My son did the Jack Kernion self-paced Physics 1 last year, and had a pretty good experience with it (https://physics-prep.com). My understanding is that it's the same material as PAH, but much cheaper without the live component/grading/etc. He only did Physics 1, not 1/2 in the same year, which made for a much more relaxed pace. He did it pretty much entirely on his own, although his calc teacher dad was available for any math help he needed, which happened occasionally but not often (he was taking Calc AB concurrently). While some places, like PAH, combine Physics 1/2 in one year, the college board calls Physics 1 a full year course and many schools teach it that way.

Bob Wachter had a long thread on twitter the other day about when he'll go back to indoor restaurants and stop masking in most situations....there were assorted caveats, but it boiled down to when cases are under 10/100,000 per day in his area. I appreciated seeing an actual number, with a lot of thoughtful reasoning behind it, and also one that seems like it might actually happen soon in most places (although likely not stay there forever; I'm expecting to be adjusting my behavior based on case counts for the foreseeable future). My husband and son were just in Cleveland last weekend and ate at indoor restaurants a couple of times...so I was pleased to read the thread and realize that they happened to be in one of the only parts of the country that comes in under the 10/100,000 threshold.

re: how many schools. Echoing that it really just depends on the situation. My oldest applied to 16, I think. Looking back, that was probably too many, but not by much. Like I can think of maybe 2-3 on his list that he almost certainly wouldn't have attended AND that he was pretty unlikely to be accepted to anyway. But if he's cut the list down to 10, he probably wouldn't have applied to the school he ended up going to. He was applying mostly to top 30 LAC, with a few outliers, and we needed to compare financial aid packages. He wound up on a LOT of waitlists and with a few acceptances at highly selective schools...there would have been no way to predict beforehand which would be the waitlists and which would be the acceptances. The few I'd cut, in retrospect, were places that made it easy to apply by not having extra essays and/or application fees, but which he hadn't visited and had no special interest in. My current senior only applied to 6. They all require auditions, which are very time consuming both to do and to prepare for (and application fees are usually higher for audition-only programs), and we really just couldn't find all that many schools that fit his needs: good clarinet teacher, good need based financial aid, realistic shot at admission (in retrospect this time, we might have added in a couple more places that seemed too reach-y at first...with the hindsight that he ended up passing all his prescreens). He also had a school we guessed/hoped would be a safety (that's a lot harder to gauge with music schools) that he would be genuinely happy to attend. Next kid might end up doing early decision somewhere so we don't have to go through this long, drawn out process again!

I'll also say that I think for my kid not being in school (and most of this would also apply to not being in a school with a big music program) has been a net positive. He's mostly played with selective, very talented ensembles, so he's used to playing music at a high level and also to knowing where he stands in relation to the best young musicians in the area. I think a lot of kids get used to being the best in their school ensembles, often without having to put in a ton of effort, and that can lead to complacency and bad practice habits and a rude awakening whenever they leave that bubble. There are some extracurriculars where not having school programs can be a huge disadvantage, but we haven't found music to be one of them.

Report back! I love admitted students weekends! I'm a giant dork. Is anywhere doing overnight visits these days? My oldest found those really helpful in making decisions, I think...a lot more immersive and less choreographed than standard visits with information sessions and tours.

The waiting is TERRIBLE! (I think I hate it way more than my kid, at least in this kid's case)

DS and DH fly to Cleveland tonight for the last of his auditions! Baldwin Wallace...we visited last summer, and he's done a lesson with the clarinet prof (who plays with the Cleveland Orchestra, making him one of the few full time orchestral musicians among his potential teachers. The only one, in fact, I think), and he likes it a lot. But I'm not sure it's likely to much of a contender for him; if the NPC is to be trusted it would be the least affordable option. But we'll see! Tomorrow the high is 25 in Cleveland with snow and 30 mph winds, so I'm off to Target to buy decent gloves today before they leave. Next up is waiting for decisions; he's supposed to hear from BW by March 8, and then Bard, Oberlin, and Vanderbilt are all clustered in mid-late March. And then we find out where we're going for spring break, based on where he gets in! I hate not being able to plan.

