<p>^Well, off topic I suppose – sorry! – but there are good things about it. My kids really liked concentrating their efforts on just 4 classes instead of 8, for instance. And it felt good to progress through a class at a fairly rapid rate. There were good things.</p>
<p>But for music … it did cause problems with scheduling at times!</p>
<p>I’m definitely one of these people. 4.0 UW gpa but only seven APs because of taking band and jazz all four years (two credits out of a seven-credit schedule). Seventh semester grades were just finalized, and I know should be first in the class intelligence-wise, but I’m going to be dropping down to at least fifth just because of missing out on these AP classes. Our school offers an honors band, but we don’t get a gpa boost from it, and all they do is play a prepared piece once a quarter. No opportunities for All-State or anything to that effect, we’re not a part of any sort of ranking system here.</p>
<p>Question for anyone that might have any insight on this - would being drum major and an unquestionable leader in both band and jazz (my director would attest) help to balance the loss of those AP classes?</p>
<p>^I would say DEFINITELY – at a whole host of different colleges.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there are very likely plenty of colleges out there that reward applicants more for a really rigorous academic load rather than for band and your associated leadership in band. When I say “reward applicants,” I mean in terms of scholarships and/or admittance.</p>
<p>If you’re number 5 in your class with high stats and those EC’s, I would think a lot of colleges would be very happy to have you… but would they be just as excited about rewarding you with their best scholarships? I think they “should” be … but they might prefer to reward the kid with 12 APs instead. Who knows? Only time will tell. :)</p>
<p>Good luck! :)</p>
<p>Guess I fail to see why this is an "either/or"question. It is certainly possible to take (and score 5’s) on 10 - 15 AP exams, be valedictorian and perform in multiple music ensembles on an All State level (or higher), including showing leadership by being concertmaster or first chair of an instrument…and have music be counted as a class for 4 years…I know multiple students who have done this. They basically gave up a study hall. All have done extremely well in college admissions. This is no different than performing superbly both in athletics and academically.</p>
<p>And the students who accomplish this do so because they LOVE music.</p>
<p>
Good for their school for allowing it. At my school–with stringent pre-AP prerequisite policies, additional math/science graduation requirements, and honors-level students NEVER taking study halls–it was impossible. Now that the school has switched to modified block scheduling, there is a mandatory no-exceptions study hall (same result).</p>
<p>Actually, there was a loophole: district orchestra met weekly at night instead of as a regular-period class. Our valedictorian played cello and was thus able to participate in All-State Orchestra without impact to academics. Most band members could theoretically do the same with marching band–except that marching band was more like an additional 15-hour weekly commitment.</p>
<p>Different schools are different. Given the other responses on this thread, I think I can reasonably say that many schools, not just mine, are unsupportive of the arts and force the OP into an either-or proposition.</p>
<p>Our high school didn’t even offer study halls. They don’t exist. All students are fully scheduled. The only exception was kids on IEPs who have a period for “academic support,” and even that wasn’t a true study hall. </p>
<p>We also cut PE. 90% of kids fulfilled their PE requirement outside of school hours, either thru an interscholastic sport or a scheduled activity that they signed up for outside of school - like dance, yoga, karate or horseback riding. A coach or instructor had to sign off that the student participated for at least 30 hours during the year. The other 10% of kids took PE one day out of every 6, during their elective period. </p>
<p>Also, due to budget cuts, our high school only allowed kids to sign up for 6 classes instead of 7. We had 6 periods per day, and every student took 6 classes. This meant that kids who chose to stay in band weren’t just worrying about giving up an AP class (which frankly, to me isn’t a huge deal) but they couldn’t even take any one semester electives like public speaking or contemporary issues (which has an honors level) because band, chorus and orchestra were all full-year classes. Maybe they should think about offering music as a semester elective…</p>
