<p>^Whoah. You don’t have to take semester tests for every class? Almost all of my classes are year-long, and even in my AP classes I have to take two semester tests (one December, one May when my school gets out) in addition to the AP test. Whoo for 16 semester tests this year.</p>
<p>I finished APUSH, AP Calculus, AP Physics, and Spanish IV with A’s (92, 95, 94, and a 90 respectively). AP Biology I got a B (88) but I’m okay with that. AP English I’m not sure about, I am only 0.5% away from an A so I am trying to convince her if I can turn in an assignment I forgot, so I’m not sure. For the most part I am very happy with my grades for the semester. They are a great Christmas present! (I know none of you really care, haha, but I’m happy right now so I’ll share it anyway. =p)</p>
<p>Although my lack of test scores are definitely frustrating. PSAT scores aren’t given out until after Christmas, and my SATII scores were delayed by a week. <_<</p>
<p>@WeIsCool: That’s unfortunate that you have to take a semester test at the end of the year along with the AP exam … I would think the AP exam is enough! We have to take a first semester exam, but not a second one for AP classes.</p>
<p>At our school it is pretty hard to get an A+. That is only if you have a 99% or above. Therefore, 6 of my classes are sitting at A’s. No A-'s for me, my very strict parents would skin me alive LOL</p>
<p>Are any of your parents like that?</p>
<p>science lesson of the day:</p>
<p>if you make ice cream using liquid nitrogen until the ice cream resembles a dipping dot, do not put a large glob of the ice cream into your mouth. you will rip the inside of your lip, you will bleed, and you will die. you will also lose feeling in your tongue. worst of all, your ice cream will be ruined by the salty taste of your blood.</p>
<p>but you also will not regret it.
maybe.</p>
<p>@weis: My parents were like that, but I’m getting a few B’s this year, so they’ve chilled out. I’m surprised; I thought that they would be on my case completely. Maybe it’s because I haven’t taken APs before.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They may be, you just don’t know that yet. 
Asian parents?</p>
<p>Done with finals!! Well an hour ago but I just got home. </p>
<p>My english teacher found it absolutely necessary to not excuse me for work (i.e. vocabulary and in-class reading log) that I missed from an excused absence. She said that we don’t need to do make-up work in her syllabus. So my grade dropped like 10% in one day. 
</p>
<p>I really hope I can get my A back. The worst part of this is, she’s quitting this semester, and leaving TODAY so if I don’t get it fixed within the next ~2 ish hours I will have a B. <strong><em>. How the heck can a get a B in English? And it’s because of work that I wasn’t supposed to be expected to do. If I got a B in this class, I will be majorly f</em></strong>ed. No kidding. </p>
<p>OK, enough of the rant. Perhaps I can get my counselor to help but I kind of doubt it. It’s just so much easier for the counselor to side with the teacher. Plus the whole issue of my teacher leaving the school. To my counselor, it’s probably like, what’s the difference? A “B” is still a perfectly fine grade. NO IT IS NOT. Especially given how badly I screwed up Freshman year and in some of my classes this year. If this grade doesn’t get back to an A, I have no idea what I will do. I’ll probably go bats*** crazy. But since I don’t know where I could get firearms, nothing too serious will probably happen if I go completely crazy. </p>
<p>OOPS. It turned into a rant again. Sorry. But I’m sure people on here can relate to the difference between an “A” and a “B”. My school has had people commit suicide because of mainly grade related issues. And given my situation right now, even though it’s a bit of a foolish reason, I can totally understand. </p>
<p>ANYWAYS…
Do any of your schools use Schoology? It is THE. WORST. THING. EVER. Especially since only one of my teachers uses it and you have to sign in like every 3 seconds. Anyways, the reason I mention this is because I just went to check my math grade, and the grades haven’t been put up yet. I’m just really annoyed right now. I was feeling pretty good until I checked my English grade and my math grade. </p>
<p>The only grades I know for sure at this point without any mistakes are my AP Statistics grade and AP Japanese grade. I didn’t even study for the Stat final at all, and I got a 80%. Thanks to an annoying group project in Stat (which freaking ended up dropping my grade considerably), I would have only been able to get a B+ even if I had gotten 100% on the final. So I’ll just have to live with my “B” grade in AP Stat. For AP Japanese, we had a presentation, but I lost my voice so I have to do it after break. However, even if I fail the final (which is pretty hard), I’ll have an A. </p>
<p>My AP Bio grades were apparently posted on my teacher’s window for about an hour, but I didn’t get a chance to look (I hate being short). I have either an A- or a B+. If I have a B+ I will never forgive myself. </p>
<p>So far it is looking like my semester grades will be A A A B B B C. All are weighted except for one of those As (in history). This is horrible. My GPA hasn’t looked this bad since freshman year. Well, now I know I’m not going to be getting into anywhere my parents (especially my mom) want me to go. </p>
