We visited Pitt last month. We liked the city vibe and the school spirit. I wish we saw more classrooms, but people seemed happy around campus.
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We looked inside a bunch of the country rooms in the Cathedral of Learning where they have classes, those were fun to see!
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I visited Pitt a couple years ago and thought it was a great campus and community! Too big for my 27, but seems like a really good place for a lot of students.
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I wish we had more time to explore. We were touring a bunch of schools and were on a timeline. It’s on the top side of the list so hopefully I’ll get to explore more the next trip.
Looks like Pitt has a computational biology major – I’ll tell D27 to check it out, since she’s also short on targets. Though it might fall in the category of large schools where the bureaucracy might lead to some awkward repetitions. That’ll likely be at least somewhat an issue at a lot of schools for her. She’s been on the STEM geek homeschool path her whole life, which has led to quite a bit of acceleration in science/math/cs, but not in ways that colleges might read easily. For instance, some schools don’t take AP scores at all, or require a 5 to skip intro bio. She has a 4 from taking the AP bio test in 8th grade, but then will have two to four post-AP college bio courses – so will they make her repeat intro, or look at the other credits? Similarly, she’ll have 6 post-calculus math classes, none of which are officially for credit, but will she be able to test out or skip prerequisites? And her CS knowledge is entirely from projects, so even more impossible to judge. All this stuff matters to her, but it’s so hard to research (one of the reasons she likes WPI actually – since an official policy of no prerequisites solves her issues neatly).
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Pitt made it onto the list after a great visit, much to my relief. It’s not a popular option around here (PNW) so she was a bit skeptical when I insisted we check it out. She loved the vibes, they’ll take a lot of her AP credits, and it’s a solid target for her. Rolling admission and possibly getting an acceptance early in the process is another appealing perk.
D27 also dropped CMU from her list after a dreary tour there on the same day as our Pitt tour.
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Are there schools that really would make a kid repeat intro bio if do well in post AP-bio classes? yikes, talk about layers of silly admins!
Maybe? That’s kind of the issue. Intro Bio is obviously a required course for a computational biology/bioinformatics major. So it would require that specific requirement-for-the-major course being waived, not based on actually completing it to the college’s specifications, but based on not needing to complete it. I’d hope it’s possible, but it’s not at all an online researchable thing. And I have heard of other kids who had to repeat things like that for silly reasons. I think you’d have to ask the actual department, and maybe that’s something that an accepted student could do, but it doesn’t seem like an appropriate question from a kid just trying to decide where to apply. And the larger schools that are more likely to have this major are also the ones that might make this kind of thing harder.
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Yeah, for sure that is true (Beyond if they take specific AP scores). I just think most (not all) schools will probably be OK. And agree most won’t go down the rabbit hole of this until the kid is in, at least.
An annoying option would be to see if school take CLEP scores and just take the test if they give your kid a hard time..Though I imagine schools that would take CLEP woudln’t give one a hard time about a 4 on an AP.
From what D25 learned, it really depends on the school. For most schools she was interested in, they really wanted students to take the intro bio classes at their institution and wouldn’t accept AP or event post AP level bio classes for any bio related major. They didn’t seem to have any assessment tests to figure out their bio level, so want to make sure students have the proper bio foundation. It seems silly to me and a huge waste of the student’s time.
For math, again depends on the institution. For the university she attends, you are only allowed to test out through calc BC. So far she has had to retake both multivariable calculus and linear algebra. She said the mvc class was exactly the same as her previous class, but the linear algebra class is a lot harder than her earlier one. She actually doesn’t mind retaking the classes too much because it makes them somewhat easy classes in her otherwise rigorous schedule. But I completely understand, especially when it sounds like it will be a lot of classes that your daughter has already taken and probably be pretty boring for her and not a good use of time and money if she has to retake many of those.
I suppose I could ask where your D25 goes to school, but more importantly, how and when did she learn those things about the school? Because my kid hates repetition, and will choose hard over easy any day (this kid attempted to skip right to calc in 6th grade and muscled all the way through derivatives until she finally hit her limit and circled back to do algebra 2). So I’ve been meeting her where she’s at her entire life, and now I’m worried it’ll come back to bite her. If it’s one post-BC math class, sure maybe not a deal-breaker to retake, but if it’s 6? – that takes most of her time in college (she’s done multivariable and differential equations and calc-based probability, and the stats that has calc-based probability as a prereq, and might do discrete math and linear algebra next year, even though both will add to her potential repetition issues, because she’s running out of things that don’t require them). I think worst case she ends up freshman year where all the subjects she likes feel repetitive and boring, and all the challenge is in her struggle subjects (writing), and then she’ll be miserable and check out entirely.
And her multidisciplinary interest means this’ll come up not for one set of intro classes, but for 3 of them (bio, math, and cs). So it’s fairly important to her.
I know she’s not special and there are tons of other kids advanced in lots of things – my mistake was that I expected that would make ‘ability to place out of classes/skip over prerequisites’ an easier thing to search in the college list process than it apparently is!
That is a pretty narrow slice of schools I am guessing..
Tufts take AP Bio - Pre-Matriculation Credits | Tufts Admissions
BU takes it
https://www.bu.edu/admissions/files/2018/06/Advanced-Credit-Guide.pdf
(those are major classes)
Sure, Dartmouth doesn’t but brown lets you pass into some : BIOL 0200 Replacement | AP/IB Transfer Credit | Biology Undergraduate Education | Brown University
Seems unlikely to me “Most” schools of lower rank will force them to retake it.
