Math acceleration and SAT

[Anonymous]

Kid's friend hyper accelerated and took Calculus in 10th grade. Opted out of AP exam.

Got 600 on PSAT math (90%ile among nationally normed 10th graders) in 10th grade fall.

When you accelerate your kid, make sure they are actually learning the material, or your hassle will be for nothing but an ego bubble burst later in high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kid's friend hyper accelerated and took Calculus in 10th grade. Opted out of AP exam.

Got 600 on PSAT math (90%ile among nationally normed 10th graders) in 10th grade fall.

When you accelerate your kid, make sure they are actually learning the material, or your hassle will be for nothing but an ego bubble burst later in high school.

Ok, but what’s the backstory to this?

[Anonymous]

They may have forgotten Geometry and Algebra 2 content or not have focused on the statistics/data analysis content in earlier grades. If they did no review and walked in cold to the PSAT, that could catch up with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kid's friend hyper accelerated and took Calculus in 10th grade. Opted out of AP exam.

Got 600 on PSAT math (90%ile among nationally normed 10th graders) in 10th grade fall.

When you accelerate your kid, make sure they are actually learning the material, or your hassle will be for nothing but an ego bubble burst later in high school.

Are you saying that landing in the 90th percentile in Math is a fail? Because that strikes me as a pretty darn strong score. the PSAT will help them target the areas that they need to review for the SAT where they will probably score higher then they did in the PSAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kid's friend hyper accelerated and took Calculus in 10th grade. Opted out of AP exam.

Got 600 on PSAT math (90%ile among nationally normed 10th graders) in 10th grade fall.

When you accelerate your kid, make sure they are actually learning the material, or your hassle will be for nothing but an ego bubble burst later in high school.

Are you saying that landing in the 90th percentile in Math is a fail? Because that strikes me as a pretty darn strong score. the PSAT will help them target the areas that they need to review for the SAT where they will probably score higher then they did in the PSAT.

It depends how you look at it, Calculus in 10 is well within the top 1% of the students, and there seem to be a disconnect with the 10% on the PSAT, even if it’s a respectable score. It’s not a tragedy, but it indicated some weaker areas that should have been mastered well by now. Couple that with not taking the AP exam, which is also somewhat of a red flag.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kid's friend hyper accelerated and took Calculus in 10th grade. Opted out of AP exam.

Got 600 on PSAT math (90%ile among nationally normed 10th graders) in 10th grade fall.

When you accelerate your kid, make sure they are actually learning the material, or your hassle will be for nothing but an ego bubble burst later in high school.

Ok, but what’s the backstory to this?

The backstory is that OP was envious of her "friend"'s smart kid and is now gloating at their perceived failure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kid's friend hyper accelerated and took Calculus in 10th grade. Opted out of AP exam.

Got 600 on PSAT math (90%ile among nationally normed 10th graders) in 10th grade fall.

When you accelerate your kid, make sure they are actually learning the material, or your hassle will be for nothing but an ego bubble burst later in high school.

Are you saying that landing in the 90th percentile in Math is a fail? Because that strikes me as a pretty darn strong score. the PSAT will help them target the areas that they need to review for the SAT where they will probably score higher then they did in the PSAT.

It depends how you look at it, Calculus in 10 is well within the top 1% of the students, and there seem to be a disconnect with the 10% on the PSAT, even if it’s a respectable score. It’s not a tragedy, but it indicated some weaker areas that should have been mastered well by now. Couple that with not taking the AP exam, which is also somewhat of a red flag.

All knowledge decays over time. Their math score should jump right up with some review.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, and it sounds like you're just the anti-acceleration poster making stuff up to somehow "prove" that math acceleration is harmful and that most of the kids shouldn't be accelerated to this degree.

Here's my counter-anecdote: My kid took AP Calc in 10th. They also scored a 5 on the AP exam and 99th percentile on the PSAT math. They took the PSAT completely cold, since 10th grade scores don't count.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kid's friend hyper accelerated and took Calculus in 10th grade. Opted out of AP exam.

Got 600 on PSAT math (90%ile among nationally normed 10th graders) in 10th grade fall.

When you accelerate your kid, make sure they are actually learning the material, or your hassle will be for nothing but an ego bubble burst later in high school.

Are you saying that landing in the 90th percentile in Math is a fail? Because that strikes me as a pretty darn strong score. the PSAT will help them target the areas that they need to review for the SAT where they will probably score higher then they did in the PSAT.

