Some school districts in Texas have music, band etc at regular level. My older D took orchestra one year and just based on that one class, her rank dropped by 1% in her school. When UT admits only top 7% and restricts the percentage down to top 2 or 3% in some majors/honors, it becomes harder to take what you like for 4 years when there is such a large impact on your rank and admissions despite having a perfect GPA.
@texaspg – that situation makes me sad!! And I wonder why the music dept is not a bit more “generous” - who stays in the program?? My DS loves orchestra - has been in it since 3rd grade - it is treated also as a regular full weight course – he is not at “all state” level or even a first chair - but he loves the music, performing & social environment too. Thankfully he gets 90s+ grades but if not it would be frustrating & he’d have to consider what he values (still I think he’d take a hit on his GPA to stay in orchestra). No real ranking at our school but of course the higher level academic kids want to show strong GPAs and where they are on the chart showing groupings of students by GPA.
Our school offers almost every AP and my daughter is taking 6 next year plus dual enrollment math because she took BC Calc as a junior. Each year she has taken a music, shop, cooking, etc type class too. The week of the AP tests is terrible but other than that the classes aren’t that hard and kids in our school tend to score well. Most nights she had less than 2 hours of homework. She plays varsity sports year round too. The regular classes and honors are generally not interesting at all. If she gets in somewhere ED or EA in her top choices she’ll only apply to 4 schools but if not she’ll probably apply to 6 more. She likes her safeties but also wants to shoot for some lottery picks and see what happens. So far she is pretty laid back about the whole thing. Even if she gets no credit in college she would still be taking all these AP classes. She likes to learn and gets bored easily.
I should add that our school doesn’t rank so she can take whatever she wants basically. It’s not a super competitive school either. A few kids go to big name schools but most of the strong students go to good state schools. I strongly encouraged both my kids not to take some of the AP classes that were known for having huge homework loads and were outside their interests like AP World and AP Euro which huge numbers of kids take here.
@CaucAsianDad our schools sound similar. Lots of AP, and honors that includes a lot of busy work. I don’t really look at the curriculum, but D worked with GC on her class schedules. No ranking, so little competition b/c no one knows the others’ GPAs. Seems like lots of kids don’t have a clue as to why they are working so hard to achieve a high GPA. They just do it. Many kids and their families are just now thinking about colleges. All in all I have found it to be a highly collaborative environment. Also, band kids tend to get screwed in GPA and lack of electives.
Also, AP is 1.0 GPA boost unless you don’t take the test. Then only .5 boost.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Does your school rank? 
I don’t know what APHUG stands for @VickiSoCal, but I like the sound of it!
Anyone looking at Tulsa U? Offer to waive the app fee in D’s email today. Decent merit from what I hear.
@2muchquan – does your school profile not include a GPA distribution chart? Our school does not rank, but
the # of each student in each GPA 1/4 point range is included. One year the school broke the categories down to 1/8 of a point and that was almost ranking, so they reverted to the 1/4 point ranges the following year. The school has only one range at 4.0+, and that is where the ranking would matter. Current graduating class had 19 students at 4.0+, so top 6%, but no one can be sure where the 17 after Val & Sal fall.
After thinking about it for a while, I figured out that APHUG is what I have heard called AP Human Geo. I recall reading the course description a few years ago and thinking that it sounded very interesting.
Ah, yes, Human Geo did sound cool.
@CT1417 Yes there is a chart. No, our profile does not give enough detail to even get down to deciles. No way. 99% of the school probably has never, and WILL never see a school profile. I am assuming the one on the website is the same one that goes to colleges, but could be wrong.
I’m not sure what is done for ‘top 10% of class’ merit opportunities. I have seen that some colleges will look at GPA and use it to guesstimate if you qualify based on other applicants %iles.
For those considering Arizona State, the app is open 
AP tests/rigor/desire to learn
As with many, there are very few AP options until junior year. For music kids, (many of whom take 2 year long music classes annually) a “full load” of only AP is impossible and other required classes eat up some slots prohibiting full AP loads as well. In general though, honors classes are considered pre-ap and in the humanities not offered past 9th or 10th grade. Which means sometimes, the “better” of the class options may be the mainstream class, depending on the teacher. Alternatively the AP class may be better depending on how closely or not they teach to the test. In general, I think largely b/c we do not rank (nor do we show gpa distribution), kids take the classes from the teachers known to be the best teachers. Not the easiest, not the hardest but the ones from which they will learn the most. It is generally the AP teacher, or honors teacher, but not always.
