I have spent the afternoon looking at various programs and perusing this website as well.
I know that he may have to take some math at college depending on the school and program he attends. What I did for my daughter was have her take math over the summer at the local community college and transfer the credits back. My son can take regular algebra in college that way; it’s just the pre-req of the higher level math for getting in to schools in the first place that is killing me. Based on the suggestions I have gotten here, I am compiling a chart on what is required vs. recommended in terms of math. He also only has 2 years of FL but is interested in taking ASL at college or at our local cc.
He’s fine with sciences and may get credit for APES if he does well enough on the test next year. He’s interested in enough areas of science that he could find something to do a gen ed in that won’t tax his math skills too much if he needs to take another science class as I believe SUNY requires one lab and one non-lab science.
As of now, his list looks like this:
SUNY - Purchase, Fredonia, Buffalo State, Oswego and Oneonta
LIU - CW Post
Pace
We may add: UNCSA, Montclair, Otterbein.
Schools like Tisch and Muehlenberg are out of the question, both financially and academically.
If he likes Purchase after he visits it, I will contact admissions with questions about his LD’s. His GC has agreed to discuss them in his recommendation letter. We have never hidden them and, frankly, I think that they have helped make him the person he is becoming. He is compassionate, resourceful and persistent (except with ACT practice, lol).
UNCSA is a school,of the arts. While,they do give need based aid to undergrads, the strength of your portfolio or audition is also a HUGE factor in their awarding.
I think it’s a terrific school with excellent programs in the arts.
Take a good long look at the requirements for degrees from Purchase, Pace, etc. There may be BA/BS options that will get your son where he wants to go that would allow for transferring in from a NYS community college. Even though he’d like the BFA, he may not absolutely need to do that.
Happykid completed an AA in Theater Tech/Design at our community college. While she was there, she completed three semesters of math: one semester of non-credit pre-college algebra review, one semester of basic college algebra required for her AA, and one semester of a higher level of college algebra that fulfilled graduation requirements for the public universities in our state. She didn’t need any more math when she transferred, and was really happy about that! She finished her BS in Theater Tech/Design at Towson U in Maryland two years ago, and now is doing lighting design and making enough to support herself in the Baltimore/DC area.
As a discalculate I feel your sons pain. I feel sooooo greatful to have grown up in where you didn’t need much math ( I had one year of algebra 1 and one of geometry ( horrible) and I was done. 495 math 710 English SAT in the days when that was fine. I am a successful attorney who went to a top 10 law school (770 LSAT) deals with complicated banking and other economic issues and I NEVER NEED TO USE HIGHER LEVEL MATH. NEVER!!!
I HATE math and was told by my daughter’s first grade teacher to never tell her that. I didn’t listen. She is good at math and is a double engineering major. So I guess my owning up didn’t ruin her!
@maya54, my wife and I agreed that I wouldn’t tell our sons how much I hated school. However, I came clean when they got to be teenagers who obviously didn’t like school. Math certainly hasn’t caused them the problems it did for me. IIRC, I got a 560 on the math SAT and a 26 on the math ACT. I scraped by with a D- in Algebra 2, but I was good enough at eliminating answers on multiple choice tests to not bomb them.
I wonder what kind of uproar there would be if students who wanted to study engineering or medicine were required to perform a Shakespearean monologue or demonstrate that they know how to do stage lighting? I simply don’t understand why a child with a known LD in math should be kept out of schools and programs because that LD precludes the successful study of math, particularly when higher level math doesn’t really have anything to do with what he wants to study. Honestly, if he could have done alg 2/trig pass fail, I’d have let him take it. I do see value in physics but he had to drop it because even with a calculator and twice weekly tutoring, he was still not getting the formulas solved correctly. I was going to have him take non regents (very little math) physics this year but he chose to do APES instead.
@techmom99. Honestly it’s a travesty and those who insist that a person has to have upper level math to be successful in intellectually challenging studies and careers are doing a huge disservice. It’s a blatant lie. For most people in business and law math never comes up. This is an issue close to my heart and I look closely at it as I engage in and study the many businesses we represent. It makes me angry that someone like me wouldn’t have had the educational opportunities I’ve had because of how students are judged today.
@maya54, I might have trouble getting admitted to a four year college today based on what I did in high school. However, I probably would have little trouble getting admitted to a PhD program in my subject area if I were so inclined. I think most students should take Algebra 2, but I also think there needs to be some flexibility if the college program and career path don’t require it. This is the point I made in the thread referenced above, and very few people agreed with me. My weakness in math has eliminated career options, but none that I wanted to pursue. My inability to hit a baseball thrown more than 75 mph or so eliminated professional baseball as a career, but I knew that way before I finished high school.
