What do you guys think of this plan? Any downside for college admissions? Goal is English and Math dual Major.
Grade 9:
Grade 10:
Grade 11:
Grade 11:
Does the school not offer AP Lang and AP Lit? Those might be important for an English major.
School doesn’t offer AP Lang or AP Lit but he can take both exams.
Nah, if they don’t offer it, no reason to waste time doing it on his own! Good luck.
Your son can either self-study for the exams or just take a course at the local community college to demonstrate rigor and interest in English. It’s completely up to him and doesn’t matter either way. Courseload looks good. I’m gathering that your son has already taken geometry, algebra, and pre-calc since you’ve got such advanced math on the table. Double check with the GC to ensure that those pre-req courses I mentioned will be mentioned SOMEWHERE on his transcript so colleges know that he is receiving graduating credit in those levels of math. Some colleges get weird and want to see that the student has A, B, and C math.
Also no history in 9th grade?
Any history for 9th grade??
Any AP/honors classes aval?
English major should look into some classes such as creative writing or being on the newspaper for the. School 
This schedule looks odd to me. Does it fulfill graduation requirements? Our school requires 2 years each of health/PE as well as a few other courses. Or did you just leave off those mundane requirements since I see you have only listed 6 courses per year.
Seems to be missing social studies/history in grade 9, that would also be a requirement for graduation in our school, and you might also like to look at the expectations of the sort of colleges your child may apply to as far as years of social studies etc.
Is physics C really only a semester class, so you are doubling it up with economics? It’s one of the hardest AP classes.
As the parent of a mathy kid and also an aspiring writer, I have a few other thoughts. Where is all this advanced math coming from? Will it be taught at an appropriately sophisticated level for a kid advanced enough to reach this material in high school? College classes would typically move about twice as fast as a high school AP class, so taking one each semester is comparable to being in 2 AP classes. Especially if you’ve left courses out of your listing (which may not be hard but still chew up many hours per week), and depending on your child’s time commitments outside of school, it could be more work than they are comfortable with. I’d be cautious enrolling a kid in college classes as a sophomore when they’ve only completed one AP class, just in terms of study skills and general maturity. Even AP classes come as quite a shock to many students. I think advanced coursework is good if you have access to appropriate classes, but participation in math competitions is also good for a potential math major and may expose your child to concepts and problems far more sophisticated and difficult than what they encounter in cookie-cutter coursework.
Regarding the English, are there other related electives available (eg. journalism, creative writing, screenwriting or more focused literature classes). It’s an extremely advanced math program but doesn’t stand out at all for a potential English major.
My advice would be to a) not set your sights on a college major for an 8th grader. Let him explore and try some new things and b) if you are really fixated now on college admissions go talk to a guidance counselor and see what h/she says about what to take to get into the level of school you are shooting for. Without knowing what your school offers or what schools you are targeting its possible to say what the impact on college admissions is.
I cannot tell much because I don’t see the school catalog.
Where does he take math classes?
For math, anything more advanced than calculus BC would have to be taken at a college, and real analysis and complex analysis would have to be taken at a four year school, as opposed to a community college.
Commuting to a college to take the advanced math courses can be more difficult to schedule along with regular high school courses.
Thank you everyone for your kind comments. I will provide a bit more context in answer to answer your questions.
The key question is this. He will either have 3 years of Science or 3 years of Social Science. No room to take 4 years of both. My advice to him has been to take 4 years of Social Science (Mico and Macro in Grade 12) but he is more inclined towards Physics C as that will be a much easier course for him. It is too far away so I am not going to sweat over that. In fact, he would rather take both Latin 5 and French 5 and just do 3 years of Social Science and 3 years of Science. Will colleges frown at a pointy kid with loads of languages and math and arts and not much of anything else? He will have outstanding international level arts ECs as well and a varsity sport for 12 years.
This is an extremely headstrong kid who is a single child and hence always had his way. So there’s very limited room to influence him. The course selection is his. We are first generation immigrants so want to know if he is doing the right thing or cutting himself off at the ankles.
If all this math will be taken on a college campus it raises many issues of cost, scheduling, transportation, etc. I’d look a bit harder at whether the high school has more courses the student can take. What about AP stats as a freshman or sophomore? A more balanced high school schedule? There’s not really any need to complete so much college math while still in high school, especially if the courses are not going to be at the same level as the eventual college.
The cost, scheduling and transportation are manageable. One alternative is to take Statistics in 11th grade, push Real Analysis out by a year, and let go of Complex Analysis. This will also help with the 11th Grade course load which then becomes very light - English, Latin, French, Statistics, Chemistry, and US history, of which only US History will be a challenging course. This opens up time to prepare for SAT and preparing college application materials over the year, finishing up in summer. However teenagers are obstinate and don’t always want to see reality.
