<p>The hardest curriculum has to be considered within the context of each high school. If a high school does not offer AP or IB courses, a student can still be said to have taken the most rigorous curriculum available.
MVCalc is not part of a hs curriculum. That many students do take it does not make the list of courses of those who stopped with AP-Calc less rigorous as far as college adcoms are concerned. And if an applicant is a prospective humanities/social science major, it makes no sense to take MV/Calc, especially in high school.</p>
<p>There is no reason to load up on AP classes just because they are so designated. Many colleges will not give credit for some AP classes anyway. And the AP curriculum can be extremely shallow. Better to take a more focused class such as Shakespeare plays (a popular senior English class in our high school) than yet another AP class.</p>
<p>I disagree with POIH, also. It is the context of your school system and not determined by College Board. Our’s is a nationally top ranked high school but has minimal AP branded classes. We don’t have classes with the specific title “honors”. We do have classes that are considered “most rigorous” (Anatomy and Physiology, Physics - the non intro class, for example). They are not AP Brand classes but the rigor is equal in concept. These non AP brand classes are spelled out on the school profile. So for the parent who has a school that offers 7 APs gets the rigorous check…we don’t even have 7 AP classes. Check with your guidance office. They can answer your question about which box will be checked. You also might like to get a copy of your school profile as the rigor classes (if not branded AP) should be indicated.</p>
<p>I’ll chime in that I disagree with POIH as well, especially regarding the math curriculum she described, which would be unavailable at most schools - she may be referring to a specialized, math/science high school.</p>
<p>My kids attend a private prep school in New England and the most advanced math available is AP Calc BC. The top 10% of the class are usually accepted at the top 20 colleges - most of whom take at least AP Calc AB, AP English lit, AP Chem or Bio, AP US History and four years of a foreign language. </p>
<p>The key point as others have mentioned, is the specific curriculum available at a particular school. A good way to gauge is to check out what classes the top 5% of seniors took during their four years - that should tell you what “most competitive” looks like at your school.</p>
<p>Another quick point - my kid’s school requires them to play at least two sports each year (these can be swapped for theatre productions or fitness classes), be involved in ECs and community service. This provides for much happier, balanced and well-rounded kids than loading them up with college level courses and teaching to a test.</p>
<p>POIH did say “if available” at the end of his first line. He was probably just bragging about his D’s curriculum which IIRC, did have something like 100 AP classes (all 5’s of course )</p>
<p>That list is a good one, though, for “Hardest Curriculum seen on CC”, or “Hardest Curriculum in the applicant pool”. If folks wait a couple of weeks, they will be able to browse through the SCEA results threads of Yale and Stanford and there will indeed be plenty of kids with about 8-10 APs done by Junior year and 6 more on the way in senior year. Some of those kids will even be accepted ;)</p>
<p>IB is the most rigorous curriculum any public high school can offer. If you want your son to work his ass off only to get a low GPA, let him do IB.</p>
<p>LOL!
S’s roommate did have 18 APs (14 with 5s and 4 with 4s). When we asked him why he took so many, he said the regular curriculum at his high school was not challenging enough and he did a lot of self- studying. My S looked like a real slacker by comparison. But another roommate attended a high school with very very few APs.</p>
<p>We have the same thing in our school system. I wasn’t aware of this for a long time.
I agree that some sort of standardization in the same system would be nice.</p>
<p>We have another situation which puzzles me. S is in 8th grade and enrolled in Geometry. Took Algebra 1 last year, both for HS credit. I have found out that a small number of students in this middle school skipped pre-Alg in 6th grade and take Algebra 2 at the HS now. This was never presented as an option and the school course catalog does not have it listed. S would have likely qualified as would several other students we know, but none of us were aware of it. For a number of reasons which I will not go into here, I am not sure that I would have chosen that route for S, but am annoyed that the school system has this “secret” option. I am not sure how this affects the “most rigorous” designation later on (this didn’t seem to happen when D was in MS).</p>
<p>VP, I’m laughing too, and in a perverse way have to admire POIH single mindedness regarding his kids, but again, “rigorous” is in the context of the particular school and not all kids have the resources of POIH’s kids’ school system. I do like that label “hardest curricululm seen on CC.” Olive’s list of what most kids take is pretty close to what our small public school offers for AP (APUSH, AP Chem, AP Eng lit and AP Calc AB and maybe one more). Most kids take them all, some might substitute Stats for AP CalcAB and pick up the non-AP brand rigorous classes to round out a college prep curriculum. I don’t feel that “our” kids are disadvantaged in anyway. You “play” with the cards delt.</p>
<p>Some schools don’t even offer 1 AP. You still think playing with “the cards delt” is really gonna help them? All their cards SUCK. It’s like they get all 2s 3s and 4s while you get all Kings Queens and Jacks.</p>
<p>Do you really want to go to such a school if there is a choice? The reason some schools do not offer APs are:</p>
<p>They offer IB (plenty rigorous); or they offer courses that are as rigorous as APs and known to be such.
