<p>Scribbulus,
I think you are worrying far too much about your son. He has decent grades from a good school, and is willing to work. If he reviews chem over the summer, and gets into a study group during the class, he should be fine. He may not get an A, but he should definitely pass.
The majority of kids who bomb difficult classes freshman year probably shouldn’t have been in them to begin with.</p>
<p>OP, I think you are overthinking this. Students who get a 90% in a difficult course don’t get F’s, trust me. If the professor wants half the class to fail (not likely either) he will make the exams so d–ned hard that the average is 40%. Have some faith in your S, and make sure he knows that it is better to overkill it than not to put in enough effort. </p>
<p>Take a deep breath now.</p>
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<p>That may be part of the reason why university students refer to some courses as “weed out” courses, generally used to refer to courses that are unexpectedly difficult for students who may have breezed through the subject in high school (including AP courses).</p>
<p>Even AP courses are often nowhere near as rigorous as university level courses, or community college courses that are transferable to universities, for that matter. The proliferation of AP courses that are of little value as subject credit at universities may give high school students the erroneous impression that university level courses are not going to be very hard. Consider all of the newer AP tests that high school students discuss self-studying in two months before the test so that they can make their dozen AP tests or whatever.</p>
<p>Even some of the AP tests which are often considered equivalent of university level courses have been watered down by high schools. Consider, for example, Calculus BC. One would think that learning Calculus BC in one year in high school would give a reasonable idea of what a university level one year calculus course is like. However, it appears to be common, based on postings on these forums, for high schools to require students reaching calculus to take Calculus AB over a year and only the next year continue to a year course to finish Calculus BC. In other words, these high schools require students (who are good enough in math to be two years ahead in math) to spend two years to cover what a university or community college calculus course (for students zero years ahead in math) covers in one year.</p>
<p>So it is entirely possible that a student who enters university, having finished high school with a dozen AP test scores of 5, may go in thinking that his/her senior year high school experience of taking 5 AP courses and self studying 3 more would make a university course load of 4 courses at a time seem easy. And then s/he will be surprised when those university courses are far more rigorous than the AP courses or self-study in Physics B, Statistics, Psychology, any History, Environmental Science, etc. that s/he had in high school, and that the university math course s/he is taking is moving at twice the speed of the two year Calculus AB / BC sequence that s/he had in high school. And then s/he will refer to some of these courses as “weeders”.</p>
<p>Let me agree with a few others who have observed that these courses are mostly just tough, honest college-level courses. As a side effect, some students are “weeded out.” Tough courses attract attention against the backdrop of grade inflation and remedial high school classes. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, we’re not producing enough capable high school students, and we live in an era where everybody believes that a college degree is essential. There are a lot of colleges that are ready and willing to serve that market.</p>
<p>@viciouspoultry - If you’re a chem E studying 2-3 hrs/wk for your core classes, then you are a God among men! Respect and props* to you, man! </p>
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<li>I’m not sure what “props” are, but I know that’s an acknowledgement of your skill in a younger age category than mine.</li>
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<p>I used to have this argument all the time with my husband. He used to be in charge of the histology course at his med school. It was then one of the first courses med students took and along with gross anatomy requires a huge amount of memorization. Exams consisted in large part of being able to identify slides. He spent hours preparing exams and pored over the results. Not only did the students scores have to fit a perfect bell curve, but they also worried a lot about whether the smart students were getting only the hard answers wrong. I kept saying - jeez these kids made it into med school how dumb can they be? Maybe if they are flunking it’s because you aren’t teaching the material right. While I suppose you always will have some kids who fail for legitimate reasons, as a professor if it is large number of students, I’d consider whether it was something wrong with me and my teaching. In the end while some students did have to repeat the class, I don’t think it actually ended up weeding that many students out of med school, but it did serve as a wake-up call that you can’t coast through med school.</p>
<p>My own experience with a pre-med physics course was that it wasn’t that hard to get a B, but it was really hard to compete with all those pre-med students. Especially when it turned out that the final weeks of the course pre-supposed a knowledge of the pre-med chem course which I had not taken. (I was taking physics for architecture school and needed a lab course so “Physics for Poets” was out.)</p>
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<p>Some community college chemistry courses are accepted as being equivalent to university chemistry courses (usually with specific arrangements with in-state state universities, mainly for the purpose of allowing students to do freshman/sophomore years at community college and then transferring as juniors to a four year university to complete a bachelor’s degree). But you have to check with the community college and university to be sure.</p>
<p>If you are in California, you can use <a href=“http://www.assist.org%5B/url%5D”>http://www.assist.org</a> to look up which community college courses are equivalent to which UC and CSU courses.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus - We’ve had that AP course discussion lots of times. There’s really not an answer that fits all. It depends on the student, the HS teacher, the college, and probably lots of other factors.</p>
<p>As to your example, I will guarantee you that there are many HS BC Calculus students who will enter the very tip-top tier of engineering universities, skip freshman Calc, and soon realize that their preparation is crushingly superior than that of the sophomores sitting next to them in their math class. And then there are the opposite cases.</p>
<p>As a parent, it’s best to make an honest appraisal, recognize the situation, and clue in your kids. That’s my approach. My kid knows that I think some of his classes are real, and some are fake. 
