@ShrimpBurrito just reserved the last room at Auberge du Carre St-Louis so thx for the inside tip. Sorry to other D18 parents for all the travel dialogue. Happy to share McGill visit review with any who are interested.
No need to apologize for the travel stuff. Easily half this thread is living vicariously through everyone else’s posts!
D18 is taking her AP Calc AB test this morning. I’m still shocked by the gaping holes in some of her math fundamentals (based on some of the questions she asked when doing her review packets). Those gaps cause real trouble when working on related rates problems.
Of course, she’s taking Calculus two full years before I took it (junior in HS vs. freshman in college). There’s no way I could have handled this class when I was her age.
@droppedit
The advanced math teacher at my S20’s private school (also where D went to elementary/middle school) FIRMLY believes that students should not do accelerated math programs. She says they can handle it early on, but it is extremely difficult for the teenaged brain to fully grasp concepts fundamental to understanding Calculus. She says of course there are exceptions, but even her own incredibly gifted son is in Geometry in grade 9.
Progress on my quest to get S18 to narrow down his college list! Last night, during family dinner, we were talking about visiting Northwestern while we are in Chicago for another event. He declined, saying he did not want to consider any cold weather schools. So basically, we are looking at the South and CA schools. It is not a completely rational thought process but I will take anything that reigns in the additional visits, auditions and apps!
@ShrimpBurrito – We (me and DW) never came to a final judgment on whether accelerated math was the correct choice for D18. I think we had to decide back in 6th or 7th grade. Even back then she had some issues with the fundamentals but they were mostly covered up by her exceptional memory (she got that memory from DW, not me!). The teachers recommended it and we said “ok”.
Her ACT subscores from October show the obvious math weakness: math was 29 and all the rest were 34+. However, her PSAT and SAT subscores from around the same time are much more balanced. Not sure what that means.
Anyway, we only have one kid so there are no do-overs for us.
I’m not sure what to think about advanced math. S’s first middle school was pretty horrible, so skipping him ahead a year in math (into Algebra) put him in with a more mature crowd plus a sprinkling of honors students. We did it mostly for that reason. That was the year his migraines came on, though, and he missed six weeks of school.
He passed the class with a C, but I made him repeat Algebra at his new, much better middle school because of how fundamental Algebra is for everything else down the road.
He’s in pre-Calc as a junior, and he’ll take Calc BC next year. In fact, I don’t even know if that’s accelerated because I didn’t do that many years of math when I was coming up.
My thought with BC is mostly to give him a leg up when he has to take Calc at the college level. Many med schools won’t accept AP credits, so he’ll have to repeat it and I thought this might make it easier and less stressful when he does.
His HS is a fine school, but I wish it had AP Chem for the same reason. He’ll have to do Chem in college, and a dry run would have been useful.
@ShrimpBurrito I can see where that is true, but I don’t feel bad that D18 is in Calc AB right now, because our high school has very few advanced courses and she already knows she will be taking Calc again in college. I may feel differently when I see her score @-) .
@vistajay My D also wants to avoid the cold. I had to explain that Hawaii is a no go.
The local middle school has three math tracks and have some standardized testing metrics for putting kids into one of the three “buckets.”
A. The “grade level” track places a student into Algebra for HS freshman.
B. The" accelerated level" track places a student into Geometry for HS freshman.
C. The “double accelerated level” track places a student into Algebra II for HS freshman.
And if you stay in the “double accelerated” track, a student will take Pre-Calc & AP Stat in their sophomore year, AB in the summer between sophomore and junior years (optional), BC in their junior year and Multi-Variable in their senior year. However, there are always a few kids at both ends of the math spectrum that will go outside these 3 tracks.
I can’t comment on the “average advanced math kid”, but accelerating in math has been an awesome experience for my son. Math is just easy for him, always has been. He skipped 5th grade completely, entered 6th grade (at age 10), took 7th grade math then. His parents and his teachers tried several times to slow him down, but it just didn’t work. He just kept learning the material! He took Algebra 2 in 8th grade, Trig/PreCalc in 9th grade, AP Calc in 10th grade, took college Calc 2 this year. Straight As, 5 on calc AP test, and 36 on his Math ACT, so I think he gets it.
He has lots of challenges don’t get me wrong; it is just that math isn’t one of them and I do get very annoyed when I hear blanket statements like “no one should accelerate in math”.
