Agree with frazzled2thecore about parents not helping with chores and homework back in the day. My mom did type some things for me, because typing wasn’t a thing we learned until an elective in 10th or 11th grade. Other than that, she never really asked about school. Clearly, there were no online grade portals back then.
My parents didn’t ever attend any of my sports events and told me sports was just a distraction. (OK, track meets and XC races are pretty boring to spectate at, but I was actually good enough back then that today’s helicopter parents would put me in club track, etc.)
My son got a B+ in AP World and a 5 on the exam. He disliked the teacher and said he often made up facts to fit his agenda. Remember the class grade includes participation, research papers, projects and practice tests graded by the teachers. The teachers may not be adept at correctly judging the quality of a standard AP essay even if the multiple choice questions are correct.
In any event, my son lucked out, the DBQ came out of left field and put many of the kids in the class in a state of panic, while my son actually thought it was kind of fun. A lot of the kids who had A’s in the class did poorly on the exam.
That class was an exception though, in general in our school the scores and grades line up pretty well. They don’t let you into the classes unless they think you are capable of getting at least a 3 on the exam. In most classes 75 to 80% of the kids get 4s or 5s.
Oh, no…say it ain’t so. There are stats to collect, pictures to take, points to tally, joints to tape, spikes which need to get in the right shoes, athletes to keep warm, to hydrate and to encourage, parents to congratulate or commiserate with, races to cheer, coaches to support…
You can see that the percentage of 5’s is between 7% and 25% for almost all the tests (Calculus BC and Chinese/Japanese are big exceptions). I would say that in most schools’ AP classes somewhere between 35% and 60% of the class gets an ‘A’. So it’s pretty clear that in general it’s far easier for students to get an A in the class than a 5 on the AP exam. I’d say it is far, far, far easier to get a B in most schools than to get a 4.
My impression is that admissions officers at selective colleges are pretty aware that getting an A in an “average” high school’s AP class absolutely is not indicative of the same level of understanding as getting a 5. Good private schools and the top public schools in each state are exceptions to this rule - based on my limited experience I’d say that getting an A at a class in these schools represents about same level of understanding as getting a 5. (Of course, top private schools shy away from the AP curriculum, but I think it’s safe to say that their corresponding classes are even more rigorous).
You can also see from the linked tables that there are lots of exams where the percentage of students getting 1’s or 2’s is 30% - 50%. I suspect that some of this is from states like Florida where the government pays for every student to take the AP exams, resulting in lots of students just sleeping through the test
There’s no “link” which covers a topic as broad as that. And even if someone put together a “Wiki” which collected all the known information, people of varying intellects and experience would agree or disagree with reasoning more or less sound.
There are hundreds if not thousands of studies and compilations. The test optional movement is a small slice of the overall scholarship on this, although I’m sure you can see how people who dislike standardized testing would be particularly active in bringing forth research that supports their views. You have a good head - use it. Try Googling things like Predictors of College Success or Predictors of Post-Secondary Performance. What do you think you’re going to find when you search “Does GPA Predict Success?”
And, I’m not mentioning this for you but for all the other people who don’t know the difference between an article, an opinion piece and original research; stay away from the popular press and writers who put together articles with sweeping and dramatic conclusions like “High school grades best predictor of college success — not SAT/ACT scores”.
Ok. Just that you said, “GPA remains the strongest predictor of college success.” I’m not trying to parse your words. Instead, I happen to disagree with you. Based on my work with a U that can cherry pick and which values much more than hs GPA and it’s prediction of college gpa (past studies were for soph year. whoopdedoo.) Yup, I do know the difference. I also now there are many ‘experts’ in the kitchen.
Thank you al2simon, that was the sort of data I was interested in.
I understand that the AP bio class includes hw, projects, labs, etc etc.
And there may be a few kids who are too smart for their own good, blow off assignments, ace the AP test and wind up with a B or B+ in class. I get that.
But if 39 kids take the class and 30 score a 5 but only 5 achieve an A, I think its an issue worth delving into.
I know that some schools have grade inflation, or watered-down versions of regular level courses, making it easier to get an A at those schools. I guess I somehow thought that AP courses were the exception; that they would be more standardized (same pace, same rigor, same criteria for an A) across the nation than regular or even honors courses.
“You really don’t think society has changed? I think the extended financial dependence of adult children is a change. Graduating from high school and working your way through college was a reality when I went to college. Not a single one of my siblings lived at home or relied on my parents financially after high school graduation (except possibly moving home for summer, and even then, I don’t think any of us did that except maybe 1or 2 summers. Most of us had jobs and apts near our universities.)”
I think the economy has changed, which therefore caused society to change (in the dimension of extended financial dependence). I feel fortunate that both of my kids are employed, in their own apartments, and able to self-support, but I do think we helped them more than our parents helped us (and both H’s and my parents were generous).
For example, we gave them hand-me-down furniture, we did “big shops” at Sam’s Club to start them out with hundreds of dollars worth of food, toiletries, cleaning supplies, etc. - and they were both given permission to raid our house for basically anything that wasn’t nailed down. Our parents may have given us some hand-me-down furniture but they didn’t sit there and worry about whether we had a trashcan, shower curtain and enough cans of soup the way we seemed to worry about our kids!
