High school math and admissions

[Anonymous]

My DS is a junior at an MCPS high school. He took honors pre-cal in 10th grade and is currently in AP Calculus AB. He is interested in dropping down to Calculus with Applications.

For background, he is not interested in majoring in any STEM related field and is in a humanities focused magnet program. He will still need to take math next year because the state requires math all 4 years. So next year he could take AP Calc or AP Statistics.

His goal is to attend a SLAC and will likely choose a humanities major. If he doesn’t take AP calculus this year, would it be better to take AP Calc next year or AP statistics? Does it matter for college admissions? He will likely have very high SAT scores based on his PSAT.

[Anonymous]

If it helps, my DD took AP Calc AB junior year followed by AP Stats senior year. She attends a top 20 SLAC.

[Anonymous]

These are high level math classes OP. I think your kid, if non-STEM should be absolutely fine doing this.

[Anonymous]

Probably fine. One thing to look at, the differences between the "calculus with applications" class and the AB class. Often you can tell from the course catalog.

My senior faced this question recently. He was not thrilled with taking on an AP math class due to focus challenges he's had in the past. But, in our high school's case, most of the lower-level "calculus" course's topics were covered in his honors precalc course. While an easy repeat of these would be one way to go, he has a few selective business programs on his list (which look for calc), and we think the extra effort to take the AB class will be worth it, especially if he manages to do well on the exam, for placing out of a college requirement - this varies by college, of course.

[Anonymous]

If he’s not planning on majoring in STEM, he’ll be fine

[Anonymous]

Mine got into 2 T20 LAC as a history major and dropped out of AP Calc to do Calc

[Anonymous]

This is reassuring. I have a junior in pre-Calc who wants to attend a SLAC in international relations. She wants to take AP Stats (am AP ECon) instead of AP Calc next year. Which makes so much sense in social sciences. And yet...

[Anonymous]

My kid took Calc with applications as a senior. He is now a freshman at a private university as a humanities major. He was accepted at 2 top 20 schools and several large out of state publics. His stats were strong in humanities classes and weak in math and science. He never took physics and didn't get past calc with applications.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is reassuring. I have a junior in pre-Calc who wants to attend a SLAC in international relations. She wants to take AP Stats (am AP ECon) instead of AP Calc next year. Which makes so much sense in social sciences. And yet...

This is my kid. She will go through AP Latin. She’s been doing summer school to make room for French, and will take French II as a junior. Will have Honors Bio, Honors Chem, standard physics. Wants to skip science her senior year and take French III 3.

So senior year looks like: AP Latin, AP Econ, AP Stats, AP Comparative Gov (which is a double AP), French III, DE English (she is AP English Lang now but doesn’t want Lit), Advanced Orchestra (she’ll have 4 years of fine arts).

Applying international relations with substantive things on her resume that show a strong interest in this area.

She’s targeting someplace like Tufts or Carleton and will try to apply ED. Likely to qualify for $15,000 a year or so in need based aid for 2 years while a sibling is in college, then become full pay. 4.0W after sophomore year. 35 on practice ACT after sophomore year, with 36s in both English sections, 34 in science, 33 in math.

Is she being unrealistic to think that doing AP Stats, not AP Calc and French III, not Honors Geosystems or similar will hurt her chances? Her guidance counselor thinks this will hurt her. I think Stats is more useful than Calc for her and French III plus AP Latin sets her apart among IR applicants.

Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is reassuring. I have a junior in pre-Calc who wants to attend a SLAC in international relations. She wants to take AP Stats (am AP ECon) instead of AP Calc next year. Which makes so much sense in social sciences. And yet...

My senior is the exact opposite of a STEM kid. Proposed major is English/Creative Writing and the college choices definitely reflect that. DC decided on AP Stats over AP Calc AB thinking that would be more useful and the pre-Calc/Trig math teacher absolutely agreed. I have no idea what the counselor thinks but she didn't advise against it during course selection and hasn't said anything during the college advising process, either.

[Anonymous]

I’ve known so many kids who twisted themselves into pretzels to get to calc in hs after they weren’t placed in it that it seems crazy not to take it if you’re already on track for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is reassuring. I have a junior in pre-Calc who wants to attend a SLAC in international relations. She wants to take AP Stats (am AP ECon) instead of AP Calc next year. Which makes so much sense in social sciences. And yet...