<p>Too vague a question - it depends entirely on the level at which the musician plays. If we’re talking Midori, I’m fairly certain her music career by age 18 would get her noticed at just about any of the Ivies and, assuming she had a decent GPA and SAT, she’d be in. If we’re talking about being first chair in the Podunk High School Wind Ensemble (which we are in most cases on this board, let’s face it), then APs are clearly more important (assuming one did well in them).</p>
<p>At our school, band is 2 unweighted classes per semester. Because of the school board’s requirement for a one semester health class and 2 years of PE class (with no substitutions) - that started for my daughter’s class, it became an either/or situation. My daughter opted to drop band after the first semester since it required her to take 2 classes each semester, and only one semester counted towards PE. She realized that she could not be in band (do the required 20+ hours outside of class) and be competitive for the colleges she wished to go to. She would have to drop AP classes (up to 3) she felt she needed, and she felt the time commitment to band, made taking AP classes and doing well in them, next to impossible. No one in band was attempting her schedule, even though the band director kept telling her she could do it, others had before her. (We did not find that to be true - kids did indeed have to make a decision, and the band kids were not going to highly competitive colleges. The band director was very demanding, and would not work with his students at all, our school band is small for our size school. )</p>
<p>The one semester she attempted it she went to bed many times between 1-2 am on school nights. The following semester they wanted her to add a class (PE), and she said no - all the band classes before hers had received PE credit for both semesters, not just one. She’s much happier now and went back to ballet, and added an extracurricular that she LOVES and will help her in her future career plans.</p>
<p>BTW: Block scheduling at our school means you take half your classes every other day. (That’s a simplified explanation, but essentially what it is.) I would worry about taking AP’s a few months after taking the class, that other block scheduling way may have left you with.</p>
<p>If your S or D is majoring in music, then I think taking band would be best, but if you are planning on majoring in something else, non-creative, then you might have to forgo it.</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate that some schools do not value kids taking band classes. My daughter still plays her flute at home and church.</p>
<p>I agree that Block scheduling (4 classes at a time) makes it tough if the music teachers insist on full year participations. My D attended the IB HS, partly to avoid that. My S went to IB HS too, even though by that time the district HS all had a block rotation with 8 classes at a time, much better for music.</p>
<p>S then opted to take 2 music classes sophomore year. And 1 music class other years. Music definitely dinged his GPA. But we’d do it all over again. Music makes him tick.</p>
<p>My son who is a junior participates in orchestra, and it counts for one elective per trimester. Since he is on a trimester system, orchestra counts for three electives per year!
He then takes five classes per trimester. He will graduate with 9 AP/Honors classes which I feel is enough for him. Participating in music has actually changed his field of study, as initially he wanted to study programming, but is now considering Sound Design.</p>
<p>It should be the rare case where a student would have to drop music in order to maintain a course load that is sufficiently rigorous for admission to a top university.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, the exact count of AP’s taken is not really that big of a deal. Understand that AP classes are generally equivalent to entry level courses at an average college. It serves no purpose to prove over and over (and over) again that you can handle moderately difficult coursework of this type. </p>
<p>Very few students are admitted to top schools based on an academic hook in the first place and virtually none that I’m aware of are admitted based solely on the high volume of AP classes they’ve taken. Keep in mind, there were more than 1.8 million AP tests taken last year. Doing something that is done by others more than 1.8 million times each year seems a poor means to distinguish yourself in the application pool for an elite college.</p>
<p>As others have suggested, it is certainly important that you take a rigorous academic core of classes and that you do well in those classes. But I can see no benefit for a committed musician to drop music solely to add yet another AP class to their schedule.</p>
<p>Interestingly, I attended the All-Southern California High School Honors Symphony Orchestra concert this past weekend and the conductor, a Northwestern University professor, interrupted the concert to deliver a speech on this exact topic. He said that the students up on that stage were on the “right track” if they wanted to attend Northwestern or other top colleges. Back when he was a high school conductor he had never understood why some of his students would abandon their commitment to music simply to add APs. And now that he is a college professor he realizes even more what a mistake it was for his students to abandon music under the mistaken belief that it would improve their college admissions odds.</p>
