Math Sequence Question/AP Stats [in 12th grade after AP calculus in 11th grade]

Applying to College
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I don’t think there’s a contradiction between these two statements. You can show continued or even increased rigor and still have space to do an elective you enjoy that is not too academically taxing in senior year. This is often the way our school tends to go - continued/improved rigor in core subjects, and an arts elective as the fun,not academically taxing add-on.

Ours is quite different. Some kids do this (but it’s not easy like yours seems to be), but the basic structure is that generally the most advanced math kids will be “+2” and do BC in 12th - the school requires AB to be completed before BC. It doesn’t seem to have hurt with admissions at top colleges, just like the fact that the school offers no honors or AP courses to freshmen doesn’t seem to hurt, presumably because school context is taken into account. (In fact,I know that two of the three kids who got into Stanford for this year - all for stem majors -“only” did math to AB, because they were in C26’s class, I don’t know about the third.) Btw, kids at our school who do AP Stats tend to only do it after precalc, which seems different to the progression someone outlined above of doing it after alg 2, as kids are encouraged to do math to at least precalc.

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We spent a lot of time fretting about this with our kids in high school, because they attended a private religious school that had mandatory Bible classes which took up a lot of space in the schedule. My oldest was aiming for very selective schools, but she was a chorus kid and really wanted/needed chorus in her schedule, too, just for a mental health break.

The school did not allow any summer classes or DE. But we managed to petition, and they finally allowed her to do two summer “independent study” options for Bible, where she had to research and write a paper and then present it before a panel – she did this for two summers, and it got her out of a semester class each time.

So, she filled her schedule with AP Seminar and AP Research (her choice), and she took only a standard semester each of the required Gov and Econ, because the AP classes didn’t fit (and she also had no interest). The school also limited students to six AP classes total over four years with only rare exceptions granted. She ended up with seven plus Multivariable Calc, which was weighted but not technically an AP.

This all did get her acceptances at a couple of selective schools – not Ivies – but largely because I think colleges do consider what is available to the student in context. (She had some solid extracurriculars and awards as well.)

My younger girl’s reachiest school was Georgia Tech, which is in-state for us. Their OOS acceptance is in the single digits, but in state is around 30 percent. She had the grades and scores and extracurriculars, but she was told by her school that she MUST take AP Latin her senior year in order to get into Tech. (She had honors Latin 4 her junior year.) She didn’t want to do that (her older sister was the only kid in AP Latin her senior year, which she absolutely loved and went on to major in classics, lol, so we were pretty familiar with what it entailed). She opted to take a weighted STEM Seminar course instead – it was a year-long project class in which she had to build something techy. We thought that would make sense if she were aiming for a tech school (she also applied to RIT and WPI, etc). Her guidance counselor told her passive-aggressively, “Well, no one has gotten into Tech without a fourth year of language, but maybe you’ll be the first.” :roll_eyes:

Spoiler – she got in, and she’s there now. And that guidance counselor left the school (not because of this, but I think her advice in general may have been problematic for many kids).

Oh, and one more thing – younger girl didn’t vibe with her honors pre-calc teacher, so she wasn’t recommended to take BC Calc her junior year, even though she’d been on that track. She took AB Calc instead, then BC Calc her senior year, which isn’t a common path at her school. Turned out to be a great choice for her because she loved the AB Calc teacher, and he wrote her a solid rec letter. And then she had a ton of confidence going into BC Calc and breezed through most of it (until they hit Lagrange Error Bound which everybody hates, lol).

All that to say, this is such an individual decision based on the kid and their interests and types of schools they’re shooting for. And guidance counselors can give bad advice. But we were assured several times that for a high-performing student, AP Stats in high school should only be taken in addition to – never instead of – a more rigorous Calc track. And that was the correct decision even for my non-mathy kids aiming for reachy schools.

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Does she have a prospective school list? I can’t imagine there’s anywhere, rigor wise, she won’t be qualified for. And that assumes taking stats senior year.

