Timely discussion! D got pulled to talk to the counselor about next year’s schedule this week. It’s mostly locked in since she’s in the IB diploma program, but there’s one area we have been wavering on and that’s math. This year she’s taking AP Calc AB, and it’s been a real slog. She does not enjoy it, and she finds the teacher to be unsupportive. His attitude seems to be if you aren’t doing well it’s because you aren’t working hard enough, among other uplifting sentiments. For my D, I can say she’s been working herself crazy in this class, trying so hard all the time, and barely clung to a B for the semester. We were thrilled with that B! But she is so demoralized, not by the content, she seems to be ok with the math, but with the way the teacher approaches the students.
So that was a long way of getting to the point which is this same teacher teaches the IB Math SL class she is supposed to take next year. And we are just not sure we want to go down that path, of her having to deal with this teacher for another year. So the alternative is to do IB Math Studies, which is not really forward progress for her for math and I’m worried about how it will look. She’ll still get the “most rigorous” because she’s full IB, but she needs an IB math and those are the only 2 choices. I came up with another option for her, because she also has an open slot in her schedule and that was to switch to Math Studies and also take AP Stats. My thought was doubling up on math might neutralize the impact of taking Math Studies. She’s not applying to anywhere top tier or going for engineering, but I just don’t want it to appear she’s reducing her load senior year. Probably I’m over-thinking it.
The classes we know she’ll have are:
Theory of Knowledge (for IB)
IB History HL
IB Visual Art HL
IB English HL
IB Marine Science SL
IB Support (Study Hall for IB Kids)
Some kind of IB math
elective not yet chosen
So, there are decisions to be made and I’m kind of leaving it up to her at this point. She’s the one who has to take the classes, but we have been discussing pros and cons a lot!!
@1822mom I can appreciate the dilemma of trying to work around an ineffective teacher in HS. One would hope schools would overlook a blemish or two in that regard, especially in the STEM areas where every HS struggles to find qualified people to teach.
Have been lucky with DS calculus teacher. He is a retired teacher who came back to teach because he truly loves teaching. He is very old school in his methods, but DS doesn’t mind. The school has migrated to Google classroom and every kid was issued a Chromebook this year. The first day of school he told all the kids to put that away, you won’t be using that, and gave them all a hardback textbook. I suppose he gets away with it because no one else is as qualified to teach that level of math. DS enjoys the class and is doing great. Hope it translates into a high AP score.
Hi all, even though I have not posted any messages in recent time, I am keeping up with your posts regularly. You all are going strong!
DD18 wants to take online AP micro (1/2 credit) and AP Macro(1/2 credit) instead of AP biology. I am recommending her to take AP bio, I feel like a student who is graduating from high school should have minimum knowledge of biological sciences just for knowledge sake whether she will pursue science degree in future or not. DD says, teacher is very poor in explaining and very hard on grades and none of her students so far ever made a A in her class and she does not think anybody made over 3 in AP exam. DD’s interests are in liberal arts and she does not know what she will be majoring in. Over all her school offers only 7 AP courses( AP cal, AP Eng,AP gov,AP bio senior year and can take online courses like AP micro, AP macro…) Her preference is to go to a competitive LAC, if offered merit aid, our family income is too high for financial aid and low for full pay.
My question is not taking AP bio would make her course load less rigorous? does online courses like AP micro and AP macro have any value to them? if she chooses to pursue biology related major in college, would that put her in a disadvantage?
@sonoran That’s just me, but not doing well in an AP class would be worse in my opinion than not taking it.
Especially if her interests lay elsewhere. In our HS all kids have to take bio, chem and physics, at least at regular level.
Is there another science class she would like. From what I hear AP Bio is a tough class.
Re: Weighting dual enrollment classes.
Not weighting them isn’t fair either. I’m taking classes like chemistry, calculus based physics and differential equations at a local university and my high school is factoring them into my GPA but not weighting them so my class rank has already dropped from 2 to 17/470 and will probably drop more. My schedule is clearly harder than someone’s who might be taking AP Environmental Science, AP Stats and AP Psychology but my GPA doesn’t reflect that. I can see how someone could game the system either way they do it though, so there’s no way to make it fair.
@snowfairy137 ^ agree. My D’s high school does not weight DE classes either but she has the choice as to whether the class is placed on her transcript or not so lessens the impact to an extent. Also less of a factor for her as she is just looking to take DE classes senior year - may be wrong but thinking rank pretty much finalized for college admission/scholarship consideration end of 11th grade.
Our HS gives a one point boost to all honors, AP and Dual Credit, and also to language classes after second year. We are in Texas, so we rank and have a valedictorian (free year of tuition at any Texas public). Only core classes are used to calculate rank.
