<p>my son is a HS sr… Math 720 CR 770 writing 740. 3.95 uw . he is def. is planning to pursue he social scinces, has no taste for the physical sciences, health sciences, engineering. most likely law, public affairs. He has not taken precalc, but is taking AP Stats. He reasons why do engineering nerds do not have have to take take AP government or APUSh if they are not ? His friends are math nerds and they are not taking any more social studies that is not required, he says " but I HAVE to precalc to look good "<br>
ANYWAY, with his good math SAT score be ok if he does not take precalc for CU?</p>
<p>Your son’s chances will become very poor if your son does not take Pre-Calculus. SAT I only covers up to Geometry/Algebra 1 with a slight bit of Algebra 2.</p>
<p>Many applicants to the Ivies, even those majoring in subject areas outside of the natural sciences, will have taken at least AP Calculus AB. A person with math only up to Algebra 2 will not seem like a very competitive applicant to the admissions panel.</p>
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<p>To get into a top school, you need to take the most competitive classes in all subjects. The “math nerds” who get into the Ivies are taking their AP englishes and AP histories, and getting A’s in them. Similarly, the “humanities nerds” who make the Ivies are getting A’s in their math and science APs.</p>
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<p>Columbia likes people to be well-rounded, not one-dimensional. It’s a pretty poor attitude, in my opinion, to have “no taste” for any of those subjects. It’s one thing if he doesn’t want to major in a science, but there’s got to be subjects that pique his interest. Astronomy? Geology? Anything?</p>
<p>I did not want to bring my son’s severe disability into this , but now I am going to. My son broke his neck at the age of 14, one week before starting ninth grade. He his paralyzed from the neck down, although he can move his arm at the shoulder and can drive his wheelchair by using a joystick. He has to to have others scribe for him or use speech recognition hardware to express himself on paper. and that fact he has taken 6 AP’s and will have taken 11 by the time when he finishes ths coming year.
He never quit doing activities that he could. He had to change high schools because the one he was suppose to attens was not wheelchair acessible. He started at a new one 5 months after spending that time in rehabiltation and discovering that fact that he will never be able to do anything that you or me could do ( walking, driving , sports, or other things young people do). He was the best trumpet player in his middle school, so that is gone, he was the an All star baseball player, now that’s gone too, so despite that, he still managed to stay in his high school marching band that he was in since 7th grade by playing a stupid gong with the mallet taped to his hand. He has gone ahead an earned his Eagle Scout with the Boy Scouts. Since he could no longer paly the trumpet, he decided to take up singing, in the school chorus, and guess what, he was all Rockland County Bass in the mixed choir a by his junior year and missed by one point to be All New York State. He sings in the adult choir at our church and he decided to form a youth musical ensemble at the church and youth group too. He has never recieved lower than a 94 in any class all honors/AP. He has won some awards for his inspiration to others. He has been in the newspaper 3 times chronicling his efforts.</p>
<p>okwjoe - You must be so proud of your son’s accomplishments – he sounds like a very talented and amazing young man. He obviously has the will and the drive to succeed at whatever he pursues. </p>
<p>It’s sad that some people on this message board feel compelled to denigrate others for their posts. Please don’t take it personally – you eventually get to know who these people are because they do it to everybody.</p>
<p>Good luck to you and your son :-)</p>
<p>okwjoe,</p>
<p>given the circumstances hats off to your son, i understand that math poses an obstacle, but if he has overcome so many of them, doing math should too be possible. You phrased your first post as if he was purely uninterested in math, and i think this might still be the case. I don’t mean to make his life harder than it already is, but math is the foundation for many areas of knowledge and analysis, regardless of college credit, he has a lot to learn in that math class, which will aid him in his future understanding of other subjects. Columbia does have 2 science/math requirements. In my experience the already acquired math knowledge base deteriorates if not returned to, practiced or taken forward. so this just compounds the disadvantage that he will be at without math. If he does do the math, he will probably appreciate what he has learnt in time, for he will see it’s key implications to our world, and on top of all that it makes for a great college essay, about how math posed a bunch of obstacles, but how he stuck to it, struggled with it (doing the numbers in his head etc) and overcame it. Unless it is impossible to do, he should do it.</p>
<p>okwjoe,</p>
<p>Your S is amazing, as you must know. I certainly don’t think he needs to take math in order to prove he can overcome obstacles, given the obstacles he has had to overcome every single day since he broke his neck. My concern would not be so much about what admissions thinks, as how hampered he might be by his lack of math background in college, especially Columbia with its core curriculum. There are many classes, in fields he may not even know exist as a high school student, that are calculus based. Without pre-calc, he would not be well set up to take calculus 1, if he decides he wants to. So he is eliminating a lot of possibilities. Based on his SAT math score, he clearly has the ability to do pre-calc. Perhaps if he looked at the course catalogue and some of the pre-requisites, it might help him see the reason to continue in math.</p>
