what state?
@K8sMom2002 Re: private high school. If there are good options available, I encourage you to look into them as there may be scholarships or need-based discounts available.
The sticker price at the private HS D2 attends is not even remotely affordable for us. We would never have even considered it a possibility until we met other families in our community who were sending their kids there. With their encouragement, we looked into it, and we were awarded a generous discount based on our income. It made the net COA possible, although not always comfortable.
Good luck!
Well, once she gets to take AP and dual enrollment classes, you will see if she is prepared for college level work.
Remember- she can self study for any AP exam and find a testing site to take it when AP exams are offered. It may be possible for her HS to order her test and proctor her with other students. There were a few AP exams with very few students in our district that were accommodated in this way. The district did not offer AP Biology but did offer that test as well.
We happened to have tour guides at 2 schools that were from similar schools to yours. They both talked extensively about the tutoring that is offered at almost every college even the most competitive. The one at UVA said that she needed tutoring for essentially every core class but once she got to major classes everyone was on the same footing as the material was new to everyone. The one at Princeton said that he chose core classes carefully to try and be sure that he was not overwhelmed with catching up on many areas all at once.
Do you have any community colleges in your area? We have a wealth of resources in our school but both my kids have also taken dual enrollment. If she really wants to attend a highly competitive school being prepared and showing aptitude are both important and would get her much farther than just shrugging and saying that is all that was offered.
I am a senior a high school that offers no AP classes and two years of one foreign language, so I can definitely relate! Many students at my school only have hopes of graduating, and think of college as unnecessary because they can stay in our rural area and be loggers or manage the Safeway… There are a handful like myself every year who are definitely going to a four year college, but I have noticed a great difference in the types of schools that graduates from my school go to (local state schools, especially EWU) and graduates from the school I went to for my junior year, where they go to Brown with full scholarship etc. It is unfortunate when high schools can’t offer their students more, but this leaves it up to the student in many ways. Online classes should be an option, just have your D talk to her counselor, and make sure she takes full advantage of those AP classes when she can. My college applications were very reliant on my activities and essays, and so far I’ve been admitted to LMU and deferred at Whitman. Her essays need to have meaning and she needs to be able to be innovative so make sure she gets well-rounding experiences like unique volunteer work.
Her standardized tests are going to make a huge difference and it is one thing she can control. Have her study for the PSAT (most students don’t) because NMF status comes with $$ or even full rides at some colleges. Her ACT and/or SAT scores are going to make a big difference as well, aim for the top 1% (33+ on ACT). She is going to be a geographic/rural diversity candidate for the top tier of colleges and that is going to help her. We live in Michigan and we see somewhat relaxed standards for residents in the rural north and upper peninsula at UMich compared to suburban students. UMich does not get enough applicants from those areas, and you will find similar situations at most upper tier/elite colleges.
In addition to the excellent advice that @Much2learn provided earlier, if she has is interested in STEM, I would also recommend taking online math courses through Art of Problem solving. They provide three advantages:
- Their online courses are usually excellent. She will learn the material, and learn it well.
- Some of the students taking the course are extraordinarily strong, and she will get a taste of what a prepared student knows. Just about everyone who is competing for the national and international math awards goes through AOPS. But it is not restricted to them, and anyone can take the course.
- They are an accredited, and she may be able to get high school credit for these courses.
I second @MYOS1634 in recommending Cal Newport’s book. Since your daughter will likely have free time due to the lack of rigor, Cal’s recipe of her developing an interest and following it will be both something that she enjoys and that colleges will appreciate.
I must say that I am not a fan of The Gatekeepers though, unless you want to see how dysfunctional college admissions can really be. I think that Michelle Hernandez’s book “A is for Admission” is better.