<p>Sorry for the long, ranty, depressing, pessimistic post. I’m just really frustrated at this point. If only I had gotten into a summer program this past summer, I could have made my grades higher (as in, my research project would have been done so I would have had more time to study). Now I’ve probably screwed over my chances for summer programs as well, except for the ones that anyone can get into. </p>
<p>OK, I’ll stop now.</p>
<p>My family does not care about grades, they only care if I try hard…They would probably be annoyed if I was failing something, but I have never had anything lower then a B so they are not too worried. I have a B in my honors pre-calc class, the rest of my grades are As.</p>
<p>I’ve only had one other C before, but it was due to an immaturity factor. This year, it’s just because I’ve been so busy entering stuff into competitions and finishing up some of the work for those competitions. And also, since I dropped a level in math, I thought I didn’t need to study for it since it was the same stuff I learned 2nd semester last year. However, that was not the case. (That’s the current C). </p>
<p>It’s really funny, only my mom really cares about the grades. I still put some pressure on myself to get all As, but if I get a B it’s not the end of the world. Unless like it’s the situation I’m in right now where my grade dropped so drastically. However, if I get a C, I am extremely angry at myself. </p>
<p>I mean, I guess the bright side is that I’m not failing out of classes, but still. Not looking forward to getting semester grades back. </p>
<p>I’m convinced my English teacher has already left town. She said she would reply to emails/check her email like every 5 minutes today until she leaves but it has been more than an hour right now. Hopefully I can get my counselor to intervene.</p>
<p>@Josh: Close, black mother, white father. :P. </p>
<p>Neither has attained a college degree (although my dad is smart and could’ve made something of himself if he didn’t drop out to work), and my mother grew up in the ghettos, so she always makes a big fuss about my grades because she doesn’t want me to wind up there.</p>
<p>@Qudditch: Do you ever relax, haha? Yes, we use Schoology on occasion for discussions & whatnot.</p>
<p>hahaha i wish… I don’t think I’ve truly relaxed thinking about my future since about freshman year. During freshman year, I really didn’t care much but then after that my mom insisted on all As. </p>
<p>But I think next semester I will do better. First, I know how my teachers are. Second, I know that I actually have to study for Calc. Also, no finals next semester! That just makes me really happy. We instead have a bunch of projects (which thank god, aren’t assigned as group work). This means lots of fluffy points. </p>
<p>And then senior year, I will finally not be taking the full 7 classes. I will be taking 6, unfortunately all APs, but I will get 2 free periods from taking one of my classes super early in the morning. Plus if I somehow got into a research program (my family thinks I can get into one just from my essays) I will not have to worry about finishing a research project. </p>
<p>I guess I can say I am extremely happy I am done with this semester, even if I am being a bit hard on myself. </p>
<p>Also, @lldm, that’s really cool about your parents. In my area, the most diverse are like half-Asians (as in like Korean mother, Taiwanese father or something like that). Then there are a few odd “white rice” kids, and one kid I know is half Asian Indian and half white. That’s pretty much the extent of our diversity in my area. I do have a friend who’s half Persian and half Chinese, and one who’s half Brazilian and half Japanese (pretty cool)… but the most cool is my friend who’s half African-American and half Vietnamese. </p>
<p>This is NOT to say any on here isn’t cool, since you couldn’t control who your parents were going to be. It’s just that in my own personal opinion, it’s really interesting when someone is multi-racial/cultural. </p>
<p>But then again, I’m just a boring full-blood. Both my parents are Japanese from Japan, and they’re both from kind of rural areas there. My mom was in a pretty rural area (as in up to a few years ago, there were rice fields everywhere) and she said that only by studying really hard (8x more than her friends) that she was able to go to Tokyo University, otherwise known as the Harvard of Japan. Likewise, since I have no connections I can use to have a “hook” in admissions, she believes I must study like there’s no tomorrow in order to get into a good college. By good I mean HYPS, Ivy, UCs level. Of course, I’m not in a rural area but she thinks it’s the same concept. However, in Japan is like almost totally different. You don’t actually need good grades in high school. All that TRULY matters is one giant uni exam. Apparently that’s how my dad got into Tokyo University.</p>
<p>Just since I’m on the topic of grades again (haha sorry everything I say seems to turn into something to do with grades), I’m just going to run down reasons I think I have pressure to do well in school.
