In general DE is all at the local CC, you can choose from a few, some kids go full DE, some do partial but it is coordinated through the HS. No extra fees unless the class has a special extra fee above tuition but you do have to buy books.
No IB but 26 AP’s. You do have to pay for the test but it is optional. There are also 3 “college in the classroom classes” where you have a separate final test and different weighting that mirrors the flagship test for the class and can get credit that way. More expensive than an AP but can be worth it in some cases. Our oldest did full DE, next one has a number of AP’s but didn’t take any tears. #3 did both a college in the classroom class/credit and AP test and S19 will have (likely) 9 AP tests, most of which could at his schools.
It pays to research if the AP tests will count at the colleges on a list, on our case they have to pay and register before decisions may be in but sometimes you can clearly see there is no point in a test based on the list.
We have the same schedule, @parent2one . My kid is in the magnet program so his theatre class takes up 2 slots. Last year AP Calc took up 2 slots. The classes are 95 minutes (I think).
We just got an email from the counselor saying that class schedules were mailed out yesterday. For the past 3 years we’ve had to go in and adjust the schedule after we get it. I can’t see why this year will be any different. We already know we need to adjust it because the kiddo took Econ in DE at the community college over the summer, so that frees up a half year for something else.
I think that the kid’s thinking on classes has evolved over the summer. He is interested in being a teacher aide in the Acting Shakespeare class. It’s not going to do him any favors in the ‘most rigorous courses’ category, but he is excited about coaching Shakespeare’s approach to verse and talking about research into Original Pronunciation. It’s a small class (16 students, I think).
Hi all- I have a question about the common app… was wondering if anyone could weigh in.
So D has taken classes at her regular HS, Virtual school, (required for graduation from HS in our state!) and the local college for dual enrollment. It’s all under the same transcript for her regular HS, and is listed on her transcript under the heading for each.
So would you list each separately? For instance under colleges attended, there is a drop down for dual enrollment. But then also says what degree was received. (none) And the virtual school comes up, but says to list why each school wasn’t attended anymore (or something like that). That’s not the case either- VS in our state is required anyway. It’s all getting confusing when really she is taking all of these classes under her main HS. The GC at virtual school says she WOULD NOT report them all separately because they all come up on her main regular HS transcript. But why then is there a slot for D/E on the app? What do you all think?
I agree that it’s interesting how many different approaches there are to structuring the school day. I like @homerdog ‘s point that you would think there would be more consensus that arises from research. Or, perhaps yes, it’s that there are many routes to acceptable outcomes. Lots of models may work well. And some of what we know would help students succeed across different socioeconomic realities – like the wraparound resources of LeBron James’ new school – are so expensive that they could never be widely implemented.
We have a K-8 school in our district that is all about doing things differently. The students rotate around all day, so they have no one classroom home, and they have teams of teachers. There are no desks – just things like beanbag chairs and some tables. They use a lot of individual white boards, move around, and are very much project-based. I think they’re doing some things well, but it did seem like throwing out everything and being different for the sake of different. It’s a closed-access school for only certain housing developments as it was funded by a specific property tax.
Our district has no DE courses. In fact I had never heard this term before coming to CC last spring. Our district apparently is well-regarded and among the top quartile at least in our large state, but I have to say, there’s not much innovation here among the high schools. No magnet programs, limited choice, no language immersion for anything other than one K-5 program at one school (which is weird given that we’re in a border region), and no DE. We do have several AP classes, and the district benefits from the high socioeconomic status of many students. I’d really like to know what percentage of students at our high school goes on to four-year universities and colleges. I know it’s far, far below the 98% figures of some folks’ schools here.
My kids have just five classes a day, with what seem like a lot of breaks and long passing periods. There are three trimesters a year. A full course is 2 trimesters of the year. AP classes and arts programs like choir take 3 trimesters, or a year and a half’s worth of course spaces. D19 has therefore been squished in her schedule.
