<p>I am glad that you have a math tutor - that should help. Maybe your tutor can suggest an additional math book or two. Sometimes, you have to learn the subject despite the teacher. We have all have to do that at one time or another. It’s not pleasant, but it is the real world. </p>
<p>I do have another idea. Is your teacher better about answering questions if its not in front of the whole class? If she doesn’t have a math degree, she probably feels about as confident as you do, and is frustrated and annoyed - again, like you. Is there a time outside of class when you could work on this?</p>
<p>Ohio-mom:
I attend after school tutoring. It helps at times but not all the time due to the fact that there are at least 35 kids in there. So, i don’t recieve the one on one help i need. My tutor is actually giving me some tips.</p>
<p>There’s a book every college student should read about studying. It’s called What Smart Students Know by Adam Robinson, written by one of the founders of the test prep service Princeton Review. I have never seen a better explanation of the steps you need to follow to really <em>learn</em> the material, and if you’ve learned it well you will have no trouble with grades. You’ll probably be kicking yourself that if you’d known this stuff earlier you could have done better in HS!</p>
<p>As for your age, I suggest taking the gap year. I don’t know you personally, maybe you are way ahead of your age, but people generally agree that in the teenage years judgement, maturity, self-acceptance, and so on change year by year (sometimes it seems month by month!). IMHO you put yourself at a handicap by entering college at 16 or even 17. Its a funny thing, you’d think in the most affluent school districts parents would be pushing their kids to get ahead (certain how bright they are, right?) but the <em>actual</em> problem the schools have is parents are savvy to the benefits of being older than the other kids and the parents refuse to start their kids on 1st grade on time; they want them to be 7 instead of 6. So take a tip from these parents, get the benefit of age on your side.</p>
<p>If you don’t see any point in taking calculus, but you want to have four years of math, you could also take courses such as statistics, computer programming or general math topics. I think you show a good knowledge of yourself and a good attitude. What sort of school would you like to attend?</p>
<p>Thank you Mikemac. I really am taking your words into mind. You have by far reached to me. Pattykk, i don’t want to sound dumb or anything, but i really don’t know. I am not even sure what i want to major in. I have a couple majors in mind but im not quite sure yet. What sort of school would i like to go to? I do not know. I know that i do not want an Ivy league school. But then again, my grades come to mind. What i was thinking of doing was going to a two year college. Then transfer to another university. I want to do a study abroad program. Hmm…i don’t know what to do.</p>
<p>There’s a vast range of colleges between Ivies and two-year colleges. Think about the type of school and location you would prefer: coed? single-sex? urban? suburban? in the NE, in the South, Midwest, etc… large? mid-sized? small?<br>
As for majors, the most popular among applicants is: undecided. You definitely should not make up your mind before you enter college. But you may have a preference for the humanities or the social sciences or the natural sciences. This is something to note.
Most colleges let students study abroad for a term or a year. Some have their own program, others let their students study through other programs. My S’s college had both kinds. It could not operate its own in every country, so in those where it did not have a program of its own, students could go through other colleges’ own.</p>
<p>It really doesn’t bother me where i attend college. Although to some people, the say that it should matetr. I have been doing a lot of thinking lately and i wouldn’t mind what was thrown at me. Humanties is by far one of the majors on my list.</p>
<p>It should matter. Someone who feels happy in a college of 1,200 students (Haverford or Bryn Mawr) may be lost at a big state university with 40,000 students, and vice-versa.
One difference among colleges is the quality, preparation and dedication of the students. A friend of mine is teaching computer science at a state college. The students are eager but poorly prepared. He was asked by one student what he meant by “input.” I’ll bet you that MIT or CMI students would not ask that question. Someone I know was asked not to assign more than 25 pages of reading per week. At other schools, a course may require 200 pages of reading for a similar course.</p>
<p>Thank you for putting it like that Marite. I never thought about it like that and i appreciate it. I don’t know, i always thought that being in a much wider range of students was good. I guess not.</p>
<p>You may find threads in college search and selection helpful. If you are within a certain SAT range and with a particular GPA, you will find that some colleges are more likely to be more appropriate for you than others. You sound a good candidate for colleges that focus on a liberal arts education. There are many many such colleges, in many different locations. Some of the best colleges are fairly small. I believe Swarthmore has about 1600 students. Smaller colleges are also more likely to be supportive, to provide lots of opportunities for faculty-student interaction; colleges that have good endowments also can fund a large range of student activities whether in group (such as clubs) or on an individual basis (such as fieldwork and summer travel). Many put a lot of emphasis on study abroad. Look up the websites of a few colleges to get a sense of their mission, focus, their requirements, the profiles of admitted students, etc…
As a younger student, I feel that you might be better off in a smaller college environment with lots of opportunities to get the support you might need.