<p>But, in my opinion, this is not a make-or-break part of his admissions. If he is dead set against it, I wouldn’t force him. (I am only another parent, however, not someone with any special insight into the admissions department). Perhaps this is a question to ask his guidance counselor at the high school. The key thing for admissions is that he is taking a challenging enough courseload overall, and one that will prepare him to do well at Columbia.</p>
<p>Given all that your S has to deal with, and how determined and resourceful he sounds, I think you must have given him some fantastic support. Good luck with his applications. He sounds like a young man who can succeed anywhere.</p>
<p>You should tell us this beforehand. The thing that we hate most is people who want us to give them decent answers but don’t give us decent info. Has it occurred to you that if you told us everything in that post up front, we can understand your situation better instead of giving you our judgement based on a partial story? … we can’t give you straight answers if you don’t give us straight info.</p>
<p>You may have asked a question but now, it just sounds like you wanted to make someone look bad.</p>
<p>i agree with karot. you should have stated “my son has a disability that makes it hard for him to do math” instead of what you did.</p>
<p>I second karot’s post. Shraf’s post – which i guess has now been removed – was perhaps over the top but it’s equally wrong to portray Shraf’s post as inappropriately demeaning the OP’s son / the disabled / etc. There’s absolutely no way anyone could have inferred that a disability is involved, given post #1. That post portrayed OP’s son in a very negative light-- someone who is one-dimensional, has “no taste” for anything math/science, and makes fun of “math nerds.”</p>
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<p>Sac’s post is very good, but I just wanted to add to this. There are also many classes / fields in the math/science arena that ARE NOT numbers-based, which a HS student may not know of. It really doesn’t sound like the the OP’s son has “no taste” for a class on the history of math or on astronomy or something.</p>
<p>There is a reason why I didn’t disclose the fact my son was disabled. My son actually enjoys the biological sciences, geolgogy, astronomy. His friends who along with him or in the top 10-15 of his class and most are going to study enginnering/ medicine and they always seem to brag how smart they are because" no one else in the school can do what we do" and he resents them because he feels left behind and proabably has love/ hate thing going on.
I wanted to show him here the reponse he would get from high acheiving people @ columbia. one of the schools he is looking to apply to. but things got out of hand.<br>
It takes him 3 times as long to complete anywork when he can’t do with his speech recognition software, becuase somone has to scribe for him and it gets ugly when people do not write it the way he actually says it (I am the worst lol). Last year his started the year with AP Chem, APUSH, AP English, AP Spanish, AP Psyh. and precalc. Between the AP CHEM and precalc it took us and him 2.5 hours to do labs, assignments in chem and precalc atop of the 2 hours for him to do his other homework. Plus it was marching band season and that took 3 hours/ 4 days aweek plus the majority of weekends from 8 am until 11pm. plus going to football games and to 3 states for competitions. He got burned out and had to drop precalc.(So now he had time to take chrorus , but no lunch.
Now the reason why I did not mention his disability. I have seen many posters on the CC attack people with learning disabilities saying they are looking for a way to milk the system and i did not want to defend myself here. Plus colleges do not take his disability into account for admission/ placement. I just wanted an honest answer about the math. I did not expect the what was posted here.</p>
<p>Yeah, most people don’t expect what we tell them. We will tell you what we feel is important if you want to make it to Columbia and survive here. We will answer your questions if you show that you’ve made a decent effort to do some work for your self. Sometimes, our attitudes come off as curt and abrasive, but we believe at least, that it will help you.</p>
<p>As to your original question, I still suggest that your son take Calc in high school. Calc here is going to be very different and will cover more material than AP Calc, so it’s a good idea to get him used to some of the important material. And by the way, your son, whether he applies to CC or Fu, will HAVE TO take calc and several sciences regardless of his intended major and interest. Many courses will expect a solid understanding of Calculus. I’ve yet to see any statistics prerequisites until you get into econ.</p>
<p>I disagree with you when you say that colleges don’t take his disability into account in admissions. The best way to MAKE SURE that the adcom will know something that you feel is important is to show it in the essay. Columbia’s essay allows you to choose any topic. What’s more, being able to achieve everything your son has with such a stifling condition is admirable and most extraordinary. However, you should consider how your son will be able to meet the high demands of a top tier school.</p>
<p>“whether he applies to CC or Fu, will HAVE TO take calc and several sciences regardless of his intended major and interest”</p>
