High School Course Selection

[anrimiji]

I have a son being junior this Sept. He finished both AP calculus AB/BC and AP statistic as sophomore, which maxed out math courses offered by his high school. For coming school year, he was recommended to take “introduction of colleague math. Asking his consoler, she only said “it would be better to have ICM rather than no math at all”. Is it true that junior is expected to have math even all math course offered is done? Would this backward course selection make him look bad on application regarding “student challenged themselves academically” rule?

Confused Mom

[Youdon'tsay]

Your son sounds like a great math student. Many here do things like online courses, dual-enrollment courses, etc. to supplement what is available at your high school. I would pursue those options.

What is covered in Introduction of College Math?

[FindAPlace]

Ditto YDS above.

My S completed AP Calc BC as a sophomore. His teacher recommended something more rigorous than AP Stats. So, he took CTY's online course in Linear Algebra this last year. It was challenging (the work load) but he aced it and he thinks it was instrumental is his landing a summer internship with a USC prof. (He worked with a paleoclimatologist and used data from coral to do trend analysis, using Matlab programming, on temperature change. Thus he got to do a real world assignment related to Global Warming.)

This coming year, he'll be taking the CTY class is MV Calculus. CTY also offers an online course in Diffy Qs (Differential Equations.)

Edit: I keep forgetting an important full disclosure. DH is a math professor, so S has some live in help.

[JHS]

anrimiji:

To translate a little, in case you are unfamiliar with the lingo:

Your son probably has two very good options. Almost every school district has "dual enrollment" arrangements with one or more local colleges, which may be community colleges or four-year colleges, under which high school students can take appropriate college courses for high school credit (although some colleges will give them college credit for it as well). Sometimes the school district pays for it, sometimes the student has to chip in something (or a lot of thing). But if the schedules can work out it's a great way to keep moving forward in math.

If that doesn't work, various organizations, including the Center for Talented Youth, sponsor advanced on-line courses that are designed to be taken for high school credit. These are pretty well-established, and most schools will likely accept them. You probably have to pay for them.