Admirable to whom? Not everyone, that’s for sure. Some would consider it foolish & dangerous.</p>
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LOL! Nor could I.</p>
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It’s a very common way to cram in APs simply to outdo one’s classmates. Some kids really plan far ahead to win the GPA/Val/Sal contest. There was a new thread just the other day from a mom upset because her D was losing out to a kid who had earned honors weighting for band & the mom was making an assumption that this was an easy course not worthy of extra weight. We all percieve things differently from one another. That’s all I’m saying. Lin may not have skipped lunch. I’m speaking in general terms about the wisdom of taking excessive APs. And whether skipping lunch will be viewed as a wonderful commitment to challenging oneself or an unhealthy gamesmanship ploy to boost GPA. </p>
<p>I don’t know Lin, but seeking to score 5s on 16 APs and solitary hobbies of painting & drawing are pointing me to the assumption that he is a less than social kind of kid. That could be welcomed or frowned upon at the school of his choice. And, of course, I could be making a false assumption. But I guarantee I’m not the only one making such an assumption.</p>
<p>If my kids had not taken college classes in the evening, he would have taken more APs per year than he did. There’s no studying or cramming for APs at his school. A 20 minute lunch break is pretty useless for that purpose. I don’t recall any AP-teacher offering extra help before or after class either.
S was/is a sociable kid who joined teams more for the social scene than because they advanced his knowledge. </p>
<p>So you don’t admire Lin. I hope others do. Too few people, it seems, support kids who want to achieve academically.</p>
<p>marite, I never said I don’t admire his achievement. I just think it will be viewed in a larger context. Kids have to juggle many things with their studies & classes. Brilliant as Lin is, he will be viewed as one-dimensional if all his record shows is APs & painting as a hobby. In my town, kids have the option of using their daily lunch period to schedule an extra AP. I am not talking about a study session or cram period. It is an additional course added to be competitive. I abhor this unhealthy trend, instituted partly because of weakness in the school’s ability to prepare kids for competitive admissions. It’s one of the many reasons we won’t send our kids there. </p>
<p>My D could never fit in college classes in the evening with her schedule & commute. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to achieve academically. Some schools will prefer kids like Lin. Some schools will prefer kids like my D.</p>
<p>Stickershock, Like Dstark, I am amazed at the assumptions you make about this young man. Just because in your school it is possible to cram during lunch hour does not mean that this young man is cramming. </p>
<p>And I agree with Dstark that drawing and painting are good hobbies. Furthermore, we don’t know what else the young man might be doing. This is not the sum total of his life! Nor do we know how he will be seen by adcoms. We’re not adcoms.</p>
<p>Let us applaud this young man for his achievements, and let’s leave it at that.</p>
<p>I’m sorry to hear you feel that way. I can sympathize. But that’s a reason to find a different school (perhaps like the school the young man mentioned in the newspaper article attends) and not a reason not to seek academic challenge through AP testing.</p>
<p>Since drawing and painting were certainly my major extra curricular activity growing up and for that matter still are now, I hope that people appreciate that not all of us are performers or extroverts or athletes.</p>
<p>Dstark, to me the excessive APs and quiet painting hobby imply solitude. If there is balance in his life, it wasn’t presented in the article.</p>
<p>Marite, I think you are missing the point. Whether he crams or not, he is seeking to take an excessive amount of APs. This in itself paints a picture. Not a complete one. But it will cause adcoms to ask “Why?” “Why was he spending so much time in stuffy classrooms on Saturday mornings?” All the adcom-authored books speak of them being leery of grinds & grade-grubbers & one-dimensional brains. I stated that “IF all his record shows is APs & painting as a hobby” he will been seen as one-dimensional. Is Lin a Jian Li in the making? Ready to sue if his 13 or more AP perfect scores don’t guarantee him admission to his top choice? Or is he an incredibly well-rounded kid with a more complete story to tell? We don’t know. But I still wonder what his motivation is.</p>
<p>My S took 6APs 2 in 8th grade, and 9 college courses. He was happy as a clam doing so and would have been unhappy taking easier courses.<br>
We don’t know, but it does not seem to prevent you from strongly suggesting that he is a loner, maladjusted, even ready to sue. Sheesh. We Do Not Know. And unless we do, I, for one, am not prepared to say anything derogatory about him.</p>
<p>It’s not that I don’t admire his achievement, it’s pretty incredible, it’s just that I wonder why. </p>
<p>And I don’t necessarily think that acing every AP test means you “learned” anything, it means you memorized things. That’s not a criticism of him, it’s just that I don’t think doing well on AP tests necessarily constitutes “academic achievement” or an intellectual feat. Standardized tests, the SATs and AP tests are more of a memorization challenge than anything else. </p>
