Reply to If not Basis or Latin, where?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Still don't buy it.  The Basis Tuscon teacher talked about kids taking as many as 3 AP tests freshman year, and some juniors taking 8 or 9.  So, that's what, ultimately at least a dozen, and maybe as many as 15 AP tests for the best students?  No program could have planned well for that volume.

My niece, who attends an average US embassy-sponsored international school abroad, was admited to Harvard and Brown (yesterday).  She's still waiting to hear from Stanford.  She did the full IB, the equivalent of 6 or 7 AP classes/tests, not a dozen. Her extra curriculars were very strong. The Basis HS approach doesn't sound balanced, or enjoyable for most by jr. or sr. year.  Raise the bar, great, but why not along the line of privates, vs. European or Asian cram schools?  My spouse, who has a PhD in social sciences and speaks four languages, went to an ordinary academic HS in Austria.  He says the curriculum and approach was so punishing toward the end that he hated it.
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The BASIS brochure notes that the average BASIS completes 8 or 9 AP courses by the time they graduate, not 12 to 15.[/quote]

Thomas Jefferson graduates average in excess of 7 AP exams per student, and as others have pointed out, several other top area schools also place heavy emphasis on APs, or the IB program which assesses on six subject areas (similar to 6 AP courses).  But I think one difference as noted above is that BASIS starts going over the AP material earlier, allowing it to be spread out, as opposed to being a big intensive cram in that's primarily just in the junior and senior years as it is with many other schools.

So apparently the suggestion is that TJ, George Marshall, George Mason, Winston Churchill and the other top schools in the burbs have also gotten it all very wrong, and apparently all of those Ivies and top universities in the nation that are accepting those students also have it all very wrong.

And so the far better alternative in the area is what?[/quote]

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