Would we make a mistake if...oops!

<p>calmom - your color-coded system sounds a lot like what a lot of people do less formally in their heads (without the colors, usually). I am curious - is your daughter a senior and still waiting to decide where to attend next year or is she already in college, and, if so, where did she end up?</p>

<p>Marite....(if you are still checking this thread)....if a district regards Algebra I as an 8th grade course, then wouldn't everyone HAVE to take calculus to have 4 maths?
Our district doesn't d Alg/Geo/Alg, but Integrated I, II, and III, the precalc and calculus. Maybe the difference is that Int. I, II, and III include trigonometry and a LOT of precalculus, statistics, etc.</p>

<p>Calmom - my daughter's weakest area is the same as yours. Besides trying the ACT, which she scores <em>much</em> better on (97th percentile), I think I will adopt your rainbow system!</p>

<p>Voronwe:
Not everyone is able to go from Algebra 1 in 8th grade to Algebra 2 so some repeat Algebra 1. We also have IMP 1,2, 3, 4 as a separate math offering; those who passed algebra 1 in 8th grade can go into IMP 2 in 9th and take AP-Calc in 12th . For those who do not repeat but do not want to take Calc, there is Advanced Math, which is a set of different math topics (S#1 took it). We also have a slew of lower level math courses for struggling students.</p>

<p>My sons' prep school has many tracks in math and they do cross over at various points. There is Alg 1, Alg1-2, Geom, Alg2-Trig, Precalc, Calc, CalcA,CalcB, Multivariable Calc,Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Stats, College Math. Kids who took Alg1 or Integ 1 in 8th grade and do not do well on the Alg screening test either repeat it or take the Alg1-2 course, or go on to Geom and retake the Alg screening for Alg placement the subsequent year. If a kid is weak in math and is a first year boarding kid, it is often recommended that he retake Alg 1 as the Alg1-2 course is very fast paced and a number of those kids may well go on to Precalc. The CalcA follows the APCalcAB syllabus to the point where the kids who take that course take the exam, and the CalcB is for kids who want to take the BC exam. The Calc without a letter designation is for kids who have satifactorily finished Precalc but do not want the rigor of CalcA, and have no intention of taking the exam but want calculus on their transcript. The College Math is really a hodge podge of all the alg, geom, trig,etc taken before, and is a review course of sort, but I know a number of kids who having taken it passed the Cornell math exams with no problem (Cornell requires a precalc/integ3 level math exam in some of their programs) which is pretty good considering these are the bottom of the math students. My 9th grader is in precalc, but his his section has moved briskly into calc and he will go into CalcB next year. When S2 took Precalc, it moved more slowly with the anticipation that he would g into CalcA thereafter, or to College Math if he did not do well in that course. This puts S3 in the position of taking AP Stats and Calc BC exams before senior year, which is a nice plus on his transcript. Most schools do have overlap in their math groups.</p>

<p>Thank you, Jamimom and Marite - it is very interesting to see how other schools do it. I wasn't very specific in my account - we too, of couse, have a bunch of lower level math courses that I did not mention. And each individual course has 3 or 4 levels. The highest levels are called Honors (and there is an Honors Precalculus AB and Honors Precalculus BC as well) until Calculus, for which there are two AP levels. After that the kids can take local university courses.</p>

<p>Oh, and there is also a plain Honors Calculus for those who want calc on their transcript but cannot meet the rigorous numerical requirements for getting into AP Cal. I have a child who scores in the top 97-98% in math for several national tests, going back to the Secondary School Admissions test, but it's not good enough......</p>

<p>Interesting to me to hear how similar your son's situation was- my daughter also is not troubled by her record really, it's more my problem. I feel very conflicted about pushing her into areas that she really doesn't want to go, but at the same time, I don't want to make a decision that she will have consequences she may later regret. I think we've already made a few mistakes along the way in her course selection. I keep reminding myself that, in the end, most of this probably won't matter much. She'll gain acceptance somewhere and given her work ethic, will do well in college. But I think she would be happiest in a school where there are serious, but happy, students. Maybe I need to do some more exploring of different colleges.</p>

