<p>Well this is to serve others and the misconception of “advanced” courses. If you are reading this and if you hare in Honors, High Honors, AP, and AP Highest Honors (new course) you are wasting your time if your SAT’s and regents do not match up!</p>
<p>For example my friend goes to a private school and is taking all Honors classes and 3 AP’s. He wants to go to NYU but his regents scores are in the 80’s low 90’s and sat scores are in the 1700 range. This obviosuly tells the admissions person this is not a competetive school and they will not account those coruses as honors or AP. </p>
<p>Another example is in my situation. I attend one of the top schools in New York: Scarsdale High School. I take 1 Honors Calculus course, 1 Low Honors English Course, Regular History (food for thought) and second year spanish. Now looking at these courses you may think well this kid is just average. This is where you are wrong and this is where college admissions pay close attention. The average score in scarsdale SAT are above 600 in every section. In my honors Calculus class the average sat in math section is 780. IN low honors English average is 750. Regents are too easy for even frist year spanish students so teachers administer Ap exams to third year students. My sat score was 1900 without studying or any preperation. Now for calculus honors we get almost 90 problems a night and for low honors English a book is due every month. We are also encoruaged to take AP testing in both subject areas. Obviosuly my school standards are much higher than my friends.</p>
<p>So you may be thinking okay so what? Well this is to people who think the SAT’s do not count and that the admissions officers do not care about it. Inact the SAT’s and ACT’s are so important that most colleges take averages of many schools so that they know which school is compettive or not. So if your taking 1 ap course and arent above 1600 then you got a problem. Many schools honors and Ap classes are not even equavilent to reguar classes in my school. So dont expect to go to harvard with every coruse being AP and an SAt score below 2000. This is just to wake people up. </p>
<p>Another example in my cal-H class we started with the derevative. We did not even review. THis is how intese this honors class is. Now if you compare it to another school who says it is Honors Cal and starts to review for a month or two and then starts limits in January, now isnt that not fair? This is why there is SAT averages of many schools and this is why colleges use them. It is a benchmark that will show colleges how hard the coruse was. </p>
<p>Also the first new course is coming out next years to compettive school. Highest Honors AP. It is coming to my school next year and fieldston in two years. It is equavilent to a second year Ivy college work. Expect over 150 to 200 pages of work a night!</p>
<p>…what is this about… this thread has no significance…by the way, most schools start limits in the first week of school.</p>
<p>By the way…they determine if your AP class is easy or hard from your AP Exam test scores not SATs… If there is a discontinuity, then it was either very hard or very easy.</p>
<p>Yikes! I tend to be understanding when I see typos in posts, but in a post like this, where the poster seems to be bragging about how great his school and its students are, so many errors are a tad hard to overlook.</p>
<p>Your assertion that kids with average SAT scores who take honors/AP courses are wasting their time and have no chance whatsoever at competitive colleges is sadly mistaken. The SAT is not an IQ test. A multitude of outside factors (economic background, school’s focus on standardized test prep, etc.) factor significantly into a student’s score.</p>
<p>Students who aren’t attending a “competitive school” should take the most challenging courseload they possibly can. Of course the “competitiveness” of an applicant’s school is considered in order to determine the rigor of a given transcript. But if their school does not even offer AP courses, how can the adcoms count it against them? Ask any admissions officer in the country whether they would rather see the most rigorous transcript possible coupled with so-so SAT scores or a stratospheric score with no other record of academic achievement, and you’ll receive the same answer time and time again.</p>
<p>By the way…no one on CC really cares about how hard your school is. If you’re looking for some sort of reverence, you won’t find it here.</p>
<p>Lol, 1900s on the SAT is actually pretty bad (even without studying). Nothing much to brag about here. You go to Scarsdale? That score is certainly low for Scarsdale…</p>
<p>“Highest Honors AP” – sounds like a heavy dose of grade and course inflation, yucky.</p>
<p>By the way, everyone on CC already knows which US schools are the most respected and competitive.</p>
<p>Guys I went back to scarsdale in my senior year i am just giving you insight because i expeirnced a prep school and the coruses were nothing like the ones in my public school. I just watned to inform those and a woman from barnard come in and said that SAT’s are weighted very heavily especially to competitve school at least the top 100</p>
<p>competitve school have low honors, honors, high honors, AT (advanced topic), Ap (advanced placemnet), Ap Highest honors. These are only offered in magnet schools or extremly comptive schools</p>
<p>i am not trying to say that i am smart because I know that I am smart but I am not like a genius. Everyone is smart but what I am trying to say is and i know it is vauge becuase i wrote this late at night, that this si why SAT’s exist to distinguish competitive school agaisnt uncompetitve schools. For example a guy taking an Ap course at Bronx prep is no where close at the difficult as a regular level at Scarsdale high school.</p>
<p>Your point, while murkily stated, may contain an iota of truth–AP classes can be either easy or hard. But the use of so many ‘honors’ prefixes denotes that your school is using bloated language to boost its appearance of difficulty–most schools in general have maybe three or four class types - AP, honors, regular, or remedial. One should not assume that extraneous class names denote extraneously difficult classes.</p>
