Is there such a thing as too much acceleration?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is your child a math prodigy? If yes, and you have other evidence for it, it will help your admission. If not, I would say that calculus AB in 9th grade is too much acceleration resulting in superficial grasp of the material.

I'm not sure what "evidence" you mean- DS doesn't do math competitions because it's not his thing. but he does many problems a day for fun. he likes experimenting with topics outside of class. also, he has an A in class and aces every test, so I think he has a prety strong grasp of the material.

this means nothing, sorry.
do you have any math background? it's hard for parents with no background to judge how good their kid is in math.

Your comment means nothing because you have no basis from which to judge the parents qualifications.

actually i do. i very much doubt OP would even ask this question publicly if she had significant math background. our own kid is highly accelerated and we constantly quiz her to make sure there are no gaps and her foundation is rock solid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anecdotal, but every kid I’ve known who took calc in 9th either dropped math forever before senior year or wound up doing an engineering degree at a state school.

Anecdotal, but my kid took high level math and by senior year had to travel to George Mason for his Linear Algebra class. He indeed does go to a state school (UVA) and is a double major in math and another subject and wants to go into quant finance. He already has an internship this summer as a rising sophomore and no doubt it is his math accomplishments that has made him stand out. In addition to his accelerated math he has won a good amount of math competitions.

He has always been surrounded by top math students and his anecdotal experience has been the complete opposite of yours. These kids are insanely competitive.

Your kid is also at a state school, so I don’t see how that experience is “the complete opposite” of mine. There are some great engineering programs at state schools. But some people on here seem to think that extreme math acceleration, by itself, makes a student a shoo-in for Ivy plus schools, or even HYPSM, and my point (and yours too) is that many accelerated math students wind up at their state flagship.

I don’t think anyone has implied the above in bold, certainly not me. OP asked if math acceleration would be *detrimental* to one’s application, and all I’ve been saying is that in my DC’s case it wasn’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anecdotal, but every kid I’ve known who took calc in 9th either dropped math forever before senior year or wound up doing an engineering degree at a state school.

Anecdotal, but my kid took high level math and by senior year had to travel to George Mason for his Linear Algebra class. He indeed does go to a state school (UVA) and is a double major in math and another subject and wants to go into quant finance. He already has an internship this summer as a rising sophomore and no doubt it is his math accomplishments that has made him stand out. In addition to his accelerated math he has won a good amount of math competitions.

He has always been surrounded by top math students and his anecdotal experience has been the complete opposite of yours. These kids are insanely competitive.

Your kid is also at a state school, so I don’t see how that experience is “the complete opposite” of mine. There are some great engineering programs at state schools. But some people on here seem to think that extreme math acceleration, by itself, makes a student a shoo-in for Ivy plus schools, or even HYPSM, and my point (and yours too) is that many accelerated math students wind up at their state flagship.

I don’t think anyone has implied the above in bold, certainly not me. OP asked if math acceleration would be *detrimental* to one’s application, and all I’ve been saying is that in my DC’s case it wasn’t.

How do you know? It still could’ve been a mark against their application, but they got in. No one’s application is perfect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anecdotal, but every kid I’ve known who took calc in 9th either dropped math forever before senior year or wound up doing an engineering degree at a state school.

Anecdotal, but my kid took high level math and by senior year had to travel to George Mason for his Linear Algebra class. He indeed does go to a state school (UVA) and is a double major in math and another subject and wants to go into quant finance. He already has an internship this summer as a rising sophomore and no doubt it is his math accomplishments that has made him stand out. In addition to his accelerated math he has won a good amount of math competitions.

He has always been surrounded by top math students and his anecdotal experience has been the complete opposite of yours. These kids are insanely competitive.

Your kid is also at a state school, so I don’t see how that experience is “the complete opposite” of mine. There are some great engineering programs at state schools. But some people on here seem to think that extreme math acceleration, by itself, makes a student a shoo-in for Ivy plus schools, or even HYPSM, and my point (and yours too) is that many accelerated math students wind up at their state flagship.