I feel like my kids have been guinea pigs for a lot of things – maybe this is just how it always goes, but I feel like there have been a lot of changes implemented while they’ve been in school, from the switch to Common Core math for S21 to a significant increase in class sizes for D25. Some of the realities of the public school route, I suppose.
@SDCounty3Mom on your schools report that your GC sends over to colleges it will probably show the amount of kids going off to college, # of ap class offered, what percent takes them, avg GPA, avg SAT and ACT, maybe a list of awards the school has won, notable events in school history, how many team sports, a blurb on music and arts, etc.
Ours is readily available for view and it’s listed right on our schools web site, along with the schools Honor Roll each term.
You can ask your GC for a copy of what they send over to colleges. It’s good info to know, and you can gauge your kid against the averages presented.
I mentioned that there have been three models in my kids’ district:
[ul][]DE comp I classes are taught in the high schools. This is paid by the school district, including textbooks.
[]A small number of students take all of their senior year classes DE at the local private very small LAC. This is relatively expensive ($15k for the year), and parents pay for it, but it guarantees a strongly discounted tuition rate if the students go to that college after graduation, so it’s appealing to a subset of the population here.
[li]Any other DE courses are taken at the local open-admissions public college, and are paid for by the parents.[/ul][/li]Starting recently, though, there’s a fourth option (which I’m considering using for my D23, if they continue it):
For their last year or two of high school, students can transfer to a “high school” that has no actual campus but is technically co-located with the local open-admissions public college. Students take only college courses, and DE courses (which includes all of the gen-ed courses for the university, plus a few others that fulfill high school graduation requirements) are paid for, including textbooks, by the school district. Any other courses (e.g., potentially for my daughter, advanced-level foreign language courses) are paid for by the family.
Just returned from our Quinnipiac U tour for S19. Will post this in both parents…2019 threads. As some know, my D14 just graduated from there (with a JOB - key in our house…time for paybacks yippee!!), and I was interested to see how S19 liked it. Decided to give D20 a break now from tours and will take her next year. Here are some new things I learned (go figure!):
3+1 program for biology - graduate in 4 years with both bachelors and masters in bio - said lots of pre-med students are utilizing this option. Saves a year or two of tuition. I asked - what about if student wants to take biochemistry and do 3+1? Counselor said they are most likely adding biochem as an option to do that and to keep in touch via email with him before/as S19 applies. There are other 3/1, 3/2, 3/3 programs that were there prior which I remember. 3+3 is an engineering program.
Pre-med acceptance rate into any school (not just QU) is ~85% as long as you maintain a 3.0 in your classes. Separate counselor to help stay on track.
Shuttles go to all campuses. When D was there, I didn't think they went to the campus where med/nursing/law/ed was, which was not an issue because by then everyone in those majors brought cars anyway to do clinicals, etc. But now goes.
87% receive merit aid. 95% live on campus - other 5% commute. Housing no longer guaranteed all four years - now only 3 years, but (my D14 tells me) every senior that wants to live on campus has been able to if they want. D14 says that the seniors more often want to live off campus because there are a lot of options within minutes of campus and it's cheaper. I also asked about tripling - when D14 started, no tripling, but mid-way, they were overcrowded. D14 (not counselor) tells me they worked that out and no more tripling. She worked in admissions office for all four years.
More students by 1,000 since D14 started - counselor stated 7,000 undergrads and 2500 graduate students.
One mention about GPS directions - sometimes they take you to the "back way" which is very rural looking, and may give the appearance that it is in the middle of nowhere. The regular way is through town - Whitney Ave/Dixwell Ave which is adorable Hamden. The Olive Garden type restaurants and Target stores, etc. are in North Haven. Then New Haven is the small city stuff.
Everything mentioned on the tour seemed accurate to D14’s experience - no inflated thoughts to convince/sell the school. Tour guide was great. S19 responded, “I could go here” which translates to: “I love it!” So he will apply.
Two more tours - going to check out Marist College and decided to take a look at Rowan - which we keep going back and forth on whether to go or not, so we’re just gonna go, LOL.
I am actually getting pooped out now after all the college tours.