Additionally, we are “keeping them on the payroll” insofar as we are having them max out their 401K’s (so to take advantage of company match and the power of early saving) but reimbursing them that money so they can still have some discretionary money (otherwise their paychecks would be super-small). So, they’re earning that money - it’s not that they aren’t earning it - but we’re trying to reward the concept of saving-now.
Handling debt in a way that can be both educational, but prudent, can be challenging. That said, even to our own situations, my wife and I paid down 200k of our own student debt–so the answer is it’s doable, but you need to be viligent and wise. Our own recipe includes our kids taking no loans for undergrad, but they assuming most of the full weight in grad/professional school, once we provided first and last for their apartment.
On the other hand, being also a landlord, I can personally attest to parents, having to step into paying rent and other major items for children getting close to 30, armed with an MBA, and making 80kplus. And it’s not because of some major life setback, but rather, the kids lived like they make 150-200k, and knew the parents would bail them out-a damn shame.
How long CAN I do that? Indefinitely. How long WILL I do that? Who knows. I’ll take it year by year. My kids are both very frugal and if anything need to be encouraged to open their wallets and live a little. So I don’t feel as though I’m encouraging “live beyond your means” as they don’t have lavish spending habits at all.
Texaspg - it’s a more efficient means of wealth transfer IMO. It helps them build their retirement accounts. It’s very future focused. Believe me when I say I have frugal kids who do not live high on the hog at all.
They don’t always correspond as some teachers/schools such as my public magnet do tend to make the courses more academically rigorous and cover more material than what would be on an AP exam. Hence, the numerous classmates I’ve had who scored 4s and 5s and yet, received B-s, Cs and even Ds as their final grade in the AP course. Then again, plenty of non-AP students there had no issues self-studying the exam for a few weeks/months and making the same scores.
Also, as some commenters here have noted, scoring a 5 doesn’t necessarily mean one has full mastery of the curriculum as one can receive that score by only getting around 60% of the exam correct.
The lack of correlation between scoring a 5 on an AP exam and actual mastery of the material it covered was underscored in one case when I had to provide an effective crash course for an older undergrad classmate who scored a 5 on APUSH in his prep school.
Despite having the highest AP score on APUSH, his knowledge gaps of what would be considered basics in a college-level USH course were such it caused serious issues in core coursework in a related major which prompted him to seek me out for tutoring. Ironic considering I was barred from taking APUSH or any other APs in my strengths because my overall GPA was well-below the requirements my HS set for taking AP courses back then.
And that even so, correlation is REALLY REALLY poor if you know anything about correlation. You’ve got 0.54 correlation using HS GPA only, and 0.53 correlation using the three SAT sections together. Crud and crud, not meaningful (0.8, maybe meaningful. 0.9, yes definitely a meaningful correlation, in most cases). Basically, it is abundantly clear that either:
a) high schools, and their courses, and their teachers, are so variable, at best the result is “better students tend to do better”, or
b) regardless of the high school, college is a completely different animal, helping some kids and hurting others
Think about this - no matter HOW great on paper students are, there still are some kids who fail out of Ivies, let alone fail out of many other schools. Where I teach, 25% of the kids drop out by end of freshman year. In four years, they get 25% graduating. In six years, that increases to 50% overall graduated from the same freshman class.
My job as a college professor is to enable students to transition from childhood to adulthood. Helicopter parents is one part of the picture. But high school teachers and admiinstrators, plus mandatory classes for many students, is another part of the picture, let alone set schedules and very early school start times.
RH, there’s an old CB study by math teachers that examined why kids who take calc have a higher soph gpa in college. At the end, all they can point to is: kids (of all SES or a variety of hs types) who take calc tend to be the sort who do challenge themselves and are presumably prepared to do so, both in terms of the math and their personal skills.
Who cares what the freshman or soph gpa is? With few exceptions, you’re no longer trying to prove your statistical superiority for college admissions. That’s the high school mentality, the boxed-in thinking. It says zip about exploring, critical thinking, the knowledge gained and its impact on you. Nor about your actions on campus and their impact on others.
And elite adcoms know this, on the front end. “Success” is holistic, too. They’re looking for more than stats and some suggestion a high gpa will continue. Much more.
Maybe not college admissions. However, for those aspiring to jobs with high competitive entry requirements like ibanking or organizational business consulting or elite graduate/professional programs whether top 10 PhD* programs or top 15-20 law schools…ensuring a high overall GPA means one has to be concerned about one’s frosh or sophomore GPA.
In an increasingly number of fields, especially in the humanities and social sciences, the competition for an exceedingly limited number of tenure track openings is such that several Profs and recent PhD graduates have all advised that unless one gets into a top 10 or 8 PhD program in one's field/subfield, it isn't worth pursuing the PhD unless one is doing it solely as a leisurely hobby.
And if a PhD graduate/soon-to-be on the market student exhibits red flags of the latter such as not receiving any fellowship funding from their department or outside grant foundations, he/she is not likely to be seriously considered for tenure track positions as he/she’d be dismissed as well-off or if not well-off, foolhardy academic dilettantes.
Since you see your relationship with your child’s college as that of a customer of a business, you are no doubt aware that if your child’s college is at all perceived as ‘elite’, there are thousands of other potential customers eager to take your kid’s place. You really have no leverage as a ‘customer’.