Also, 27 goes to a school where many kids are super advanced (think 5 semesters of college physics), and while some have troubles in college with advancement and credits, most don’t…I think this also depends on where DE credits come from, to be fair.
There’s also “general policies” vs. special situations. I know you are saying your student isn’t special, but having math competency as a freshman beyond the college calc sequence is at least somewhat special/unusual at most schools that aren’t MIT. My S25 at Rice was told by several people that it would be very unusual to be granted credit for all the university level math he took in high school, and that it was a bad idea start with honors real analysis as a freshman, though they did allow it. He was granted the credit and got an A in honors analysis.
It IS hard to know ahead of time, especially about credit. We initially thought he would be going to a different school (we thought it was such an unlikely possibility that he would both get into Rice AND that the aid package would work out, and so he was moving along toward his 2nd choice while waiting to hear if he Got into Rice). At the other school they seemed very open to him starting in real analysis, but wouldn’t comment at all about the credit, even after being admitted (they told us to use the online tool, which for complicated reasons wasn’t working well in his specific situation).
I think especially once you have admission decisions in hand, asking questions (potentially of the math department or other relevant departments) about the flexibility they have for testing for placement seems like a fair question. At my S25’s second choice school, they allow students to “test out” of some classes by taking the final exam to prove they are prepared for the next class in the sequence.
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I guess I should have phrased that differently - it wasn’t until she was accepted to schools that she really looked into their AP credit policies. And just now I’m looking into the schools where she was considering and it seems that more than I thought accept AP bio, but some still want students to take bio at their institution. So, you are definitely correct that most schools accept credits for bio majors. Even at her institution, for bio majors they do accept AP credits, but for her bio adjacent major, it is not (at least not for her major plus the grad program she’s interested in). D25 was accepted to Tufts (and it was top 3 on her list) and was one of the schools that I did know accept AP bio credits.
It sounds like my kids attend a school similar to yours with many taking very advanced courses and from what I’ve heard, it’s pretty mixed on whether they get credit or not, but I know that many do not have trouble.
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Definitely once she’s accepted schools should be able to provide you info on what she will be able to use credit for or test out of. Many schools will also try to help with this before you have an acceptance (though they might not be able to give an exact answer).
Your daughter sounds to be advanced in several areas and I would hope that she wouldn’t have to retake many or any of those courses. Or I would hope that the university would work with her and her circumstances t make sure she isn’t having to repeat courses she doesn’t need to.
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Thanks all for being my sounding board on this! I have exactly the opposite situation as some here – instead of a high school with a lot of advanced kids as useful data points I have a rural Alaska community with probably 10 or fewer total high school aged kids, exactly none of whom are in my situation. And even our state university system’s online offerings are limited in some places (post calc math especially), so she will end up with a lot of self-studied MIT open courseware math that I know won’t give her credit, but hopefully can give her placement into math she doesn’t know yet. So I appreciate all the internet data points.
She’d love to get into MIT of course, where the problem would be solved easily, but as a kid that loves probability math, she knows it’s not something to plan on.
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The Kid has finished putting his college list together. He picked fifteen schools: four safeties/likely schools, four targets, and seven reaches. Six in-state, and nine out-of-state. Nine publics, and six private schools. We have visited four of these colleges. Next year he should have at least a few good options to pick from, and possibly quite a few more.
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Congrats! so organized!
My kid has only 4 that they are 100% sure they are applying to, of which 3 are likely schools for them, and 1 is a reach, which is kind of an unusual split!
There are about 20ish in the mix, but they want to see a few more in person before narrowing down, and that may actually add back a few. I thought that they had ruled out large state flagships, but now they are very keen on seeing a new one. If they like that one, we may now have others to consider 
. They also want to see a couple in Canada. If they love those, it may open the door to more Canadian ones, too. argh! It will be a busy summer! However, given the $$ involved, here, I do want them to have a good list they are excited about. We obviously will also wait to see where they get it with some, but most aren’t that far.
Yes very organized! I feel like my D27 is fairly organized, but also a little stuck. She has 4 reach, 1 target, 1 likely/safety she’s pretty sure she wants to apply to, and another one of each (reach, target, likely) she’s unsure of, but is struggling to add beyond those initial 6, particularly in the target and likely zone – and might even take out some of the 6. I feel like we’ve done a fair amount of looking for “computational bio programs with decently in-depth CS”, and there likely aren’t many more out there to find. She’s ruled out LACs (with the techy exception of Harvey Mudd). Big state schools that are farther away and more expensive than the WUE (cheaper tuition for western state residents) school she already added as a likely/safety aren’t super appealing, and the flagships are generally unaffordable. And she needs a trans-safe state and location. I guess she doesn’t really need more than one safety if she’s sure to get into it, but I’d really like her to have more in both the target and safety zone. So I guess her best bet to add more is to try and figure out if there are any small to medium-sized universities that will make it realistic to pursue all her interests together (bio, cs, math) in some major/minor/just taking courses combination without overloading. Which is possibly a harder thing to research than computational biology majors.
Both D27, and D28 went together on a college visit tour this spring, and D27 won’t likely get to do any more visits until after acceptances unless she gets into a free fly-in in the fall. D28’s search is already much easier – obviously she has lots of time to change her mind, but she pretty much said I like LACs, and they all have Bio and English, so I can just pick a set to apply to based whatever other characteristics (currently weather/geography and an interest in women’s colleges).
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Wow, that’s great to already have the college list together!
My kid definitely is not anywhere near that point yet. He has a big list of schools he’s interested in and really needs to narrow it down. I also think there are too many reaches on his list.