<p>My own experience bears this out to some degree as well. I was a full-on theater geek in HS and, as a result, ended up with far fewer AP classes (and a lower weighted GPA) than a good number of my classmates. Yet I was the only student from my graduating class admitted to Stanford. I believe that maintaining my commitment to theater served me far better than maxing out my weighted GPA would have.</p>
<p>^The problem is when a student is being compared to musically-talented students from the same high school with stronger/more rigorous academic records. As in my anecdotal example, the “sacrifice” required to demonstrate musical ability, such as participation in All-State, is not equivalent across all instruments. Adcoms are unlikely to adjust for (or care about) this level of detail.</p>
<p>Think about it: if Stanford could choose another student from your high school who had the same high-level commitment to theater PLUS more AP classes, why wouldn’t they choose that student?</p>
<p>at our schools band counts as pe in the fall and arts in the spring and all students are required to take arts and pe. once you have those credits satisfied, you can opt to take band as pass/fail. so it wont hurt your gpa. </p>
<p>having to drop band (or whatever) to take pe so you can get the IB diploma was, i am sure, not the only option. kids here take some things in summer school (like pe) so that they can meet certain requirements during the school year.</p>
<p>I could imagine almost no scenario in which taking 1 incremental AP class in and of itself would be the hook that gets you into a school like Stanford (especially if doing so causes you to drop a subject you are otherwise passionate about). It is quality, not quantity that matters. </p>
<p>Stanford admissions addresses this point on its website: “The students who thrive at Stanford are those who are genuinely excited about learning, not necessarily those who take every single AP, Honors, or Accelerated class just because it has that name.”</p>
<p>[Academic</a> Preparation : Stanford University](<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/basics/selection/prepare.html]Academic”>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/basics/selection/prepare.html)</p>
<p>My rule of thumb in HS for scheduling beyond the required courses was to take whatever interested me and focus my energies on doing as well in my chosen courses as my abilities would allow. I honestly didn’t give much thought to how my record compared to others in my high school. (Thank goodness I didn’t because otherwise I would have been bored to tears sitting in some AP computer science class or something while my theater friends were off peforming before thousands of students at the state drama festival.)</p>
<p>I should have included this quote from the Stanford admissions website as well:</p>
<p>“We want to be clear that this is not a case of ‘whoever has the most APs wins.’ Instead, we look for thoughtful, eager and highly engaged students who will make a difference at Stanford and the world beyond, and we expect that they have taken high school course loads of reasonable and appropriate challenge in the context of their school.”</p>
<p>^don’t know if you saw it in my earlier thread, clapuma, but I made the point that there are actually colleges out there that literally count the number of AP classes to rank their accepted students for merit scholarships. We learned this just a few weeks ago. They count how many APs and weight the student’s (idk) “scholarship score” accordingly, with the highest scores getting the highest merit scholarships. Ugh. That made me sick when I heard it.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree with you – 9-10 APs or 13-14 APs (that’s about as many as most kids can get here, given all the other required curriculum) – won’t matter for admissions in the vast majority of places (or ALL places?), particularly when you have music or some other passion to back up the smaller number. But the number of APs may actually count for merit scholarships in who knows how many schools! I, personally, think that is very short-sighted and narrow and, most likely, ineffective for the purpose they have in mind (to gather the “best” students at their university). But it’s their program, not mine. And, can you believe it? They didn’t think to ask my opinion about it! :)</p>
