<p>On AP’s …
D1 didn’t take AP US History because the teacher was awful opting for the gifted class instead. Though she did sit the SAT subject test. She took AP Psych because she loved the teacher. Took AP Cal AB instead of BC, so she could fit AP Physics B and C into her schedule- she is now a Math major. D2 is taking AP Human Geog (HUGS, my fav acronym) next semester because the teacher is one of the best in the school. What I am trying to illustrate is that flexibility is OK and it really depends on the student, teacher and school. IMHO- there is no " right" choice. D1 ended up with 13 AP’s because she wanted to be in those classes. D2’s route will be different.</p>
<p>AP Physics is hard especially physics C. D1 made a 3 on the C exam- scored 5’s on the rest. She took gifted physics in 11th grade to allow her access to the AP physics class which was held at a local science center.</p>
<p>D1 took 7 AP’s in her senior year, against my advice. In hindsight, I think she would agree it was too much given all the college apps etc. No one has a crystal ball, if she hadn’t taken those classes may be she wouldn’t have received the offers she did. Who knows? </p>
<p>TV4caster- If she was mine, I would advise on taking AP Chem or Bio in 11th grade and AP physics as a senior. Let her grow the knowledge she gained with Bio or Chem. ( Think my d2 will opt for AP Bio) and leave physics till senior year. Perhaps, she could take a summer course for some intro to physics? Mine grew up a lot from junior to senior year. Just my 2 cents…</p>
<p>D got her scores and did well. All that crazy for nothing, of course. Maxwell, that’s a great score!</p>
<p>VAMom, good to see you! I wish they offered driving classes through school. It’s going to eat up a lot of D’s free time over the next several months.</p>
<p>TV4caster, I wish I had advice, but I’m wading through similar issues. As far as English, I think OHMomof2’s advice is good - I’d ask other parents of kids who have had this teacher what they think. As for the science, I thought I was going to have the same problem as you, but realized that D’s school doesn’t allow them to start at the AP level for any science so I didn’t have to worry about it. That said, thanks to the advice/info from posters here, I think I would have had her start at a lower level physics (that was the course I was wondering about) since she’s not going to pursue a science track after high school.</p>
<p>Interesting…we don’t get ours until January either but D is also applying to summer programs, a couple of which want that score. I don’t think she has the option to get it early, though.</p>
<p>Re: English, one more thing to add to the idea of talking with other parents. My S is in college now and he took AP English Lang in 11th grade. They did a LOT of work on writing and some directly related to college essay writing. You might also see if that focus in the regular class is the same.</p>
<p>Ezilyamused: S got Plan scores this week. He was pretty excited about scoring higher than “the smart kids in my Honors Biology class”. His phrasing cracked me up. I don’t know why beating their scores doesn’t make him a smart kid too…</p>
<p>I meant to comment on this. It’s pretty cool that he did so well! Maybe now he’ll start to think of himself as one of those smart kids too. :)</p>
<p>Ok, now I’m getting nervous. Not for the PSAT score but for the notion that summer apps actually ask for a sophomore PSAT score AND that my D hasn’t even ventured in the direction of summer planning yet.</p>
<p>As to the PSAT scores, congrats to Maxwell and Suzy’s D’s! Those great scores are excellent confidence boosters and affirmations of ability!</p>
<p>It is mind boggling how differently APs are handled in different schools. Our high school does not offer AP Biology, claiming that this course emphasizes “breadth not depth.” In place of it, the school offers an intensive “Advanced Topics in Biology” class. In any case, everyone is required to take the basic class before advancing to the AP level class. English is taught as AP English to all juniors. This is pretty common practice at private schools (much to my frustration), except that at the school my older girls attended the class didn’t get the AP label. Nonetheless, most kids took the exam at the end of the year and most scored well. </p>
<p>TV4caster, depending on the interest and motivation level of your child, I’d definitely urge further investigation before opting out. Is it possible that the school may shift teachers around anyway? I hear that the guy teaching US AP History at D’s school is a difficult personality but D seems to believe that he won’t be teaching next year or that there will be two different teachers. Is it possible to try it and drop it if it doesn’t work out? I’m a lot less concerned with how it will look to schools than with how the class will feel to your D. I’ve heard that moving down to a lower level can be just as awful for a bright kid as suffering through a bad teacher.</p>
<p>Gibson, our school doesn’t require AP Physics B as a prerequisite for AP Physics C. Generally, kids opt for one or the other. Did your D find it necessary to take B in order to master C? My D was adamant that she didn’t want to take B this year but would take C later.</p>