I agree with TooOld4School on studying for the PSAT–I was pretty much the only one of my friends who did, and I got NMF, which has come with its perks and is also a good way to show schools that you are academically competitive. In fact, all the people in this thread have offered very good advice! I go to a somewhat rural school, though not as small as your daughter’s. Community college and online courses are a good option to supplement what’s offered at your school; I did the former with statistics over the summer when my school announced AP Stats wasn’t going to be offered for an indefinite amount of time. I used Khan Academy and YouTube channels like CrashCourse and Bozeman Science to supplement my coursework and prepare for SAT subject tests, which I would definitely recommend. Personally, I felt the process of self-studying and taking AP exams at other schools would be slightly more difficult logistics-wise; for subjects tests, there are a lot more options for exam dates (so you can wait until you are confident that you are ready). My school did not offer AP Chem., and it although it did offer Honors Chem., it didn’t cover all the material taught in AP. My major is ChemE, so to prove that I was just as competitive as a student who had taken AP, I took the SAT subject test (along with several others soph. & junior year). A few weeks ago, I found out that I got into UC Berkeley College of Chemistry early with Regents invite! Study hard, stay self-motivated, practice those standardized tests, and write killer essays! Your daughter will be fine as long as she continues to seek out opportunities to challenge herself.
Larger colleges have regional recruiters just for this purpose. They know the high schools in their regions like the back of their hand. Pursue the most rigorous available at that school. Sign into Naviance and see where former students at your school were accepted.
Rather than worry about the disadvantages of a small rural school, make lemonade out of the lemon, and accentuate the advantages. My children went to a similar school, a little bigger and not as rural, and they and many of their top classmates went on to college successfully. Grain of salt (I taught at the school) but kids who wanted a good high school education got it. The biggest problem we saw academically was inconsistency, but every public school in the country suffers from that. Here a great writing teacher, there a slack history class. As long as she has a good math foundation, good writing skills, she will be fine. One of the advantages of a small school is the opportunity to try anything, and lots of things. Through yourself into the best culture of the school, there are good opportunities to show excellence. Play a school sport, at a big school she would have been cut in 7th grade. Join the best club in the school and be a leader, those people skills are more important in the long run than AP Calculus. Rural? Do you have an FFA chapter? At our school we consistently send students to state and national competitions, colleges will be impressed more by that than 10 on-line self studied AP tests. It’s healthier and more beneficial to learn those people skills, the academic part will take care of itself. Yes, you need to supplement, but we found that more necessary in grade school/middle school and did it with book club, destination imagination, summer camp. By high school they were so involved they wouldn’t have had time to self study at Khan Academy. Not saying the above people advocating self study, virtual school, etc. are wrong. I just think there are actually lots of opportunities at a small school that you should try to take advantage of.
Cream rises, even in small schools, there just isn’t as much of it. You will know in a few years the kind of college that fits her needs.
I know a lot of people are advocating self-study, but I think that’s a really variable and individual thing. There are a lot o really smart, driven students who are not really great at self-studying. Self-studying for the AP tests, for example, may be kind of tough for a student who’s already not getting the prep she needs to succeed. Some people also don’t adjust well to the format of MOOCs. I’m not saying that she shouldn’t try these things at all, but just keep an open mind with them and realize that they’re not a magic bullet.
What I would suggest instead is if your area has a local community college, see if your daughter can supplement with some classes from there. Even if she doesn’t formally go through the dual enrollment program at her high school, she could probably still take some classes that lie outside of it - like pre-cal and foreign language classes - with regular community college students. She might find that intellectually she’s at or above their level, especially if she has the stats for selective colleges. I would just be careful that she doesn’t take enough credits to make her considered as a transfer student instead of a freshman (the threshold is usually around 24-30 credits), but typically colleges do not count credits earned while still in high school towards that threshold.
Many community colleges these days are offering online classes, so that’s an option too if you live too far away for her to commute or a class doesn’t work with her schedule. Usually there’s at least one online section of their service classes (English comp, calc, etc.)
As for the math - I have a friend from college who hadn’t even taken pre-calculus when she started at my college, and she majored in math. She finished the math major with honors and went on to get a master’s in biostatistics afterwards. I also have to say that at Columbia there are tons of students in the regular introductory calculus I class who didn’t take it in high school. So it’s possible to succeed even in quant fields if you haven’t taken calculus in high school.