Our school doesn’t weight classes, but they do have a more forgiving percentile range for the IB courses. For example, in a regular or honors course, a 90% is a B+, but in an IB class, it’s an A-. So there is that little boost that gives some cushion for the students to get a lower percentage in the harder course and still maintain a strong average.
@sonoran, can she take a regular level Bio? I think that’s what I’d recommend for my D in that situation.
@snowfairy137, I totally hear what you are saying and I’d be frustrated if I were you. Are those courses not offered at your HS? The situation that frustrates me at D’s school is the kid who is loading up on APs at the HS, but then taking a really fluff class at the local CC. That does not sound at all like your situation.
@LOUKYDAD my sons’ high school weights at least two levels of classes, with AP getting greatest weight, Honors getting next most weight. Not sure if anyrhing below that is weighted, although there are three lower levels of classes. Also not sure how dual enrollment classes are weighted; they have a few of those offered at the school, but no one goes off campus for college level classes.
@LOUKYDAD our school weighs PreAP (H), AP, Dual Credit and local ( our ISD only) weighted classes all the same.
If one take courses that are not offered in Dual Credit, and not offered at school, ( such as multivariate Calc, etc.) then those courses are not figured into GPA.
@sonoran I’d also recommend regular level bio. Bio, chem and physics are required for graduation at many HS so that is an important consideration to make sure she’s okay there first. Most colleges list it as a course they expect to see in a high school curriculum for the 3 years of science. Take a look at the HS curriculum expected of the colleges your DD is thinking about. Not to say a student who is missing one of those courses won’t get into college but with the insanity of this process, best to check off the minimum requirements boxes and leave nothing to chance.
our county weights honors and AP classes the same, but DE classes are not incorporated at all into HS transcripts. Our S16 took 4 DE classes in advanced programming and they only appeared as a separate, college transcript. It was unfortunate since he did very well in them, but they didn’t impact his HS GPA at all. In fact, it would have been better to take some non-honors easy classes and get A’s in them to boost his GPA rather than the DE credits.
But, I think colleges valued his DE courses and college transcript, so in the end it probably tipped decisions in his favor because he could show that he could get A’s in college-level computer programming courses (which is his major). My guess is colleges do their own weighting of student HS and DE classes after transcripts are submitted, because they know honors classes can vary quite a bit in difficulty across schools, districts, and states, but AP classes are supposed to be identical across all schools in the US and other countries.
I still can’t entirely figure out exactly what our HS does with weights–they have a bizarre system where they multiply the GPA (scaled 0-100) times the number of laude classes. So it is essential to take more laude classes, even if you are not going to do well. The HS does not rank (officially), but does declare a “top 10”. In my D16s class, one of the boys in the top 10 was not even a B+ average, but I guess he took a lot of hard classes. I should also note my kids feel that what is labeled as laude does not always make sense. Taking art or band hurts with this system. I hate it, in case you couldn’t tell!
Wow, seems like every school does things a little differently. I suppose colleges have become pretty good at sorting it all out. It tells me that even in comparing high schools with the 4 points plus 1 point to figure out weighted GPA, it is hardly apples to apples. You can really only evaluate in the context of each school. And as some have expressed even then within each HS it doesn’t always end up creating what seems fair.
Our HS has honors sections of some classes, but many don’t, even in some of the more academic and rigorous classes. Biology, chemistry, English, algebra and geometry have honors sections, but pre-calculus and physics don’t. In the case of pre-calculus and physics they are sort of honors by default, but they just don’t bother to call them that because they may only have one or two classes anyway. So no regular section to differentiate the pace and depth from. And it doesn’t really matter anyway because they don’t count honors any different for GPA/class rank purpose (only AP and dual credit).
@suzy100 I think AP Physics C and AP Chem are rough equivalents although my Physics sequence covers more and I don’t think I could have scheduled both at the same time. My school doesn’t offer math past AP Cal BC (except for AP Stats and I’ve heard that’s dumb) so to just take math outside of school would take 2 class periods out of my day and be more of a hassle. I’m also planning on taking some mechanical engineering courses next spring and senior year and those definitely don’t have high school equivalents.
@LOUKYDAD HS send a cover sheet with info about their school. Kids grades, classes, etc. are put into context. You won’t get penalized by colleges for not taking classes not offered by your school. We had an interesting session at S17 school. It was a mock admission committee led by actual college AOs. We split up into small groups and were given 3 applications, along with info about the fake college (so we would know about the school and its programs and priorities). We had to take the applications and accept one, waitlist one and deny one. Then all the groups came together and said what they did. It was very eye opening.
I agree that schools don’t look at weighted GPA and just take it at face value. They look deeper at how it is computed, and even further into the rigor of courses taken.