Academic Stats needed for Ivy Pre-read?

blossom
Fri, 30 May 2025 20:48:57 +0000

Yes, it will be more rigorous.

Unless you can somehow find a way to spend 4 years taking only introductory courses (big lectures, a midterm and a final) and still graduate, by sophomore year you will likely have 1,000 pages of reading per week, one or two significant papers to write which include primary sources, appendices and index; lab work for anything in the sciences which doesn’t get you “extra credit”- it’s required. And by junior year, you will be buried.

That’s a good thing. That’s how you learn-- by being stretched significantly. But what you did in a year in an AP class might represent the first 6 weeks of the semester. And then- wow. Compressed, fast paced, you miss two lectures and you are WAY behind.

Your health comes first. Your sport may or may not end up in the top three considerations for you as you pick a college, but I would not assume that Harvard or Yale will be the cakewalk you are anticipating.

And absences REALLY impact your performance. One withdrawal for a medical condition- that’s smart if you really missed a lot. Two withdrawals- hey, your health comes first. But by the time you’re looking at a stack of incompletes, withdrawals, etc. you and your family are stuck paying an extra year.

I went to Brown (back in the dark ages). Just for perspective- I was the top student in French in my HS. There were over 1,000 students in my graduating class. I got an 800 on the French achievement test (they are no longer administered, but it was a big deal since it was not a heritage language for me) and a 5 on the AP.

By October of Freshman year I had to drop down a section in French. I went from being the top French student at a huge HS to getting C’s and “no credit” on the weekly essays we were required to write. And these weren’t “I went to the park with my friend and we got ice cream” essays. These were comparisons of Voltaire’s concept of free will to Rousseau’s-- with citations, 8-10 pages per essay. And the next week we were done with Voltaire and Rousseau and were reading Sartre and writing about nihilism and whether he was an anarchist or was just rebelling against society and culture.