children’s magazine. At the very least, most kids who end up in advanced math and science in middle school or high school were tutored for years and years because the aptitude tests used for math placement had to be made extremely advanced to sort out the most able (since the kids were all being tutored to several grade levels higher). And you need advanced math placement to be admitted to the AP sciences. An ordinary smart kid who was never taught outside of the public school classroom is simply not going to place into advanced math or science anymore. That is why we have tutoring centers on every block here. My older kids managed to make it without any tutoring other than what we parents could provide. We didn’t have the money for it, and neither did we have the funds to move or pay for a less competitive private school. But things have gotten much tougher in the last 10 years and I can confidently say they wouldn’t be able to do the same now.
Of course, you don’t have to play the game. But my special ed. D was easily getting 100’s in her regular level science class senior year. So the problem for parents of bright children is how to balance stress with the need for a good and appropriate education.
The article linked in the OP and the essay that started it all really focus on the top 3 school districts in Illinois and how those districts push the pressure, it is not a commentary on the overall high school experience across the country.
As I said earlier, my son graduated with the essay writer and had a different experience. He was never pressured to take even one AP class and no one cared much about what he learned or didn’t learn. He (we) was told in the fall of 8th grade that he had no chance of attending a college of any type due to his score on the EXPLORE exam that was given the first week of school in 8th grade. That was the last he had any input from the school in terms of how to navigate high school until it was senior year and they had to meet with each student to assess their future plans. In spite of a 3.0 gpa and mid 20’s ACT he was told in this meeting that he should not apply to a 4 year school, his only option was the local CC and even that was a stretch.
The schools in this article do pressure the top performers and if you are not on that track or take yourself off that track you lose any support from the school and are left to your own devices, this is where the pressure comes from, you have to do school the only way the school wants it done or you get nothing.
My son is doing quite well at a Big Ten state flagship but only because we knew how to navigate the process. I look at some of his friends that were also written off in the 8th grade and they are not in nearly the same situation. He has friends that were 3.8 gpas and high 20’s ACT scores that only applied to the local CC because that was where the high school told them they had to go because at 3.8gpas they were bottom 50% of the class (although the school does not rank). I am quite certain the school would refuse letters of rec for people/schools they didn’t think were acceptable, that is where the pressure comes from.
Interestingly, with the Thanksgiving break, a teacher my son has kept in touch with, asked him to come in and speak to his class yesterday. The teacher was so impressed that my son out performed the high school expectations and is impressed with the program and campus job he has that he wanted him to “mentor” students that are in his same position. That is one teacher that sees the pressure to follow the only path the school supports is not the only way and is working to change it from the inside, but he is just one person.
1/3 of the problems are solvable by C students (as well as B and A students).
1/3 of the problems are solvable by B students (as well as A students).
1/3 of the problems are solvable by A students.
Then, students who get 1/3 correct would be considered passing (C grade). However, the rest of the more difficult problems distinguish between the C students, B students, and A students.
If it were not necessary to distinguish between those who meet minimum passing standards (C grade) and those who do better (B and A grades), then there really is no point to having a grading system other than passed / not-passed.
1/3 of the problems are solvable by C students (as well as B and A students).
1/3 of the problems are solvable by B students (as well as A students).
1/3 of the problems are solvable by A students.
Then, students who get 1/3 correct would be considered passing (C grade). However, the rest of the more difficult problems distinguish between the C students, B students, and A students.
If it were not necessary to distinguish between those who meet minimum passing standards (C grade) and those who do better (B and A grades), then there really is no point to having a grading system other than passed / not-passed.
“The point some of us are trying to convey is that in some regions, districts and high schools the system is set up in such a way that a student can’t simply DECIDE, in a relaxed fashion come junior and senior year, to sign up for the 3-5 AP’s that some of you deem reasonable pressure-wise and adequate for even elite college admissions. What we are attempting to explain is what is required for AP placement in terms of early tracking in elementary school, perfect grades in 5-8 grades, teacher recommendation (which can take into account the staff’s perception of the student’s home support and socio-economic background), an application and essay for each AP desired, and so on just to be admitted into said AP classes.”
