<p>Have you tested her vision and hearing lately, in the past month even?</p>
<p>SteveMA, not in the past month, but yearly. And she does have glasses, which she uses in school. She also has problems understanding stuff when she stays after school for extra help and it’s one on one.</p>
<p>I don’t know about now, but not taking chemistry…or any lab sciences wasn’t necessarily a barrier for some older undergrad classmates at my LAC(Oberlin) back in the mid-late '90s. </p>
<p>Some took as little as two years of “rocks for jocks” type science courses(i.e. Environmental science) without lab at a prep school and were admitted. Granted, this really limited them in what STEM requirement courses they felt comfortable taking and sometimes caused them problems later on (i.e. Grad school stats requirement, MBA calculus requirement, etc). It also manifested itself in the sometimes problematic reasoning skills and general knowledge level of such classmates. </p>
<p>However, I don’t think going their route is wise from an educational standpoint. </p>
<p>If she has serious weaknesses with math, she may want to consider taking stats in high school as that’s much easier than pre-calc/calc and will be applicable someone aspiring to be a decent journalist. </p>
<p>She can then consider taking college-level pre-calc/calculus as a summer course before or right after freshman year so she can concentrate on it and with tutoring, do reasonably well on it.</p>
<p>Unless “Business math” contains a reasonable amount of statistics, I’d take stats instead. Not only would that be easier than pre-calc/calc IME, but also highly relevant to her journalistic career…or any career for that matter.</p>
<p>She’s good at English, but she’s not considering journalism. She loves kids and is very good with them, and is thinking about teaching kindergarten or early elementary. She will have 2 lab sciences no matter what, because Integrated Science has a lab component, as does Biology, which she’s taking this year. She took Environmental Science last year. I actually think it’s her logic/reasoning skills that are the problem with math, so statistics would be tough as well. I agree some people who aren’t great at math can do ok with statistics. I never liked math but did get Bs. Never went higher than Algebta 2 in high school, but took statistics in college and got an A. Her problems with math are on a whole other level, unfortunately.</p>
<p>Also, she’s not considering Business math. Maybe you got that from another thread? lol</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>For the sake of her young students in the future, I hope she’s able to overcome her problems with math. </p>
<p>I’ve heard from several friends who teach HS and college math that one reason why so many American students, especially girls struggle with math in late HS and/or college is partially due to the “math-phobia” and poor mathematical foundation they’ve picked up from many of their K-8 teachers.</p>
<p>She’s ok with basic math. I think she can handle explaining kindergarten level, first grade. In fact, she was allowed to shadow her old first grade teacher for a “career day” thing and ended up helping some kids with math. She really sympathized with the kids having trouble. lol</p>
<p>^ Agreed. My D’s teacher last year went on and on about how she couldn’t do math (she normally taught English, long story). I ended up having to re-teach big chunks at home.</p>
<p>I skipped chemistry and bombed my physics state test an have been admitted to a bunch of schools. She will be fine!</p>
<p>My S missed something in Junior high Math. Don’t know what, but it threw him off, and he never ejoyed math after that even though he had some ability. Everyone learns in a different way, and Math is a cumulative skill, so if you don’t master something early on, it’s doubly hard when you try to learn something later. That and having a different style of learning can make it difficult. Has she tried Kahn Academy videos on the web? He has lots for math, and quite a few for biology. Each one covers one subject. They are short, and he is a master at explaining things. He uses visual and audio learning in short presentations. They might be a good tool for her.</p>
<p>I think with the PASSHE colleges – Pennsylvania’s “directional states” – there is no meaningful admissions barrier if you can read and write at grade level, and graduate from high school. At most of them, the 75th percentile level on SAT scores is around 520-530 per test, and the 25th percentile is 100 points lower. (West Chester is higher, but not by that much.) They all (again, with the exception of West Chester) have admissions rates between 60-80%, but I am not certain who it is who gets rejected. At my kids’ school – a well regarded academic magnet, to be sure, but one where half the kids scored below 550 on any SAT – the students who wanted to go to a PASSHE college (besides West Chester) generally did not apply to more than one or two. And while I can’t say that no one was ever rejected, the school folklore was certainly that if you were in good standing academically and capable of completing the application (something that wasn’t always easy for everyone), you were in.</p>