<p>About AP physics - IMO, of course taking honors physics before AP is good. But many good students can manage AP physics (B) without honors, if they have strong math background. I’m helping my D’s AP physics teacher with some teaching. We have two students (both are seniors) who didn’t take honors. they do very well, at least so far. They struggled a little bit the first few weeks, then caught up nicely. </p>
<p>jmnva, great! I bet she is happy to go back to CTY. Did she go to Lancaster last summer?</p>
<p>Checking in - I spend most of my time in the class of 2013 thread but wanted to give my opinion on the AP sciences. First off - if you have a strong student - they really need to take physics at some point (at least that is what I have been told). But remember that your childs grades will be reported to colleges through the end of Junior year - sooooooo if you think your child will do better in an AP Bio or AP Chem then they should take that junior year and take physics senior year. My dd’s school does not allow the AP sciences (Bio, chem and physics) until you take a regular class - but then again it is common that 100% of the kids get 5’s on the exams. You may have to report 1st semester grades to the colleges but my dd13 has not had to and she has many acceptances already in. Just food for thought!</p>
<p>I am shocked at TV4caster’s story! It seems highly inappropriate for a teacher to tell a student that another teacher is “horrible” and that the department is trying to get the teacher fired. That sort of thing should be kept between the adults until due process has had a chance to run its course.</p>
<p>I’m also shocked that a school would allow a kid to take 8 hours’ straight classes with no break for lunch. I know when I started working at 15yo, my boss used to chew me out if I worked too long a shift w/o taking a break, because it was in violation of child labor laws. Do those rules not apply to schools?</p>
<p>Congrats to Maxwellequations, suzy100, and others with happy-making scores! </p>
<p>My D2 brought home scores yesterday, too. Her scores are a couple of points shy of her sister’s but much more evenly distributed – which means that there is more room for upside improvement, should she choose to study for when it counts “for real.” I was surprised that her PLAN was rather lower than her PSAT, having expected the opposite. She blames it on having been distracted by a bad runny nose and no Kleenex. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>3girls3cats- D1 took AP physics B and C at a specialized county run science center. She had to apply and regular physics was a prerequisite. The program was year long and met twice a week from 3:30 till 6 pm. She loved it. Many of the kids she had met during a science program she took there as a Freshman. We never discussed B or C. The class was offered that way. The teacher ran out of time in physics C. That was the year we were hit by snow/ ice and schools shut down for a week. They never caught up. Though the teacher continued to teach after the AP test, you can imagine how well that went down with a bunch of seniors.</p>
<p>Sorry to break the run of good scores her but my daughter came home yesterday with her PSAT results and they were dismal. I really am shocked at how low they were.</p>
<p>There is no reason for her to try for it next year-I know the day she took them was in the middle of the worst week of school but still there is no way I thought they would be in this range.</p>
<p>It’s going to be very hard for her to come to the realization that her brother might be “smarter” than her in measurable ways like test scores. I have always rejected using a test score though as a way to measure a person and what they are capable of. This result though is so out of keeping with every state test she has ever taken that I am more baffled than anything.</p>
<p>She is so competitive with him but she is also realistic-it’s going to be very interesting to see how she navigates the next couple of years and gets to where she needs to be-and I have no doubt that she will do just fine-but getting there is going to be very bumpy!</p>
<p>My one concern with her and these tests was how she is not a reader-something that these test results highlight.</p>
<p>Oh Pepper. Did she get the test booklet back? This may give her an idea of where she went wrong.I recall that there is some guidance given in the printout on areas where to focus for improvement.Maybe she did something as simple as bubbling in the wrong question in the exam grid and carried on one question off.</p>
<p>She is probably being harder on herself than anyone. It is just one test, one day. She was in a stressful time with soccer. I remember both you and I worrying about our d’s and their respective sports schedules. This doesn’t count for anything. I hope she can put it behind her before finals. This would rock my d2’s confidence right before exams. Maybe I should be grateful we won’t hear till Jan.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone! D. studied some before PSAT. She did several SAT practice tests. But with her crazy marching band schedule, it was hard to focus. Plus I told her she didn’t need to take this one seriously, just a practice. But she did well. I think the practice helped anyway. </p>
