Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Facing high school

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.