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Only sort of at this point. Partly due to she does not know what she wants to study. She also has only started digging into schools. She seems to want a mid size; like 4000 - 10k students roughly. I’m going to take her to all kinds to let her get a feel.

But … Notre Dame, UChicago, Northwestern, Duke, Rice are her dreams schools at the moment. She started with all the Ivys and I’ve been trying to get her Dream School list at least slightly in reality. We visited Notre Dame and UChicago and she like both of those and I could see both of those working well for her. I worry about the greek culture at Duke and Vandy (sort of on her list). She liked Northwestern but I’m less sure that fits. I might have to move to Evanston though - that is a beautiful area. She did not like Loyola but I’m not certain why - I thought it would be a good fit for her. She was dead set on moving to NYC and going to NYU, but I think the more she learns the less that is an interest.

Generally speaking, she is very personable and social, but is annoyed by the “bro” and “popular” culture at school. She is also annoyed in classes where students mess around or don’t take it serious. My son was the same, but more shy, and had the same ideas; now is at Miami Ohio in Honors and joined a frat so who knows. Currently she is set against any big party school or greek school; like Miami, OSU and Dayton. She interested interested in Denison, Kenyon and Case and I could see any of those working for her, but she also seems to want to leave Ohio at the moment. Our son got accepted to all of those so we know them well. I need to take her around more to figure out what characteristics in a school she would thrive in yet. I’ve been sending her names to start looking into. Pitt, Rochester, Richmond, William and Mary, Davidson, Hamilton. I’m sure others will come up.

It’s still early though. The schools my son loved in 10th are not the schools he was picking between when the time came.

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Some kids that love NYU - uber urban - may love GW (small campus and a first year true campus a few miles away), Pitt - urban with a campus, College of Charleston - smaller with a campus (downtown), UMN (big big campus in the city). My daughter sought urban but was excited to see Elon, Miami (Ohio), and James Madison - all three came right off.

I got news for her - they party at Notre Dame - the craizest guy I know went there - and they have brilliant nerds at Ohio State. Yes, some schools may be moreso than others.

Then when you look at a Denison (small town), Kenyon - rural…now she’s off NYU but is she off urban?? Because those wouldn’t go, etc.

It’s early - so that’s good.

Anyway, I think she’ll be worthy of anywhere she applies.

And don’t forget, a school may be beneath her stats - but lots have not just Honors but sub Honors (like the Charleston Fellows and I’m sure there are more at other schools).

Good luck in her search.

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Thanks. I know she / we are all over the place. But that’s on purpose. I want her to see many different sizes, vibes, rural / urban, etc. What she thinks she wants and what she might actually like / thrive in are not necessarily the same. I think she likes the idea of a big city life, but is scare of the negatives that go with that (and dad is scare about that too). I was trying to sell her on Alabama and Florida the other day.

Again .. the son was so much easier. He wanted to stay in Ohio as pre-med student and we only visited Vandy as we were in the area. It’s the only school he applied to and did not get accepted but by then he already decided against it.

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I would suggest she look at the Jesuit colleges. Size wise, they sound really very good for her. The Jesuits have higher education well crafted, in my opinion. Many of their colleges offer a large variety of majors from humanities to Stem. My younger child graduated from Santa Clara. She also wanted a mid size college. So…look at the Jesuit list.

Check out Holy Cross, for example. And of course, we are big fans of Santa Clara…if CA is of interest and fits your budget!

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Thanks. We visited Loyola Chicago, I liked it, she didn’t but could not really say why. Of course we saw UChicago and Northwestern inbetween Loyola. Their environmental program and how they heat the campus and use the waste from that for all their soap, etc., I thought was really interesting. We will eventually see Dayton and try to get her over it being a party school - but it’s a big party school. I’ll have to look at the others. She almost went to a Jesuit high school but decided against it due to their restrictive course scheduling. My son went to UD Jesuit for a couple of years before we left Detroit for Ohio and it was great for him.

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You might look the part score of each on niche. For example, Xavier in Cincy gets a B- so likely not crazy and not far from Dayton, which gets an A+. @EconPop can confirm but yeah, sounds like it. Creighton isn’t far and gets a B+, so likely ok. Loyola MD also gets a B+. You can play around with that.

