@carolinamom2boys I think the gym requirement is decided by the state. Four years of gym is such a joke but required in Illinois. Only juniors and seniors can get out of it during their school sanctioned sport’s season. And then they can only substitute a study hall for gym. It stinks. I know gymnasts who practice 30 hours at private gyms and still have to take gym class at the high school. s19 is obviously a sophomore but runs just as much as the junior and seniors during XC and Track season but still has to go to gym. 40 miles of running per week and he has to go to gym!
But get this- the marching band gets out of gym! Apparently our high school has a hard time making band kids march so, if you’re in any band at the school, you are required to do marching band for both football season and basketball season but you don’t have to take gym.
Gym class is such a waste of a spot that could be used for so many cool classes. Some kids take zero period gym at 6:50 am just so they can take another class during the day. I don’t think either of our kids would ever wake up at 6:00 to get to gym.
Our schools require PE/Health in 9th and 10th only (and this year, one quarter is driver’s ed). No one gets out of it for sports (or marching band! lol) All of the AP classes are year long except for Micro and Macro.
S19 is taking just two APs next year (Physics 1 and Psych), and four honors classes (English, US History, Pre-Calc and STEM Engineering), along with advanced orchestra. He’s still considering AP Chem instead of physics - it might be better to take it right after regular chem this year, but taking physics might help him narrow down his interests, potential majors, etc. I don’t think either class is particularly popular so he can probably change his mind in August.
The GC could not be sold on three APs but many of his friends (including some with lower GPAs and test scores) signed up for 4+ without any protest from their GCs. He wanted to take AP Lang.
D19 will take three AP courses and one honors course next year. She is done with PE already (as she dances down the hall) as sophomores have two quarters of PE, one quarter of driver’s ed, and one quarter of health. (They assign the driver’s ed quarter based on birthday.) Her school is on a block schedule of four classes on odd days and three classes plus a “block” class on even days. Lunch is part of the third class on each day. No study hall, though.
Her younger sibling (class of 2022) will be the first class with yet a newer version of graduation requirements, which may or may not include four years of PE. My kids are not big fans of the general assembly members that voted to support such a graduation requirement.
My son decided to take only 1 AP, and the rest Honors. He wants to maintain his GPA while still being involved in his ECs. He plans to take at least 2 AP’s senior year. I don’t know if that is going to be enough AP’s to get into some tippy top schools, but I don’t think he’s get into some of them anyways without being recruited for a sport. He’s talked with some coaches already about entrance requirements and their advice was “keep your grades up”.
I think if he stays with this plan he should get into some decent schools, and maybe if he gets recruited he gets into a reach school. We’ll see.
@mommdc thanks for the info on Summer ACT. That might come in handy for son19. Springtime is crazy for him, so a summer session would be ideal.
@OrangeFish - agreed on the summer programs; several thousand dollars that we don’t have now and won’t have next year either. Next year she’ll finally be 16 and eligible for a host of local programs and internships, both attached to colleges and community-level, for pay and even credit in some cases.
I hear you on the “for pay” thing, @Gatormama - D19 is not 16 yet, so she has limited options to earn money right now. She does not want to do lifeguarding as she is petite/lightweight (the rescue dummy likely weighs more than she does!). There are limited employment options in our area for 15 year-olds.
S19 will take gym (!!), APUSH, BC Calc, AP Lang, Earth Science H, French 4 Honors and his art classes which are only one semester each Advanced Painting Honors/Portfolio H. Opting to wait until senior year for AP Physics mostly because his other junior year classes are a rough load and adding AP Physics would push the load into impossible territory considering he doesn’t start homework each night until 6:00 with XC/Track.
As for summer, it’s drivers ed time! Very late for the grade. Most kids already done and many have their licenses. We couldn’t fit it in his schedule so he’ll take private class this summer. SAT studying this summer, of course, and lots of soccer reffing. It’s a great job for former soccer player. He refs games up through U15 and makes $30 cash per game. Games are generally close to our house so he can just ride his bike there!
As long as you don’t look at them as application boosters, and are willing to pay, I think they can be great.
S17 did do a weeklong program last summer at a college that ended up being his #2 choice. It helped confirm interest in his major though it really didn’t give him a taste of college life, they definitely treat it more like a summer camp. He received one college credit for it, which shockingly enough I found out yesterday his college took and gave him credit for. Which means I received the full value of that investment back, a very pleasant surprise. Granted…it was a “cheap” session, as those things go.
It does not appear S19 will be taking a August or Sept, or even fall SAT or ACT. I just mapped out his summer schedule and holy cats!
2 weeks of camp counselor
2 weeks of family vacation
1 week of scout summer camp
1 week of 50 mile hike with scouts
Running club 3x a week in all non booked weeks.
There are breaks here and there but not many and no way to fit in a test prep class that runs on an 8 week schedule. Nor do I see drivers ed happening.
I think we will shoot for December as his first sitting, but may have to look at Jan or Feb. Fall is XC and MB, so I’d rather start test prep towards the end of that at the earliest.
He is doing an online game design class right now over spring break, and enjoying it though says it’s easy, we will see if he keeps going, it’s a 5 course series.
Just to chime in, in our school district (in Alaska, and it’s the same requirement in several districts up here) the requirement is one credit(=one year) of PE, plus a half credit(=one semester) of “Lifetime Personal Fitness” (read: health), which many students take online during a summer. Playing one season of one extramural sport provides a quarter credit of PE (untranscripted, not just ungraded).
My D19 will by the end of this school year already, it turns out, have 1¾ credits of PE (without any extramural sports!) and is signed up for another half credit from a minicourse at the beginning of the fall term—but no Lifetime Personal Fitness credit at all. It’s good that she’s active and such, but we may need to get on her about not padding her schedule with gym courses when nothing else will fit in.
