Reading Comprehension and Writing

mathmom
Thu, 06 Dec 2012 11:31:37 +0000

My son took 9 APs, was beyond AP in math and got B+'s in honors English. He took regular English as a senior and got an A. He got into Harvard. Now he had a lot of things beyond otherwise stellar grades that made him attractive, excellent APs and ECs, including being a legacy, nevertheless it does show that a few B’s won’t hurt. (He also got into Carnegie Mellon, RPI, WPI and was waitlisted at Harvey Mudd.)

My younger son had very similar grades, but was not as advanced in math and had some science B’s. Rank was lower as were SAT scores. In his case he actually had a very strong CR score, but not so hot English grades except senior year when he also dropped down to regular English. He got into U of Chicago, Tufts, Vassar. He’s a history guy.

Anyway, what my examples show is that even very good colleges will look past an occasional B if they like the rest of the application.

I’ve heard good things about CTY’s crafting the essay course, I don’t know if there is an age limit for it. In general I think the best way to improve reading is just to do a lot of it. Find a genre you like and go to town - my kids both read tons of sci fi and fantasy and both had great CR scores despite the fact that they didn’t actually like doing literary analysis. Younger son is a good writer as long as he gets to write about history, older son hates writing and pretty much managed to avoid it once he got to college.