I don’t think anyone has implied the above in bold, certainly not me. OP asked if math acceleration would be *detrimental* to one’s application, and all I’ve been saying is that in my DC’s case it wasn’t.

How do you know? It still could’ve been a mark against their application, but they got in. No one’s application is perfect.

If you truly think the AO reviewed DC’s app and decided “well, it sucks that this kid excelled at math beyond grade level, but I guess I’ll admit them anyway since HYPSM is so hard up for applicants,” then I don’t know what to tell you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was talking with a friend who also has a kid in 9th. DS is taking Calc AB and her kid is in Geometry. She said that too much acceleration is a bad thing, and that we should be careful because it can make kids seem like overachievers and/or gunners. At first I thought it's just jealousy and that she is mad my kid is so advanced, but then I thought there may be some truth to what she is saying. It seems these days, colleges aren't looking for excellence so much as quirkiness and that kids who do well in subjects like math, aren't valued at all. It doesn't help that we're Asian. Anyway. I'm wondering what other people think.

PS. My younger child is in 7th and is not on an accelerated track. Both kids are happy and love school.

Too much acceleration? Depends on the kid and what they want to do.
As long as they are getting A's it's not going to hurt them but it's not clear how much it will help them either.
Once you can check the box for high rigor. I think you can probably do this by taking AP calculus in high school, your friend's kid is on track for this their senior year. However, it would be nice to have it done by junior year so it is in your transcript, so I would try to be on track to take calculus by junior year.
But after that, colleges don't really see linear algebra or multivariable much differently than APUSH or other rigorous AP classes.

If you want to lean into the math in a way that colleges care about, then I think the baseline is qualifying for AIME.
There are like 3000 kids that are qualify to take that test so it's very nice but it's not a very high bar.
From there you want to qualify for the USAMO
That's like 500 kids and that is a small enough number that it can get you into a very selective school if you have otherwise great stats and ECs.
From there you want to qualify for the math olympiad summer program at carnegie mellon
That's like 100 kids and this will usually get you into pretty much any school you want.
After that you are in very rare company and you can write your own ticket.

[Anonymous]

Those who claim math acceleration is detrimental to admission into highly selective colleges are off their rocker so long as the student does well in the classes. It's this simple: a student taking linear or diff equations or elements of numbers or field theory or whatever, will have a stronger applicant file than a student who doesn't have that on their app. That's true if the student comes from a high resource school where everyone is taking calc bc their senior year. It is also true for the student in some underresourced school who went into their local college system.

I think a lot of parents who have children on the "regular" sequence of Calc BC by junior or senior year are bitter that there are students more capable than theirs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anecdotal, but every kid I’ve known who took calc in 9th either dropped math forever before senior year or wound up doing an engineering degree at a state school.

Because most are being pushed by the parents, even if the kid is somewhat interested, after 10+ years of being pushed pushed pushed, they burn out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anecdotal, but every kid I’ve known who took calc in 9th either dropped math forever before senior year or wound up doing an engineering degree at a state school.

Anecdotal, but my kid took high level math and by senior year had to travel to George Mason for his Linear Algebra class. He indeed does go to a state school (UVA) and is a double major in math and another subject and wants to go into quant finance. He already has an internship this summer as a rising sophomore and no doubt it is his math accomplishments that has made him stand out. In addition to his accelerated math he has won a good amount of math competitions.

He has always been surrounded by top math students and his anecdotal experience has been the complete opposite of yours. These kids are insanely competitive.

Your kid is also at a state school, so I don’t see how that experience is “the complete opposite” of mine. There are some great engineering programs at state schools. But some people on here seem to think that extreme math acceleration, by itself, makes a student a shoo-in for Ivy plus schools, or even HYPSM, and my point (and yours too) is that many accelerated math students wind up at their state flagship.

I don’t think anyone has implied the above in bold, certainly not me. OP asked if math acceleration would be *detrimental* to one’s application, and all I’ve been saying is that in my DC’s case it wasn’t.

How do you know? It still could’ve been a mark against their application, but they got in. No one’s application is perfect.

