Pleased to report that my S16 finally has a full schedule (on day 4 of school). Counselor says he wins the award this year of having the most “singleton” classes. In other words, he’s taking the most courses that are only offered in one period, which makes it really hard to schedule. Just decided to take Macro/Microeconomics AP to fill the gap left by not being able to do a double period of Art AP because of Calc BC. We want him to drop from AP to honors art so he doesn’t have the stress of producing a portfolio despite having only one period during the day. He (predictably) wants the challenge. Says once he finishes all his college apps by the end of November it will all be peachy. Oy vey.
@ crow lady Congrats to your son. Senior year schedules can be a nightmare . We had craziness too, but at least we found out at the end of last year. My son wasn’t happy about the changes he had to make, but it has actually turned out to be a good thing. Hope your son’s year goes well.
My daughter has filled out all of her apps - I have not seen them or the essays. I am sure she will want me to look over them in time.
I had to help with some info but my D16 has tackled the common app mostly by herself. However, I will definitely be checking before it’s sent – she asked me a question about Fordham and I happened to see that she’d marked, yes, that she’d accept admittance without housing. Uh, in Manhattan, NO
D had her first day of senior year today. She has AP Lit first thing in the morning, and she had AP Stats, Band and Yoga. Tomorrow she has AP Spanish, AP Gov’t, and Rhetoric of Cinema (finally, she gets to take a Humanities elective!)
Hopefully this weekend we can sit down and look at a couple of college apps, so we can get this thing rolling. She wants to get her hw done on Friday evening so we can do that…
Oh, and she is getting comfortable being Drum Major of the band. She said she felt awkward the first day of band camp, but after that, it started to come more naturally… I’m really proud of her for stepping up to this task when the band director asked her, I think she’ll do a great job with it and it will give her some leadership experience.
Best of luck to everyone on their college apps and in senior year! Can’t believe it’s here already.
DD discovered that her school offers philosophy class this year. Unfortunately she can not take it since it is a regular class and will bring her GPA down. Hopefully in college she will be able to take those classes that she really wants to.
We too have had to juggle classes this year. The new challenge–DE course has suddenly been changed to “remote”. So she has to sit in a classroom at CC at a certain time each day to watch a professor on a screen. We are not pleased. This is 2nd semester college Calc, and haven’t been able to find do-able replacement. We’ve asked her to try it, but we will have her drop it if it isn’t going well.
The first college acceptance notification arrived yesterday. It’s a rolling admission school, not terribly selective, and one that will require her earning a particular school-specific merit scholarship to make it affordable. So there are pieces that still have to fall into place for her to get excited about the possibility of attendance there. 
Still…it begins! The season is upon us
@AKFirefly congrats. That’s exciting .
I will keep my fingers crossed for the scholarship @AKFirefly! It is great to at least have the admission this early in the game.
Woo Hoo we have a full schedule for school with no conflicts despite every class except AP Lit only being offered once or twice! All of his 4 ED apps are done but need editing. Summer AP assignments not quite done yet…1 easy Lit book left to read with 1 week to go…
@dcplanner – Welcome !! (unless I missed some prior note(s)).
You do mean EA, not ED, correct? I don’t think that he can apply to more than one school ED. Not trying to be a wise guy – just trying to make sure a grievous error has not been committed.
@AKFirefly – Congrats. Undoubtedly this is the first of many acceptances that will make their way from the lower 48 to your winter wonderland up there. Kudos to you guys for getting some applications completed and submitted. We’re not yet there in this family, although we may be getting close.
It’s looking increasingly like S16 will apply somewhere ED, so for now it’s really only one application (common app, plus supplemental essays) that he needs to consider.
I’m a bit blown away by the complexity of many of your kids’ class schedules. It’s unbelievably straightforward for my son. And as his school doesn’t calculate GPA’s and offers very few AP courses (so ‘weighted GPA’ is not even a consideration), there’s very little strategy in terms of course selection. In fact, he’s taking his first AP courses just this year. All very different than the experience of most kids discussed on this thread.
Asleep-our school is much like yours. With block classes and the same for all grade-level kids unless they are advanced in math or a language, all kids in a grade have the same classes. Duel enrollment kids also at the HS might need to do some juggling, but that’s about it. No weighting here, either, and no AP or IB. Kids wouldn’t have to skip a class they wanted to take because it counts less on the GPA (which I think is a sad commentary on the race to college, but I digress).
We had back-to-school night last night and senior projects and classes were all spelled out for us. D is going to wonder where she’s supposed to be some days, I think, with taking some junior classes, working on her senior project and internship as part of her graduation requirements, going on the junior retreat while being a technical senior, but if anyone can handle it, she can.
