Has anyone found any great resources for planning our rising freshmen’s high school choices? I was a bit surprised when she asked about AP class choices for next year, which I didn’t know were available in our state. So I suppose given how competitive the process is, we should get a head start.
If anybody has any recommendations for online resources on high school planning, we’d appreciate them!
I just helped my son sign up for his freshman year classes as well and I felt really unprepared… It would be great if there was something to help rising freshmen get a playbook of things they need to do for the next four year to prep them for college
Quite a bit depends on what your high school offers, and what placement procedures the school has for placing students into regular, honors, etc… Also important is the number of class periods per day at the school – if the school has only 6 periods (as opposed to 7 or 8), then it may be more difficult to fit all of the desired courses into the four year schedule.
AP courses are supposed to include college level material, so many of them are best suited for 11th and 12th grade students who have completed any needed preparatory high school courses. Taking AP courses in 9th grade is most commonly done with human geography, commonly seen as one of the least difficult AP courses. CS principles may also be appropriate for some 9th grade students. However, other AP courses in 9th grade are likely only suitable in special situations, like foreign language for those who had a head start due to being heritage speakers or alumni of elementary school immersion programs, or calculus for math prodigies.
Try to focus on getting the best high school education they can. Is your child ready for college level classes? Does the teacher have a good reputation? Unless your child’s needs cannot be met by your high school, online or self study AP not a great idea. And if they’re not ready for AP now, that is fine, too.
As for this summer, do they already have a strong extracurricular interest? For example, if they’re interested in politics, volunteer for a campaign this summer.
Your school guidance counselor can help you to understand the appropriate course sequence for tgeir high school.
Freshmen need to have
The precollege/HS life forum should have details.
The only APs appropriate for 9th graders are those mentioned upthread.
A few students may be placed higher, due to being heritage speakers or alumni of elementary school immersion programs.
Generally, 9th grade math placement depends on middle school math tracking:
| Track | Traditional | Integrated math |
|---|---|---|
| +0 | Algebra 1 | Integrated Math 1 |
| +1 | Geometry | Integrated Math 2 |
| +2 | Algebra 2 | Integrated Math 3 |
| +3 | Precalculus | Precalculus |
| +4 | Calculus | Calculus |
Usually, students in +1 or higher math tracks are more likely to be placed into honors courses. In some schools, particularly with integrated math curricula, the honors courses include the precalculus material in the integrated math 1-2-3 courses, so that students can go directly to calculus after integrated math 3 honors.
In my opinion, the best way to prepare/plan for high school is for the kids to have friends 1-3 years ahead of them. The usual ways to make such friends would be friends with older siblings, church, after school programs, scouts, sports team, band, orchestra, choir, etc. Regular interactions with older friends helps the kids form a realistic expectation for what’s coming up in life.
Thanks so much for the feedback - that’s extremely helpful. I will check with the college counselors at the school. Meanwhile, are there any sites anybody has found that has examples of successful college applications (with classes, activities, summers, etc.)?
If your high school has the luxury of dedicated college counselors (versus only regular counselors who may be loaded with other counselor issues as well as college prep issues for hundreds of students each), then it is likely that they are the best resource for college prep issues in the context of your high school.
There are thousands of successful paths. There is no one perfect path. Follow your child’s interests and let them go through high school exploring interests and strengths. Encourage them to get involved! Some kids have one big focus and others will try a bunch of things, as long as they are doing something they will be fine. Encourage them to build relationships with teachers and find a volunteer activity.
MIT has an excellent blog article about applying sideways to look up. Don’t try to craft a high school experience just to fit a college.
For AP courses, our school offered AP Geog freshman year and AP Euro Sophomore year but my daughter did not take them since she wasn’t excited about those subjects. She took pretty much all APs available starting junior year and did great in them. Her college results are just as good as those who took AP starting freshman year. Don’t stress too much.
Integrated math course names can be confusing. Our district uses integrated math. IM1 is taught in 8th grade and is simply called 8th grade math. IM2, IM3, and precalc are taught in 9th-11th grade, but are confusingly called “Math 1, 2, 3” by the HS (“Math 1” = IM2, etc).
Best advice for a current 8th grader:
get involved in high school- not so it looks good on paper, but so you feel like you are a part of your school community. Try new things- a new sport, club, art class etc.
Challenge yourself in the academic areas you enjoy- you don’t need to stress yourself out by trying to take a certain number of AP’s or Honors classes.
Get to know your teachers- and make sure they really know who you are.
Spend your summers - especially the early high school summers- doing something you love- and get a job. A job teaches life skills.
Bottom line- when you’re 14 you’re still a kid- it’s fleeting, so soak it all in.
You can do well in school, pursue and excel in the EC areas that you enjoy, all without stressing yourself out over what “looks good” for college.