(It’s not like she’s skimping on the academic side, though—she’ll actually have completed all her requirements for graduation by the end of junior year. She’s not earning a spectacular GPA getting there if current trends continue, mind, but she’s certainly academically driven.)
I really like the idea of a summer program at a prospective college, but I’m a little shy about whether the impression S19 would get at the camp would carry over when it comes time to look at the school for college. What if I send him to a program at a school I think might be great for him and he has a bad time at camp? That might affect how he feels about the school even if it’s a judgement made without ever seeing the campus with students on it!
The programs I’ve looked into are expensive. And they all seem to be three weeks long. When I mention it, S19 balks. Says summer is too short as it is and doesn’t really want to go away for three whole weeks. He agreed that a shorter camp with a fun twist might work, but really doesn’t want an academic camp. Carleton usually has a one week ultimate frisbee camp and he was totally up for that but, for some reason, they announced they aren’t doing it this summer. Oh well.
3 weeks is too long unless it’s something a kid is passionate about and it’s their idea. This was definitely a 1 week academic session with a fair amount of work involved. He thought it sounded great at the time of sign up as a way to gauge major area of interest.
Of course when the time came, and he saw the syllabus and realized it really was a week long of actual classes and work, he was less thrilled. That said, afterwards, he agreed it was a good thing and helped him overall.
I think your concerns about possible negative impact are valid @homerdog it would be a risk. For my S it was helpful in realizing a dorm is a dorm is a dorm and he doesn’t care about the layout etc nearly as much as he thought the would but hills and distance to classes are more of a factor than he’d originally considered. LOL!
I may look into something similar for S19 next summer but it’s really too early to tell.
Yesterday S found out that 10 of the 60 kids in his class are doing semester away last year. He was bummed since he’d kind of planned to do that himself, but our (private) school makes it expensive. They only take credits from certain semester away schools and if you don’t do those programs, you are faced with making up a lot of credits. Since he can’t do summer school due to sports, it’d be hard for him to make up credits. Thing is, the semester away schools are really pricey: ca 24K for a semester (ouch!!) plus you still pay the tuition at your home school. We sat down with S in Feb when apps were due and told him we couldn’t justify the cost. He’d gotten over it, but hearing about where all his classmates are going yesterday was kind of painful for him.
On the upside though, through his sport connections we are sending him off to train in Europe this summer for a month. This sounds glamorous, but it’s not. Train, eat, train, eat, train, eat, sleep. Fortunately the cost is not much more than just airfare since he’s going with a local team in the country and staying in a very minimalist dorm. We know quite a few families in the public school who have done something like this as a “poor-man’s” semester away, but S19’s school poo-pooed the idea. He could have done it at the local public school as they’ll take credits from foreign schools and online credits, but S’s private school would not. Oh well.
Aw, @liska21 - I know what you’re going through. We’ve also watched as lots of D’s classmates go away on school trips we can’t afford. We just all agreed yesterday that a spring break trip next year to England was not worth it, even if we did have the money - one week for $4,000 - good grief, our whole family could go for that much.
D is sanguine, but I know she feels a twinge.
@Gatormama Exactly. S19 didn’t go on French trip for spring break. $4000 for that one too. I’d rather spend a little more and have our family go! Plus, we can see what we want to see instead of what the tour was showing the kids. I just keep telling both of our kids that they will study abroad in college. And they can work overseas if they want. My husband worked in Amsterdam and Sydney for extended periods of time before we were married. And my brother in law moved to Paris and worked for a bank for 12 years, met his wife there, and just recently returned to the states when his little girls started school. It’s ok to not go on these trips as 16-year olds.
Just have to share news from today’s mail – D19 received a handwritten letter from the dean of one of the schools she visited last week. I took a picture on my phone and messaged D to let her know. And yes, I know it’s marketing to prospective students – but I know one high school sophomore who’s going to love it.
Re camps; My son19 applied for a camp at RPI this summer, Exploring Engineering if I recall. Looks kind of neat, he’d probably like it and I think I’d send him if he got in. I don’t mind paying for summer camps if they help the kid better at something, exposes them to stuff they might not get at HS, and/or is located at a school of interest. My son has done a few soccer camps at schools he is interested in, so it was a good way to visit and see it first hand.
The trip thing is hard. SD14 did a HS French trip…and doesn’t get to study abroad. SS11 didn’t do anything in HS and did get to study abroad. The younger two did a band trip to Ireland last year and most likely will not get to study abroad unless they find funding. That “was” our family vacation for the year. Both kids did raise funds on their own for it. But I’ll admit, I am a sucker for the band trips, I went on one every year myself, including one European one (that I raised funds for back in the day).
S17 had a NYC drama trip this year. I refused to pay for it (see Ireland) and he worked and paid for the whole thing himself. Great exercise. If they want it badly enough, they can make it happen if you give them the tools. IF S19 stays in state or magically gets much bigger MAC than I think he will, he might get to study abroad but if he ends up at a similar price point to his siblings…not on our dime. He will know the tradeoffs though.
My S19 will get to go to Germany with his school orchestra next year for less than $2000, which seems reasonable - they stay with host families. There’s a group of Germans coming to our school this year. D16 is thinking about study abroad junior year but it really depends on $$ and whether it will impact her graduation date.
I’m thinking about a one-week on-campus program next year - VA Tech has an “inside architecture and design” program that might spark an interest in S19 - he has drawing skills, but couldn’t fit in art and music (and doesn’t want to take art or design with freshmen now that he’ll finally have room in his schedule).
Hey @STEM2017 my son17 did not take any AP classes until senior year because he did not want to, and took 2 in senior year, classes that were of interest to him. I don’t think the AP race is really worth it. Take them if you want to, or not.
