Talk to his school counselor. You need to switch him, even if he objects.

Anonymous wrote:My DS is a sophomore who decided to skip pre calculus and go straight to taking AP calculus this year. Now he tells me it’s his goal to get a B in the calculus class.

I have not said anything to him about this because he is a motivated student and is taking charge of his own education. Also, he is extremely strong willed. His school counselor advised him against it, but left the final decision up to him.

I am wondering how getting a B in this class will affect his college applications. Is it no big deal? Or will it hurt him?

I don’t want to put pressure on him. But I don’t want him to be making bad decisions. He is an only child, so I don’t have experience with today’s application process.

Oh no! Clearly your child is headed to trade school. Sorry OP. His academic life is over.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks to everyone who replied. DS is extremely strong willed and so have to I pick my battles carefully. If I forced him to drop he would blame me until my dying day for “ruining his life”.

For those who asked, he is taking Calculus AB.

There is literally no reason to take calculus in 10th grade. None. Taking calculus in 11th is fine for STEM fields. Call the school first thing in the morning and have him put in precalculus. Explain he self-studied and is not prepared for this class. Let your kid blame you until his dying day. Parent him, OP.

Maybe he took it in 10th grade because he’s a brilliant kid who’s sick to death of easy classes.

Honors Pre-Calc is generally not an “easier class”. And if he was a math genius who could just skip it, Op would be on here handwriting about low grades. Spending on the school district, the kid has only been out of summer learning loss review and into new material for a few weeks. If there is already a problem with knowledge gap, then pre-Calc would not have been too easy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks to everyone who replied. DS is extremely strong willed and so have to I pick my battles carefully. If I forced him to drop he would blame me until my dying day for “ruining his life”.

For those who asked, he is taking Calculus AB.

So you'd rather he ruin his own life?

Absent further evidence, your kid is acting stupid. I wonder in what other ways he walks over you to make bad decisions.

What's his plan for next year and the year after?

If he's going to take BC later, there's no point in doing poorly in AB instead of doing well in precalc and then well in BC.

If he "learned" precalc by himself in the summer, why can't he handle BC?

Getting a B in AP Calc is not a “life ruining” event. My god, grade inflation has REALLY distorted expectations.

Yes. It really has. When everyone in public schools is rolling with essentially straight As, those Bs in significant classes become a problem. It's ridiculous.

There are harder publics out there but the point is the same: Bs and god forbid a c even with a high rigor course load is not going to work out for you when applying to a very highly selective college. It is fine if applying to good but less selective schools if paired with very high test scores. But strategically I think any top student should set up a course load with decent rigor but not so much that you aren’t getting As.

I disagree. Insofar as your goal is a college that has <10% acceptance rate, then you’re probably right. But I think kids are better served to challenge themselves and stretch. And getting some Bs is an almost necessary consequence of that. That is much more important than the name of the college you go to. But I hear a lot of teachers bemoaning “grade grubbing”. Kids take clases they think they can ace rather than challenge themselves.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks to everyone who replied. DS is extremely strong willed and so have to I pick my battles carefully. If I forced him to drop he would blame me until my dying day for “ruining his life”.

For those who asked, he is taking Calculus AB.

So you'd rather he ruin his own life?

Absent further evidence, your kid is acting stupid. I wonder in what other ways he walks over you to make bad decisions.

What's his plan for next year and the year after?

If he's going to take BC later, there's no point in doing poorly in AB instead of doing well in precalc and then well in BC.

If he "learned" precalc by himself in the summer, why can't he handle BC?

Getting a B in AP Calc is not a “life ruining” event. My god, grade inflation has REALLY distorted expectations.

Yes. It really has. When everyone in public schools is rolling with essentially straight As, those Bs in significant classes become a problem. It's ridiculous.

There are harder publics out there but the point is the same: Bs and god forbid a c even with a high rigor course load is not going to work out for you when applying to a very highly selective college. It is fine if applying to good but less selective schools if paired with very high test scores. But strategically I think any top student should set up a course load with decent rigor but not so much that you aren’t getting As.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It will be life-altering based on my experience.

Thanks, chicken little. As a counterpoint, at my DC’s private HS, the bottom 1/3, all of whom probably have multiple Cs (GPA’s sub 3.25), almost all got into top 100 or top 150 colleges. Including VT, UVM, Colorado-Boulder, Indiana, Clemson, Fordham, RIT, WPI.

Look, was skipping pre-Calc the best move? No. Almost certainly not. Not sure why people thing they need to get beyond Calc in HS. But getting a B (or even a C or 2) will not inalterable change your DC’s life trajectory, unless a big part of that trajectory was being dead set on being a member of The Harvard Club of DC. Which, let’s all face it, is the reason people want to go to Harvard, much more than the actual education.

But in the end if OP’s DS attends a college at all well known and dies well there, he will be more than fine in the long run.

A high school like yours would never have permitted this kid to skip precalc in the first place.

This kid does not have the foundation he needs to go forward in math. That is the potentially life-altering problem, not which college he goes to.

Anonymous wrote:It will be life-altering based on my experience.

Thanks, chicken little. As a counterpoint, at my DC’s private HS, the bottom 1/3, all of whom probably have multiple Cs (GPA’s sub 3.25), almost all got into top 100 or top 150 colleges. Including VT, UVM, Colorado-Boulder, Indiana, Clemson, Fordham, RIT, WPI.

Look, was skipping pre-Calc the best move? No. Almost certainly not. Not sure why people thing they need to get beyond Calc in HS. But getting a B (or even a C or 2) will not inalterable change your DC’s life trajectory, unless a big part of that trajectory was being dead set on being a member of The Harvard Club of DC. Which, let’s all face it, is the reason people want to go to Harvard, much more than the actual education.

