Good thing no one here does that with Michigan. 
Re: âWhite, heterosexual, cisgender, Protestantâ students
Actually, there seems to be a definite tendency among posters not to include HBCUs in suggestion lists unless the student is known to be Black. I.e. it is assumed by most posters that White and other non-Black students would not be fine at a mostly-Black school that most HBCUs are.
I get the feeling that posters also may be hesitant to recommend HBCUs to students who have identified themselves as Black, unless the student themselves has put some of these schools on their list.
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Speaking just for myself, I did need my horizons expanded. And considering ABCDEF U helped me do that. Every time somebody suggested a school I checked it out, even if I had never heard of it, or even when I thought I knew it was âall wrong.â It helped open my mind to a wider range of schools, and my mind needed that.
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But as you said in the first few sentences of your post, many, many posters like you have been reading the forum for a long time, and many more are likely to be lurkers who do not post at all. So like you, many, if not most posters have been doing their research and HW here and elsewhere for a while, and by the time they post, even if it is their first post, repeating the same old, same old that they have read multiple times in multiple threads may provide little benefit. What is more likely a benefit is to answer the posterâs specific questions that they ask.
Alabama! If I see Alabama recommended one more time for every kid 
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One of my thoughts vis a vis groupthink is that the importance of ârigorâ is over-stated. Students should take a reasonably rigorous schedule but you donât need to max out APs or take AP calc to get into a very selective school.
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Agree that you donât need a dozen plus APs like I have seen some students do, but re AP Calc, that depends upon the intended major. For most STEM majors, itâs pretty important.
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S24s close friend just got into Dartmouth as a prospective science major without any calc at all. He went for AP stats after pre-calc instead. He also had fewer APs in general. Unhooked.
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I do not have an Alabama issue, but I find it interesting that people are able to suggest colleges to students on a regular basis without having enough information from the OP to make recommendations at all.
I agree - take a hardish schedule, be involved, have a strong application, get Aâs, submit scores if strong. That is the winning strategy. Pretty difficult to do for most. One less AP is a good strategy IMO.
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Sure, but I donât think individual anecdotes to the contrary constitute good advice.
If a student is going into math, engineering, CS, or sciences like Physics, and AP Calc is available at the school, itâs a mistake to avoid taking it.
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As an engineering major way back when, my highschool didnât offer calculus, so my highest math was called âadvanced mathâ, which is basically pre-calculus. About 20 of us freshman year in engineering college had to take accelerated calculus, which crammed 3 semesters of calc into 2. I do NOT recommend that for anyone that can avoid it. My take is that while you might get admitted without calc, like I was, itâs best to get calc in if youâre going the STEM route.
How about if we stipulate the above, which seems like common sense. However, if a kid has history, psychology, social work, classics etc etc etc as a direction, they do not need calculus. If they want to take it, great! But, in my opinion, if they donât want to take it, itâs fine.
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My two cents is it is very useful to distinguish hard rules from what I would call rules of thumb. This could also be called the distinction between a requirement and a recommendation.
When it comes to course selection, I think a few things can be hard rules/requirements (depending on the college), but most things are more rules of thumb/recommendations. And with the latter, I think the basic mindset should be something like to follow the rule of thumb/recommendationâunless you have a good reason not to.
And good reasons are not necessarily vanishingly rare. Obviously sometimes the recommended course in question isnât even an option. Sometimes there are conflicting recommendations and you have to make a trade off. Sometimes there are special circumstances like a teacher you have good reasons to want to avoid. And so on.
Anyway, I personally think having that distinction in mind can help guide these discussions in productive ways.
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I agree that kids should take rigorous course load within reason. However, what Iâm coming to realize that having a strong âstoryâ is often as important as academics as long as you have âgood enoughâ rigor.
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And if they decide they need calculus, they can take it in college.
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Thatâs a deep issue but I am inclined to agree.
The way I would put it, some people seem to have this sort of model in their head of highly selective holistic review admissions where there is some ideal candidate who checks all the boxes and would score 100 points, and then you as an actual applicant get point deductions for anything you are missing or is otherwise non-ideal, but you try not to slip below whatever point cutoff they will be using for admissions.
We know from what these AOs say that is wrong. It is wrong from the start because they do not have one sort of candidate they are looking for, they actually want to put together a mix of different students who they think will interact to their mutual benefit in their college community.
And in that context, once you clear a certain academic thresholdâadmittedly a high one for the most selective colleges, but not so high that they donât have many applicants who meet that standard for every one they can admitâthey shift to asking how you as an individual might participate in that community, how you will benefit, what you will give in return, and so on. And to actually get admitted, you need to stand out to them in some way that a committee of people finds compelling.
So yeah, at that point your story as you put it is going to dominate. And that story is a bit backward-looking, but also forward-lookingâyou need in some way to convince them that choosing you rather than the other applicants they also deemed good enough academically will help them create the sort of complex, interactive community they are targeting.
OK, so to bring this back to the topic at hand, to the extent the collective advice we give ends up in practice implying to some kids that everyone should be doing all the same things to try to get admitted to the most selective colleges, we know in some sense that must be wrong. To be sure, they need to make sure they will pass that academic threshold, but beyond that it really becomes a question of helping them find a way to stand out as someone who will be seen by one or more great colleges as the sort of person they really want as part of the class they are making. And that has to be an individual journey by nature, it cannot be a formula or checklist or so on that everyone must follow.
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Itâs an interesting comment because there is a thread now with a student who is in BC as a Junior, has named a few top schools they are interested, and is not planning to take the next level of calc as a Senior even though itâs offered.
Most of the opinions are you need to take it - for the rigor - because top schools will expect to see that. Other opinions are - youâve taken Calc BC - youâll be fine.
No one can 100% say what is the right answer - but - it gives the OP differing opinions to think about themselves - and perhaps than further discuss with a HS counselor, college admission person - or to even with parent/student discussing potential pros and cons.
Thatâs whatâs great about these threads - a variety of perspectives that hopefully will help OP in their thought process.
It is a fine line, and the idea is for students to make course choices that keep as many doors open as long as possible while also taking classes that appeal to them. Calculus has become an important measure of rigor at many colleges. Not all schools give us the data though.
Wesleyan, which has a pretty high proportion of non-STEM majors, reported that 85% of their Class of 2027 admits had calculus in HS. That tells me they value calculus regardless what an applicant states their likely major is. I expect a large proportion of the 15% of admits who didnât take calculus didnât have that option at their HS. If only other schools were this transparent.
With that said, many admissions people are acutely aware that there are calculus access issues, and other schools have taken the time to understand if calculus is really necessary in HS for certain majors. Andy Borst had some good twitter threads about this when he was in UIUC admissions (now at UGA):
https://twitter.com/AndyBorstUGA/status/1575872338817478661
I agree. Sort of think, however, more OPâs ask because they know the odds of the A, for them, are slim. I also think that overreaching in APâs does more damage than good for most kids. I see 3 APâs junior and senior year with Aâs and a great package as someone who does far better than 5 APâs junior and senior year with a couple Bâs. Not disagreeing, but that is my experience.
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