It is not always beyond in terms of levels (e.g 2 years post BC Calc), in some (many?) cases private schools offer less breadth (not all of US history in one year) and more depth (aka more like a college level seminar than a college level intro class).
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You really only need a couple of classroomsâ worth of students at that level, for each AP subject that is taught. The whole school doesnât have to be at that level, and the school doesnât have to teach every AP subject.
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IME very few high schools will conduct a class for fewer than 6 students. At Exeter far more than that are ready for very advanced math, and even if it were only 5 kids, that school can afford to hold it.
Not true for most other schools. Even if other schools have a mass of kids completing AP classes as frosh, few high schools have a mission to provide more advanced college level work beyond APs. Other priorities, often.
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I wasnât sure whether you were talking about âbeyond APâ as in courses that follow on after AP courses (such as multivariable calc), or âbeyond APâ as in courses that cover the AP subject but do it in more breadth and depth than the standard AP curriculum.
It seemed to me that many high schools successfully offer one or both of these. I mean, multivariable calc isnât exactly rocket science.
AP is kind of a low bar, so I am not sure why âbeyond APâ would require a super elite setting to pull off.
But now Iâm even more unsure of what you are talking about. Do you mean to say only VERY advanced math classes, beyond lower-division college level?
You bring up an excellent point. Feeder schools have long known that effective LORs can make or break a student on the cusp, so much so that teachers at these schools are given training sessions on how to craft them and carve-out time to write them.
In contrast, teachers at regular schools are often misinformed about what is a good thing to say. For example, some studies have shown they will write âhard workerâ instead of âoriginal thinkerâ, even when the student is an original thinker because in their world being a hard working invested student is a rare and precious thing, while being called an âoriginal thinkerâ sounds to them like a backhanded compliment. And then add to the problem of not knowing what to write, they have the problem of not having time to write it.
So this is something practical that schools such as the one @AppalachianMama describes might consider. I am sure these schools want to do right by their top students. Is there a way to teach them that it is not just OK but actually desirable to write phrases such as âthe best student in our schoolâ, âA brilliant and original thinker who has maxed out every resource that our under-resourced school has to offerâ, âthe most promising student in my memoryâ etc. Because these are not phrases that are culturally natural for certain populations.
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As this is off-topic, I donât think its worth pursuing further. Suffice to say, claims of academic rigor by schools are self-interested and exaggerated. Just like grades.
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Our public charter HS does âbeyond APâ classes. Theyâre âcapstoneâ classes and only taken in 12th grade. School counselor described them similar to an upper division college seminar class. D24âs english/humanities class was all about Shakespeare plays. Her other favorite was a bioethics class. But at our HS, you take those classes AFTER youâve done the rest of the curriculum (which includes some required AP classes) during grades 9-11.
Other schoolsâ mileage may vary, of course.
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Even for such common titles like:
Calculus
Multivariable calculus
Introductory statistics
Introductory microeconomics or macroeconomics
Introductory sociology
Spanish 1 ⊠4
General chemistry
History of [some part of the world]
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Yes, for example, HSs can have a local college AO come into the school and do training sessions for teachers (obviously this could also be done virtually.)
I also expect we are going to see plenty of LoRs written by ChatGPT (or at least the base written by AI, with some specifics added in by the teacher.)
I, and my colleagues, look up plenty of courses. Separately, and this is common during the summer when there is downtime, many admissions offices take that time to update HS profiles in their systemsâŠto reflect things that came to light during the previous year (which could include a curriculum restructure, or descriptions of commonly taken DE classes, etc.)
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Yes, even for that. One of mine had to take a CC course her frosh summer due to scheduling. Accounting. She thought it was taught at a middle school grade level, maybe 7th or 8th. Rigor varies greatly.
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Of course I understand why a teacher would do this (LORs are time consuming, and teachers donât have enough time), but still ⊠
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Yeah, those poor kids at Phillips Exeter, forced to take APs outside of school to show rigorâŠ
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All really fantastic points and spot on. Not sure if kids from our school typically apply to the schools that we are applying to. Most of our kids go to our state schools that have auto admit policies making letters of recommendations moot or to neighboring state schools that put more emphasis on scores and grades than letters. So I do think many teachers see these letters as boxes to check and not deal breakers maybe. I think our school is unfamiliar with the process and competitiveness of the top 20âs, and having more info would help them for sure.