OR: they are inner-city or rural school without the resources to offer highly rigorous classes.</p>
<p>However, if colleges really only care about you taking the most rigorous courses in your high school and won’t hold it against you against others who took more APs, then, sure, yeah, I’ll go. Do a lot less work and get into that same school as that kid who did 15 APs because we both took the most rigorous at our school. </p>
<p>In our DREAMS!!???</p>
<p>Even if the 15 AP kid didn’t take the most rigorous (because he could’ve took 10 more, for example) he should still have a large advantage over that other kid who took zero even though he had no choice. Sorry, the world is unfair, but at least the 15 AP kid worked a lot harder and went through more rigor.</p>
<p>I recently listened to a podcast that said Stanford admissions was seriously considering giving no admission boost for AP courses in order to reduce the stress on high school students. Turns out that about 1/3 of Stanford kids, according to the speaker, come to school on some form of psychological medication. They are concerned about this. I say, hats off to Stanford, if they can actually pull that off.</p>
<p>
Universities also understand that there are many kids who would have taken them and done better than the kids who did, but that the courses were not available. It would also limit the diversity of the college (not just talking ethnic diversity here). What they want to see is that the kids are motivated and interested in challenging themselves, not that they finished a year or two of college courses. They know taking AP courses is not required for success on campus. A former Harvard president once remarked that a student with a 600+ SAT CR score could be successful at Harvard. They are looking for motivation and potential, not that one has taken 10 APs.</p>
<p>By the most rigorous curriculum, colleges are not suggesting that if a school offers 20 APs, one should take them all. In fact, most schedules work in such a way as making it very difficult to take many APs at the same time. What this often means, however, is that if two students at the same school have been taking Chemistry, the one who took it to AP-Chem has an advantage over the one who did not. It means taking a particular subject to the highest level of that subject offered in a particular school. It does not mean taking APs in all sciences and all humanities fields just because they are offered at the school.</p>
Sorry. Doesn’t work that way at the schools that give a crap about the box being checked. Everything is in context of the opps at the school the kid attends. As it should be IMO. </p>
<p>If the kid is aiming for a school that considers the check-mark as important, just make sure the box gets checked. The only way to do that is by having a direct, specific conversation with the GC that makes that call. I’d follow that up with a confirming letter or email. May I suggest the following:</p>
<p>Dear Ms. McGillicuddy, It was a pleasure to meet you and thanks so much for confirming that little Johnny’s proposed course selection is in the “most rigorous” category at Suburban High. As you know, little Johnny is aiming for the stars and it would be a shame if we had to fire-bomb your house.</p>
<p>My zoned school is Jackass High School (I don’t like it, so I’ll insult it).</p>
<p>But I’m in a magnet program, so I go to Hell High School (the IB curriculum over here is insane).</p>
<p>I ride a 45 minute bus every morning to get there. My zoned high school, however, only takes about 10 minutes.</p>
<p>Let’s face it: our IB curriculum as 70%+ dropouts for my current classmates. Last year’s graduating class at 66%. Anyway, most of the dropouts (they have low GPA doing IB) go back to my zoned high school and get a 1.0+ GPA boost because the AP classes over there are easier to get an A since our school basically attracts the best students from our district.</p>
<p>Okay, so what I’m saying is that if I stayed at my zoned school my GPA would be higher. </p>
<p>And you all are saying that it depends on the contex of your high school. There are top 10 ranked students who came in in 11th grade IB and got shot all the way down to 92% tile (not even in top 50 now) because of this program. </p>
<p>What I’m saying is that students who go to a magnet school that’s more rigorous high school don’t get any advantage because they only look at the contex of your high school? </p>
<p>Yeah I should’ve stayed at my zoned high school then. A lot higher GPA, huh. Really fair indeed. Easier classes, a lot higher class rank, and I get the same treatment as the guy from another school who had to work his ass off for his deflated grades. All because they only look at the contex of your high school…</p>
<p>One does not have to go crazy on the APs. S1 only took the ones he was truly interested in, had nine total over four years of HS (three per year in 10th-12th), and got into MIT EA without a science AP already under his belt. He took the Physics C exam at the end of senior year. He used his electives for post-AP math and CS – as a caveat, he was at a specialized math/science program and this was his thing. Happily, with an eight period day, he was also able to take some cool non-math/CS electives as well. </p>
<p>S2 is at a full diploma IB program and automatically gets the most rigorous designation. Also made National AP Scholar as a junior, mainly because he took AP exams to correspond with the IB SLs, which don’t count for credit at most colleges. The program has a 98-100% full diploma graduation rate and is selective admit, so 25% of the senior class consists of the top students from across the county. The GPA definitely has taken a hit vs. the local HS. OTOH, the quality of the education is excellent.</p>
<p>That said, we live in an area which is hugely competitive and so there is a lot of pressure to load up.</p>
<p>However, we have a neighbor who got into Penn State Engineering, Ohio State, FSU, Clemson and Pitt without taking any AP calc or science. I imagine he will have a harder time than some other students, but if he steps up to the plate I am sure he’ll be fine.</p>
<p>My niece has taken three APs and that is considered highly unusual at her (non-Atlanta) Georgia HS.</p>
<p>Dumb question alert: When one is talking about AP this and that, is this with regards to also getting a 4 or 5 on the AP exam that goes with it? It seems to me that without that external validation, any school can call something AP and it may actually not be as rigorous as plain old regular class at a highly competitive school. It just becomes labeling and part of a game.</p>
<p>I have a friend who recently moved from a city and great school district in the NE to a small community in a southern state not known for its educational standards (its a temporary thing related to work). Daughter is taking “AP English” in 10th grade now but it looks pretty similar to the regular English she took last year in 9th grade.</p>
<p>AP tried to clean that up a couple of years ago, Starbright, by requiring that teachers submit their syllabi to AP for approval. </p>
<p>My niece’s AP English class was a joke and she wound up not taking that exam. My younger son’s pre-IB 9th grade English class was tougher than S1’s AP Eng Lang course (which was no walk in the park, either).</p>
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