Some kids, despite the lack of rank, will take honors or AP simply to avoid the mainstream classroom culture, even if that teacher offers far more than the honors or AP designated class.
Our school does not report tests taken or scores earned, just number of AP/honors/college in the classroom offered. But I would definitely never say that kids not taking only AP’s don’t have the same desire to learn as kids that are and frankly the only way to have a full load of AP’s at our school seems disingenuous at best, you may well be taking something simply for the sake of it being an AP versus something you’d rather do
S17 will have 3 Honors, 6 AP’s and 1 College in the Classroom. Realistically he only could have managed 1 more each year (1 honors 10th, 1 AP 11th, 1 AP 12th) without giving up music and those classes were not the right choice for him. I am grateful that keeping music does not impact his gpa. However I am well aware that it may hurt perception of rigor for an application. On the flip side, many of his schools do have a fine arts requirement and that is certainly not an issue he has to worry about and we can hope for some non major music money at a few schools if lucky. Even if it was a GPA hit, all of our kids would have kept music
S19 will have more simply due to starting language earlier and a higher math track and I truly question the validity of some of his class choices, it is playing to the race and elitist mindset of that his classes “must” be honors or AP or he will be “drug down” by the kids in the other class and bored. While in some cases there is truth to that, it is not universally true, at least at our school.
ED/EA
As a general rule I am not an ED fan, at all. For those who really need to compare offers, it is stressful to contemplate having to retract as the offer isn’t sufficient or to negotiate versus the risk of not getting in at all. I wish all had EA. That said, SD14 did go ED, knowing it was affordable ahead of time, and for her, it was the right call.
Number of schools
As we are searching for merit for non stellar stats, we will likely be casting a larger net. I can see where it makes sense to apply to a lot, as well as where it may make sense not to. The current list has 12. He will not apply to 12 but how small it gets remains to be seen. Far too early to say.
Swag
All we have gotten are offers for t shirts if you fill out this or instagram that, or today a computer decal. Exciting stuff!. Other than a water bottle and a tee on an actual tour. No books here. Which is just fine.
Our school offers about 18 AP courses and about 18 IB courses. We do have IB Music, Theater, Art, etc. So, weighted GPAs do not have to take a hit for involvement in the Arts. Although based on what I read here on cc, it is unweighted GPAs that matter the most anyway.
Our kids would have to give up a performance group to take AP Music 
that just seems all kinds of messed up to me!
I find it interesting that people take the AP courses to get a bump in class ranking. In our school it’s almost the opposite…GPA is not weighted. Therefore those taking regular level courses tend to have a higher GPA and therefore a higher ranking than many of the kids who are taking honors level and AP level courses. It is frustrating to my child to see peers doing less work, having more hand holding and easier exams also end up with a higher GPA.
Of course there are also those students in honors/AP courses who still get high As in all classes and therefore can keep up in the class ranking, but my child is not one of them! : )
@2muchquan We visited Tulsa on our spring break tour. It was just ok. There is no real honors program, if you are interested in that. I was not a fan of the “closed” campus (it’s gated around), the cafeteria food, or the admin’s lack of organization as far as the visit went. Neither of us liked the vibe. It was just not a good fit for my D.
More on APs: I do like what D’s school did with the arts as far as GPA weighting is concerned. Since AP choices are limited by pre-reqs freshman and sophomore years, music and art is offered at the regular and honors level like all other classes. Junior and Senior year, however, students can, without taking AP music, elect to turn a music class (orchestra, band, etc,) into an AP weighted course by, for example (I don’t know all the details), attending several performances outside of school and writing papers on those.
In middle school, the schools have the students develop a 5 year plan (8-12). D originally intended to take music and art all 5 years but she only made it to 9th because the art classes are too time consuming for a kid that wants everything to be perfect and will start over on projects regularly to attain that perfection, which made me sad but I understood. And the orchestra teacher totally turned a lot of kids off orchestra.
