My senior is taking 7 AP classes and will graduate with 17 total

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
NO ONE IS REMEMBERING THAT SOME KIDS LIKE TO LEARN!

Sorry for shouting, but you people make me sick.
I haven't gone through the American education system and my kids are not yet in high school, but I loved my classes and spent hours reading my textbooks, especially all the chapters that were not taught in class or part of the curriculum.

If OP's children love to learn and want a challenge, more power to them, and congratulations on their work ethic. They will be the leaders in their chosen field.

How much learning is really going on if the kid is pulling all nighters the first week (or two) of school. That's simply unhealthy and unsustainable.

[Anonymous]

I honestly have doubts about learning that is crammed in. In order to really retain and enjoy learning, there needs to be time to reflect and follow up in ways that are independent of the class learning. That's just my opinion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
NO ONE IS REMEMBERING THAT SOME KIDS LIKE TO LEARN!

Sorry for shouting, but you people make me sick.
I haven't gone through the American education system and my kids are not yet in high school, but I loved my classes and spent hours reading my textbooks, especially all the chapters that were not taught in class or part of the curriculum.

If OP's children love to learn and want a challenge, more power to them, and congratulations on their work ethic. They will be the leaders in their chosen field.

How much learning is really going on if the kid is pulling all nighters the first week (or two) of school. That's simply unhealthy and unsustainable.

I'm sure he or she will get better at it. Where there's a will, there's a way. I pulled all-nighters too. Others who are more efficient might do it in less, but is this child is motivated and really wants to do it, nobody should stop them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:7 APs in a year sounds like a grubby striver. Only okay if they're the captain of a sport and elected to student council. Otherwise I'd safely assume they have few friends and their peers find them annoying and/or irrelevant.

Maybe CalTech or MIT wants that, the Ivys don't.

What's missing in your life that you have to be such a judgmental bitch? And to direct that language at a child is inexcusably vulgar.

I think you need your xanax and bottle of wine a little early this evening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:7 APs in a year sounds like a grubby striver. Only okay if they're the captain of a sport and elected to student council. Otherwise I'd safely assume they have few friends and their peers find them annoying and/or irrelevant.

Maybe CalTech or MIT wants that, the Ivys don't.

What's missing in your life that you have to be such a judgmental bitch? And to direct that language at a child is inexcusably vulgar.

I think you need your xanax and bottle of wine a little early this evening.

The grubby striver poster hadn't understood yet that geeks rule the earth

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ah I took 7 AP classes my senior year. I held on until around December and then had a bit of a breakdown and became very depressed and even suicidal. I ended up getting a few Ds and was scared about my college acceptance getting rescinded. It was not and everything turned out okay but I would not support my child doing this.

NP here. OP, please listen to this post above.

I'm surprised that any school guidance counselor would let a kid take seven APs in one year including double science. Yes, I get that some kids love to learn. But OP, we here online can't know if your kid is doing this because she loves to learn or because she feels pressured (from inside herself, from seeing other friends load up on AP, from home, whatever) to do this. Even if she is the world's best student and adores learning, she is killing herself and the year has only just begun. All-nighters are never good. Lack of sleep over time is damaging to the body and the mind, and it is impossible to "make up" sleep later; our bodies do not work like that.

OP, did you know last spring during course selection that she was signing up for seven APs for this school year? Did you approve of it at the time? Didn't you have to sign off on the class choices? I would be furious if a counselor let my kid load up like that with no warning to her or to me. How is she supposed to achieve good grades if she has zero time to absorb what she is learning?

She may wake up to the problem if you tell her that the time-consuming extracurricular must go, since she is spending all night on schoolwork and needs to sleep. If she wants to keep that extracurricular she would need to change out of some of the APs. (OK, DCUM, scream that she will never, ever get into any college if she doesn't have massive ECs and seven APs.)

Please talk to your DD ASAP about her expectations for all these APs. If your DD is thinking she will take all these APs and be allowed to skip a ton of college classes, she may be very disappointed later when she finds out that every AP credit does not automatically translate into skipping a college class. I know a kid who had straight As through all of high school in every subject and took APs including in the summers online, and she found that her elite college program wanted things taught "their way" so they would not allow her to place out of nearly as many required classes as she and her parents had believed. The college approach was basically, it's great you've gotten all this foundation and you can skip a few things but nope, you still have to take our base classes for many things. I'm not saying she should not have had any APs but she did approach them in HS as a way to tick off college credit, only to find at college that things didn't work quite that way. She didn't do it out of love of every subject but to get credits racked up. That's no way to learn.

