How do you know if your child would be competitive at top schools?

MyrtleD
Mon, 24 Apr 2017 03:48:08 +0000

In our school system, families in the know (through older children or through a grapevine of overachieving hard-driving parents) enroll their gifted students into accelerated programs at the local university, where the students finish four years of math and English in two years. By the time they are high school sophomores, they are taking AP English and Calculus BC; that opens their schedules considerably for other classes down the line. We, on the other hand, had no idea that the high school schedule was so limited and that it was so difficult to fit in all the courses and stay in music as well. (Decades ago when I was in high school, I think we had 7 periods a day with lots of time for classes, electives, study hall. Not so any more.) My son tested out of 10th grade English so he could take American Literature this year, and tested out of freshman science so he could take Biology. He tells me he wished he had known how easy biology was going to be, because he could have tried to test out of that, as well. His focus on science and math is an attempt to try to catch up to some of these accelerated students. He and several peers petitioned the principal to allow them to take AP English as juniors, but she refused. Frankly, he hates the classes that aren’t AP’s as the other students tend to be unmotivated and the material too easy. He’s doing AP World History this year and will take the SAT subject test in that and math. His transcript will have more courses on it than most because his summer classes in Spanish and government will appear there. No, he won’t look like every other kid that applies to top colleges, but he won’t, I think, look like a slacker, either.

He spends around two hours a day outside of school playing trumpet, whether in musical ensembles, lessons, or practicing. So saying that music isn’t demanding sounds kind of ignorant to me. He listens to classical and jazz in his spare time and definitely knows his stuff. He’s considering self studying AP music theory senior year. There is a reason Einstein played violin all through his life, and continued to perform in symphony orchestras. Music stimulates the brain in ways that other subjects (and sports, I suspect) do not. It certainly helps with concentration and creative thinking and itself is a form of communication. I’d never demand that my son give up music just to check off boxes on someone’s college recommendations list. How odd for so many people to dismiss it as unimportant just because it takes a spot on a schedule that could be filled with a more conventional class.