Edited to say that I do think our letters were probably still really fantastic. We chose teachers that said the above and more, personally to us, just out of kindness, prior to asking. So I imagine and hope they did not write anything too generic.
This could be a possibility, although I anticipate that many of the teachers would feel such a training session was âjust one more thing to do.â And I think some teachers might never be capable of learning how to write an LOR in the way it needs to be done.
For a school like @AppalachianMama 's, (where they have deserving students, but no luck) I am imagining instead a process where only a handful of invested teachers get training. Ideally these teachers would be in core subjects and teach AP (if they offer it) so they will know the strongest students. These few teachers might meet once or twice a year and identify students they see as being candidates for elite schools. Then these teachers might proactively reach out to these students their junior year and offer to write their LORs. This would be important because students might otherwise make the naive mistake of, for example, asking a non-core teacher who is also their coach to write their LOR thinking âthat person knows me best.â
(Asking a non-core teacher/coach for an LOR is actually a mistake I made myself as a 1st gen student at a public school long ago. I later got the chance to read my admissions folder and boy can I say that LOR was inarticulate, and underwhelming! And Iâm pretty sure it was unintentional because that teacher/coach clearly cares to the point they have kept up with my career and reached out to congratulate me on multiple occasions. In my case it didnât matter, but still it goes to showâŠ)
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Most students from our school donât take community college classes because they need a higher level. Our high school has lots of APs and multivariable, etc. They mostly take them to replace another class so they can have extra electives, or to take classes of interest that arenât offered at most public high schools (think Economics of Africa, History of the Middle East, Women in Film, Marine Bio, etc.)
I think since many of our strong students end up at UCs, the community college classes are also seen as advantageous because they give the student sophomore or even junior standing when they arrive for freshman year.
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I meanâŠwe live in a high income neighborhood no matter how granular you getâŠbecause we bought a foreclosure when the market was down in 2012. We paid just over $200,000; the very similar house across the street from us sold for over $800,000 last year. We were pretty much maxing out how much house we could afford with the $200,000 we paid. All it means for us personally is that our property taxes keep going up. So. I donât know. I do worry about how colleges are trying to evaluate my pell-eligible homeschooled kid in these algorithm-dependent times. But all I can do is try to contextualize him for them as well as I can in the app and hope for the best.
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When do they fit these classes in? For many, they wouldnât have time during the school day nor after school due to ECs/activities. I personally wouldnât recommend taking an elective class outside of HS at the possible expense of ECs, but of course some students might still want to do that.
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Yes, they would need time carved out of their schedules to attend training, AND to write the LORs. Most teachers at our school limit LORs because they only get a small amount of time designated for writing them (carved out by a certain number of hours of subs assisting or teaching a few classes).
My son had a non-core teacher (orchestra) write him a LOR, and saw the LOR later⊠it was well written and persuasive. But I know weâre really lucky with that teacher.
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The bottom line is that itâs harder and harder for AOs to truly see your student.
AP can be usefulâit is a common fixed curriculum and assessment. Many positives. Cynically, it is also a tool for the College Board to sell tests. And late-registration fees. And cancellation fees. And access to your incorrect answers. Itâs a non-profit that has rev over $1B each year. Execs make real money. They have almost $2B in investmentsâthatâs where the 100M+ extra goes every year.
Marketing: AP is used by high schools to sell themselves. Both Public and Private.
I donât mean to insult anyone or their school. But I have taught HS English now for 28 years. You can have amazing teachers in mediocre schools. You can have mediocre teachers in highly-rated schools. Every parent has gone through this pain with their children.
Iâm not trying to simplify the question about AP etc. at all. Iâm trying to say that the answer is wildly complex.
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What I wonder is why? Why do HS kids need to constantly âenrichâ themselves with every free moment. When did the expectation become not just taking the most rigorous classes available to you (and doing well) but filling up every free moment outside of school with additional academic work (including summer and vacations) as well. All to prove what? And it isnât just public school kids doing this. A close friendâs son attends a T5 BS and she has told me of kids with daily tutors, constant academic enrichment during vacations and summer - all this while attending an outstanding HS already. I just donât get it. Is the chance at a T20 school worth all that? Worth dedicating the entirety of your HS years to a relentless pursuit of college admission. Yikes.
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