Senior Year Course Selection (AP Stats vs AP Calc B/C) Answered
Rising Senior is getting mixed message from her advisors, can anyone help clarify.
Academic Background: Straight A student, on a 6.0 scale has a 5.04 GPA, has completed 9 AP courses and the rest Honors ( except where not available ).
Current course load for Senior next year looks like:
AP Gov/ AP Macro
AP Physics
AP Research
AP Stats
DE Course ( TBD )
Honors English 4
She was advised that AP Stats, was not a good choice ( non-competitive math ) and should take AP Calc B/C since she completed A/B very successfully. ( Same teacher for both Calc Classes.. which she says is a GREAT teacher! ) BUT she knows she was successful because of the amount of excessive time and work that was required to put into this class. Close to 2 Hours of homework daily. So knowing how this teacher teaches, she is concerned that the work load required for these 4 APs ( including this excessive calc class ) in addition to serving on the board of 2 honor societies, playing club soccer along with the SAT and college application process may be just pushing her to the limit of dropping the ball with something which she doesn't want to to. But she's having anxiety that her course selections, as a new advisor made it seem that her course selections may not be rigorous enough for some of the top choice schools she's looking at, and would possibly affect her chance to be admitted. Any advise?? Does one or two course selections weight this heavily on a applicants chances ??
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1 answer
I don't think your daughter? is getting good advice. While it's true that top colleges like Harvard like to see 4 years of math on ones transcript, stopping at AP Calc A/B is perfectly fine in terms of course rigor.
I'm attending Columbia this fall and I only had AP Calc A/B and AP Stats. I didn't take a B/C or an advanced Calc course. Believe it or not there are plenty of private boarding school admits at Ivys that didn't even take AP Calc. Why? Because if you are a legacy or recruited athlete, they are more forgiving. So there are plenty of freshman and sophomores at Ivys that take Calculus for the first time or repeat it because they were not that strong in it to begin with.
My advice is to leave enough room in your daughters schedule to self-care and have time to decompress in case she needs a mental health day or two. Being a successful student is about a work/play balance not only about pushing yourself to the brink of exhaustion each and every waking day. That is completely unsustainable and an irresponsible expectation for everyone.
My advice is two-fold.
Try to lighten the load by taking a summer online class that is either Stats or Economics so she has one extra study period this fall.
Also, try to get a higher SAT or ACT score this summer if she doesn't have a 1500+ or 34+ score already. That will be more meaningful to college admissions officers than taking Calc B/C.
Use the extra time next fall to curate the very best recommendations and do this the first week of senior year, do not wait Oct/Nov. Work on writing the very best main essay and supplemental essays as humanly possible. Her words matter immensely. Too many HS students rush through this process. And fix anything that is out of alignment. So that might involve dropping or adding some ECs or working on leadership opportunities. It would be better for her to get a Board Seat on some community service org. than to take an extra AP.
Lastly, use this summer wisely to personally visit as many colleges as possible. It's very important to walk the campuses, talk to people that go there, talk to professors and staff that work there. Sometimes you learn a lot from talking to people that have to be there all the time like people who work at the local coffee shop. Do your research well together and add schools and eliminate them based on first hands on impressions.
Good luck.
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You advise is absolutely invaluable!! Thank you so much for taking the time to respond!