<p>^this is a misinformed opinion. at Fu he will have to take calc, at CC the requirements are frontiers of science and two or three math or science courses, and there are tons of those without calc (many superficial) - physics for poets, intro astronomy etc. on top of that columbia is very accommodating to students with disabilities, if his disability severally inhibits his ability in a core class, they would be happy to drop the requirement in place of something else for him, if not they would go out of their way to make sure his is on a leveler playing field as the rest of students, in terms of his access to the material and the amount of time he has to put into his classes. i have a friend who is nearly blind, and they put everything into audio books and recordings for him. they also give him a single room on the first floor and write his exams while he dictates. So if your S gets into columbia he will be taken good care of, and the adcom must be informed of his disability, it seems to be a serious impediment to his participation and achievements. Sometimes people make up disabilities like having a mental condition that prevented them from doing math, when they were actually lazy and failed the class out of disinterest, this is not appreciated.</p>
<p>I think he does not need to do precalc if you can explain that away, but after being a college student, i cannot stress enough its importance to his future learning and it’s implications in other fields. In fact it i annoys me that CC wants its students to go through all the major lit and philosophy texts, and yet graduates students every year who cannot do or understand calculus.</p>
<p>Whoops, I was thinking about the curriculum for science students.</p>
<p>okwjoe,</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the use of the term “engineering nerd” set some people off here, since a disproportionate number of those who post appear to be headed to or graduates of the engineering college. Please realize that some of those who post here are high school students, and that online posting also sometimes brings out the worst in people. Too much testosterone on this forum at times, in my opinion, as high school students and college students try to impress each other with their put-downs So, please don’t judge an entire student body on the reaction here. Confidentialcoll’s description of how Columbia accomodated his friend’s visual disability speaks volumes.</p>
<p>I think you have gotten some genuine opinions and attempts to help here. If you want more, you might want to post your question on the parents forum. I suspect you’ll get a similar range of opinions, but more politely put.</p>
<p>As to his disability being considered by admissions, I don’t believe he has to write an essay about it. I can’t imagine that those writing his recommendations won’t describe what he has had to overcome and how he has met his challenges. Honestly, I can’t tell you how impressive he is to me just based on what you’ve said here.</p>
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<p>Thanks all three of you for standing with the logical interpretation of things</p>
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<p>and of course when the response you got wasn’t what you had hoped for you had to try to make those who gave an opinion contrary to your own look like jerks and have their opinion stricken from the record…where have i see that before in the last seven years…oh thats right…its straight from turd blossom’s play book. </p>
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<p>really?? not on this board i hope! I’ve been on this board for a year and a have and have posted almost 1300 tiimes and have never seen anyone say anything derogatory about the disabled or else i’d be the first to discredit their comments. If anything you should contrast the responses from before you gave the full story and after.</p>
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<p>when someone blatantly insults and degrades my field and my work with language and tone such as that displayed in the original post you better believe the response will be appropriately harsh. Its unfortunate that some parents find it necessary to suspend logic because they feel its important to blindly stick together and seem to draw battle lines between themseves and students/alums who are really just here to help.</p>
<p>And now a piece of advice for okwjoe’s son…despite the immaturity displayed in this thread i dont think OP’s son should suffer:</p>
<p>I applaud all of your accomplishments but it’ll be extremely important to dig deep when researching colleges. For instance, columbia’s campus isn’t exactly the most wheelchair-friendly! Though i think most of campus is technically accessible by wheelchair, a number of dorms and buildings are not…though the disability office does accommodate disabled students by making sure they can get to their classes and putting them in accessible housing…i think there will be something that will be lost in the college experience.</p>
<p>I am sorry if "engineering nerd " set off people here. I was ignorant of the fact, if people could be that touchy. If someone said somthing offensive like that to my face and I felt it was not sarcasm, then I would like to say somthing defensive to them. But mature people do not get upset overly excited when if they see in print a term that is not perverse , blatantly offensive, or tells them that their mother wears army boots.<br>
Yes parents do like to comment when they see immature posts being displayed by students attending a prestigious institution of higher learning.
And finally, if you read posts to topics placed on the forum " Learning Disabilties and Challenges you will see some posters ripping apart parents and students inquiring about topics dear to them.
My son has been told by professionals in his high school and private ones to lower his expectations becuase he is disabled and because it is a hard road to tranverse. Thank God for his high school guidiance counseler, his teachers, and some of his friends who treat him with respect.<br>
Yes, He has been to campuses of Columbia, Cornell, Rochester, Binghamton, Hofstra, Fordham, Albany, Colgate, and NYU. Columbia’s campus is flat and small. And the others are better or worse in some degree than Columbia.
If my son has listened to so called well meaning people he would be in a nursing home.</p>