S started classes and his schedule is wrong, but now he’s rethinking what he wants to do. He’s in the second year of IB diploma and he’s covered for Lang, History, Spanish and Environmental Science. He also has AP stats. Unfortunately, he still needs Health/PE to graduate so he was supposed to have one of those each semester. The thing that is wrong with his schedule is that he was not placed in health or PE and has AP computer science instead.
He should just get out of the computer science and switch into health or PE and make life easier. However, he thinks he will really like the computer science class and he likes the teacher a lot so far. I can tell he really wants to stay in that class. He could stay in it and take health/PE online but that would cost $500 for the year and I’d much rather put that toward application fees or anything else. I also don’t want him to have an extra online class to worry about when he is so busy with sports and college stuff.
The third option is to drop AP stats, keep AP computer science, and add health/PE, which is what he really wants to do. I don’t think he should do it because he would not have a math this year and he is applying to some very selective schools. He took IB math last year which included an AP calc curriculum. The math he took in 8th grade also counted for high school so he doesn’t need another math to graduate. He will definitely have the “most rigorous” curriculum with the IB diploma but no math senior year? He said that stats has been so painfully boring and he would much rather take AP computer science. However, I think stats will get better and even if it is easy, so what?
Is it a mistake not to take a math this year?
@elena13 I think AP Computer Science is fine. I once heard a counselor say “AP Stats is not a math class!” AP CS is as mathy as AP Stats can be. I am not a mathematician but a scientist. Just my 2c.
“Real” math which above counselor was referring to is Multivariable Calculus/Differential Equations or Number Theory or Linear Algebra, etc, for kids going into STEM fields.
DS19 could be taking 4 “math” classes this year if he does not get AP Physics C: Multivariable Calc, AP CS, Graph theory (3 already signed up) and AP Stat.
Wow! That’s a lot of math @payn4ward ! Thanks so much for your thoughts. I’m getting a little panicky because it was all worked out last spring and I’m concerned about the lack of math. I do think AP comp sci would be just as mathy.
Funny you said “real” as today S said, “It’s not a real class. We spent a class talking about how to find an average.”
I actually like stats and I’m sure the class will get more interesting.
@elena13, I don’t have any sage advice but just wanted to say that I totally understand the stress over the senior year schedule! I agonized over it all spring and then almost nothing D19 finally decided on fit anyway. Would PE/Health definitely fit instead of AP Stats? If so, that’s what I would lean toward since that’s what your son wants and happy kids do better, in my experience. (When my D21 likes a teacher, she does her best work without procrastination. The opposite situation has also happened, enough said.)
I can’t imagine that four years of high school math including AP Calculus would not be enough for any school besides maybe MIT or similar.
@SunnyFlorida22 Someone with an earlier graduate may have a better answer, but for our Auburn instructions (non-Common App), the answer was to list everything and also send a separate transcript. I think the separate transcript becomes necessary if upon enrollment, we seek college credit. So for now, we are just being redundant with her Virtual classes and listing them.
@elena13 Id suggest discussing with the IB coordinator AP Stats versus AP CS. CS is a new-ish class in the system, but my daughter loved it. I will share our experience with online PE if it helps. It’s rough unless your son is already doing activities that will count on the “Fitbit” device or iphone. So if he’s on track in the fall, easy win. Fitting in the reading and quizzes with the full course load was still rough. It is doable. We found cheaper non-county options online including one that combined PE with health. Some were very flexible with the completion dates. Just have to cross reference the accrediting agency with the county. We ended up doing PE online thru the county -baseline and final physical testing is on-site. It was geographically convenient, but rough because the timing is strict. We stretched out Health with a non-county online school, so it overlapped with summer and a portion of Fall. Overall, I found PE/Health to be a headache online. Since AP CS is counted as a science in the diploma requirements, I find it difficult to believe it would be viewed negatively.
