<p>I have a student taking AP physics this year. He did not take regular physics as a junior, and he wishes he had. Although he is an excellent math student, he wishes he had had the background that the regular physics class offers. My son, who is in his second year in college, did take the regular physics as a junior and AP physics B as a senior. Got a 5 on the exam, but again, the background knowledge he had from the first class was a big help with the AP.</p>
<p>Deciding whether to take the AP Physics or honors physics may also depend on how the school schedules the AP Physics B class. At our high school, honors physics is not a pre-req for the AP class and a small group of kids (my son’s physics class has 12 kids out of a graduating class of 200+) elect to take the AP class in place of the honors physics.</p>
<p>The AP Physics class is an 85 minute period every day for the entire school year, and the kids need every minute of this block in order to cover all of the material.</p>
<p>If your school does not have a double period for the AP Physics class, imo if would be difficult to take the AP class without any prior background in physics.</p>
<p>D had a “major” paper due today (major for HS freshmen at least.) She did it all on her own and was appalled that her dad read it and wanted her to correct two typos. Okay, so I know now that this is a child that WILL NOT want help editing her college essays!</p>
<p>I guess every school is different. At my kids’ school every 10th grader must take the PSAT but, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever brought up taking it in 9th. Kids aren’t eligible for AP Physics until 11th grade so it’s not an option to take it earlier. Interesting how much ad coms must have to sort out with all the differences.</p>
<p>I was an early participant on this thread but, with a high school senior, I’ve been busy on other threads of late so I apologize if this has already been asked: I’d love to hear about summer programs for rising 10th graders. I am not looking for the ultra challenging/competitive programs that seem to come up first and often but I do have a daughter that would enjoy going away. She doesn’t have a particular area of interest like art or writing but does enjoy community service…she also enjoys Spanish so one option is an immersion program, preferably in Latin or South America. Explo might be an option (older D attended) but if anyone has any suggestions I’d love to hear them.</p>
<p>My '12 son loved the high school credit Spanish program at Concordia Language Villages last summer. After the month he tested out of a year of Spanish and is now in AP Spanish lang as a 9th grader.</p>
<p>Apollo, I should have mentioned…my D went to a 2 week session for Spanish at Concordia last summer. Had a fabulous time and her Spanish did improve–I know the 4 week is much more intensive but she prefers to try something different this summer. Highly recommend Concordia though and glad to hear that your S had a positive experience too.</p>
<p>If you can handle the price, [Compare</a> Summer Language Study Programs](<a href=“http://www.afsusa.org/study-abroad/summer-abroad/compare/language-study-programs/]Compare”>http://www.afsusa.org/study-abroad/summer-abroad/compare/language-study-programs/) AFS offers Spanish language study programs abroad for 4-6 weeks for $7K. AFS is highly reputable. My son applied for a NSLI-Y scholarship to begin learning a “critical need” language abroad this summer. If he gets his wish he’ll be learning Arabic in Egypt this summer. I think AFS coordinates the NSLI-Y Egypt program but the State dept. has hired several exchange programs to coordinate their programs so I could be wrong.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info on the Concordia programs. I so wish we had found out about them sooner! My inlaws have a lake house in central Minnesota, so we’re up there quite a bit. All this time we could have been sending them to a language camp instead of hanging around the lake house!</p>
<p>Mine’s summer program is going to be called “get a job”. She thinks she’ll be trying detasseling (allergies willing). It’s hard, dirty work, but pays maximum dollars, hopefully a whole academic year’s worth of spending money, in minimum time. I wanted her to get her lifeguard certificate. Maybe next year.</p>
<p>Anyone have freshman studying for their first HS semester exams. DS is shooting for a perfect score in his math class- He is also stressing about Honors English class because he wants to pull that up from an A-.</p>
<p>His class of 2014 is the first year that minuses and plusses make a difference. So an A- is a 3.7. All the grades in the past that earned 90% stayed at a 4.0. So it hurts the A- student but helps the C+ student which my friend reminded me of. Ha Ha</p>
<p>What does your school do?</p>
<p>+'s and -‘s count, but as X.33 and X.67, as of last year. It really has helped to “thin the herd” of 4.0s at graduation time, and I don’t necessarily believe that’s a bad thing. My kids attend a relatively large school where weighting is also fairly new (maybe just 4-5 years old). I believe there are just 12 courses that are weighted. So, you can imagine, some of the sky high GPAs reported on CC aren’t even possible at my kids’ high school. </p>
<p>This year, the school tried to move from determining rank by GPA by determining it by grade points. The school board adopted it, and then said they would defer implementation. Haven’t heard anything about it since. </p>
<p>Report cards came out as we finished the semester before Christmas. THe new things seems to be NOT reporting GPA or class rank to the students or families. Not sure what’s up with that.</p>
<p>D’s school is on trimesters, so first set of HS finals was done before Thanksgiving. She’s already past mid-marks of the second trimester with another set of finals in sight. The school has been weighting +'s and -'s for years, along with weighting grades in AP classes only.</p>