It depends how you look at it, Calculus in 10 is well within the top 1% of the students, and there seem to be a disconnect with the 10% on the PSAT, even if it’s a respectable score. It’s not a tragedy, but it indicated some weaker areas that should have been mastered well by now. Couple that with not taking the AP exam, which is also somewhat of a red flag.

All knowledge decays over time. Their math score should jump right up with some review.

It’s not guaranteed the math score will go up, but it doesn’t matter. The student in this story sacrificed some depth for breadth, leading to taking calculus in 10th. That’s a legitimate choice, and it doesn’t show failure as OP implies.

Not taking the AP is not a good idea though, there’s zero downside to it, and there will be no credit or being able to use the calculus class for placement in college. It’s likely they’ll also take multi, linear algebra and differential equations while in high school. There’s a risk that all these classes might be repeated in college, which makes the acceleration pointless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kid's friend hyper accelerated and took Calculus in 10th grade. Opted out of AP exam.

Got 600 on PSAT math (90%ile among nationally normed 10th graders) in 10th grade fall.

When you accelerate your kid, make sure they are actually learning the material, or your hassle will be for nothing but an ego bubble burst later in high school.

Are you saying that landing in the 90th percentile in Math is a fail? Because that strikes me as a pretty darn strong score. the PSAT will help them target the areas that they need to review for the SAT where they will probably score higher then they did in the PSAT.

It depends how you look at it, Calculus in 10 is well within the top 1% of the students, and there seem to be a disconnect with the 10% on the PSAT, even if it’s a respectable score. It’s not a tragedy, but it indicated some weaker areas that should have been mastered well by now. Couple that with not taking the AP exam, which is also somewhat of a red flag.

All knowledge decays over time. Their math score should jump right up with some review.

It’s not guaranteed the math score will go up, but it doesn’t matter. The student in this story sacrificed some depth for breadth, leading to taking calculus in 10th. That’s a legitimate choice, and it doesn’t show failure as OP implies.

Not taking the AP is not a good idea though, there’s zero downside to it, and there will be no credit or being able to use the calculus class for placement in college. It’s likely they’ll also take multi, linear algebra and differential equations while in high school. There’s a risk that all these classes might be repeated in college, which makes the acceleration pointless.

What depth was sacrificed? Be as specific as you can regarding missing skills/content. I agree with AP, but if they choose to attend a school that doesn't accept their highschool/DE credit, it's better for them than all the schools that do accept it, and therefore likely selective enough that the acceleration would have been a net positive to admissions, and certainly to college GPA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kid's friend hyper accelerated and took Calculus in 10th grade. Opted out of AP exam.

Got 600 on PSAT math (90%ile among nationally normed 10th graders) in 10th grade fall.

When you accelerate your kid, make sure they are actually learning the material, or your hassle will be for nothing but an ego bubble burst later in high school.

Are you saying that landing in the 90th percentile in Math is a fail? Because that strikes me as a pretty darn strong score. the PSAT will help them target the areas that they need to review for the SAT where they will probably score higher then they did in the PSAT.

It depends how you look at it, Calculus in 10 is well within the top 1% of the students, and there seem to be a disconnect with the 10% on the PSAT, even if it’s a respectable score. It’s not a tragedy, but it indicated some weaker areas that should have been mastered well by now. Couple that with not taking the AP exam, which is also somewhat of a red flag.

All knowledge decays over time. Their math score should jump right up with some review.

It’s not guaranteed the math score will go up, but it doesn’t matter. The student in this story sacrificed some depth for breadth, leading to taking calculus in 10th. That’s a legitimate choice, and it doesn’t show failure as OP implies.

Not taking the AP is not a good idea though, there’s zero downside to it, and there will be no credit or being able to use the calculus class for placement in college. It’s likely they’ll also take multi, linear algebra and differential equations while in high school. There’s a risk that all these classes might be repeated in college, which makes the acceleration pointless.

What depth was sacrificed? Be as specific as you can regarding missing skills/content. I agree with AP, but if they choose to attend a school that doesn't accept their highschool/DE credit, it's better for them than all the schools that do accept it, and therefore likely selective enough that the acceleration would have been a net positive to admissions, and certainly to college GPA.

The PSAT questions are not too deep, so if you’re not acing them, that’s some indication of gaps.

The content is described here:
https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/psat-nmsqt/whats-on-the-test/math/overview

Linear equations, systems, basic geometry and statistics are nowhere close to the complexity of calculus.