She is holding off on applications until she finishes her online classes in 2 weeks. So far she has an A in both, good for the GPA, but fascinating classes even if they were not.
Is your D graduating early @sseamom ?
Impressed, @dcplanner, though you cannot by definition have 4 different ED apps. They usually only permit one as an acceptance means your student must attend unless the financial aid makes that impossible. You must mean 4 EA apps?
Waited too long to correct my post! Here’s another try:
Impressed, @dcplanner ! Whether it is 1 ED or 4 EA that’s a big accomplishment at this point. College stuff has taken a back seat with the start of the school year in our household though we are definitely talking about it. Hoping to catch up this weekend.
Last night S16 was so pumped up by his classes he said, “I’m going to have homework every day for the rest of the school year. And I’m still going to love learning every concept in every class!” Today he’s a bit disappointed that he seems to already know a fair amount of Psych AP and Econ AP (self-taught, family conversations). I warned him that while the beginning may seem to be all review there will be new material before he knows it and he will still have to demonstrate his knowledge to pass the classes.
@AsleepAtTheWheel Sometimes I think our area (and many on CC) have gone crazy with all these advanced, high-stress classes. On the other hand, S16 is (obviously) hungry for college-level material so I’m glad he has the option; our school doesn’t do DE at all as far as I’m aware. He has only a couple lightweight extra-curriculars, and an almost non-existent social life (by choice). I don’t know how the mainstream advanced kids do it, with sports and dances and jobs on top of their schoolwork.
Welcome @dcplanner that is a great start!
@AKFirefly Congrats to your son!!
Deep into the first few weeks of senior year and my Daughter thinks this year is so “chill” (her words) compared to last year. Her schedule is more rigorous than last year. I sure hope it is not a false alarm.
@AsleepAtTheWheel my daughter could only start to take AP classes last year - and only two. This year if her schedule had allowed she could have taken 4 or 5. She is taking three. The other classes are Honors. It is different than most schools where they take every class as an AP.
I think the difference in schools may have to do with the size differences perhaps? My son goes to one of the largest schools in the US. We have around 4000 students. This means that they have had to do some pretty out of the box things to manage students and classes. Our school district uses small learning community programs to achieve that. Each high school in the district has approx 6 or so different programs and the students can apply to any high school program throughout the district, although some are very hard to get in to. Each follows the same basic grad requirements (in CA the A-G requirements) but each program is self contained and offers different options - they include class levels (regular, honors, AP), extracurriculars, and focus. My son’s school has a high achieving track which requires a minimum of 5 APs (he is in that one), there is also a visual or performing arts program, a social justice program, a computer science program, a business program, and an ecology program. Other schools have engineering, CSI, Hospitality, etc. One school has IB. About half the programs you have to apply to based on middle school grades and test scores. While all have the basic grad requirements the extras are significantly different so the list of different types of classes available is huge. We also have a choice of about 25 APs!
The set up of the high schools is a very positive thing, I think. It keeps our gigantic high schools feeling small. Since the kids are self contained in programs they tend to have classes with the same kids all 4 years and it is easier to make friends. It is also easier to keep the rigor appropriate for different types of kids who have different needs.
It is interesting to hear the different options from the rest of our 2016 community here on CC.
That sounds really neat, LKnomad! I think you are right about school size being a factor in the differences.
I was saddened when I read @ballerina16’s note yesterday about her daughter who might have taken a newly-offered (unweighted) philosophy course, but chose not to because it would lower her GPA. Over the last couple of years I’ve read similar notes about kids who want to take a second foreign language, but forego the opportunity for the same reason. I totally get the need to act strategically like this, but no one can like a system where high school grading/stats conspire with selective college admission criteria to create this situation. I’d like to think that colleges could figure this out, i.e., look beyond exact class rank based on weighted GPA and judge the “challenging” nature of a kid’s curriculum by something other than how many AP classes they’ve taken relative to the number offered, but given the huge number of applicants that’s probably unreasonable.
The corollary is that I feel for the kids who, by virtue of the nature of their high school, have had to enter a rat race like this if they want to go to a highly selective college. I’m sure that they learn to be incredibly efficient and that they develop (or need to already have) a strong work ethic – traits that will serve them well going forward. But the stress and the craziness seem like a high price to pay.
P.S. to @Sophmore1 – I’m sure that your daughter hasn’t gotten this far underestimating the amount of work that she needs to do. But I’m sure you’ll be reassured once she’s several weeks into these courses and doing well.