While I was referring above to my D who was recruited to Stanford with zero intentions of majoring in a STEM field, I was actually given the exact same example about AP Bio vs. AP Environ. by the Haverford coach regarding my D who wanted to major in archaeology. My sense is that private liberal arts colleges looked for the core, rigorous AP’s regardless of major since no one enters with a declared major and they expect you to explore. Other universities where you have to apply to a specific school within the university may see things differently.
@85bears46 That’s really no different than college curves in STEM courses.
I went to a high school mentioned in the article. I was a top student in grades and at or near the top in standardized testing. I think I took 1 AP class? School just wasn’t that hard. I don’t remember excessive homework. I had a ton of free time (which I did not use productively or wisely 
). Things have definitely changed.
Exactly. In our science AP classes at least, an 80 percent in the class is an A. The teachers make the class very similar to a college class and the tests are practice for the AP. When I’ve mentioned this on CC, parents say things like “our school would never do that! kids need a 90 to get an A!” I think it works out for our kids, though, as they get more of a college experience. And, even with that lower percentage for an A, fewer than half of the kids in the class can hit that 80 percent.
Stanford’s website recommend applicants take 3 years of science in HS including biology, chemistry, and physics. They don’t mention environmental science because it is not a core foundation class, rather than anything to do with rigor of AP Bio vs AP ES. However, this does not mean AP ES is not important for any applicants. Stanford is also explicitly clear that they are looking for students with “intellectual vitality” – a genuine interest and passion in learning. It’s not just a matter of taking a HS schedule full of the core foundation classes, just as it is not a matter of taking the maximum number of AP classes. Instead it helps to show that you are passionate about your area of study, both in and out of the classroom. If you are passionate about ES, then taking ES as an elective is great, especially if combined with ES related activities outside of the classroom. However, it sounds like your daughter is in to Archeology, rather than ES. It’s not a simple one course selection fits all students approach.
Well, don’t count on that. CB makes money on every AP exam taken. I hope no one is thinking that this award is a key to getting into a top college. Grinders aren’t what they are looking for.
Data10: perhaps for athletic recruiting they are more formulaic about course rigor.
It seems to me that the opacity of what constitutes the “most demanding schedule” plays a role in the AP race.
Summer sessions are shorter than regular semesters, and much shorter than regular school years. A college precalculus course is typically a semester long (twice the speed of a high school precalculus course), but a summer session doubles the speed again (four times the speed of a high school precalculus course).
Also, taking precalculus in 8th grade is prodigy-level, not just being “good in math”, since it is four grade levels advanced. A math prodigy who likes math would probably be able to handle 2x college speed or 4x high school speed, but such a course is probably inappropriate for almost all other middle and high school students.
Actual college courses (calculus or otherwise) commonly do not follow the rigid 90%/80%/70%/60% thresholds for A/B/C/D. Often, instructors will put a substantially larger percentage of difficult problems on the test, so that what would appear to be a low score in a high school course (e.g. 50% or 60%) may result in an A or B grade.
The common high school 90%/80%/70%/60% thresholds for A/B/C/D mean that 70% of the tests and other graded work in a high school course needs to be relatively easy stuff that C students can do. This can be useless busywork for A and B students (who are presumably the ones most likely to go to college immediately after high school) who may be more interested and may learn more if more of the work were more challenging problems and such.
That would be an issue local to the high school and its counseling staff. It should be hard to come up with a reasonable set of guidelines and publish them for students to see.
@evergreen5 – D18’s public HS has a table showing their criteria for the various levels of curriculum difficulty that make up the level they’ll report on your transcript. There are five categories: English, Math, Social Studies, Science, and Foreign Language. Each category has a difficulty level from 1 to 4 based on the classes taken. Add up the points for the five categories and you get the overall difficulty level for the transcript: Average (0-5 pts), Above Average (6-10 pts), Advanced (11-15 pts), Most Difficult (16+ pts).
For example, the max points (4 pts) for each category require the following classes:
English = 2 AP classes
Math = AP Calc AB or BC or GaTech Calc
Social Studies = 3+ AP classes
Science = 2+ AP classes
Foreign Language = 1 AP class
Unfortunately, we didn’t find this table until late in the junior year (I’m sure they showed it at freshman orientation but we didn’t realize the importance of it).
Re: #150
Seems like the math and foreign language categories may be affected by middle school placement.
Also, for science, skipping any one of biology, chemistry, or physics should lose a point. Otherwise, a student may choose to take biology, chemistry, AP biology, and AP environmental science to get the maximum points while skipping physics.
But it does look like, for social studies and science, this point system encourages chasing AP courses.
In defense of the system, it encourages kids to spread out their classes in the various categories. D18 is overloaded to Math and Science (AB/BC, CS-P, Bio, Chem, Physics-C). I’m not sure that her transcript shows “Most Difficult” because of that. Nor does that table include her Biotech “pathway” or G&T classes, which reduced many of the kids to tears this year from stress (I’m talking ACT 36 kids, it was that rough). It ticks me off that some other kid could waltz through with AP ES and get the same rating. I’m not sure that colleges have the time to look at the actual transcript in enough detail to differentiate (they get so many applications that a significant part of it must be automated).
PS. I’m not irritated by the Biotech stress. It was good stress … caused by kids trying to do something novel in genetic engineering and associated hardware/software, creating websites, prepping for presentations, etc. Bad stress would be having tons of busy work dumped on them like in some of the other AP classes.
This article made me think.
I graduated high school in 09 so have a bit of time to reflect back. I exited the rat race in my junior year because the stress just wasn’t worth it. Luckily, I had parents who backed me 100% no matter what decision I chose.