If you truly think the AO reviewed DC’s app and decided “well, it sucks that this kid excelled at math beyond grade level, but I guess I’ll admit them anyway since HYPSM is so hard up for applicants,” then I don’t know what to tell you.

?? Yes. In DD’s application to her top university, they wrote comments about her lack of history courses in senior year. She’s still on campus. They care more about a good rec letter and convincing essay over that, but if you’re on the fence, that can get your app trashed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Those who claim math acceleration is detrimental to admission into highly selective colleges are off their rocker so long as the student does well in the classes. It's this simple: a student taking linear or diff equations or elements of numbers or field theory or whatever, will have a stronger applicant file than a student who doesn't have that on their app. That's true if the student comes from a high resource school where everyone is taking calc bc their senior year. It is also true for the student in some underresourced school who went into their local college system.

I think a lot of parents who have children on the "regular" sequence of Calc BC by junior or senior year are bitter that there are students more capable than theirs.

You’re arguing against the clouds. People are saying op just needs to ensure there’s enough math coursework.

[Anonymous]

I think overall there is definitely way too much acceleration.

When high-achieving kids want to get the "most rigorous classes available" checked off on their college applications, they feel pressure to take increasingly more accelerated classes to keep up with the competition. It becomes the race to nowhere. They are rushing instead of building better foundational skills and understanding.

However, I do think there should be a path for truly gifted, math passionate kids like OP's kid. Just keep a very high threshold and make it an extreme exception. Colleges should consider 2+ year acceleration as "most rigorous" to take the pressure off of these kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So much spite from parents whose kids didn't have the intellectual capability of taking Calculus as a freshman.

Now it's a bad thing a kid is great at math and takes linear eq or diff equations in high school!

How sad. To the OP, if your kid is great in math, enjoys it, then there is no such thing as "too much acceleration". Just be prepared for too much envy and resentment.

Well it is a bad thing if the kid isn't the one driving the process. Every kid I've known at our HS who got to BC in Junior year (we don't have MVC and you have to get approval to do BC before AB) is a kid who is always studying, never socializing at all, has no Sports or ECs that are not STEM related---these were kids whose parents are largely driving it all (my one kid knew 3 of them, and the kids were mostly miserable and not allowed to have a life beyond academics). So yeah it is not normal to be 3-4 years advanced in math. Kids need time to learn the material and there is plenty of things to do to enrich math/stem if they are interested without just pushing calculus (and college level math) down to 9th grade.

ANd I say this as a parent of a kid who moved between 5th and 6th grade. My kid was 2 grade levels ahead. The new district didn't advance kids until 6th grade. I could have easily put them in Alg 1 in 6th grade, but I wanted them to develop socially in a new environment, and I didn't want to have to figure out how to get them to/from the HS for 8th grade math (Algebra 2) and what to do for junior/senior year math (no MVC). So they took 7th grade math/pre Alg again in 6th grade---didn't learn anything new until the last month, but they were in class with 7th/8th graders (as a new 6th grader who knew nobody). But it let them adjust to the totally new life they had without stress of a bad teacher for totally new material (potentially) and with students who they wouldn't see the next year (mostly 8th graders if they took Alg 1). Sure my kid could have done that and we would have figured it all out---but they are at a T40 school as an engineering major, who started in Calc 3 and did just fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was talking with a friend who also has a kid in 9th. DS is taking Calc AB and her kid is in Geometry. She said that too much acceleration is a bad thing, and that we should be careful because it can make kids seem like overachievers and/or gunners. At first I thought it's just jealousy and that she is mad my kid is so advanced, but then I thought there may be some truth to what she is saying. It seems these days, colleges aren't looking for excellence so much as quirkiness and that kids who do well in subjects like math, aren't valued at all. It doesn't help that we're Asian. Anyway. I'm wondering what other people think.

PS. My younger child is in 7th and is not on an accelerated track. Both kids are happy and love school.

Too much acceleration? Depends on the kid and what they want to do.
As long as they are getting A's it's not going to hurt them but it's not clear how much it will help them either.
Once you can check the box for high rigor. I think you can probably do this by taking AP calculus in high school, your friend's kid is on track for this their senior year. However, it would be nice to have it done by junior year so it is in your transcript, so I would try to be on track to take calculus by junior year.
But after that, colleges don't really see linear algebra or multivariable much differently than APUSH or other rigorous AP classes.

