High-achieving students are enrolling to turbocharge grade-point averages or load up on advanced courses, but critics say the practice only adds to the inequities of the college admissions process.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/nyregion/taking-summer-school-to-get-ahead-not-catch-up.html
Of course summer programs are a “waste of money” and meaningless to CC’ers. Get a summer job or let your kid be a kid says parent forum parents. Yeah…and your kid will be left in the dust.
Left in the dust… what a silly way to refer to the 99.9% of students who don’t take summer classes for credit.
If by “left in the dust” you mean not getting into HYPSM then you may be correct. As we CC’ers know, if you are not admitted there your life is a failure.
Without question the top students at my children’s upper middle class public school pursue at least a 2-week academic program every high school summer break.
Nice that they can afford it. How old are your children?
“Previewing” should be required to be disclosed to the school and to colleges, and if I were a GC I’d make it clear that “previewing” is not “most challenging”.
A two week commuter robotics course can be as low as $100. Scholarships available…
I find this story sad.
My kid spent one summer doing academics before college. She also took behind the wheel over the summer. The vast majority of her summers were spent doing sports, visiting family, and hanging out with friends. She wasn’t left in the dust by any means. I also find this article sad. I would only sign my kid up for summer school if they were begging for it, and begging out of enthusiasm, not fear.
What if a kid is just staying at home but is studying pretty hard on academics to get ahead in the coming year? Is it also considered unfair? Or is it ok because she isn’t immediately loading up anything visible into her transcript?
One kid did academic things two summers because that’s what he enjoyed. He did fast paced Chemistry after freshman year to give him more flexibility because for various reasons his science sequence got out of kilter with what worked best for scheduling. We were taking an overseas trip he didn’t want to come on at the same time. The following summer he took a computer graphics programming course. Neither were particularly cheap and he absolutely had an advantage there - after the graphics course he started working doing computer programming work, and more than earned all the money we had spent on him.
My other son, while bright, had no interest in schooling in the summer. He did music camp one year, volunteered at the senior center another year, and worked some summers.
They both got into good schools. The oldest got into what are generally considered the tippy top schools/programs, but he also had better grades and SAT scores than the younger brother. (I don’t think what he did in the summer had anything to do with that - he’s scored at the top of any test he ever took, even in elementary school.)
First world problem supreme.
In my local school district, vast numbers of kids take the required 10th grade half-year health course over the summer to enable them to schedule a more interesting or more rigorous full-year course during the time slot that would ordinarily be devoted to health in their school year schedules. The summer course has become so popular that the school system now offers an online version as well as classroom programs.
Is this unethical, too?
I’m a rising HS senior taking community college courses to fulfill my language requirement. Because my grades are high, the state is covering most of the cost. The courses are challenging, but I still have plenty of time to “be a kid” and have a small part-time job. I’ve also completed my college search, and my early applications for Northeastern (target), Brown (reach), and Drexel (fallback) are nearly done.
But I’m sure CC thinks I’m doing it all wrong.
My S19 will be going to summer school next summer to take infotech 2, if he doesn’t he doesn’t have room for academics, band and jazz band. Does that give him an advantage? Yes in that he gets to take the classes he loves and not stress. Easy
This is VERY common among some demographic groups (usually ORMs) in highly competitive school districts, my own included. Every year in HS, my children had peers in their classes who already took geometry, algebra 2, biology, chemistry, physics, calculus, etc. over the summer. The students who take these courses in the summer (full course!) do it so that when they take it during the school year, it is not the first time they are learning the materials and they can get better grades. My kids HATE this. The families who send their kids to summer school to get ahead respond by saying that anyone is welcome to do the same thing.
I 100% agree with this. In fact, I’d go one step further and say that a student who takes the course over the summer should not be permitted to take it at his regular school during the school year. At college, you can’t take the same course twice for credit and grades. Why should this be allowed in high school?
At college, you can take the same course at Coursera then retake it for real for credit and grade, just like the kid who took the summer course without credit is taking it for real in the coming year. I am not endorsing this practice. But it’s not rule breaking anything
If the kid took the summer course for official credit, obviously it was to move on to the next course in the coming year.
I am amazed at the things I learn by reading this site. I have never heard of summer classes except for those that failed and need to take them to stay with their grade. My kids high school does not offer summer classes except in those instances. I have heard of people doing academic based summer camps, or taking a class at the local community college in something that is not offered at the high school, but have never heard of people taking a class during the summer and then retaking it during the school year. I am so glad this insane competitiveness has not made its way to my community.