Our local middle school administration and teachers counsel families about what COULD happen to kids who accelerate their math in middle school only to find out that some of these accelerated kids MAY struggle with the more advanced math in HS. They’ll tell parents that it’s not about “the now” in middle school math, but “the later” down the road when they start taking Pre-Cal, AB & BC, etc.
I’m sure that’s the case for some kids, but not others. Just depends on the kid.
@droppedit I think our Ds might be math twins! Same imbalance on the ACT score, 2 sittings and 29 was as high as she got it even though the other sections were much, much higher! Never took the SAT because her PSAT scores really showed the ACT was a better test for her and she liked it better overall, but the math thing, ugh.
We never got a choice on the acceleration. She was at a very small private for middle school and her year they accelerated the whole class rather than split them into two, so she’s been on track for Calc this year since 6th grade, for better or worse. This year it’s mostly been worse. 
But, she knows that we are unconcerned with how she scores on the AP exam, that we are using this class as exposure to the topic before she may need to take it in college. She’s doing her best to keep the grade up as best she can, but the biggest challenge is the tests. She seems to enjoy the math, and can work her way through the homework for the most part, sometimes with help, sometimes on her own, but the tests… she just crumbles, so we’ll see where she ends up. She’s already decided she’s stepping away from this type of math for next year.
Ironically this was a path we wanted for her because I remembered my own challenges with calculus in college having never had it in high school. It seemed all my classmates had had it, and it was just so much smoother for them. So I still think it’s been a good exposure for her and I don’t oppose acceleration generally, for the right kid. I just think it’s hard to tell what that right kid is in 6th grade. Her younger sister is tracked to hit Calc as a senior, which is probably better, but we aren’t sure yet whether that will be an appropriate class for her.
The course sequence @Booajo describes is actually the standard math track at our school. My kids seem to be handling it just fine, and I assume the others are too. The school has scaled back on advancing kids any faster than that, though.
Our middle school takes the same approach as what @sushiritto shared.
Both my girls are option B which allows them to get to Calc AB which generally satisfies the college level math requirement for a business major at many schools. Likely same for non-STEM majors. Also demonstrates enough rigor for non-Stem majors. I do think though if math is someone’s strength, option C can work well. Option B was a good balance for us.
do most schools do calc AB then BC?
That seems like duplication. Our district will allow AB then BC but not require it.
My D’s high school only has the BC option, no AB. She was on the accelerated track but for the life of me, I can’t tell you what order the classes went in. She’ll take CalcBC next year. This year her math was APStats. (She could have reversed the order, but the Calc teacher is tough so she wanted to push it off.)
TexasSon18 has the option of Precal AB or Precal BC (both pre-ap) for junior year and the corresponding AP Cal AB or BC their senior year. The only students that can take Calculus in their junior year are the very few that tested out of 7th grade math. TexasSon18 chose the BC route because he felt it would better prepare him for engineering and he heard that teacher was better. He has struggled in that class but a big portion of that he brought on himself with homework issues. He’s taking AP BC next year but may not take the AP test as I agree with many of you that it might serve better to go thru it again in college. Especially as an engineering major that will have more calculus behind it.
Our HS has both. You can take AB and/or BC, it is up to you. S17 took AB because BC wound not fit into his schedule. S18 is signed up for BC so we will see how it goes in the fall.
At D18’s HS (large public), there are three math tiers:
- On-level -- don't know that schedule
- Advanced - one year behind Accelerated
- Accelerated - Algebra/Geometry=>Pre-Calculus=>AP Calculus AB or AB/BC=>AP Calc BC or GaTech Calculus
The Accelerated path splits at the junior year. D18 is taking just AB (one hour per day) and will take BC next year (one hour per day). The AB/BC class is two hours per day (so you’re basically taking two years of classes in one year). A few kids move on to GaTech calc their senior year.
One 9th grade kid is taking AB/BC this year. Crazy!
At our local HS, a student can take BC without having taken AB, BUT a student is required to take a 4-week summer course (19 four-hour days) in order to enroll in BC w/o AB. The student must have an A in Pre-Calc to enroll in the summer course. And the student must withdraw from the summer course, if they cannot maintain an 80% grade level.
FWIW, the summer course starts the Monday after school dismisses for the Summer. My D18 took the summer course and each day represents one week of a BC class during the regular school year and there was a quiz/test each day. Roughly 100 kids (3 classes, large public) take the summer course and there’s a lottery drawing for it. Go figure.