My son was also in a semi-rural, off the radar school and there’s lots of good advice here - there is something to be said for being a big fish in a small pond. Going back to your original post, have you talked to the guidance counselor about course selection or why the AP classes are only for upperclassmen? Has your D taken any standardized tests that you could use to justify making an exception? Sometimes it’s just that nobody asks…
I had the advantage of teaching at the high school, and I had a meeting with guidance before he started there to say he was aiming high. If the AP classes don’t run every year (ours don’t either), then adding a sophomore may be a good thing. My kid took Chemistry as a freshman (before he was “supposed” to be there) with much head-shaking from the teacher (my colleague!) and he did well, which made it easier to carve his own schedule for the next three years. There are social pressures to being out of the normal cohort, and you and your D should talk about that if you go that way.
Good things do happen and colleges do look mix up their classes. My kid got into some great schools, and graduated last year from an Ivy that had never admitted anyone from his school before.
I did not read all the responses, but I agree with those that said that though she will have a chance to get in to a top school, she may not be prepared. My son is a freshman at a top public university. He was well prepared, many AP’s, dual enrollment, very rigorous HS curriculum. His roommate is also from our state, a very small school in a rural area, and has struggled so much this year. He was just not prepared. He studies constantly and is still not doing well. He may have never learned to study properly. I don’t really know. But the suggestions of online courses and self study and whatever else you can do to help your student prepare for the rigors of college courses would be wise IMO. Good luck and good for you all for recognizing she may not be properly preparing for what lies ahead within her everyday school experiences.
I had almost the exact same high school experience. I shared the same concerns. I got into 10/11 schools I applied to and I’m currently at Northwestern.
At my high school, there were no AP classes at all. No science courses were offered to seniors, even. The highest math class was calculus 1, which only seniors were allowed to take (and it did not prepare anyone for an AP). There were no science labs for any grade. The school didn’t keep track of what it’s students go after they high school. It didn’t offer any clubs except for the newspaper. The only foreign language offered was a language that’s been dead for years. The English program did not include having to write any essays after 9th grade (just teaching stuff like alliteration, personification, and all over for two years, and some short writing of like one paragraph an assignment). No one in my class of around 45 cared about academics - I was the only one in my entire grade to immediately go on to college.
And yet despite coming from the high school I did, I was able to get accepted to a school considered a peer to the Ivies (ranked in the top 15) and get a really, really good scholarship to the school where I currently go to (ranked in the top 60). I’ve had no problem adjusting to college academics - I haven’t gotten anything lower than an A in my three and a half semesters here. So going to a small, non-rigorous high school isn’t going to make you or anyone an automatic rejection if you do well there. I think that I’m proof of that.
The issue is not APs or not. The issue is the extent to which your child is being cheated of an education and extent to which your child is not getting out if his/her day what other children are getting from their schools. Supplementing is a dicy issue. Should kids who spend the day in school and already have homework have to do extra after they finish the school’s home work, much of which can be busy work or pitched at too low a level? I’d either move (oh yes I did) or ask the school if your child can swap online (Stanford, CTY, etc) classes (or classes at a local college) for classroom based typical instruction. I would not think any kid would want to spend the day on work mastered at home years earlier and that is what poor schools often make kids to. By the way, my kids who were top in one school had major catch up to do when moved to another district that had high achieving kids. The disparities were marked and unfortunate for the kids left in the losing district.
Yes, this is a problem. Too many “gifted” programs just assume that it’s OK for kids to waste their entire day with low level instruction in school and then that they will be happy to spend what should be their spare time pursuing the appropriate education their school did not provide. Some kids will want to do this and be able to get through their school homework quickly in order to do so. Others may have outside interests which make this difficult to accomplish or may simply not want to spend even more hours in their day on schoolwork. There is no one answer for every child in this unfortunate situation.
@MYOS1634 Love the Gilmore Girls reference! <3 Paris