My son is applying to colleges as a clarinet performance major right now. He decided he wanted to major in music towards the end of 9th grade, after not starting clarinet until summer before 9th grade. And he's homeschooled, so everything has been outside of school. I think the two most important things he did/we did for him were getting him the best private teacher we could find and finding him groups he could perform with where the expectations and talent level were high (i.e. places where he wouldn't be the best clarinetist in the room and would be challenged). When I asked the same sort of question when we were first thinking this stuff through, a lot of people stressed the importance of summer programs as well. But thanks to covid he only did one camp, the year after he started playing, and I don't think it's hurt him (of course, most kids were in the same boat the past few years). Junior year he did sample lessons at colleges he was interested in to get an idea of what teachers he'd work well with, and right now we're nearly finished with audition season (phew!)...he's applied to 6 schools total, which is WAY fewer than my oldest, non-music kid applied to, because doing more auditions than that seemed overwhelming (and expensive...although a bunch of them were switched to virtual). So far he's been accepted at 2 and is waiting to hear from the rest. ETA more specific details about what the music part of his time looks like: right now he has a 1 hour private lesson every week, plays in a clarinet choir and a youth symphony on Sundays, in a youth wind ensemble on Mondays, and practices a couple of hours a day. He's auditioned for district honor band and All-state the past few years (and is actually getting to do all state in person this year!) but hasn't done any competitions otherwise. He took a music theory class through WTM Academy last year and also takes piano lessons.

Ugh--so frustrating! But maybe better to know now that he doesn't want to deal with them long term!

At least in the US, from what I can tell, teaching calculus in high school was pretty much unheard of until the 50s/60s. I don't see any trend at all to teach it to fewer students right now, but to push more and more unprepared students into it. I also don't see that anyone is substituting music and sports for academic subjects; it's the same wealthy schools that offer a bunch of AP classes that have robust music programs and lots of money for sports. I know that around here the schools in poorer areas can't play football games on Friday nights because they can't afford lights for their fields. My kids just auditioned into district honor band in our county where there are huge socio-economic variations across the county, and just about every single kid who got into district came from the wealthier, whiter/more Asian half of the county where there are schools with strong music programs and parents who can afford private lessons. The kids getting the best shots at succeeding in sports and music are the same ones getting the best shots academically.

My first two had 28 and (will have; graduating in May) 28.5

This is an interesting example, because my oldest took AP Human Geography and has ended up doing a geography minor (or possibly but not likely a double major), and his AP credit actually did count for the required intro class for that. But even elective credits can help you graduate early or just free up space in your schedule to fit in other requirements. Also AP HUG is just an interesting class, and, yes, a fairly gentle intro to AP exams.

There does seem to be a trend to offer non-AP calculus (my husband's school started offering it a few years ago). According to the survey in the report, admissions people still look more favorably on on-AP calc than on AP stats. From what I can tell, it's a good life raft for kids who would be in over their heads with an AP class but find themselves needing to take calc because of how they were placed back in 7th or 8th grade. How useful the class is probably depends on the situation....my husband tutored one kid who struggled with AB in 11th grade but likely could have handled it and done okay with a lot of effort; she decided to switch to non-AP calc just because the stress wasn't worth it to her, and she's doing great in the (very) slow paced class. Since she's just in 11th grade, it means she can still take AP calc next year if she wants and get that AP credit, and it will likely be a lot easier because she's had a gentle introduction to the subject this year.

My son did the WTM Academy music theory in 10th grade and really enjoyed it.

Yes, for sure. I guess a lot of it is a built in problem with trying to make school in general work for a huge population; there's only so much you can do and so much variety you can offer. Dual enrollment gives you a lot more options, but then you run into the problem of wondering how admissions people are going to evaluate classes they're not familiar with or a non-standard sequence.

oops, yes--I worded it badly--I meant AP lit is harder than AP lang, basing it on scores (but does not seem to have the same reputation as being indisputably the more rigorous choice like calc does).

lol--it perhaps says a lot about my bias that my immediate impulse was "but that's different!" Although, to be fair (of me to me) I'm not really advocating LESS math or even less difficult math for kids who are aiming for selective colleges...just more choices about higher math. Kind of like AP lit vs AP lang perhaps. I don't think there's any career field where learning to understand and structure arguments won't help you, but I don't get the impression that AP lit is considered far superior to AP lang in the same way calc is privileged over stats, even though the test is objectively easier.