<p>@Pepper, I think at this point, the score really doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t hurt her confidence. Next year have her practice a couple sample tests. One of my friends’ son did PSAT in freshman and sophomore. His sophomore year score is lower than the freshman score, because he messed up the bubbling. That’s the kind of mistake they definitely should avoid to make when they take the test in junior year.</p>
<p>Pepper, don’t make too much of one bad score, especially if it doesn’t make sense to you and especially if the test was given in the middle of the worst week of school for her. Definitely look over the booklet with the answers. My older girls’ scores both leaped substantially from sophomore year to junior year.</p>
<p>When you say she’s not a reader, how has this manifested itself? It sounds like she’s done well on state tests so this hasn’t been an issue for her in testing. My second daughter is not a reader and her scores on standardized tests were all over the place as a direct result of this and the anxiety this produced. What we found was that she needed a lot more practice than another kid might in order to be successful. She’s not a natural test taker but was able to get her SATs into the 2100 range with a lot of review. The practice and review was as much therapy to relieve anxiety as it was direct preparation.</p>
<p>I understand the sibling competitiveness thing too. My middle daughter was all set to give up on herself because she felt she could never compete with the older one. That has eased as both have gone through college and their different skill sets have been given room to emerge.</p>
<p>Pepper - I hope you can help her recognize just how narrow the set of skills measured by these tests is. I wouldn’t want a “bad” test score to make her lose confidence or change the way she sees herself. My oldest two are both bright, and all along, my oldest tests worse than my middle son. I wouldn’t say either on of them is smarter than the other. I just hope she doesn’t put too much stock in the PSAT as far as how she identifies herself. :)</p>
<p>TVcaster - I’m having a similar reaction as mihcal’s. Really weird for a teacher to talk to a student about another teacher like that - teachers and administrators usually find a better way to offer advice in course selection without being so inappropriate. Is the AP Physics course in question Physics B or C? Kids at our HS go directly into AP Physics B all the time. Physics C is Calculus based, although many schools say you can take Calc at the same time instead of having to complete it before Physics C. As far as English goes - I would probably try to avoid the horrible teacher, if more digging reveals that the consensus really is that she/he is that bad. Can she take AP English over the summer somewhere - maybe that way she can have time for lunch next year. She’d probably benefit by understanding that taking care of basic needs like sleeping and eating are important, and learning how to balance those things. Good luck figuring it all out!</p>
<p>Thanks all! I am really more baffled than upset. I don’t think it is that big a deal as long as she doesn’t make it out to be more than it is. I view this as an outlier and my main concern is that she doesn’t get discouraged.</p>
<p>Yes that was an awful week-unfortunately the test will be given under similar if not worse conditions next year! It is very hard anyway as we have talked about on here to make the state cutoff and it is a one shot deal-it also may be that isn’t a realistic goal for her-only she can figure that out once she reviews her test and does some prep.</p>
<p>She is going to be fine-as usual my job involves more of not making matters worse than of actually helping!</p>
<p>Thanks for all the comments about our situation. I too was horrified that the teacher would make those comments about a fellow teacher.</p>
<p>Also, because so many parents complained about the lack of a lunch for students who wanted to challenge themselves, the school board voted last week to lengthen the school day so that every kid would have at least a very short lunch break. Right now those kids get permission to break the rules and eat a snack while in class even though that is normally not allowed. </p>
<p>I just found out that it is physics is B. I also found out today that PSAT scores are at the school and will be released at a meeting next week.</p>
<p>PSAT scores showed up at the house over the weekend. D’s scores were very consistant staright across the board, which leaves room for growth next go round.</p>
<p>D’s school also does an additional writing essay that the school faculty grade separately. D’s was pleased she scored above her peer group on this assignment.</p>
<p>D is very busy writing a 7 page research paper on “Women’s Influences on the French Revolution” for History class. Paper is due the end of next week before they go on Winter Break. She is working very hard on the paper in addition to her other school work.</p>