<p>Still not sure how to reply to a specific post- it seems this board puts all replies at the end of the list. Oh well. To Calmom, I took what you said very seriously and do not consider your thoughts discouraging at all; they are actually very helpful to me. We do need to broaden our search, and include real safeties. My daughter's ACT scores ( took in the fall- got a 28) are about 100 points lower than the average at the schools I listed. We hope to prep her a bit over the summer to raise her score, but given her problems in math, I'm not optimistic that they'll really go up very much. We visited Lewis and Clark ( a "target/safety" for her, I think) and I was hoping she would like it well enough there that if she didn't gain admission to a "reach", she would be happy with the alternative. Unfortunately, she was kind of disappointed in the academic strength of the student body. Her high school was extremely academically rigourous and competitive, and she is used to a fairly high level of academic ability. In the end, I'm not sure it was the best school for her, and I would hestitate to send her to a college that was too much of a stretch for her (given her high school experience). We're going to look at Pitzer College as another possible target/safety. I'm open to other suggestions as well, so any ideas are welcome. I like your color-coded scheme- I'm going to sit down with the Fiske Guide and try to evaluate the schools we're considering in the way you have suggested. Thank you.
Oh, and to the mother of the student who goes to an IB program- did you find many of the students very stressed at all the work? My daughter's school is having multiple "meltdowns" of stressed-out students who are very pushed by parents or by their own college dreams. I was wondering if it was the way our school interprets the IB requirements, or whether it is something inherent in the IB program. Finally, my daughter's plan is to do higher level tests in History, English, Spanish and lower level tests in Math, Science, and Music. Her EE (extended essay) will be in English Lit. Thanks again for all your thoughts and suggestion- much, much appreciated.</p>

<p>Calmom: not to quibble with your color scheme, but % admitted & SATs for Oberlin & Brandeis are pretty similar IMO. Admissions % is the same, with infinitesimal edge to Oberlin. SATs (avg of 25%-75% range) at Brandeis look 5pts higher, 1350 vs. 1345, but after backing out the Oberlin Conservatory, Oberlin Arts College is slightly higher than Brandeis. They are basically the same. Scripps SATs are not much worse, but they accept closer to 50%, vs. 40% for the other two. Not much difference between any of them really, in the big picture, but if we're selecting colors..</p>

<p>MotherOfTwo, my daughter is a high school junior, and the reason for the color scheme on paper is simply that it is an efficient way for me to communicate with her. Now that I think of it, my son had me type out a list of about 45 colleges for him almost 5 years ago, and then he used his own collor scheme to mark up that list - but his was far more complex and obtuse, and involved secret codes that were never explained to me.</p>

<p>Monydad, I don't want to quibble over my ranking - the numbers I used showed Oberlin with a 48% admit rate and Brandeis with a 40% admit rate, and that was what causes one to be assigned to a different color group. I was considering both factors, but in this case the admit rate was significant. You might be working from a different set of figures than I am -- I was just working from the numbers provided by Princeton Review, which are easy to access and find quickly on line. But since you said "Admissions % is the same" - you obviously have different numbers. </p>

<p>Anyway, it doesn't matter for my purposes, because I don't know if my daughter would be interested in either school. I'm just trying to develop a list of colleges for her to look at that are easier to get into than the two that currently are at the top of her list.</p>

<p>Veronwe, my daughter will also be taking the ACT next month, so I am hoping that will change our equation somewhat. I have heard that many students who run into barriers on the SAT do better with the ACT. My daughter took the SAT at the end of sophomore year, and the one thing she did really good at were the analogies -- which of course they have now taken out of the test.</p>

<p>I got the numbers from Oberlin's actual Common Data Set submission. They match some other numbers I've seen for them. I have to believe the numbers you saw were in error, or for a prior (multiple years past) year.</p>

<p>I did the analysis for our own use last year, using the prior year's data of course, and got similar results. I'd bet Princeton Review has a typo.</p>

<p>I just checked at Oberlin, and the last time Arts & Sciences %admitted was as high as 48% was in the year 2000 !!!! It has been below 40% every year since. You have old numbers.</p>

<p>The Conservatory is yet more selective on a % basis. So there's no way to get 48% with recent data.</p>

<p>Shojomo wrote:
[quote]
I don't want to make a decision that she will have consequences she may later regret. I think we've already made a few mistakes along the way in her course selection. I keep reminding myself that, in the end, most of this probably won't matter much. She'll gain acceptance somewhere and given her work ethic, will do well in college. But I think she would be happiest in a school where there are serious, but happy, students.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Your daughter will be happiest exploring and developing her own interests and areas of strength, both now and at the college level. Her choices now will influence the path to college, but the net effect may be to steer her more toward a college that would be a better fit. There are many, many colleges that are less selective than the ones you listed but have serious and happy students.</p>