Many of my friends didn’t and went on to continue taking a mound of AP classes in senior year. Honestly, most of the students who continued in the rat race aren’t that much better off than I am. Sure, there are a handful who are very successful, but I also have many friends who are successful that exited the rat race like I did.
Some caveats to all of this. The friends that I grew up with before high school were much more poor than my high school friends. Those who stayed in the bad school district I was in haven’t gone on to huge success though a few now own homes in their late 20s (a big deal around here). The smartest, most driven person I knew from there is a heroin addict who had 3 kids by the time she was 20 and has been homeless on and off since then.
The friends that I went to high school with and came from well-connected backgrounds are doing fine regardless of how they did in high school. Most were good, not great, students but they had internships and whatnot with their parents’ work. One is my best friend’s little brother who slacked through high school and college but managed to eek out a degree and now works a cushy county job courtesy of their father.
I do think high school is unnecessarily stressful and I think parents have a lot to do with it. I had friends who would get sick over the thought of bringing home a B on their semester report cards because of how disappointed their parents would be. That’s ridiculous and unnecessary. It was then and it is now. You don’t need to go to a super high-end college to do well in life… especially if you’re already coming from the upper-middle/upper class.
Well, I posted almost two years ago about how we had to take my D out of HS for a month - her second semester of senior year - so she could get intensive behavioral therapy, and start ant-anxiety meds, because she was getting Cs in her AP science and math classes. I mean, that was really the trigger.
And I do take partial responsibility for it because we’d always praised her for her grades… We did beg her to limit herself to a max of two AP classes per year (and she only took one freshman year) but the other students, the teachers and school filled in the pressure where we left off.
So she ended up taking nine AP classes before graduating. Would’ve been ten but we convinced her to drop one second semester her sr. year, after she completed therapy.
(And yes, she did graduate on time and ended up going to no-name directional state where she’s very happy and fulfilled - and sufficiently challenged in her classes, as well.)
Because of her anxiety, we’ve encouraged her to study what she is passionate about, and just take it a day, week, semester at a time.
She is very happy now in college, SO MUCH happier than she was all through high school. She’s like a different person. And she’s so much more productive in both her academic and personal life. That, to me, is so much more important than getting to brag that she is at a prestigious school, if it was at the expense of her mental and emotional health. In fact, before she was done with therapy, I’d decided that if she didn’t go to college at all, but just found a job at a fast-food place and was just happy again and free of the ongoing stress, that was all that really mattered.
Academic success should not take precedence over our children’s health and well-being.
I do think there are some people, even young people, who thrive on difficult challenge and competition. But so many do not. And honestly, I think it’s ruining their self-esteem and their emotional health.
“My kid who got in everyplace she applied (including UChicago, Harvey Mudd, Swarthmore, and Carleton, plus several other colleges with good merit aid) took two APs – Calc AB and French. It simply isn’t necessary, no matter how convinced so many people are that it makes or breaks college admissions. If her school had offered more and allowed more, I’d guess she might have taken a few more. But 11 is kind of ridiculous. She had great test scores, recommendations that said she was an extremely bright and interesting kid, and time for in-school and out-of school ECs that backed that up. Her GPA wasn’t even that impressive – serviceable, but not tip top.”
This is anecdotal and should not be taken as anything more than that. If your high school offers 15-20 APs, you don’t have to take them all and you certainly don’t need to take 10. But you need a few to show you can handle college work, and take advantage of the courses offered. Colleges look for students who will make use of the things they offer and taking 2 APs when your school offers 20 will raise concerns.
@BeeDAre
Your daughter is fortunate to have supportive parents like you and your husband. Sometimes, parents are too involved to recognize the stress levels our high school students are facing.
The more I read these posts, the more I feel grateful to my D’s public HS. It is small to medium size ( about 420 in her class). The school does not allow freshmen or sophomores to take AP classes. It offers honor classes. AP are for juniors and seniors and they can only take two AP classes per year. Capable seniors can take more but students need to get permission from their parents and their teachers.
I used to think that it was unfair for our students as other school districts allow their freshmen and sophomores to take APs. I wondered how our students could compete with those students who were allowed to take 6, 7, or even 10 APs.
I forgot to consider the fact that 5-10 students from this school attend Ivies and other Ivy equivalents every year. My D was in all honor classes, took one AP in her junior year and three in her senior year. She did not have any leadership role in high school. She had EC that she did consistently all four years and she could show her passion through her essay. She was a good fit for the Ivy that accepted her.
I think doing your best, being passionate and being consistent are more important than trying too hard and spreading yourself thin which can lead to both students and parents becoming all stressed out.
My daughter’s school didn’t allow Ap courses until junior year as well and she graduated with only 4. That did have implications for her college courseload. Not only does she need to fulfill more distribution requirements, but registration is also done based on semester hours of credit.
Roycroftmom brings up a great point about the implications for college course registration and performance. My Stanford D did not take AP Calculus in high school–just a regular calc lite sort of class. As a result, she was behind most of her college classmates in math–quite far behind in some cases, since the sort of kid who gets into Stanford often has gone well beyond calculus. This fact set her back as far as doing well in her major initially and in meeting the departmental requirements in a way that didn’t entail loading up on reqs her final two years. Similarly, my Dartmouth son, who DID take Calc BC in high school, nevertheless found himself unprepared for the math demands of his first college econ class, taught by a visiting professor from Europe. Students with more math background, and they existed, had less trouble.
I think a one size fits all requirement not allowing Freshman and Sophomore is a bit unfair. I could see some requirements that certain classes leading up to the AP classes need to be taking or some kind of other prerequisite.