My 14 year old freshman daughter has a D- in Algebra

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was a regular C - D math student.

Me too. Went to top law school and have succesful career. But, talk to the teacher and get DD some support.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have you talked to the teacher about this at all? What does your daughter say? It's still the beginning of the year and she has lots of time to pull the grade up.

I also don't know her learning style and whether these would help as supplemental material. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Khan Academy videos, which are free, and help explain conceptual issues in a very straightforward way.

http://www.khanacademy.org/math/algebra

I was not naturally bright at math, and I found that my success or failure was much more indicative of the teacher's style or ability to explain the material. Because I studied like a mad person. I was never a slacker. Yet I got straight As one year and struggled with Cs and Ds the next. Supplementation with things like the Khan Academy videos help me a lot. I'm relearning this stuff myself so I can understand what my 16 year old daughter is doing.

[Anonymous]

Back to the matter at hand. Can you see her grades? D- is low if it's all assessment grades. Is she missing basic concepts or making calculation errors? Is homework graded? Is it being submitted on time and complete?

[Anonymous]

I don't get how this works. Because you said your daughter sucks at math but good at everything else. Physics and Chemistry use a lot of math. Finance and Economics use a lot of math. Technology courses use a lot of math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was a regular C - D math student.

Me too. Went to top law school and have succesful career. But, talk to the teacher and get DD some support.

Those days are over

[Anonymous]

How could one be a poor math student and go to a top law school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I have to disagree with this based upon recent experiences of trying to get kids into college. Today's colleges (not the one I went to) expect to see calculus finished by the time your kid applies - preferably finished by the end of jr. year, so the calculus grade is on the transcript when your kid applies EA or ED. That means having taken Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, pre-cal, and calculus finished by end of junior year. One of our kids made it only through the first three but he cannot continue in his major if he doesn't finish calculus at the college level soon. Having learned that the hard way, I am making sure that kid no. 2 is taking calculus now in junior year of high school. I'm not saying that was easy - and he had to take summer math courses, but he will finish calculus by end of junior year - and that is what colleges want to see on the transcript (they don't care what your major is going to be, unless you applying to the rare school, like VT, which require applications to your college of choice at the entry level. In most cases, the only serious review your kids' application will get is a cursory check of SAT or ACT scores, GPA (with notations about breadth and depth of coursework), which are put on front of the file, along with any notes having to do with URM, legacy, athletics. Only if you make it through that cut, will they ever get to your child's essay and rarely will they care about what your kid wants to major in. SO my advice to OP is to hangin in there with the tutor and keep at it - switch tutors if this one isn't working - and work closely with the high school. But if you seriously want her to do well in the college sweepstakes, she will have to have far more than just a D- in Algebra I. And this applies to all colleges for the simple reason: Colleges and Universities don't want to be teaching geometry, pre-calc or calculus. They want the high schools to do it. Often the first question in my first kid's interviews was "Have you finished calculus?". I'm not saying this is the correct way to run our universities but it is the truth: they don't want to have to hire adjuncts to teacher "lower-level" math courses so you really need to be strong on math in the application process and, of course, reflect that skill in the SAT and ACT. So tutor on! BTW, NOVA and your community colleges have math courses, as well. Once our son finishes calculus this junior year, he will take an advanced math college-level course this summer, so that entry will be on his resume, too, next fall.

This is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

No, it's not. All admissions personnel will tell you that they look at the GPA, but most important, the depth of study. So a 4.0 in regular classes (not AP or Honors) doesn't cut it. They cull first on SAT scores and GPA (weighted) and only after you have passed that hurdle will the admissions people get into the file. You have to understand that these schools are getting 33,000 to 35,000 applications and that number is only increasing as international students are now actively in the fray. They want to see a string of AP courses, solidly in math and English, xlnt test scores and all the other stuff. And then they will take only 3% of the 35,000 because the other 3% got in on EA and are legacies, athletes or URM. Sorry, that's just the way the system works now. It's a whole different world than when I went through the system.

Sorry, you continue to be wrong.