<p>Lewis & Clark is also on my list for my daughter, as a safety. They take a large number every year from my daughter's school, and so I'm sure my daughter's good academic record will be a plus there. My son was accepted there -- also a safety -- and they gave him a financial aid package including merit aid that would have cost us LESS out of pocket than attending any of the UC schools where he was accepted. (A little heavy on loans, though) One reason the financial aid package was so good is that, at least at the time, L&C only asked for a FAFSA - no CSS Profile. But at the time L&C was his personal "fourth" choice - along with UC Santa Cruz & Pitzer. He did an overnight at L&C and was rather appalled at the heavy partying he saw in the dorms on a Thursday night. </p>

<p>My son ended up at a US News "first tier" east coast LAC, and dropped out after 2 years. He is working now and plans to go back to college. He does not want to return to his former college - he was in good standing there, but finances are a big issue and in the end, he's happier on the west coast. </p>

<p>So guess where he wants to go now? Lewis & Clark. In hindsight & with maturity, L&C looks a lot better to him. Of course, these days he's also a big advocate of L&C for his younger sister. So definitely L&C stays on our list, whether or not my daughter thinks she wants it. I mean, as a safety, I know that she'd find plenty to keep her happy there, even if right now she thinks Barnard is her dream school. And I know the school will give us a fair shake on financial aid.</p>

<p>Calmom, Interesting story..thank you. We visited Lewis and Clark a few weeks ago. My daughter attended a creative writing class there which focused on student writing. She thought the quality of writing (and feedback) was kind of weak, and she reported that many of the stories were about drunken college students. She also thought the lunch conversation was kind of uninteresting, but in the end, she said she'd go there if she didn't have other choices. She wasn't too happy with the coed bathroom situation, although I understand that one can choose to be in the "substance free" dorm which has single-sex bathrooms. My daughter asked her student hosts at lunch if everyone was liberal on campus, and they replied that all the conservative students live in the substance free dorm. You are also from California, so I'm sure you can appreciate what wonderful ethnic diversity we have here; she found Lewis and Clark very, very white. (Her high school is 40% nonwhite).</p>

<p>Shojomo, my son also had issues with lack of diversity - but his east coast LAC was worse. At L&C he did at least find a large contingent of international students; things might have changed somewhat in that respect with the difficulty with getting visas since 9/11 -- my son was there in 2000. </p>

<p>I do think my son had the sense of way more drinking going on than what was acceptable to his 18-year-old eyes, but his 21-year-old perspective is a little more jaded. Turns out that there was a lot of drinking at his other college, too. </p>

<p>With very few exceptions - including Pitzer and a handful of other California schools - there are few private colleges in the US that are not heavily white. Of course, larger colleges have an advantage, simply because there are more students overall. But it's hard to aim for selective private colleges and also find true diversity.</p>

<p>Personally, at this point I'd rather see my daughter go to UC -- but the UC system's reliance on standardized testing works against her, so I am not sure that she could get into the campuses she would most likely prefer.</p>

<p>Calmom, my D was also really, really good at analogies. Her problem was that she'd do great on SATs when taken at home - precisely timed, just like real SATs - then totally crash and burn when she had to take them in a regular test situation. Very, very bizarre. Yet for some reason, she has no test anxiety about the ACT, and does much better. I hope your daughter does well when she tries it......</p>

<p>We'll see. Part of my daughter's problem is with math - she says she can do all the SAT math problems, but not quickly enough - so she runs out of time on the test. At this point, the situation is worse (not better) because she has gone a year without math instruction - she did a semester-long foreign exchange, and when she came back there was no way for her to enroll mid-year in the trig class that would have been at her level. On the other hand, oddly enough, living in a foreign country made her far more attentive to the nuances of English language, so she is far more sophisticated in her analysis of sentence structure and grammar. Whether this will improve performance on the sentence completion type questions that are now weighted more heavily for the SAT remains to be seen.</p>

<p>analogies were what my kids did best, too. Glad they took the SAT's before they took them away.</p>

<p>I've heard (here, I think, and elsewhere), that minority students don't have the gap on analogies tht they do elsewhere. These are less coachable, seem to show innate thinking leaps, so they'r less dependent on socioeconomics. It's too bad, the added writing s ection is more coachable, it sseems.</p>

<p>calmom, are you concerned at all about the UC limits of on-campus housing? It seems that so many of the UC campuses end up functioning like commuter schools because only freshmen live on campus. I get concerned about the lack of spontaneous social interactions that occur in dorms, the inability to easily get to the library at night, having to shop, cook, clean in an apartment, reliance on a car, etc. What do you think?</p>

<p>Funny, my daughter did best on analogies too. She performs better on the ACT than the SAT, although she isn't scoring all that well on any of the tests. The ACT has many advantages over the SAT though, as I'm sure you're well aware.</p>