At the most selective end are colleges such as Swarthmore, Williams, Amherst, Pomona. Some slightly less selective colleges (but still excellent) are Bowdoin, Bates, Middlebury, Colby, Connecticut College, Earlham, Grinnell, Carleton, Macalester, Kenyon, Denison. The reason why they are somewhat less selective has less to do with the quality of their offerings or of their students, and more to do with location (for example, midwestern colleges do not get the recognition they deserve) . Carolyn has lots of great tips on great colleges you may want to look up.</p>
<p>Thank you Marite. Smaller colleges were more on my mind than larger ones. Although, larger ones do have more interaction. I mean that they have more clubs and much more programs. I will look up those colleges that you refered.</p>
<p>Thinking about clubs is a bit like thinking about colleges. No matter how many wonderful colleges there are, you can only attend one; even if there are 300 clubs at a larger university, you can only join a few. Think about the type of activities you would like to participate in and check whether they are possible at the colleges you might consider. And do not limit yourself to the colleges on my list. The Fiske Guide to Colleges comes highly recommended by parents as a source of information about various types of colleges.</p>
<p>lboogie, you might be interested in an academic study at <a href=“http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v5n1/graue.html[/url]”>http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v5n1/graue.html</a> that notes " Academic redshirting involves delaying entry to kindergarten so that a child will have more time to grow and develop… The redshirts were white and middle class, while the those held back were more on the border of working class and middle class. These characteristics are in line with folk wisdom and research that redshirting is a practice of the relatively affluent"</p>
<p>As you consider colleges, I suggest you read thru the book “Looking Beyond the Ivy League” by Pope. While he has a bias towards LACs, it is a clear explanation of the steps you should follow to find the type of college that is right for you, and then picking the right set of colleges in that type to apply to.</p>
<p>I am not clear about your schedule. You are in 11th grade; but you are not starting school until March. Does that mean you have not yet started 11th grade? Have you taken the PSAT? It is given only once, in October. If you did not, it is helpful to take either the practice PSAT or the SAT to familiarize yourself with their format and identify your areas of weakness. Junior year is particularly important as far as academic performance is concerned. It is also a good time to take the SAT and SATIIs (take those at the conclusion of the relevant course). Normally, colleges require 3 SATs. Since you are in CA, look up the requirement for the UCs, the State Universities and community colleges (I understand there are some excellent ones from which it is possible to transfer into great UCs). Take Honors and APs in those subjects in which you are interested. For ECs, you need only 2-3, but those, you should pursue consistently. They can be working for pay, tutoring, sports, journalism, music, etc… Don’t go for a raft of ECs to which you can only devote a couple of hours a week. In fact, having a whole list of ECs will blur the picture you want to present of yourself. Take advantage of the next 6 weeks to read works of literature and try to conquer the math. I don’t think you will need Calculus to get into top colleges, but 4 years of math will definitely look far better than 3. The 4th year can be something other than Calculus, as my S found.</p>
<p>I am in the 11th grade. I will be starting my second semester in March. No, i did not take the PSAT due to the fact that i missed the date. I do not specifically remember the reason, maybe i was out of town or something else. But i know for a fact that it was a mistake on my part. I did sign up for the SATs coming up in March, and i am currently taking classes to help me. All my classes are honors and have been honors since 9th grade with the exception of math, and i have one AP class at the moment which is Psychology. I am reading a lot more now than i ever. I enjoy that the most. I will most definitely talk to my counselor regarding math 4th year. I know for a fact that some community colleges around my area make it easier to transfer into a UC. </p>
<p>My school has a track system. This means that it is divided into 3 tracks A,B,C. We don’t get spring break or any holidays that most schools recive.</p>