<p>I still have not seen the first trimester report card. They sent them home with the students, and it’s somewhere in the backpack. I know the grades, but I’m not sure if the school is showing class ranking.</p>
<p>I’ve got one cranky daughter at home doing freshman finals for the first time. Missypie, we got into a huge run-in this weekend because I read her paper and started the conversation about some “errors” (apparently I was supposed to give her three compliments like in elementary school first…) The conversation soured from there. She’s very capable yet I don’t delude myself that she is Ivy-bound. I do think she has a lot of potential but I realize that with the competition, her freshman year is critical to future success. Any pointers as to how to be a supportive mom but still drive the message home that if she wants to go anywhere but one of our state schools, she is going to have to buck up.</p>
<p>We never pay attention to rank until Jr year as it is so fluid. We worry about our students grades. It is very cut-throat at the top few spots and the landscape changes dramatically in their Jr. year once the AP classes come into play. The kids see their grades online so I rarely see the ppr scores anymore. We won’t have mid-terms until the end of the month, although some classes have started theirs already. Foreign language that has an oral and written exam takes much longer to administer so they start earlier. We have +'s (but no A+'s) that have a X.4 (ie B+ is a 3.4). This is all relative. I think GPA is very inexact for the reasons we see when we start to talk about the different ways schools grade and report. Without the grading scale and profile it is like trying to read a map without a key. A 3.8 at a school with a 7pt scale with no AP weighting is pretty good. That same 3.8 at a school with a 10pt scale with AP weighting of 2.0 isn’t nearly as impressive. It all depends on what does an A really mean?</p>
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<p>Well, according to that Tiger Mother book you could threaten to burn all her stuffed animals if she doesn’t get A+s…or not let her go to the bathroom until her paper is perfect…</p>
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<p>For those of you who haven’t been through the college app process before, some schools look at only the weighted average and others look at only the unweighted average (and I haven’t seen a school yet that put such info on their website.) We know of one school that looked at weighted average for admission and unweighted for merit aid. Some schools will look at all grades…others will take out classes like band and choir and will recompute the GPA with just the core classes. So unless the student has a perfect unweighted 4.0, it’s hard to know exactly where she’ll end up GPA wise.</p>
<p>@pdxsuzanne - your concerns are valid! (But then you knew that 
). Are there any schools that your daughter shows any interest in? If so google their common data set and share with her the GPA, SAT scores, etc. of the successful applicants. You may want to search those records for your state schools as well. Many are becoming very competitive. What we thought were ‘safety’ schools a few years ago are not anymore. Having the information so she can set goals is a good thing. It may be quite a shock to her system to see it in black and white. Schools do look for ‘upward trend’ and will forgive a glitch, but then she has to find the will to trend upward. A mediocre freshman year does not kill every chance. You might look at the thread for ‘Top Schools for B+ students’. I can’t remember the exact name, but it will give you an idea of some schools that may be of interest. There are schools out there that give great merit to kids with less then a 4.0. The other mantra you will find from the 2011 crowd is ‘love the kid on the couch’. Even the high achieving kids (be they high achieving via grades, scores, activities, etc) usually end up on the couch at some point.</p>
<p>EDIT: Arrow pointing down to missypie’s post below, absolutely and thanks for finishing my thought! I have to remember not to do things in shorthand.</p>
<p>If we haven’t posted the rest of the saying before it’s, “Love the kid on the couch, not the kid you wish you had.”</p>
<p>Snow day tomorrow which pushes back the last couple exams to next week. I am loving the extra time with the kids. Now if I could get the little one to finish shoveling.</p>
<p>I joined early this year seeking advice on academic summer camp and now finally stumbled into this forum!! Thanks for setting this up!!</p>
<p>I have a freshman D (has been in CTY for years), she’s in a small independent college-prep school, liberal, no AP classes, no ranking type with limited acadaemic choices. She is taking her foreign language elsewhere as she has way passed the level that the school offers and plans to take the AP language exam in her junior year, other than that, she might self-study AP art history as she likes it. I was told not to take too many independent AP exams as the college admission people might simply question why she stays at this school if taking more than 2-4 AP exams independently, she should just take the hardest classes offered by the school. </p>
<p>She will be taking an independent study in junior. We are thinking to send her to study abroad for one term during her sophomore year, she will be the “guinea pig” as the school just barely set up this relationship. I can monitor the progress quite closely as I sit in the committee about this whole sister school project. I am planning to help her to tie this study aboard and lay ground work for her independent study.</p>
<p>Questions:
- Does it make sense not to take more than 1-3 self-study AP exams if your college-prep school doesn’t offer?
- Any advice on independent study? How does college admission view this?</p>