That does sound extreme but I can’t believe that represents the majority of high schools. The subject where elementary test could be important is Math,but you can retake a test in middle school if you want the higher track or take it over the summer to skip a math level (not advised but an option). And teacher recommendations are important for sure, but they’re not binding in most districts. Parents can override them and still put their kids in honors or AP classes (not advised of course) Typically admission into APUSH and APLAC is a test given at end of tenth grade and again can be overriden by parents.
I believe all of my comments on this thread relate to the opening story since our kids are in one of the districts cited in the article. In our district, you CANNOT opt out of a bunch of APs and be competitive for the top 30 universities. I’m not just talking about Ivies, etc. Kids will high grades, perfect ACTs, and accomplished ECs are getting shut out of places like Wash U, Vanderbilt, University of Michigan (OOS). The top 10% (about 70 kids) are all running themselves ragged knowing that they all take a lot of the same classes and have time consuming ECs.
Many of them don’t want to go far away for school so many of them have the same list: Michigan, Northwestern, Chicago, Vandy, Wash U. The average ACT and GPA from our high school students getting into these schools is way higher than the 75th percentile on the common data set for these schools because the kids are competing against each other and NU isn’t going to take 70 kids from one school. They take what they deem the best. So, there’s a lot of jockeying for who is going to apply where and maybe changing your list if four/five kids with a tiny bit higher GPA is applying to somewhere you want to apply. What is a family to do? Have their very bright child just take fewer APs and let the chips fall where they may? If you make that decision early on and give up the honors points then you are already deciding that your student will not go to these types of schools. Maybe that’s not true at other schools but I’ve got three years of Naviance history I can look at right now and it’s the truth.
We are extremely happy that our S19 wants an LAC. Very few kids from his school are looking at them. Only 3-4 kids apply each year to a place like Bowdoin or Carleton. For the last two years, the school had two kids apply to Davidson and, for both of those years, one of those kids got the Belk scholarship. It’s a lot less competitive (at least among his classmates) if a student has a list full of LACs.
So what’s the answer? Around here, parents send their kids to Catholic schools in the city to get out of the rat race that is our district. There, the kids can play multiple sports, take the classes they wish, shine and get into all kinds of schools. We decided to stay the course here. My husband grew up here and we came back for the schools. (Still trying to decide if that’s ironic or not but the truth is that our S19 is getting an amazing education at his school and he’s managing his stress well.) Our D21 is a ballerina and spends 25-30 hours a week at the studio for class/rehearsals. We’ve made a few different decisions for her in her freshman year schedule since she’s at ballet from 5:30-9:30 every weekday. So far, so good. Will she take as many APs at S19? No. And she won’t be applying to those universities cited above either so she won’t have to compete with those kids. She’s a different student, though, and very interested in history and writing so she’s focusing her APs there. S19 is still an undecided kid who loves every subject and can handle the class load with honors and AP in every subject. If we saw him struggling, we would admit it’s the wrong path for him and we would choose different classes.
I’ve had college exams with the average grade in the 30-40% range. The grades were so low because the exam difficulty was far beyond the textbook level, and the exam was long enough that very few could finish the exam in the time limit. The exam focused on learning the concepts of the class and applying them at a much higher level, often in ways that were not discussed in the class or in the textbook. Being a pre-med class with a reputation for “weeding” may have also been a factor. A stellar chem student who is an expert on the material might only get a 50%.
In contrast, it was my experience that typical HS exams were mostly just regurgitating what the teacher/textbook says in a simple and predictable way, such that just about every student can answer every question correctly with some basic memorization and little real learning. I think the ideal approach is somewhere between these two extremes, an exam that shows you learn the concepts and can apply them in new ways outside of the textbook/classroom discussions and one with questions that are challenging enough that hardly anyone will get a perfect score, but not necessarily with mean grades as low as 30%. In such an approach, the mean exam grade will vary, and grades well below 90% are likely to correspond to an A.
I looked at the syllabus for the Naperville North AP Chem and the semester grade is determined using the final exam grade as 15% of the total grade. For the equivalent course at UIUC the final exam counts for 38% of the final course grade. The final exam grade is a better assessment of mastery of the material than homework or outlining scores padding the final grade.