If you want to lean into the math in a way that colleges care about, then I think the baseline is qualifying for AIME.
There are like 3000 kids that are qualify to take that test so it's very nice but it's not a very high bar.
From there you want to qualify for the USAMO
That's like 500 kids and that is a small enough number that it can get you into a very selective school if you have otherwise great stats and ECs.
From there you want to qualify for the math olympiad summer program at carnegie mellon
That's like 100 kids and this will usually get you into pretty much any school you want.
After that you are in very rare company and you can write your own ticket.

Their kid is too far behind for USAMO. We know families who started training in early middle school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anecdotal, but every kid I’ve known who took calc in 9th either dropped math forever before senior year or wound up doing an engineering degree at a state school.

Anecdotal, but my kid took high level math and by senior year had to travel to George Mason for his Linear Algebra class. He indeed does go to a state school (UVA) and is a double major in math and another subject and wants to go into quant finance. He already has an internship this summer as a rising sophomore and no doubt it is his math accomplishments that has made him stand out. In addition to his accelerated math he has won a good amount of math competitions.

He has always been surrounded by top math students and his anecdotal experience has been the complete opposite of yours. These kids are insanely competitive.

Your kid is also at a state school, so I don’t see how that experience is “the complete opposite” of mine. There are some great engineering programs at state schools. But some people on here seem to think that extreme math acceleration, by itself, makes a student a shoo-in for Ivy plus schools, or even HYPSM, and my point (and yours too) is that many accelerated math students wind up at their state flagship.

I don’t think anyone has implied the above in bold, certainly not me. OP asked if math acceleration would be *detrimental* to one’s application, and all I’ve been saying is that in my DC’s case it wasn’t.

How do you know? It still could’ve been a mark against their application, but they got in. No one’s application is perfect.

If you truly think the AO reviewed DC’s app and decided “well, it sucks that this kid excelled at math beyond grade level, but I guess I’ll admit them anyway since HYPSM is so hard up for applicants,” then I don’t know what to tell you.

?? Yes. In DD’s application to her top university, they wrote comments about her lack of history courses in senior year. She’s still on campus. They care more about a good rec letter and convincing essay over that, but if you’re on the fence, that can get your app trashed.

Your example is about taking too few courses, not taking a higher level of coursework.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is your child a math prodigy? If yes, and you have other evidence for it, it will help your admission. If not, I would say that calculus AB in 9th grade is too much acceleration resulting in superficial grasp of the material.

I'm not sure what "evidence" you mean- DS doesn't do math competitions because it's not his thing. but he does many problems a day for fun. he likes experimenting with topics outside of class. also, he has an A in class and aces every test, so I think he has a prety strong grasp of the material.

this means nothing, sorry.
do you have any math background? it's hard for parents with no background to judge how good their kid is in math.

Your comment means nothing because you have no basis from which to judge the parents qualifications.

actually i do. i very much doubt OP would even ask this question publicly if she had significant math background. our own kid is highly accelerated and we constantly quiz her to make sure there are no gaps and her foundation is rock solid.

You mean that you have an opinion, nothing more

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Those who claim math acceleration is detrimental to admission into highly selective colleges are off their rocker so long as the student does well in the classes. It's this simple: a student taking linear or diff equations or elements of numbers or field theory or whatever, will have a stronger applicant file than a student who doesn't have that on their app. That's true if the student comes from a high resource school where everyone is taking calc bc their senior year. It is also true for the student in some underresourced school who went into their local college system.

I think a lot of parents who have children on the "regular" sequence of Calc BC by junior or senior year are bitter that there are students more capable than theirs.

I think that you are naive and oversimplifying things if you blindly believe that someone with extra math automatically has a stronger application than someone who doesn't. Everything requires tradeoffs. I think that many would say that someone who obsessively focuses on extra math doesn't really understand the admissions process at elite schools.