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I almost can't believe I am writing this, but both DD14 and DD13 DYS will be graduating from 8th grade in a few weeks. What are some good resources to look at for being smart about one's high school career? While we have chosen to live overseas for awhile, we will all move back to the US after high school so we hope to help the girls make good class choices the next 4 years.

Currently they are finishing up geometry and the basic 8th grade science, LA, and social studies as well as electives. The only classes I know for sure they will take next year are Algebra 2 and an Honors Science of some kind. I am waiting to hear from the college counselor to help us figure out what to do.

By the way, how did you all set up acceleration in high school? DD13 has already skipped one year of school and ended up taking geometry as a 12 year old. She found it a breeze as she did all the other classes in 8th grade. I know one school employee who believes DD could take advanced classes, but I wonder how to approach the principal and college counselor.

We are going through it now:

Our daughter (13) will be starting Pre-Calculus next year according to her ability (she got an A on the AoPS Algebra II class) but we are having an uphill battle with the regional high school over arrangements for this in the Fall.

We have settled on her taking the year end HS exam (fair enough - finally).

She also wants to do fast paced HS Chemistry at CTY this summer which her future HS is not receptive to despite CTY being certified by the same accreditation body that the HS itself belongs to (MidAtlantic Conference). She wants to do this class at CTY and Organic Chemistry next year (assuming that she continues to be enthused) with AP Chemistry at HS as a Sophomore. I am expecting a battle over this too.

Will post progress here...

This past year(officially 8th) we home/blended/hybrid schooled. DS took band and played soccer at the public school. He took 9th grade English and World History at home, AoPS for math, and went to a two-day a week study center for Spanish and Bio. He also did robots and piano as exc.

Next year somewhat the same excep we hope to take a couple classes vi early college in place of the study center. DS seems to work well with 2-day a week semester style approach.

Each year it’s a new challenge. At times he has needed the social contact while at other times he craves the higher academics. .

I have to say I am envious of both of you. We will not have those kinds of options. I am trying to decide how much energy I have to go and even discuss DD taking an alternative path in our private school. While many of the teachers are kind, they think (and the principal) they know best for all students. How can I even prove to them that DD is capable of so much more? In elementary we had the yearly testing that showed what she could do (which finally allowed single subject acceleration then finally a grade skip and more). No testing at the school this year. Just DD not even lifting a finger to get A's. Her big sister studies like crazy and gets 99's and 100's across the board. That is the child the school really respects.

I should have been more clear in my first post. I am looking for websites that help parents make informed choices as their child moves through high school keeping in mind that college is just a few years down the road. I read bits and pieces of advice here, but hope to map out the steps the girls need to do well. How many AP classes? How many Honor classes? What route for mathy kid? What route for artsy/music/writer kid? How to find scholarships?

I’m not sure there is such a resource- it will be very different depending on th school and the kid. If there is something out there, we didn’t find it!

Regarding studying vs. how much your child is capable of, again, it will depend. Our kids rarely, if ever, really needed to truly study, but the output requirements for various classes meant that they had a very heavy workload, if that makes sense. (Mainly writing, but also projects, presentations, problem sets, notes, research, etc)- I think because our AP and DE classes are open to everyone, they often require more output than would be expected, for example, handing in your handwritten notes before a seminar, or handing in index cards for a research paper (in our case, the cards are often done after the paper, so basically busy work).

Regarding how many APs, again, that will vary widely. Competitive colleges expect kids to take advantage of the most rigorous coursework available to them (many actually state this explicitly, and our counselor letter is required to address this in detail). Obviously, this will vary- here, we have both AP and dual enrollment options for many upper level classes, but the rigor varies. The AP class is felt to be more rigorous for many options here, but not always, and whether a kid expects to use either option for credit also plays a part in which class is chosen. Some elite schools now don’t accept credit for either, so the most competitive kids here generally do AP over DE if both are available. There is a subset of kids here who self study APs like crazy, to gain some magical number of APs taken- if one is headed to a school that accepts them for credit, it may make economic sense, but otherwise I think there are better ways to use one’s time.

The best information we got came from older students and their families, but it is hard to gauge whether a given student is truly similar, and whether their college goals are similar, etc, and we are in a large district, so there are some peers. Theoretically, a good counselor would be the most help, but ours are oversubscribed and don’t exert much personalized effort for the top kids, they expect them and their families to figure it out on their own. We never investigated a paid college advising service, but perhaps that would be an option.

Scholarship opportunities is a good question- our counseling office puts out an ongoing list throughout the year, and there are various websites as well as books, but I don’t have specifics. Most of the opportunities we came across were college-specific, when or after one applies, or related to coursework/classes in high school, but generally not an option until junior or senior year. Look into the extracurricular your kids do as well; our kids had opportunities through science olympiad, music activities, history projects/papers, writing, their foreign language study, etc.

ETA- just thought of one more thing. Our counselors strongly suggest kids get their recommendation letters from junior year teachers, and they advise that kids should usually choose one from math/sciences and one from a humanities area. So this played a role in DD’s choices as well- I suspect her strong letters of red helped set her apart.. Junior year she opted for AP bio over AP chem in part because both the bio teachers are considered to be very strong, but one of the two AP chem teachers is quite weak (the school will not let kids choose or switch out between them, and the risk of having this terrible teacher overrode her preference for chemistry). She ended up loving the class, and got a great letter as well, from a teacher who got to know her well.

The resource you want is College Confidential - you may have to sift through the chaff, but you will find people knowledgeable about everything in the admissions process. I’ve used them for work!

When our DD was in 8th grade they had to pick their first year of high school classes. I asked her to pick some colleges that she thought she wanted to attend, then I suggested a couple more and we wound up with a total of five. One California school, an Ivy, one overseas, the local state school, etc. Then I showed her how to look at the admissions page to see what courses were required/suggested for admission. We divided up the schools (so it would not be overwhelming) and made a list of all the classes that the universities wanted. DD then looked up what was required to graduate from High School here. Put all this in Excel and made columns so that she could see that AP US history would count for high school graduation and was recommended for 4 out of 5 colleges. Then made a 4 year plan for high school.

In the end, her High School program (designed by the school) was so rigid that there was not a lot of wiggle room. She could pick 1-2 classes per year and had options within subjects (i.e. must have PE, can pick tennis, weight lifting, etc). Having a list enabled her to see what she still needed to take every fall when she had to register. Some of her friends parents went further and looked into what the pre-requisites for specific majors at University were.

We did this all again after she had chosen a university and kind of knew what her major/minor (and grad school) plans would be so that she could sign up for freshman year classes at university.

Of course, plans change, and interests may change too, but doing the lists enabled her to see what taking (or not) a class did to her overall goals.