<p>SimpleLife, it wouldn’t surprise me to find schools that use AP counts as a means to allocate merit aid. That’s an easy short hand for a school to use that is just trying to fill seats with some academic talent. In such case there’d be no need to scrutinize the applications with any particularity. (Moreover, students with a high number of AP credits tend to graduate early, which would free up the merit aid for the next batch of students.)</p>
<p>In any event, my point is that a high AP count is not the magic key to gaining admission to an elite college. Life would be much simpler (though not necessarily better) if college admissions were simply a numbers game based on weighted GPA and SAT. Everyone could just cram their class schedules with APs and hope to get as many A’s as possible. But if admissions really worked like that, there would be no need to consult “experts”” (like Sally Rubenstone, the Ask the Dean author) who have made lucrative careers out of dispensing college admissions advice to anxious families. </p>
<p>That’s why it’s especially curious to me that “Dean” Robenstone is suggesting to students that APs are some sort of admissions panacea. In fact, she just repeated this advice in her most recent Ask the Dean post, one in which she advises a high school freshman that he should drop drama so he can take more AP classes and shoot for valedictorian. I really don’t understand why she keeps pushing AP classes so much. But the fact that she is paid by the College Board, which happens to administer the AP exams, is enough for me to take anything she says on this topic with a grain of salt. </p>
<p>In any event, I would never have considered dropping theater in order to join my HS classmates in shooting for a max GPA. And perhaps it was exactly that attitude that made my application uniquely attractive to the Stanford adcom.</p>
<p>
My argument is that 9-10 APs + musical passion vs. 13-14 APs + musical passion is a difficult handicap to overcome. In reality, many students with the “smaller number” are competing against classmates whose extracurricular profiles are equally strong, with a just-slightly-stronger academic rigor profile. If the 9-10 APs student is NOT stronger in ANY other significant way than the 13-14 APs student, why not choose the quantitatively “better” one?</p>
<p>
Actually, the scenario is more like an extra 4 AP courses (1 course per year), and the valedictorian also plays cello at an equally high level–but orchestra is structured differently than band, so s/he didn’t have to sacrifice the course slots.</p>
<p>In even-more-anecdotal fashion, I conjecture that liberal arts colleges are more likely than universities to adjust for lower course rigor due to fine arts pursuits. Most of my 4-year band friends are attending excellent-by-any-measure colleges, but not HYPS-level (unless hooked in other non-academic ways). A French horn player went to Columbia, but he skipped two years of band class to take APs. The valedictorian went to MIT, but she did orchestra outside of formal school hours (an option not available to woodwind players, except for the extremely time-consuming marching band).</p>
<p>^And in the scenario I was describing, Keilexandra, the 9-10 AP student is the valedictorian, with the most AP courses he could possibly take, because of the way the orchestra program and class schedules are structured. Impossible to fit in another AP, unless he gave up orchestra for a semester (for 1 more AP) or more semesters (for more APs). </p>
<p>Why wouldn’t a school take the 13-14 AP student with great musical talent vs. a 9-10 AP student with great musical talent? Good question … They probably wouldn’t. But you’re assuming that all other things are equal. Which is kind of silly. Rarely do two students of that caliber present themselves as entirely equal except for one, single factor – the number of APs.</p>
<p>And so, that’s my point … When you’re dealing with kids of that caliber, simply counting APs is stupid. It’s just artificially weighting something that, imo, doesn’t deserve that much weight. If you can excel in 10 APs, become the valedictorian, and have excellent musical achievement, and complete the most rigorous academic course load available (considering that you took 4 years of music and really excelled in that arena), and have perfect SATs, and other achievements that are very commendable, then WHY would it be beneficial for the colleges to weight the kid who took 13-14 over the kid who took 9-10?? That 13-14 kid could obviously fit 13-14 in his/her schedule, for whatever reason, and the other kid couldn’t. Colleges say they look at each student individually and holistically, with regard to what is available to each student at their individual schools. And I’m saying … if they’re counting APs, EVER, at that level, to weight a scale for merit scholarships (or admissions), then they’re losing sight of the big picture and focusing in on a very narrow facet of a much larger picture. And not serving themselves well either, necessarily. There’s a lot more to future leaders and difference-makers than the number of APs they can complete in four years.</p>