The funny thing is that he’s starting to notice how easy the “fake ones” are.</p>
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<p>Yes, I got a 5 on the BC, skipped ahead, and did fine. But my high school taught (and still teaches) Calculus BC in one year, not two years (required AB for a year, followed by a year to continue to BC) like what is common today, so students taking Calculus BC there (then and now) got something that much more closely approximates a university level math course. Unfortunately, it seems that the mandatory two year calculus plan is the norm these days, based on postings here.</p>
<p>And back then, there were not several AP tests that students would self study in two months to get a 5, which may cause students to be overconfident in their ability to handle “university level” course work.</p>
<p>It all depends on the HS. Sounds like yours was good, and that you took advantage of it. As for schools teaching calculus over two years - that’s new to me. Sounds pretty silly; maybe they’ve rebranded precalc?</p>
<p>My HS delivers a high quality one year BC class that would compare well with that of any university. It would be silly for my kid to retake it in college. But not so with some of the other APs. And I would be very suspicious of self-study, but gotta admit that I wouldn’t mind the free credits if it’s in some unrelated field.</p>
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<p>According to many posts here and in the AP forum, many high schools are set up so that students first have to take over the course of a year Calculus AB, then take the next year Calculus BC, presumably starting where Calculus AB left off.</p>
<p>I agree with you that it sounds pretty silly, because students who reach calculus in junior year (two grades ahead) should be able to handle Calculus BC in one year (same pace as a university calculus course that is populated by students zero years ahead in math). But apparently it is a means of making a high school’s AP count look better (the high school gets to claim that such students are acing two AP calculus tests instead of just one).</p>
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<p>I agree, at least for students who score a 5. Even for students who went to high schools that required a two year calculus sequence to complete BC, those who score a 5 should be able to move on, though they should be aware that their high school calculus was run at only half the pace of math courses that they will see in university and not be overconfident about assuming that their high school courses were really equivalent to the university courses.</p>
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<p>Looks like we pretty much agree here.</p>
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Yes, we do. But a lot of folks here think we’re smoking crack… There seem to be a lot of CC absolutists on the AP topic.</p>
<p>i may should start a new thread because this is off topic somewhat. however, it has been mentioned in this thread and i thought i would give it a shot. the previous post was:</p>
<p>My niece had a VERY bad chem teacher in HS, that turned her off to the subject. She had to take college chem, which she did OK in but was very worried about OChem. To boost confidence and enhance her chances, she audited OChem at flagship U for summer school before enrolling in it at her U.</p>
<p>my S also had a very bad HS Chem teacher. he is graduating HS now and will be attending a top 50 university. He plans on taking the prerequisites to med school. i thought taking a summer school “general chemistry class” at a four year institution would be a good foundation for the same “general chemistry class” at the top 50 university he will be attending in the fall. However, i thought that rather than audit the course that he would be better off taking the course for credit. </p>
<p>my question is…If he takes the class for credit, does he have to report that GPA to the top 50 school that he will be attending in the Fall or can he just ignore it?</p>
<p>he is not trying avoid taking General Chemistry in the fall. He is wanting a better foundation at the beginning of the semester. I feel that the course taken for credit will push him more than auditing the class.</p>
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He will have to report it on his AMCAS for med school, and I may be mistaken, but I don’t think they allow a duplicate class for med school purposes, unless this original grade is below a C. Either way, it has to be on his med school application. Also, it is NOT a good idea to take any med school pre-req at a CC. You may want to post this in the pre-med forum where there are many knowledgable posters.</p>
<p>Edit: I just noticed you said to take a a four year institution, not CC, but either way I don’t think it is allowed. If a student is going to a DO school, a retake of a class can replace a lower grade, but not if going for a MD.</p>