Not so much venting as saying, "hey, this is an issue I've noticed, and it's interesting to see this big report talk about it and about creative alternatives some schools are exploring." I'm not outraged that my kid will probably take calculus instead of statistics or anything; I just think he would be better served by statistics, and I think it's unfortunate that there aren't better, more forward-looking options in the standard high school math sequence for non STEM students who are aiming for selective colleges. As far as financing college, we are lucky in that our in-state publics are affordable for us thanks to lottery funded tuition grants, should he choose to go that route (as my current senior might, depending on where else he's accepted). But I think a small LAC would likely be a better fit for my 10th grader, and I'd like him to have that option if he wants it (and so, yes, I'll advise calculus over stats to up the odds). I'm a pretty big proponent of making sure high achieving, low income students are aware of how many needs-met colleges are out there; it's an incredible option for kids who can get into them, and I think many families, particularly of first generation kids, don't realize they're out there. For low income kids, a needs-met college might well be cheaper than the community college to public in-state path (and might well open up more opportunities). But a lot of families don't know that there's anything out there past community colleges and big public universities, or they think that every needs-met school is Harvard, when plenty of them are also Bard or Oberlin or Macalester (i.e. acceptance rates of 30-40% instead of 5%).

Certainly. But many/most non-stem kids who have any AP math credit probably won't take any math in college. And I think stats is something that it's good to have just to be a good citizen of the world, whether or not it's required for a degree.

That's what DH said...but that doesn't help if you're trying to pick between calculus and stats for senior year. I'm sure the college board could expect more out of students for stats without requiring calc as a pre-req...but it's ingrained in the standard course sequence that stats is for kids who struggled in pre-calc and aren't up for calculus.

I guess my beef with it is that there are other advanced maths that would be more helpful to a humanities major, and they're discouraged from taking them if they plan to apply to selective colleges. But then it's also true that AP stats is easier than AP calc, so that's where I'm not sure what the solution is.

(Hi. I can talk about college admissions for far too long). There are (at least) a couple of different things going on here. My personal pet peeve is the way that statistics gets the short of the stick when it comes to determinations of rigor, even though it makes more sense for most non STEM kids to take, and that's the thing that affects my own kids the most: But then the bigger issue is equity. If 79% of Wesleyan students took calculus in high school, but only 50% of high schools offer calculus...well, you don't need to have taken calculus to do that math. Incidentally, I'm quoting from the report linked to in the article I posted above: https://justequations.org/wp-content/uploads/Just-Equations-2021-Report-New-Calculus-Final-Digital.pdf

My oldest applied to a range of colleges, including a couple of true safeties. At one of them he was indeed offered a full ride, but the school turned out to be not a good fit for him and his interests, though it's a great school in many ways. But a full ride there was certainly not assured; he was offered a scholarship funded by a federal grant that was specifically for STEM majors. Another offered him pretty good financial aid but couldn't compete with the packages offered by much more highly ranked needs-met schools. Chasing merit at lower ranked schools is a great strategy for many middle income families and for many high achieving kids, but there's really not much competition for generous needs-met schools for kids who are Pell eligible/have very low EFCs. ETA: and, of course, the way to be competitive for the very best scholarships at lower ranked schools is the same as the way to be competitive for admission at highly selective schools: i.e. rigor counts, and admissions officers see calculus as a shorthand for rigor.

nope--I'm saying that even with calculus + 2 maths past calc and even with everything else going for him academically he still got waitlisted a ton of places (and got in at a lot of other great schools; our experience was that once you hit the top 20 or so of LACs it feels like a crapshoot)...so I know that at that level of competition you need every advantage you can get, and calculus is one of those advantages, even if it shouldn't be. Another quote from the report:

I'll also echo again that this is with the caveat that my kid does have access to calculus and likely will do well in it with a reasonable amount of effort. If I thought he would struggle in calculus I would suggest something else, and if it weren't available to him I would encourage him to apply to selective schools anyway. But if he wants the best shot at admission to schools like Wesleyan I will advise him honestly that calculus will "look better" on his transcript than stats. ETA: and I feel so strongly that everyone ought to take stats that I might encourage him to double up senior year and do both if he can fit it in. My oldest is a math major so knew he'd take stats in college, and my current senior did calc AB in 11th and then stats in 12th, but 10th grader won't get to AB until 12th grade.