@elena13 I’m not familiar with IB classes but, if he took Calc last year, I agree that the next math class should be Multivariable. If he doesn’t want to do that, then Stats. The problem is that, if he has to go back to Calc in college, he will have had a year off and it’s hard to go back. Stats is a different animal. As for AP Comp Sci, make sure it’s Comp Sci A and not Principles. Principles is very easy and not seen as rigorous. Also, at our school, Comp Sci is in the math department but it would be taken as an additional math class and not a substitute for Calc or Stats. I don’t think his middle school math will count. Our S took geometry as an eighth grader and it won’t count. Very selective schools want four year of math in high school. So, for him, he ended up in Bc Calc last year and will take honors Multivariable this year.
If Multivariable isn’t an option, I think you need to keep stats somehow.
Senior year schedules were mailed out on Monday, supposedly. I keep checking the mailbox. The school has an online tracking system that would show his schedule, but the system has been going to an error screen since last Friday. I suspect that’s just because they’re shifting the database from last year to this year, but it’s hella annoying.
The reason I’m so antsy about this is that we’re going on the college visit trip next week (yay!) so if we have to make adjustments, I’ve only got tomorrow and Friday to do it. And, as I’ve mentioned before, they’ve screwed up his schedule 3 years running so I have no faith that it won’t be screwed up again.
College visit trip is firming up! We’re going to see Yale, Wesleyan, Brown and Tufts, with Mystic Seaport and Salem as family vacation fillers. There’s a Viking exhibit at Mystic that has me all aflutter.
@ninakatarina that seems like a fun trip! I’ve recently been to all of those schools except Wes. It’s a nice time of the year to visit the coastline of NE.
One piece of advice when you visit Tuts. When you are checking out campus it might not seem that there is a lot of stuff to do directly off campus , whereas Brown and Yale have city life directly next door. I would advise taking a stroll down College Ave and head into Davis Square ( at least drive that way). It’s about 12 minute walk to Davis Square, and that’s the hip zone for the kids to explore. College Ave is very safe to walk and once you get to Davis Sq there are great places to eat. The kids from Tufts go there a lot. That is where the T stop is currently, and that gets you into Harvard in just minutes. There is a new T stop being built next to campus right now, and that will open in 2 years and the Tuft’s kids will have even easier access to the city. So that’s my tip, if you can make it over to Davis Sq you’ll have a better understanding of where the campus sits, instead of just thinking it’s located in a neighborhood with little around it, just realize a few minutes away is a more active, trendy, college kid Aga focused zone.
When you visit Brown and Yale it will seem like you are right in the middle of the action. Make sure to head over to Thayer St at Brown for a snack! I really liked Yale’s campus, it was very pretty and remarkably flat. I love Brown, it’s more familiar to me, and I know my way around. Tufts doesn’t seem as big and " old architecture" as those two and has a more traditional campus, but be prepared for a hilly experience.
I am playing the game of how many clicks through admission webpages to find the ACT/SAT Codes to send test scores. A lot more than I care to!
I find this exercise more useful than just Searching the school on the ACT/SAT site. As I read the Sending test scores page deeply hidden after multiple clicks, some schools say you may self-report scores on Common App, etc, and are only required to send official scores to enroll. Nice way to save some $. Some schools have a paragraph or two on Subject tests or superscoring policy.
Anyone sending scores to schools when the schools say you “may” self-report scores? Why?
I realized that I did use 4 free score reports on test dates. Nice! I had no recollection
The applications are barely started, but the schools will have the test score.
@payn4ward yes. I sent scores to all schools even though three of them said we could self report. I did it to show extra interest since we won’t get to visit. And S19 received emails from two of the three saying they recognized that we sent scores when we did not need to and they recognize that means he’s serious about applying.
We may self report an AP score, planning on sending SAT the regular old way. We have not sent in any yet, didn’t sign up for free score sending.
I don’t want to send a bunch of scores in just yet in case son19 decides to ED somewhere.There would be no point. So we are just waiting a bit on all of that.
I am seeing many selective schools are going test “self-reporting” route beginning 2018-19. They must have recognized the burden of sending scores, $$$.