- My older sister: My older sister is currently a sophomore at Stanford, and she got in without any true hooks. She only had 3 Bs in her entire school life and nothing below that. Whereas me, I’m all over the place. I guess from my GPA, I have mostly As but still. I think that my mom thinks that if I don’t get into “at least a UC” she can’t go out in public anymore. If that doesn’t happen, I will be the “failure child.” Well if I do become the “failure child,” then I’ll just be fulfilling the middle child theory.
- My younger brother: This just looks and sounds ridiculous, right? Well yeah, I think so too. He’s in the 6th grade. He takes about 10 hours doing his stupid middle school homework every night. And he drags around a filthy stuffed dog. Yet he’s still apparently “more mature” than I am. Apparently he is better than I ever was at math (but he mostly copies answers, memorizes them, or guesses. talking about competitions), music (he plays piano, I play cello. He sometimes practices because he actually wants to but mostly it’s pressure from my mom.) Well, we’ll see. In my opinion, he acts like a 3 year old. I wish my brother the best (sardonic) luck to get into Harvard. In like what, 6 years? How hard will college admissions be then?
- Extended family: So my extended family all lives in Japan. My aunt dropped out of high school but she’s the most well off because she kind of became a gold digger. That’s “failure #1” in my mom’s and my grandma’s (who passed away) point of view. Then my other aunt, who actually had her own kids, is I guess pretty successful. However, her husband, my uncle, hasn’t really done any work since he got fired as an engineer sometime before I was born. So he’s secretly (and not so secretly) called another failure. Then there’s my oldest cousin. He’s approaching the age of 40, dropped out of high school, was part of the Yakuza apparently, seems pretty depressed, and lives with my aunt/uncle. My mom definitely doesn’t want me turning out like any of those 3.
- The area I live in: So I’m from the San Fran Bay Area, and I always feel like I’m the stupidest one here. I bet like 99% of my junior class at my high school has a 4.0 unweighted GPA. Okay, so maybe that’s an exaggeration, but still. I had to get >220 on PSAT to qualify for NMSQT or whatever. </p>
<p>That’s all that I can think up of for now.</p>
<p>I’m more Native American than anything else; I have it on both sides. My dad is Cherokee (and others?), Irish, Lithuanian, Italian… etc. My mother is some sort of black, has some tribe blood that we’re not sure of, and she thinks we may be a small part Spanish (although nobody on that side of the family looks Spanish, imo, so I doubt it).</p>
<p>I think it’s cool when someone is multi-racial too; a lot of interesting physical characteristics manifest from a varied mix. For example, most people in my town haven’t seen hair like mine before (granted, my town is also ~90% pure white).</p>
<p>I’ve only seen a small number of Asians (in person) in my lifetime; there are maybe 10 in my entire school. At my Eastern Regionals audition (vocal & instrumental auditions to get into a festival) this year, I was looking for my friend in the instrumental hall, and when I passed by the violin room there were more Asians packed into that one room than I’ve ever seen in my life, lol. There were maybe 100 kids in there, and only ~10 were non-Asian. It was crazy; I thought that was just a stereotype.</p>
<p>I’m sorry that you have so much pressure placed upon you. I can’t really relate to your situation because I’m an only child, and neither side of my family is scholarly inclined to the point of being dubbed a “failure” for not being academically successful. Most of my pressure comes from my teachers, tbh. I got a 91 in APUSH 1st quarter and my teacher’s comment was “capable of higher quality work”, and she told me to my face that I should be getting A+s in her class. I have the ability to, but because my attention is divided between that class, AP Chem, PreCalc H, and other classes that are work-heavy; I don’t care much for history; and I dislike her attitude toward my class as a whole (she thinks the other kids in my class, except for one, are idiots, and she misses her class from the year before because it consisted of extreme try-hards & geniuses), it’s not a priority for me to excel in that one class.</p>
<p>What field are you thinking of going into?</p>
<p>Quidditchcat, Tell your parents that it is easy to succeed in America than it is for your relatives in Japan due to the available opportunities. Hopefully they’ll let you rest easy.</p>
<p>woah that’s really cool! The only person who I’ve met with Native American ancestry is my AP Bio teacher, and she’s like 1% Cherokee, as I think I recall. Hahaha that’s really funny, since she brought it up during the Genetics unit, and she also talked about how interesting it was to see how each parents’ genetics leads to how a person looks. </p>
