1822mom brings up a good question. What was/has been the most difficult class for your C in in his/her high school career? No debate here: APUSH. She had a fantastically overqualified teacher who expected a lot. D was enormously stressed that year, but she really, really learned a lot.
@shrimpburrito and @1822mom Most difficult class for sure is this year’s Calc BC. She is working her butt off. Honors Physics was a challenge and the senior design project for it was a multi-month nightmare but she held on to a solid grade all year. This Calc BC has been a roller coaster. First “F” ever in her school career was on the first test. Definite learning experience haha.
I’m super nervouos and excited for everyone’s kids waiting on those EAs. No high reaches for my D BUT I’m living vicariously through y’all. She has a friend applying to UPenn who will hear next week I think…and a friend applying to Cornell. Another friend (perfect stats 1600/36) is applying to all the HYPSM. Besides that she doesn’t say much about other kids’ college aspirations, I actually don’t think they discuss it much. Probably due to the fact that they’re all stressed out and tired of people like me asking them ;).
D’s toughest class was AP Lang. Too many essays. She’s not a big fan of writing essays.
I should mention D does have one EA app decision that will release results before 12/22. It’s by no stretch a gimme, but the odds are far superior to Stanford REA.
Most difficult is dual enrollment physics. It’s what I complain about most, lol.
The first week she came home just in tears. I’d never seen that before. We went back to the school in the hopes of dropping it. I walked past the room and the teacher was there. I went in to talk to him - she refused to go in there. I kind of motioned to him she was out there, and he went and got her.
He said she was the second person that year to come into his room in tears - the first was a boy. Long story short, he talked her down from the ledge. I can’t say she’s thrilled she stayed in it, but it’s a small fraternity of kids who are in it and doing decently. She likes the teacher, and hates the class. She has a B in it, thanks to doing well on the labs and web assign. It’s not unusual for everyone to fail the quizzes and tests - :-&
The teacher said that last year he had all As and Bs, with one C. One of the reasons she wanted to drop is that she heard he failed 70 percent of the kids who took the class. He laughed at that one. But she has sworn she will never take physics again.
I will chime in that Honors Physics has been the bane of her existence this year so far. Her school requires two years of honors physics and she breezed through last year. Can’t stand the teacher this year. Still maintaining an A (guess we will see when semester grades come out!), but definitely more difficult than last year.
APUSH at my D’s school was easy-peasy. Very little homework, inspired, fun teacher, and almost all the kids got 5s and As in the class.
Yesterday a couple of people mentioned a slightly lower mark in one class or another, and I got to thinking about how misleading some grades can be to an AO. For instance, last year my D’s science teacher gave out really low grades to the class, yet more than half the class scored a 5 on the AP and everyone else except 1 kid got a 4 and the average SAT2 was 790. Her teacher just had crazy high expectations. Now this year the AP BC Calc and AB Calc teachers are using different grading systems, and the kids in AB are getting killed, so it’s giving a really false read to the colleges. I guess you could figure out in advance which teachers or classes to avoid, but at this point I think the die is cast and I’m just going with, regardless of the grade, she’s getting a great education. Let’s hope the AO’s agree!
Most difficult class: AP Lang by a mile. The teacher was awesome, and in fact S asked her for a recommendation letter for the McDermott scholarship application. He learned a lot and improved his ability to write under pressure but he just hates being forced to read and deeply analyze fiction he didn’t choose.
Most poorly taught class: AP Physics 1. He was required to take it junior year for his STEM program. He likes physics as a subject and it came easily to him, which is good because the students mostly needed to teach themselves. So it wasn’t difficult for him, just a bad experience with a bad teacher. He was sad because he would have liked to take AP Physics C (I think it’s still called that? The one where they do electricity and magnetism) senior year but he would have had the same teacher and he could not face it. No worries though, I think he has to take physics for his CS degree so hopefully he will enjoy it in college. I also had a much better experience with physics in college than high school. I wonder if the good physics teachers just don’t like to teach in high school?
@traveler98 I really liked physics in high school, and I just can’t believe this class is run the way it is (it is a college class, but still … even the honors physics class is super hard).
My husband was a physics major in college for a year before he transferred into engineering, and he has forbidden our younger daughter from taking this class. We will see, lol. But he says a good physics class is a joy, and is really disgusted that this one seems like drudgery and teach-yourself.
AP world history was a big stress class as it was the first AP class. Then Honors Alg 2 BC because of the teacher only. And honors Physics not really sure why but it was constantly being complained about last year. AP Calc is going great. Knock on wood. 95 so far in the class. An " A" here is 93-100.