<p>“I’m sorry to hear you feel that way. I can sympathize. But that’s a reason to find a different school (perhaps like the school the young man mentioned in the newspaper article attends) and not a reason not to seek academic challenge through AP testing.”</p>
<p>I rather like the school that I go to actually, but it’s just a fact of life - unless you seem to have the perfect personality or are really charismatic, it’s not going to be very easy for a kid socially once s/he hits adolescence if s/he’s seen as “smart” or “nerdy” or “studious” or “intellectual” or god knows what other words we use. Yeah I could’ve gone to the local funky private school and my parents could’ve gone into debt and I would’ve been in a little bubble of wonderfulness, but it’s something that’s present at pretty much any junior high or high school, even the best ones. It’s just how teenagers are. I think I’ll have an easier time of it in college, and Mr. Lin probably will too. My experiences actually have been okay, it’s just there’s the overall assumption people tend to make about me that I have no life because I’m not social all the time and I don’t do sports. And Mr. Lin could very well be a great person who does a lot of things, but at this point he’s known as the AP test guy, and if people were assuming things about him before that isn’t helping.</p>
<p>It’s not 1 in 9.2 billion odds, seeing as your score on AP exams is not determined by chance… For the story to insinuate that it is (or that it’s super-exceptional) is just foolish. Many factors make it so those who get 5s on one test are likely to get 5s on the rest-- school quality, course quality, test-taking skills,and study habits. I’ve taken… gosh, 7 thus far (with 6 more to come)? And I’ve gotten 5s on all of them. I know many other people in this situation too. How is this news? Lots of people are doing this…</p>
<p>The sheer fact of the matter is that AP exams * just aren’t that hard.* They are marketed as college courses, but they’re really not. I am at heart a humanities sort. I shouldn’t be able, if the exams really were equivalent to college courses, to ace my science and math tests. I just shouldn’t. The history tests are glancing and superficial. The English tests are a joke, just a rehash of SAT critical reading. Nothing is really and truly outside of normal high school fare. Some of my AP courses have been quite excellent, but that has been a product of the kids who take them and the teachers who teach them, not the curriculum we followed. So while the sheer volume of tests Lin took is impressive, it hardly makes him a genius.</p>
<p>why, you ask? why do kids want to push the envelope of their intellectual ability? </p>
<p>because they can.</p>
<p>and do you know what we kids who like to take “excessive” amounts of tests, just to see if we can get top scores on them, say when others ask us “why?” I say, “why not?”</p>
<p>good response spudman. Why not?. Such response was given by a mountain climber. When asked why he climbs mountains, he responded because they are there, so why not?</p>
<p>Yes, but lots of his schoolmates take classes at Harvard, too (that’s why the school does not have as many APs as some other schools).
One schoolmate took 9 APs in three years. It’s not 13, but then the school did not offer 13. I believe she also took Harvard classes (and graduated early). The Harvard Extension School has begun to enrol more and more high schoolers.</p>
<p>Not to minimize the achievement, but AP classes are not comparable to college courses, and, although I wouldn’t know, I have been told that the AP tests are not terribly difficult and that the curve is very forgiving.</p>
<p>Although I can’t speak for Lin, I know about the motivation of a similar high scorer of 15 AP tests. The AP classes were readily available; the best teachers at the school taught those AP classes; the desire to be challenged was there; and the result of not having taken them would have been unmitigated boredom and frustration. The cost was zero since the school covers the costs of all AP tests, and the time invested was no more than that which was spent studying for the required final of each AP class. Most Saturdays were spent doing a fun EC which was not very solitary. </p>
<p>For most (including me!) so many AP classes would be excessive. However, one size does and should not fit all. For those who are capable and motivated, I agree, why in the world not?</p>
<p>"why, you ask? why do kids want to push the envelope of their intellectual ability? </p>
<p>because they can.</p>
<p>and do you know what we kids who like to take “excessive” amounts of tests, just to see if we can get top scores on them, say when others ask us “why?” I say, “why not?”"</p>
<p>I guess I just think that there’s more and better ways of exercising your intellectual ability than taking a bunch of standardized tests. That’s why I wonder why. Like that Siemens competition he’s in, that’s a better use of his time than 13 college board tests. To each his own… :-/</p>
<p>Attn StickerShock: that math only works for calculating the probability of <em>random</em> events. AP scores, as you are aware, are not assigned according to random probability.</p>