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That's kind of where she is heading: take just the one college science class through concurrent enrollment and take APs in other areas plus electives that interest her. Honestly reading/writing are her strongest areas just not as much of a passion for her as is science. She got 27s on the English & Reading parts of the ACT just after her 12th bd. She should be taking some of these other courses in the AP track.

To change my direction, though, I know that a lot of people mention calculus as necessary and we are getting the feel from a lot of the universities that have gotten back to her that it would be desirable if not necessary. Her (and my) big fear here is that math is not her strength. Pre-skipping she was testing in the upper 90s on math achievement tests like MAPs & ITBS but not the 99th (which is where she was in all other subjects). Post skipping, she's always still been "advanced" on the CSAP math tests (NCLB test) and got a 19 on the ACT math again at 12. She isn't bad at math, per se, but she isn't knock you out stellar like she is in other subjects.

Her senior year is the year she'd be taking AP calc if she did. She is also taking AP literature of some sort that year and the college physics class (along with whatever else goes into that year to fill in the other periods). How hard is calculus for a kid who isn't mathy but is generally very bright?

I just checked our district's course guide.

+ AP Bio has a year of bio (pre-AP or regular) as a prereq and a year of chem (pre-AP or regular) as a coreq.

+ AP Chem requires a year of Chem (pre-AP or regular) and Algebra II as prereqs.

+ AP Physics B has pre-calc as a coreq. AP Physics C has Calc AB as a prereq, or Calc BC as a coreq. Neither have a physics prereq, although pre-AP physics is an offered course.

When I took it, a million years ago before AP tests, I had a good teacher, took calc concurrent with trig, and high school calc wasn't particularly hard. Then I spent a year abroad, and essentially had a math-free year.

And for some reason, when I went to college, I figured that I still remembered all that math, so started at Calc II (2nd semester of the 2-semester univariate calc course), and the next term went on to Calc III (multivariate). Same grade in both classes, which I suspect was slightly below the class average, but I felt like I was keeping up in Calc II and was totally lost and bewildered in Calc III.

So my vote would be "not that hard." I struggled much more with physics than with calc.

It's fine to apply to a few 'lottery schools' just to see what happens, but some kids can plan their entire lives around that and some kids shouldn't. It sounds like you are quite clear of your priorities.

Have you found College Confidential?
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-oregon/1276452-admission-uo.html

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stetson-university/?pp=20&daysprune=-1

I recently heard a reminder that it's all just people's opinions, but given that grain of salt, I think it's a great resource.

There is also a magic document that all colleges put together nowadays called the 'Common Data Set' that you can find if you hunt -

http://www.stetson.edu/administration/iro/commondataset.php

for example
http://www.stetson.edu/administration/iro/media/CDS2010_2011.xls
might help you see where she stands compared to incoming freshman

http://ir.uoregon.edu/cds
specifically -
http://ir.uoregon.edu/sites/ir/files/CDS2010_2011_For%20WEB.xls

hope that helps -
Grinity

Uhhh, she more that just "generally very bright" based on what you're saying. It sounds like you're seeing that she's not as "mathy" as she is other things, but that doesn't mean she's not mathy.

Calculus was the easiest math class I took in high school.

For me, algebra was hardest, and it got easier from there all the way through until I hit Fourier Series, where the combination of 8 am classes and a prof who talked like Grandpa Smurf got the better of me. I suspect, like everything else in this world, it depends upon how your brain is wired. Some kids latch onto arithmetic quickly but stall out when the abstract nature of algebra hits, while others see algebra as a huge relief from the difficulty of memorizing multiplication facts and computation algorithms.

I see the same with my advisees, many of whom come in taking pre-calc, and their math grades go up as they move into and through calculus.

The difficulty of calculus depends directly on how intuitive you find calculus. I don't know whether it's a question of "mathy".

With calculus, I think I was completely confused for about one month, figured it out, and then proceeded to sleep through the rest of the year while getting a 100%.

With me, either I understand the theoretical underpinnings or I don't. For instance, I never unlocked differential equations, so I have virtually zero ability in that area.

Harvard's guide to what math freshmen should take is at http://www.math.harvard.edu/pamphlets/freshmenguide.html . There are freshmen who will be prepared for multivariable calculus. My oldest son, who is gifted at math, ought to be in that category a decade from now.

Just because a college course is different from an AP one does not mean it is better. Harvard's single-variable calculus course is criticized at http://mathematicallycorrect.com/hc.htm
and the introductory textbook used has received many poor reviews on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Sing...mp;ie=UTF8&qid=1327424647&sr=1-1 .

Thanks for the links, Grinity. I'll check them out.

One thing you may want to consider with AP/college sciences is the difference between the instruction and lab time available in each situation. Depending on the high school and college schedules, your DD might get 50 minutes a day of science instruction in college plus a 2-3 hour lab section a week vs. 50 min of combined instruction AND labs in a high school setting. On the other hand, the college course may be very demanding if, like Bio or Chem, it is acting as a "weed-out" course for certain majors. Best of luck with your planning!

Lol. Dd's third grade teacher said something along those lines: "[dd]'s weak areas are other people's strong areas." I don't think that she isn't good at math; I just think that she is good at math the way I am good at math not the way my younger dd is or her friend who is just a math whiz is. She needs a good teacher. If she runs into what she had in Algebra I in 8th for part of the year, which was a teacher who spent the first quarter essentially making it an independent study math class, she doesn't get it. She needs someone to teach her well. Her Algebra I class got better after a few complaints at least.

My youngest makes these intuitive leaps in math and tends to find step by step instructions frustrating. Dd13, on the other hand, needs all of the steps layed out as do I. I took integral calculus my freshman year @ Cal & totally froze. I was unprepared, had a teacher who was probably brilliant at math but didn't know how to teach it. Funny enough, my calc teacher had a bit of a papa Smurf air about him, too . I don't think that I can help her unless I go back and learn it myself now.