But in the end if OP’s DS attends a college at all well known and dies well there, he will be more than fine in the long run.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks to everyone who replied. DS is extremely strong willed and so have to I pick my battles carefully. If I forced him to drop he would blame me until my dying day for “ruining his life”.

For those who asked, he is taking Calculus AB.

So you'd rather he ruin his own life?

Absent further evidence, your kid is acting stupid. I wonder in what other ways he walks over you to make bad decisions.

What's his plan for next year and the year after?

If he's going to take BC later, there's no point in doing poorly in AB instead of doing well in precalc and then well in BC.

If he "learned" precalc by himself in the summer, why can't he handle BC?

Getting a B in AP Calc is not a “life ruining” event. My god, grade inflation has REALLY distorted expectations.

Yes. It really has. When everyone in public schools is rolling with essentially straight As, those Bs in significant classes become a problem. It's ridiculous.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks to everyone who replied. DS is extremely strong willed and so have to I pick my battles carefully. If I forced him to drop he would blame me until my dying day for “ruining his life”.

For those who asked, he is taking Calculus AB.

So you'd rather he ruin his own life?

Absent further evidence, your kid is acting stupid. I wonder in what other ways he walks over you to make bad decisions.

What's his plan for next year and the year after?

If he's going to take BC later, there's no point in doing poorly in AB instead of doing well in precalc and then well in BC.

If he "learned" precalc by himself in the summer, why can't he handle BC?

Getting a B in AP Calc is not a “life ruining” event. My god, grade inflation has REALLY distorted expectations.

That is horrifying that he would be satisfied with a B. He may as well resign himself to community college and wearing a bag over his head. The shame of it. 😳

Reading between the lines, it sounds like this student wanted to skip the natural progression of classes not because they're passionate about math, but because of ego. So now we have an unprepared 15 year old taking Calculus AB and he's discovering he's in over his head.

As a parent, this would be very frustrating. Normally, letting kids reap the consequences of poor decisions is sufficient. But this will have significant consequences down the line when it comes to college admissions. If he's struggling here he's going to continue to have a hard time with Multivariable Calculus and the remaining higher level math classes. There'a reason math classes progress the way they do. Skipping ahead doesn't work.

If the student is interested in either more selective colleges or a STEM field, rolling with a B in Calculus AB is going to be a problem. I think there's two options. Tutor and buckle down and shoot for the A. Or, and this is unconventional, take the hit and get the B. But then take Calculus BC next and shoot for the A there. Then he should be sufficiently prepared to take multivariable. He'll have the math base. And he will have demonstrated some perseverance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks to everyone who replied. DS is extremely strong willed and so have to I pick my battles carefully. If I forced him to drop he would blame me until my dying day for “ruining his life”.

For those who asked, he is taking Calculus AB.

There is literally no reason to take calculus in 10th grade. None. Taking calculus in 11th is fine for STEM fields. Call the school first thing in the morning and have him put in precalculus. Explain he self-studied and is not prepared for this class. Let your kid blame you until his dying day. Parent him, OP.

Maybe he took it in 10th grade because he’s a brilliant kid who’s sick to death of easy classes.

The information given by OP suggests that her child would not find Precalc easy since he is planning for a B in September

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks to everyone who replied. DS is extremely strong willed and so have to I pick my battles carefully. If I forced him to drop he would blame me until my dying day for “ruining his life”.

For those who asked, he is taking Calculus AB.

There is literally no reason to take calculus in 10th grade. None. Taking calculus in 11th is fine for STEM fields. Call the school first thing in the morning and have him put in precalculus. Explain he self-studied and is not prepared for this class. Let your kid blame you until his dying day. Parent him, OP.

Maybe he took it in 10th grade because he’s a brilliant kid who’s sick to death of easy classes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks to everyone who replied. DS is extremely strong willed and so have to I pick my battles carefully. If I forced him to drop he would blame me until my dying day for “ruining his life”.

For those who asked, he is taking Calculus AB.

There is literally no reason to take calculus in 10th grade. None. Taking calculus in 11th is fine for STEM fields. Call the school first thing in the morning and have him put in precalculus. Explain he self-studied and is not prepared for this class. Let your kid blame you until his dying day. Parent him, OP.

This is literally a great reason to take calculus in 10th. The reason is doing well in precalc in 9th. Taking calculus earlier unlocks advanced math and science in college earlier.

Earlier is not better. It 100% will not impact a kid’s college choices if he takes Calculus in 11th instead of 10th. You tiger moms need to chill. Acceleration is not always the answer!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS is a sophomore who decided to skip pre calculus and go straight to taking AP calculus this year. Now he tells me it’s his goal to get a B in the calculus class.

I have not said anything to him about this because he is a motivated student and is taking charge of his own education. Also, he is extremely strong willed. His school counselor advised him against it, but left the final decision up to him.

I am wondering how getting a B in this class will affect his college applications. Is it no big deal? Or will it hurt him?

I don’t want to put pressure on him. But I don’t want him to be making bad decisions. He is an only child, so I don’t have experience with today’s application process.

My kid got his only B in BC. Went to an average public school and somehow still made it to a T10.

OP’s kid is in AB, not BC. And can’t even hang in September. And has two much harder years of Calc after this. It may not B a B. It could be lower. And if it is, next year and the year after will also be Bs, at best.

Or he may get a tutor and turn it around and do well from here on out. He's obviously a good math student or he wouldn't have been able to skip Precalc. Simmer down and stop trying to worry OP. OP, get a good tutor for him and he will be fine. We found a great one on Wyzant - a college professor who taught Calculus.