<p>Most people where I live are the stereotypically try-hard Asians (mostly Chinese) who have played a musical instrument since they were practically born, have at least a 3.8 unweighted GPA (at least I think so… Most of these people are like… OH NO I have an A- not an A+ now what am I going to do.) and get 2300+ on the SAT. Seriously, but the only reason I know this is because people think it is very interesting to put as their facebook statuses. </p>
<p>I didn’t always live in the area I live now, for the first half of my life I lived in an area where people probably would have thought I should be going to like the HYPS. Also there were barely any super try-hards. The main reason I moved was because my sister skipped three grades in math, still thought it was too easy, and the school district I’m in is known to have really good math/science classes. But by good it means pretty hard. People in my area, are for the most part, really fired up about college. </p>
<p>I have a friend who’s a senior right now and she thought she didn’t have enough ECs because she didn’t have a leadership position, quit piano in 10th grade, and except for volunteering at a puppy-rescue place, didn’t devote much time to her other activities. However, she has a pretty high GPA and high SAT. This is what the area I live in does to people, unfortunately. </p>
<p>So I think in general, even if my mom expects all As, it’s definitely not just my family. </p>
<p>Also, SAME. I don’t care much for history. That’s why I decided APUSH wasn’t a good use of my time, so I’m in regular history. During class, we have a lot of horrible busy work things, but there’s barely any homework. Well, I guess I got off lucky, because other regular US history teachers at my school assign so much homework in regular history that it barely is less than the APUSH homework load. </p>
<p>I’m thinking of majoring in either computational biology/bioinformatics or neuroscience.
I did bioinformatics before it was cool 
haha jk but I started doing my science fair projects on bioinformatics 4 years ago and back then, nobody knew about bioinformatics field around me. And then after that, so many people began working on bioinformatics projects. I’m a trendsetter. XD</p>
<p>I really want to go to UCSD for the majors I’m interested in. However, the UCs are known to be notoriously # driven, so now I’m looking at LACs, which Asians are known not to attend very frequently (I guess that’s kind of a plus? They won’t go "oh no another boring Asian with a musical instrument and wanting to go into science). People think I’m crazy when I say my ultimate dream school is UCSD. They’re like, what happened to all the Ivys? HYPS? But what matters more for me is that the school actually offers the majors I want.</p>
<p>I’m more worried about my grades than my mom is. She’s been trying to convince me for a long time that a B is a good grade. She doesn’t care where I go to school as long as I continue my education and get some scholarships to fund it.</p>
<p>My mom’s the same way, and there’s nothing wrong with that. My mom gets really excited when I get a B and gets really excited when I get an A. My mom doesn’t have low expectations, she’s just really proud in everything I do, which is more that I can ask for.</p>
<p>Wow, I know one full blood korean, who was adopted at birth, and I have a half african american friend and a filipino friend. Everyone else I know is white or super white. I fall into super white. My parents are very chill about everything. I put way more pressure on myself then they ever will. They just want me to do something I love. But what I love requires a great education and a law degree.</p>
<p>You guys are lucky. My mom doesn’t care about me getting A’s or anything. </p>
<p>She only cares that I get into a top college and get a decent job (100k+/y). She doesn’t know anything about my high school nor my grades.</p>
<p>I have like 2-3 weeks before I take finals so I need to really adjust my grades to get all A’s. </p>
<p>Honors Physics 91%/B (Not worried at all, my teacher is an easy grader. When I turn in my semester project, 10% of my grade, I’ll probably get a 95-100 which will boost me to an A)</p>
<p>APUSH 91%/B (Not that worried either. I just have to study a bit harder and I can get an A)</p>
<p>Honors Spanish III 95%/A (Really easy, not bothered)</p>
<p>Honors British Literature 87%/B (Really annoyed. I actually try in this class. I need extra credit, better study habits, and a prayer to get an A. I feel like my teacher really wants me to get an A.)</p>
<p>Honors Algebra 2/Trig 87%/B (I messed up HUGE at the beginning of the semester, so I’m currently trying to fix my grade from that mistake. An A is possible. I understand all the concepts so it’s not like I need a tutor, I just need to study harder.)</p>
<p>Honors Debate II 100%/A (LOL this class is just a GPA booster)</p>
<p>My parents don’t care what I do, which means the only pressure I get is from myself, which I’m glad about.</p>