It really has nothing to do with theatre tech, SUNY across the board has become more competitive, because there are more students applying. I am willing to bet $$ that if your son attends Laguardia, that there are a slew of students who are applying to Purchase as a safety (and they will have the AL2/trig). This is really going to be a question for your GC, who will be able to tell you how many , unhooked, no-EOP students were admitted to Purchase, without AL2/trig (I can tell you that many of the hooked, low income students applying to 4-year SUNY schools , are taking AL2/trig).
Does your son have one life science and lab along with one physical science with lab?
You said that he took earth science in 8th grade; was it coded as a high school course?
That is the minimum science graduation requirement for the state (the 3rd science can be a life science or a physical science)
One of the challenges that your son may have, especially if he attends school in NYC, if he does not successfully complete algebra II/Trig, he is not considered college ready.
There is no remediation in the 4-year SUNY and CUNY colleges, which is why NYS as a whole is pushing for students to be college ready when leaving high school.
The Current CUNY college readiness requirements are:
Earth Science is counted as a HS class for him. He also took Honors Bio and Honors Chem (was lucky to wind up with a C and 83 on the regents). He has also taken Marine Science and will be taking APES this year. So, he is okay in the science department.
He is in the group that was allowed to take both the common core and the regular regents. Our school reports the higher of the 2. For him, the old tests were better - 80 in algebra and 71 in geometry. The 80 was achieved after he went to summer school to raise his original score of 70. I didn’t make him retake the geometry test.
His ACT composite was 27 and he will take it again in September. His sub-scores ranged from 19 in math to 32 in English. Your note said ACT score of “2138” but I assume you mean 21. He is going for tutoring over the summer in act math to try and get the score higher. His GC said that it’s obvious that he has a math LD because most students don’t have such a huge discrepancy in their math v. english scores unless they have an LD.
I attended a CUNY school myself and took CLEP tests to avoid both math and science. It doesn’t seem like that’s a possibility anymore.
I agree with Maya and Mstomper that I might not be able to enjoy the career I have if I was starting out now.
I wonder if there are test taking strategies that might help on the ACT. I approached a lot of problems by figuring out what the answer wasn’t, which improved my odds. My scores on the math sections, while lower than the others, didn’t exactly scream “needed a tutor to get a D- in Algebra 2.”
I am not sure if they offer a non regents version. I have to check the guide. I don’t even know that I could talk him into it. Maybe if it meant that he’d never have to take math in college, but I can’t guarantee that. I just really hate that taking that course is necessary for what he wants to do. Plus, all of his friends took it this past year and most of them hated it and made painfully clear how much they hated it. I really wish that I had realized that just because alternative third year math classes are offered it doesn’t mean that the SUNY’s will accept them because I might have forced him to take it last year. I hate this.
There is plenty of attempted remediation going on at our school. As a theatre tech major, OP’s S should be able to avoid all of that. He can certainly take some kind of earth science to fulfill the science requirement. And just explain that theatre techs don’t need maths, fgs.
It’s too bad no one realized the issue sooner. I remember about 25 years ago that I was so happy after geometry because I could stop taking math as it wasn’t required to graduate high school. I took tons of electives in 11th grade. And then about 1/2 way through 11th grade I was looking at colleges and realized that even though I didn’t need more math to graduate high school, I did need it for all of the colleges since most said they wanted students to have it. What a bummer. I took it my senior year (I feel like it was called trig back then, not algebra 2.) . Barely passed it but I did pass. I was a psychology major and I had to take one math in college, some easy business type math IIRC and then stats and methods for psychology (that math I loved). Maybe I would have gotten into the colleges I did even without it but I took it because I didn’t want to take the chance of being shut out.
I checked. Our school is on a block system which means that the students are on a 6 day cycle where they take academic classes 4 out of the 6 days. A 6 day version of alg 2 is offered; it moves more slowly and all the kids I know who took it hated it and most barely passed the regents. There is also a class called Foundations of Algebra 2, which is a year long class that supposedly prepares a student to take alg 2 the following year. That’s what was recommended for my son last year. I don’t know that colleges would be fooled into believing that was the real deal.
If he likes Purchase and Pace after he sees them, I will call admissions and be upfront with them about his situation. Maybe if he’s otherwise a viable candidate, they will accept that he simply isn’t a good fit with math and that admissions needn’t be one size fits all.
I have a similar kid, creative, hardworking, with some learning needs that really impact his math and foreign languages. His grades and transcripts are not as strong as your son’s. He’s also hoping for a BFA in tech theater.
Right now, as a rising senior, my son has 1 year each of 2 languages with no ability to continue them, no chemistry or physics, and no algebra 2. I’ve spoken to a couple college counselors and they all say that Algebra 2 is the most likely of these things to impact his admissions. They have suggested that if we can only fix one deficit senior year, it should be trying to get through Algebra 2.
One school to look at that would be guaranteed admissions with your DS’ stats is Wright State in Ohio. Their design and tech programs are very highly regarded.