@melvin123 I think some student here on CC posted a link to a u-tube video, on the Stanford forum, of a former Stanford AO showing on a whiteboard of how she/they compare applicants. It’s an 8-minute video, but the gist I got was that they were comparing applicants within a school, so of course, theoretically, that’s an apples-to-apples comparison.
However, two issues come to mind. One, at some point, I’m assuming they’ll have to compare a student from one school to another and, two, 2 or more students from the same school could have had different teachers for the same subject with one being more difficult than the other.
Most difficult class for my D was probably AP Euro - big workload and demanding but fun teacher. APUSH was easier for her but still solid workload. With all that said the AP Calc is her toughest grade wise - not clicking for her, not a great teacher, and looking to salvage her B.
For anyone who’s interested and didn’t see this, there’s a thread called Questbridge National Match Finalists, or something like that. Anyway on 12/2 someone posted these numbers for Questbridge Finalists, unfortunately Stanford isn’t listed.
UChicago - 84
Williams - 16
Rice - 51
Northwestern - 63
Hamilton - 5
Colorado College - 10
Notre Dame - 22
Vanderbilt - 25
USC - 5
Oberlin - 3
Amherst - 19
UPenn- 56
Yale- 52
Pomona- 17
Bowdoin- 12
Duke- 38
Emory- 31
Haverford- 15
Caltech- 6
Princeton- 49
Swarthmore- 18
Columbia- 39
@sushiritto, but I thought all the AOs say the kids aren’t competing against other kids within their own school - yeah, right. In any event, I guess I’m just at the point where so much of this is meaningless. A kid can drop a couple of points because they had a migraine during their final, or because they had teacher A rather than B. Or they took AP Physics rather than AP Chen. I guess, when all is said and done, I’m glad for the holistic admissions process, because once you start looking at the kids, I think they fall into performance bands/groupings and the abilities of those kids within each grouping are so close to one another. Really, is there any difference in ability between the Val and Sal of any school? In a rare case yes, but usually not.
Admittedly, I am a little jealous of Stanford SCEA decision date release. Good luck to you all!! My D18 ED decision is rumored to be out at the end of next week! 8 days and counting…
Most difficult class: IB Physics; it had to have been really good for her because she felt ‘not smart.’
@melvin123 This was a video dated around 2011 or 2012 about a former Stanford AO or so they claimed. But I can totally see how they’ll have to compare kids from one school. I think it was @RoonilWazlib99 who said that their kid’s school has like 30 REA applicants to Stanford this year and only one or two kids usually get accepted into Stanford from their school. As I’ve mentioned, I’m conspiracy theorist from way back, but they must have to compare kids within a school at some point in the process of elimination.
I always thought they compared kids from the same school. We come from a small school and the Sal is also applying REA, making my kid’s chances even lower. :((
@melvin123 I hope that holistic look is real. That may be his only chance, though extremely low.
D is also awaiting Stanford REA. It’s always been first choice. We will drive to Cheesecake Factory to carb wash our sorrow away. We will rinse and repeat next week for her besties, gunning for Princeton and UChicago. I am hopeful that will be a celebration, they are truly talented and their accomplishments/ECs/essays are spectacular.
Most difficult class: APUSH, due to sheer amount of work and personality clashes with the teacher. AB Calculus caused lots of worry (new teacher) but since she did well on the exam, all is forgiven; she has the same teacher for BC this year and I haven’t heard a word.
Good luck to all our kiddos!
Stanford has been the goal for S18 for a long time. His dad did grad school there, so there has been a lot of sports watching and California dreaming over the years. His other top picks required ED rather than EA, and we would not allow that because of $$ concerns. Even if he gets in, finances remain a concern.
There has never been a kid from his school get into Stanford, much less go there. Two applied this year. The other guy got an interview, mine didn’t. No clue why but that certainly increases stress around here.
Hardest class? I would have to say French. He is just not a natural linguist. He had a lisp requiring speech therapy for years; why he chose to study French I’ll never understand. He is completing French 5 this year, and I know he is hoping to not take any more languages in college.
Good luck to everyone!
But even if they compare kids within the same school, at a certain point it becomes meaningless, I think. @Booajo I’m not talking about your S, but let’s suppose there are 2 REA apps from any given school. Both have identical all As except one got a B in a language and one got a B in history, and both want to major in a science. To me, that’s indistinguishable. Or even if 1 got a B in a language and the other got all As. I still think that’s indistinguishable. That’s where I’d want to see what else these kids are doing and who I think has personality traits that will make them successful at my school and in life.