No reason to spend the next 4 years simply trying to prepare for the following 4 years.
Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.
I think doing something meaningful during the summer should be a first priority. Just look at @MYOS1634 post and just go from there. Don’t think about what is right for your student. Make sure that they take the classes they feel are appropriate for them.
Not really what YOU want but what she/he wants.
Thank you for all the wonderful feedback. I took a look at @MYOS1634 but couldn’t seem to identify the relevant thread. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
I do understand that each person (student) is unique, and am not trying to have our child conform to a mold of any type. However, if our hope is that she goes to the best possible school to give her the best chance to succeed and be happy in the future, does anyone have any ideas on Internet sites that might have successful applications with classes, activities, and summer plans just to give us some ideas?
Thanks again!
I think they may be referring to this
Basically
There is no path (beyond taking academic classes)!!
My own 2 cents is to think outside the box. So if you can identify a path, don’t go down it! Definitely do not “tick boxes”.
I will clarify that none of my kids had particularly unusual interests, but for example, if your kid is musical, have them play the bagpipes, not the violin. How many high level bagpipe players apply to college? Guessing 5 or fewer. How many violin players? Tens of thousands.
This is actually not as helpful as one would think (there is the big troupe on this and other college websites about the bassoon player who gets full rides to schools due to their bassoon playing) No school needs a bagpipe for the orchestra, but they do need violins, cellos, and flutes. Kids thrive at the instruments they are interested in. Orchestra and band instruments get the biggest boost for admissions
This is the philosophy we’re taking with our younger two kids.
I’m no expert, just a parent muddling my way through this like many others. My eldest is a junior at a LPS without a dedicated college counselor and we haven’t been through the complete cycle yet. We made sure that he was taking the highest level classes available to him not because we were trying to think too much about his college chances, but primarily because we didn’t want him to get bored and disengage in class (=trouble in more ways than just impact on grades), which we were seeing happen to a number of kids we knew as they entered middle and high school. So our intention in encouraging a high rigor schedule and commitment to athletics right from the start freshman year had more to do with keeping him out of trouble than anything else. That being said, his peers in his two sports are also pretty academically-minded and driven, so that has played a significant part in his own motivation as well.
I do have a current freshman who attends a small boarding school and does have access to a college counselor. At a college counseling forum this past fall, aside from half-joking that they didn’t really want to hear from 9th grade parents yet, they emphasized to us that the best thing for our students to do this year was “lean in to all that the school has to offer”.
Join clubs, try new things, uncover different academic interests, become a part of and get involved in the community, get to know your teachers and challenge yourself in and outside of the classroom.
Don’t underestimate the challenge of the jump to high school - depending on the kid and the school, it can be a lot, especially socially and emotionally.
Yes, but each year they may need 1 or 2 (or 4, whatever) violins, and how many violin players will be vying for those spots? Agreed no school needs a bagpiper, but I believe that bagpiper will be more interesting to the school than the 50th violinist admissions sees.
Also – I am not talking about hooks. To have a hook such that the student is recruited – for an instrument, or a sport, or some other talent – one has to be SO talented that you are one of the best in the country, pretty much. Which is not something one can just decide to become.
I’m talking about the “average excellent” kid. How do they stand out? By maybe being a little different, is all I’m saying.
It goes without saying the student has to love what they do, I certainly am not advocating for someone to do something they don’t enjoy.
It doesn’t have to be as exotic as bagpiping. I remember the student who posted here about starting a crocheting group at an assisted living place, and sticking with it for several years. How many applicants did that? Maybe only one, in the entire country!
The advice I’ve given in real life is not to forget the actual human being while planning for HS.
Doing laundry; making doctor and dentist appointments; returning overdue library books and paying the fines; making a simple dinner and cleaning up afterwards; understanding the difference between a debit and a credit card and what it means to be overdrawn… all that adulting stuff. Waking up on time without a parent shaking you for ten minutes. Going to bed when you are tired. Eating an apple for a late afternoon snack and not a mochacinno with 300 mg of caffeine and 800 calories and then wondering why you can’t fall asleep.
I know a lot of kids who have dropped out, taken leave, asked to leave, etc. from college and not a single one of them was under-prepared academically. The issues was “Life 101”-- for which they were woefully unprepared. The scaffolding, helicoptering, snow plowing, enabling that some parents do for their kids in HS-- it is a trap. The parents feel indispensable; the kid feels as though the slightest “doesn’t prepare me for college” task is both beneath and above their skillset simultaneously.
Plan to spend the next four years giving your kid the tools that are needed for independent living on a college campus. How to hang up a towel so it doesn’t smell like mildew is a lot more important than deciding whether to play ultimate frisbee or travel soccer.