While it is true that universities that get a large volume of applications often have SAT/GPA cut-offs to ease the process of reviewing applications, most universities and colleges in the US don't get anywhere near 30,000 applications and even fewer have anywhere near 6% acceptance rates. Only 50 universities nationwide get more than 30,000 applicants each year. And the vast, vast majority of universities that get this volume of applications accept a far greater share of them. For example, the top 10 in number of applications received accept the following percentage of applicants:

1. UCLA--22%
2. UC Berkeley--18%
3. UCSD--38%
4. NYU--26%
5. UC-Irvine--42%
6. UCSB--44%
7. Cal State-Long Beach--31%
8. St. Johns (NY)--53%
9. SDSU--38%
10. UC-Davis--45%

If you look at the USNWR rankings of national universities, you will see that once you get out of the top 10, there is only one school that has an acceptance rate lower than 10%--Brown (9.2%). #16 Notre Dame accepts 22% of its applicants. #12 Johns Hopkins accepts 17%. Well-regarded universities like Wake Forest, BC, Brandeis, Rochester, and BU accept more than 30% of the their applicants.

Liberal arts colleges get far fewer applications than major universities and are well known for having more comprehensive and holistic reviews that do not rely on SAT and GPA cutoffs to weed out applicants. These schools not only have fewer applications to review, they accept far, far more than 6 percent of their applicants. This is true even for the very top LACs. Williams' acceptance rate is 17%, Amherst's is 14%, Wellesley's is 29%, Bowdoin's is 15%, Haverford's is 23%. These are all top 10 schools. Moving into the top 20, Davidson accepts 25%, Wesleyan 20%, Bates 24%, Grinnell 35%, Smith 43%.

Even if you were correct about the average volume of applications and the typical acceptance rates, your argument that kids need to take calculus in order to avoid being immediately culled out makes no sense given that when culling occurs, as you note, it is done based on SAT and/or GPA. There is no calculus (or even trigonometry) on the SAT. None, zero, zilch, nada. A student with a strong knowledge of algebra and geometry can ace the SAT and be a strong contender for admission anywhere.

Finally, the vast majority of college students DID NOT ace the math SAT, or even close to it. The average math SAT score in 2013 was 514. There are, literally, hundreds of colleges out there for students who are not gifted in or interested in (or even capable of) advanced math.

It may be different from when you and I went to college but the situation is nowhere near as dire or competitive as you make it out to be.

THANK YOU. As a parent of current college and high school students, you are absolutely right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was a regular C - D math student.

Me too. Went to top law school and have succesful career. But, talk to the teacher and get DD some support.

Those days are over

You're really showing your ignorance, Chicken Little.

[Anonymous]

Here's a link to the US World and News list of the 100 lowest to highest admission rates:

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-acceptance-rate?src=stats

#1. Stanford accepts 5.7%

[Anonymous]

Do the math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's a link to the US World and News list of the 100 lowest to highest admission rates:

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-acceptance-rate?src=stats

#1. Stanford accepts 5.7%

And as noted above, it's a top 10 university with an acceptance rate below 10%. Once you get out of the top 10 universities, acceptance rate rise rapidly. I don't think this list you've posted is particularly helpful, since I'm pretty sure no one here is arguing that students need to take calculus so they can be competitive for admission at Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, KY, or Rust College in Mississippi.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How could one be a poor math student and go to a top law school?

I had good overall grades and did well on the LSAT. Don't necessarily need math for law school or at least it was not a necessity or heavily considered when I was in law school. Anyway, I was using it as an example and is not something to run with...

[Anonymous]

If your daughter has a D minus in Algebra 1 in 9th grade, she won't even get accepted to universities like Georgetown, George Washington or George Mason, forget about Ivy Leagues, UC's or Institutes of Technology.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your daughter has a D minus in Algebra 1 in 9th grade, she won't even get accepted to universities like Georgetown, George Washington or George Mason, forget about Ivy Leagues, UC's or Institutes of Technology.

I think this is just a ridiculous statement. So many things go into an application and one blip can be explained or made up for.

And also, since when do you put Goergetown, GW and George Mason even in the same category as far as difficulty of admission?!

Also, a D- now could become a C by the end of the quarter and a B for the semester, with encouragement, tutoring, etc.

[Anonymous]

The daughter is taking Algebra 1 in 9th grade, which is the grade level standard. This isn't like taking it in 7th or 8th grade and then realizing it's too hard.

What I meant was that she won't get accepted to GWU, Georgetown or anything like that.