<p>This is an interesting topic that sheds some light on the difference of opinion in another thread. In my mind, the end result of a “weed out” class is that students who possess sufficient academic talent are separated from those who lack said talent. The end result for a student who has been “weeded” is the realization that he/she should focus on a course/degree/career that is a better fit in terms of aptitude. </p>
<p>I would not apply the term weeded out to students who lack maturity, motivation or opportunity (sudden illness, family emergency,etc) to succeed in a class, because any of these circumstances could, and frequently is, temporary. A highly talented but undermotivated student, or a student who failed because of some personal crisis could, for instance, be quite successful if he/she repeated a “weed out” class. </p>
<p>I’m too lazy to read through the whole thread to find the exact quote but someone earlier mentioned that, at the university level, former AP students are shocked, sometimes to the point of psychological damage, by test score averages in rigorous courses. ESPECIALLY with regard to students who have taken several AP classes, this is not accurate. A passing grade on an AP test varies a little bit by test subect and year, but generally, 40-50% (of the total possible composite points) is a passing grade (3) on the official AP tests and as little as 60% of the total composite points can translate to a scale score of 5, a score that puts students in the top 15-17% nationally. Surely, there can’t be ANY freshman college students whose high school experiences better prepared them to deal with the psychological stress from what would otherwise be shocking grade distributions.</p>
<p>General chemistry is frequently the first weed-out class large groups of students encounter because it requires superior use of BOTH halves of the brain. Left-brained learners tend to find biology easy, right-brained learners tend to find physics easy, but chemistry requires learning lots of rules (which are not always 100% consistent) AND doing complex multi-step calculations.</p>
<p>Add to that mix one or two students in a large class who ARE good at both parts and you have the classic “curve breakers” that make everyone else take a grade/point hit in the sub-area that continues to confound them.</p>
<p>To use the example from the other thread: a chem I class at a community college where students’ academic ability, background, test scores, age, living circumstances, etc fill the entire spectrum of possibilities, will be a weed out class. On the other hand, a chem I class at Stanford, where students are all going to school full time, living on campus, attending professor-led study sessions, AND have average 2200 SAT scores, 5’s on AP chem, bio, and calc tests and north of 700 scores on SAT subject tests will not be a “weeder”. Students in those selective schools have for the most part already demonstrated they have sufficient academic talent to be successful in introductory freshman level classes. More often than not, community college students (or 3rd tier state u students) don’t come with the same evidence set. Their grades in Chem I will frequently be their first evidence. Same course–one “weeder”, one not. Also, frequently, the AP, community college, and HYPMS Chem I classes are using the same textbook. Content is similar, but obviously the average level of academic talent is not comparable.</p>
<p>*At what type of university are the arrogant “weed-out” profs teaching? I don’t actually think that classes are taught in that way at my university (large public). *</p>
<p>I think “weed out” classes are definitely at large publics as well. My kids’ flagship U definitely has weed out classes (Gen Chem, OChem, some math classes, some engineering classes). These classes (or profs) aren’t “arrogant.” These classes just aren’t going to coddle students who either don’t have the smarts or study-habits to get the best grades in those classes.</p>
<p>Can someone clarify exactly what the difference is in what is covered in Calculus AB versus Calculus BC? S is in AB now (only one offered at his school) and they are up to Integration by Parts, which we did not do until Calc II as an undergrad. </p>
<p>(My 3 undergrad Calculus courses covered pretty much the entire 1200 page Leithold textbook. Linear Algebra was a separate course, as was Differential Equations.)</p>
<p>He plans on taking the prerequisites to med school. i thought taking a summer school “general chemistry class” at a four year institution would be a good foundation for the same “general chemistry class” at the top 50 university he will be attending in the fall. However, i thought that rather than audit the course that he would be better off taking the course for credit.</p>
<p>Are you saying that you want your child to take Gen Chem at a local public in the summer and then take it again at his real college? He can’t really do that. </p>
<p>He could audit the summer class, but I don’t know how/if that gets reported or not. </p>
<p>Don’t try to game the system for med school chances…it can bite you in the hiney. </p>
<p>If you don’t think your son is capable of As at his top 50 school, why is he going there as a pre-med student?</p>