[Anonymous]

everyone needs to chill lmao aps are not that difficult
.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a senior, what's the point? She won't have AP scores to share until next summer and apps go out before semester grades go on transcript.

If I worked in admissions, I'd think kids like this are soulless grinds who would add nothing to the campus vibe.

What a strange attitude, to think that admissions officers are worried about a campus vibe and not successful alumni.

+1 For some kids academics just comes very easy. 17 APs is a lot, but if the kid takes all AP classes (about 4 a year), it's not ridiculous.

How can you take 4 a year? At our school Freshman classes are pre-AP as are most of the Sophmore classes. I don't think it's even possible to take 4 AP's till senior year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a senior, what's the point? She won't have AP scores to share until next summer and apps go out before semester grades go on transcript.

If I worked in admissions, I'd think kids like this are soulless grinds who would add nothing to the campus vibe.

What a strange attitude, to think that admissions officers are worried about a campus vibe and not successful alumni.

+1 For some kids academics just comes very easy. 17 APs is a lot, but if the kid takes all AP classes (about 4 a year), it's not ridiculous.

How can you take 4 a year? At our school Freshman classes are pre-AP as are most of the Sophmore classes. I don't think it's even possible to take 4 AP's till senior year.

Sorry. I meant I don't think it's possible to take 4 AP's at our school till Junior year.

[Anonymous]

DS is taking five his senior year. I cannot imagine seven. He took four last year along with a fifth honors class and it was very time consuming. He promises to drop one if he gets too stressed.

It is the way of the world now for top students. I hate it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Collegeboard thanks you.

Exactly. Cha-ching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
NO ONE IS REMEMBERING THAT SOME KIDS LIKE TO LEARN!

Sorry for shouting, but you people make me sick.
I haven't gone through the American education system and my kids are not yet in high school, but I loved my classes and spent hours reading my textbooks, especially all the chapters that were not taught in class or part of the curriculum.

If OP's children love to learn and want a challenge, more power to them, and congratulations on their work ethic. They will be the leaders in their chosen field.

AP classes aren't about learning (at least not real learning). They are about memorizing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot of the parents here can't deal with kids who have a lot of drive and a lot of things that their hothouse flower doesn't have on their resume. They are the same ones who try to convince people here that their high scoring kids "will never" make it into XYZ ivy. I have news for you, 10+ Aps is getting more and more common and these kids are your kids competition.

True. My kid had 20 APs and post APs in four years of high school. 10-14 APs are common in the Northern Virginia area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of the parents here can't deal with kids who have a lot of drive and a lot of things that their hothouse flower doesn't have on their resume. They are the same ones who try to convince people here that their high scoring kids "will never" make it into XYZ ivy. I have news for you, 10+ Aps is getting more and more common and these kids are your kids competition.

True. My kid had 20 APs and post APs in four years of high school. 10-14 APs are common in the Northern Virginia area.

Good for you. Here, have a cookie.

I've seen what this does to many kids. We can stop this madness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
NO ONE IS REMEMBERING THAT SOME KIDS LIKE TO LEARN!

Sorry for shouting, but you people make me sick.
I haven't gone through the American education system and my kids are not yet in high school, but I loved my classes and spent hours reading my textbooks, especially all the chapters that were not taught in class or part of the curriculum.

If OP's children love to learn and want a challenge, more power to them, and congratulations on their work ethic. They will be the leaders in their chosen field.

Personally, I think it's my job as a parent to teach my kids that exhibiting *extremely* unhealthy behaviors (e.g. pulling regular all-nighters) is not acceptable no matter how much you love something, whether it's learning (and in this case, I'm not entirely convinced that's the motivation behind taking 7 AP classes in a year), their chosen career field, working on cars, writing poetry, or really anything. Especially at the age of 17. Raising an unbalanced child who puts class work instead of their basic health is not something I would ever be OK with.