AP statistics would probably be too low level for a math super-prodigy who has already taken calculus; a college calculus-based statistics course would likely be better suited for him. Discrete math is another option for what is normally a college sophomore level math course.
Math more advanced than AP level is best taken as college courses (instead of high school courses) in order to ensure transfer credit and placement when he becomes an actual college student.
How strong is the math department at the local research university in terms of students going on to PhD programs? Some have said that the level of rigor in junior/senior level courses like real analysis varies significantly among different math departments (more rigorous would be preferable for pre-PhD students, but less important for those aiming at other career paths).
I doubt he is a prodigy of any sort but thanks for the kind words. He knows of many kids who are far better in math than him, and acknowledges that he has a lot to learn. But he is a very hard worker and once he sets his mind on something he accomplishes it. The Math department would rank in the top-5 in terms of PhD programs. Discrete Mathematics will be a very attractive option as he loves combinatorics, probability and number theory, and feels that calculus is too much like physics.
It will also be fun for me as I happen to know a little bit about Discrete Mathematics. I gave him a little problem the other day, about a group of n boys numbered 1 through n standing in a circle, and a group of (n-1) girls picking alternate boys for a dance, starting from position 1. Which boy will be left without a dance partner?
You are extremely fortunate to have such easy access to such good math instruction, and to be at a school where there are a critical mass of students able to take advantage of it. Odd that in such a school so few AP classes are offered.
“will take the intermediate and advanced ones in the same place in Grade 9. In Grade 10 he will take Shakespeare’s early and late work in Fall and Spring respectively. In Grade 11 he will likely take Irish Literature and Modern American Poetry.”
So, on top of a full high school schedule which includes some very advanced math, he is going to be taking a college English course every semester? And he is a varsity athlete and he plays music at a nationally competitive level? I don’t doubt that he could do any of this if he is motivated but I am not convinced there are enough hours in the day for it. I took a Shakespeare class like you are describing in college and we were reading at least 2 plays a week. I seem to recall spending about 8 hours per week on this in addition to the 4 hours of class. And my roommate, who was actually an English major, took it far more seriously than I did and easily spent double that. I think it’s good to map out plans to be aware of options and to make sure that prerequisites aren’t overlooked but I think a kid who has been seriously underchallenged in middle school probably doesn’t appreciate how much more work the AP/college classes are. For comparison, our high school spends several week on a single Shakespeare play and the kids read the plays during class time.
Regarding the English AP tests, I don’t think any colleges will give credit for both of them. My daughter skipped her senior year test for this reason.
Yes, a real stats class would be better than AP stats. My daughter took AP stats as a freshman along with calc and still enjoyed it a lot though I would have liked a little more math rigor. I suggested the AP as a way to keep the kid in high school courses longer since access to college courses is difficult and disruptive for most high school students.
Mathyone, I think the load situation is actually much brighter. The kid believes (and I agree) that the math classes will be the light load ones given his natural spike. He will take fall and spring sports waiver for arts EC and play his sport which is only offered in winter. Arts EC takes about 7 hours a week and the waiver will give him back just about that, so overall he is not taking any more load than a regular high school student. As for the English classes, 9th grade will be 2 more UG courses in creative writing, so nothing to worry about just yet. By the way the Shakespeare courses only read 5 plays a semester, not far from the 4 novellas/plays that he did in middle school each semester. Finally, the school is private and teaching to AP is not a priority, however he can still take 6 or 7 by end of 11th grade if he so chooses.
However my key question remains unanswered. How will colleges look at a very pointy kid with spikes in languages and maths and arts EC, but just 3 credits in Science and Social Science each?
My guess is that if your kid takes that many college math classes and is getting As, college admissions won’t care about those other high school credits, assuming they are sufficient for the hs diploma. Especially with the English, the arts, the sport–it’s not like he is so narrowly focused. No one can do everything anyway and colleges seem to be looking for a well rounded class more than well rounded individual students.
I have to assume since all those math classes are available at your child’s school that there are plenty of other students taking a similar program. You should talk to the parents of these kids about how it is going for them with the workload and also find out from the counselor and any parental gossip you can get how kids like this are doing with college admissions.
There aren’t really too many other students going down the math path in the school. There’s one kid ahead of my son, and two others in the same grade with him. The beauty of a good private school is that they will make the courses happen if a kid needs it and it makes sense in the context of the overall education, regardless of the cost, scheduling, and graduation requirements. For all of middle school, my son was in a math class with just 3 other kids taught by a professor from the University who taught them all kinds of college level math, things that I didn’t learn till I was in second year in college or even third year. It was pretty cool. So anyway, we don’t really have any pre-existing sample cases. We will find out, I guess. Thanks for all your kind comments.