This is my kid. She will go through AP Latin. She’s been doing summer school to make room for French, and will take French II as a junior. Will have Honors Bio, Honors Chem, standard physics. Wants to skip science her senior year and take French III 3.

So senior year looks like: AP Latin, AP Econ, AP Stats, AP Comparative Gov (which is a double AP), French III, DE English (she is AP English Lang now but doesn’t want Lit), Advanced Orchestra (she’ll have 4 years of fine arts).

Applying international relations with substantive things on her resume that show a strong interest in this area.

She’s targeting someplace like Tufts or Carleton and will try to apply ED. Likely to qualify for $15,000 a year or so in need based aid for 2 years while a sibling is in college, then become full pay. 4.0W after sophomore year. 35 on practice ACT after sophomore year, with 36s in both English sections, 34 in science, 33 in math.

Is she being unrealistic to think that doing AP Stats, not AP Calc and French III, not Honors Geosystems or similar will hurt her chances? Her guidance counselor thinks this will hurt her. I think Stats is more useful than Calc for her and French III plus AP Latin sets her apart among IR applicants.

Thoughts?

I think it sounds very well planned. But I'd hesitate to say AP Latin is going to make any kind of difference to anyone. She's not going into medicine where passing Latin and Greek is helpful. Its really useless for IR. The French is good but she'd be better taking another language which is usable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve known so many kids who twisted themselves into pretzels to get to calc in hs after they weren’t placed in it that it seems crazy not to take it if you’re already on track for it.

Well he would take Calc with applications junior year and could still take AP in 12th. Is there a reason to take AP in 11th? Just to get AP stats in?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is reassuring. I have a junior in pre-Calc who wants to attend a SLAC in international relations. She wants to take AP Stats (am AP ECon) instead of AP Calc next year. Which makes so much sense in social sciences. And yet...

This is my kid. She will go through AP Latin. She’s been doing summer school to make room for French, and will take French II as a junior. Will have Honors Bio, Honors Chem, standard physics. Wants to skip science her senior year and take French III 3.

So senior year looks like: AP Latin, AP Econ, AP Stats, AP Comparative Gov (which is a double AP), French III, DE English (she is AP English Lang now but doesn’t want Lit), Advanced Orchestra (she’ll have 4 years of fine arts).

Applying international relations with substantive things on her resume that show a strong interest in this area.

She’s targeting someplace like Tufts or Carleton and will try to apply ED. Likely to qualify for $15,000 a year or so in need based aid for 2 years while a sibling is in college, then become full pay. 4.0W after sophomore year. 35 on practice ACT after sophomore year, with 36s in both English sections, 34 in science, 33 in math.

Is she being unrealistic to think that doing AP Stats, not AP Calc and French III, not Honors Geosystems or similar will hurt her chances? Her guidance counselor thinks this will hurt her. I think Stats is more useful than Calc for her and French III plus AP Latin sets her apart among IR applicants.

Thoughts?

I think it sounds very well planned. But I'd hesitate to say AP Latin is going to make any kind of difference to anyone. She's not going into medicine where passing Latin and Greek is helpful. Its really useless for IR. The French is good but she'd be better taking another language which is usable.

You may be right about the Latin. But, she’s three years in and very, very, good at it and her Latin teacher is phenomenal. So here we are. I will say that Latin has been amazing for learning French. She picked up French so incredibly fast. Spanish and Italian should also be easy. So, it has value. She applied for NSLI-Y this summer in Arabic, but COVID. She’s reapplying for next summer in Arabic. But COVID. She may well end up with a gap year and do NSLI-Y Arabic. So, that’s on her radar.

There isn’t a way to get Arabic through her school. And we’ve looked in the community. Most of what’s out there is learning to read and recite the Koran. She is more into conversational Arabic, even if she can’t read or write at a high level. Open to suggestions if anyone knows one in the DMV.

[Anonymous]

Which high school does she attend? Some of the mcps high schools offer Arabic. I wonder if she could take Arabic at one of the high schools that does offer it - in the same way some Mcps middle schoolers travel to high school to take a language class that isn’t offered at their middle school.