The real GPA and rank killer at D’s school is sports. All sports factor into the weighted GPA and is unweighted. So a lot of the top kids drop out of their sport by junior year and focus only on the sport at the club level.
@itsgettingreal17 Wow, I don’t think I have ever read of a school that factors sports into the GPA. How are the students graded? I don’t know how the admissions officers can keep track of all of these different grading scales.
Brief re-intro: I am a homeschooling mom of 3. S15, S17, and D19. S15 just finished his freshman year at MIT.
S17 is a recruited athlete. He started visiting schools at the beginning of his junior year and verbally committed to his #1 choice in March. After remembering my stress of going through the process with S15, it seems surreal that S17 is already done.
All of the posts on GPA and APs have been revealing to me bc I am an outsider to this whole process. They have made me understand the tone and frenzy that ooze from so many kids’ posts questioning whether or not their achievements are good enough or conversely assuming that their rank and list are the essence of superiority. It also explains the views on ranking and equating high school with the “I have worked so hard therefore I deserve” or “I only want to be around smart kids so I have to attend x, y, or z” bc those are the underlying messages being conveyed to those kids.
@2muchquan I know you were kidding around when you asked about ranking, but wowsers, my thoughts on ranking are now on a way more philosophical level. (It isn’t something I had ever given much thought prior to yesterday.) I am probably like an alien life form to some of you in the way I think about education! If not to you, well, I actually feel like I fit that description from my side of the playground view. Our homeschool pedagogy is so far removed from class rank influencing course selection. I have spent the past 2 decades focused on collaborating with my kids to design courses uniquely suited to their interests and needs. My main educational objective is focused on moving them to function in the higher tiers of Bloom’s taxonomy. Their entire lives have been spent immersed in believing that the goal of education is about how you think and knowing how to learn (seeking out additional sources independently), not the subjects you have been taught.
That is why zero APs was perfectly fine with me.
@shuttlebus The sports and grading is very fair. It’s based on attendance and effort so most kids get a 100 (=4.0). But a 4.0 on a weighted 5.0 scale is low and lowers a strong GPA and rank every semester (as do all unweighted classes).
Congrats at being done with S17! Do you mind sharing where he will be attending, sport, and what he will be studying?
Welcome aboard, @Shuttlebus. Nice to see another familiar face!
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Your course descriptions sound very interesting. That said, however, APs don’t get in the way of developing great critical thinking skills and independent learning. Like my daughter, I took a large number of AP courses in high school. They were most definitely not taught to the test, prepared me very well for college level work, and allowed me to graduate from an elite LAC in three years in a rigorous major. I am still a life long learner. I am always studying something or other of interest to me (and not related to my career) via an online course or books. I just don’t get all the hate for AP courses.
@itsgettingreal17 I have no hate for AP courses. I have kids who have taken them. I have zero emotion about them one way or the other. If my kids want to take APs, I can teach the courses however I want and then they can just study for the exams. I equally don’t see them as the end all be all. They are subjects.
My main thought on the issue is when kids are making course selections based on external outcomes vs any internal motivation or individual benefit. That isn’t the fault of APs, but the system (both sides…high school and admissions.)
On AP HuG:
Close to 49% don’t score a 3 or higher.
In our school, the kids in the AICE program (similar to an IB program) take AP HuG in the 9th grade. It’s their first really rigorous course (as taught), and is used to prep them for the rigors ahead.
The school (a large public HS) offers 16 to 18 AP classes, about 18 AICE classes (not counting “pre-aice” classes), various honor classes and the option to do DE at the local CC. Out of a senior class of 600+ students, a bit less than 100 will be in the AICE program. It’s not uncommon for kids to drop out of the AICE program, to take a mixture of AP/honor classes. Some do it to keep their GPAs high; they fear earning "B"s in the more rigorous AICE classes.
In 2013, 1,781 AP exams were taken, with only 676 being passed (38%). The state pays for the AP test/programs, so it’s far easier to get into an AP class in Florida (in general) than in many other states.
Our school does rank, based on weighted GPA. However, we decided back in 9th grade to not “chase” after being VAL/SAL and take the classes (and workload) that make sense. His rank ended up being fine anyway, but I can see how tempting it could be to take a few extra AP/DE classes, chasing after that ranking, so I’ll pass on judging other parents/kids. 