Good luck.

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@RookMSU , I think the “party school” label gets tossed around too loosely to actually be useful. People use it as a negative to downgrade schools they thought little of anyway, and ignore it when it’s been applied to a school they like.

I remember when my son20 was looking at colleges, we were surprised to see Wake Forest and Notre Dame listed as top Party Schools. Other parents and students ignored that because those schools’ prestige and other rankings appealed to them. However, some would use the designation to warn against schools like WVU or Alabama, schools which appealed to them less anyway.

Any college is going to have parties. The larger the school, the more parties will exist. But it is also true that any school will also have a substantial number of students who are not heavy partiers. It’s not as if any college calculus class is going to be full of students moaning through hangovers on a Wednesday morning.

U Dayton students have fun. Some of that fun for some of the students includes parties. U Dayton has a couple of big event campus-wide parties, like its St Patrick’s Day outdoor party. But that is contained to a couple of blocks among student housing (the houses, not dorms). And honestly, as far as parties go, it’s more of a good ol’ time and far from a wild Bosch painting of debauchery. I unintentionally got caught amid one of these celebrations while visiting my son his freshman year and we had a great time. There were a lot of non-drinking students amid the throngs, gleefully absorbing the atmosphere of joy and fun.

UD students also have fun in places like ArtStreet, ArtStreet : University of Dayton, Ohio where students have a place to practice, exhibit, and perform their creative talents, while also living amongst group of similarly-minded people. Then there’s the Flyer Fund group where business students get hands-on fun and experience, and compete among a select group of impressive universities Davis Center for Portfolio Management : University of Dayton, Ohio . UD has the largest student-run fund in the country and has since 2021.

UD is ranked 50th for Engineering by USN&WR, amid a group that includes Notre Dame, Brown, Rensselaer Polytech Institute, CWRU, and UofFL. Though my son was not an engineering major, and my own aborted Engineering major was long ago, I was impressed by UD’s engineering school and facilities.

So yes, some UD students party. But those are the students who prioritize partying and you’ll find them on every college campus. There are also many students who prioritize learning while also having their kind of fun which includes less (or no) drinking, and UD offers ample opportunities for these students to do what they went to college for.

My son drank in college and liked to hang out socially, but he was not a heavy partier. He never joined (or wanted to join) a fraternity. He was more of a quiet socializer and had a smaller circle around him while at UD. He enjoyed attending UD basketball games, watching soccer matches on campus when he walked past them. He enjoyed his friends who studied Engineering, those in Business School, in Poly-Sci, or whatever major they pursued. My son is agnostic and had no difficulty with that at UD. It was a nice time and place for him to spend 4 years.

Another under-recognized perk is the Marianist Exchange Program, which allows students to study at one of the three sister schools for a year with no additional charges (other than travel expenses). For a student who might like to live in another state for a year, this is a great opportunity. The other two universities are St Mary’s in San Antonio, and Chaminade University of Honolulu

I could go on and on about the benefits of UD

Good luck to your student on making her choice! She seems like a great student and a great young person.

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You know, I’ve never thought about it that way but yeah, that’s a true statement.

Thanks for your experience too.

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@HCPP20 can you please give some input about Holy Cross?

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If you’re looking for a large LAC, Holy Cross is in my opinion the perfect Goldilocks size at 3,250 students. Not too small, not too big. Located in the second largest city in New England, Worcester MA, with other colleges nearby forming a consortium of higher ed. No Greek life, small and eternally optimistic D1 sports, rah rah and plenty of other non-party activities going on. The Jesuit core is designed to expose students to all aspects of liberal arts. STEM is rigorous and facilities are excellent in the Fauci Integrated Science Complex. Humanities and Classics are well regarded and the college really embraces the holistic, well rounded education of its students. Social justice focused. For admission chances, I think the OP’s question about math sequence is fine, since student took AP Calculus. Four years of core classes thru high school is what they’re looking for.

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