What a funny coincidence that you mentioned Princeton math specifically. One of my favorite slides from Richard Rusczyk was from a talk he presented at Math Prize for Girls. (One of my dd's attended for a few years before the pandemic.) I've added RR's comments below. It seems like Princeton is in the habit of admitted unprepared students. And why would anyone tell this person not to apply to medical school just because of one lousy math grade? That's just so... weird. Heck, I got a C in chemistry the first time around and I was admitted to UCSF. Not exactly Ivy League, but still. 2014 MPG video Right after I started Art of Problem Solving I received an email from someone who attended Princeton who attended right around the time I did. I want you think for a minute what this student’s middle school and high school teachers thought when he went off to Princeton. They thought, “We succeeded. He went off to Princeton; we’re awesome.” They never saw this. I’m sure he didn’t go back to his middle school teachers and say, “Yeah what’s up?!? You didn’t prepare me for this.” So they didn’t get this feedback, and this happens a lot. I saw this a lot at Princeton, this happens a lot now. Kids go through school, some very good schools, they get perfect scores on everything, and then they come to place like MIT, a place like Princeton, they walk into that first year math class, and they see something they’ve never seen before: problems they don’t know how to solve. And they completely freak out. And that’s a bad time to have these first experiences. Having to overcome initial failure.

Oh, that makes more sense. You can probably tell I'm still a little sad that they went away.

1 or 2 years??

No. They aren't being offered anymore. https://blog.collegeboard.org/January-2021-sat-subject-test-and-essay-faq

At this point I'm wondering with whom you are acquainted who has expressed regret for using AoPS because it did not provide adequate preparation and did not continue to excel in math? I'm honestly very surprised that would be the case.

I'll only add that if you only have time for 1-2 AoPS courses, PreAlgebra and Algebra are the ones to study as those are the key topics he'll use for the rest of high school and college. He's off to a good start already, wherever he ends up.

To be clear it is not fraudulent to use another textbook or create your own curriculum and call it an AP course. All you need to do is get it approved and then you can make any changes to your plan. See below: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-course-audit/about Each individual school may develop its own curriculum for courses labeled “AP.” The AP Program does not mandate a specific curriculum for AP courses to follow. Instead, the official Course and Exam Description provides a scope and sequence for new AP teachers to utilize, modify, and adapt, rather than having to build from scratch. We also provide several sample syllabi that teachers can submit to confirm their awareness of course scope. Or teachers can develop an original syllabus or submit a colleague’s already-approved one. https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-course-audit-user-guide.pdf (page 12) When you click “Select Textbook”, a list of approved textbooks will appear. Scroll through the list and select the textbook that matches the one you use. You can also perform a search by typing the title or author of your textbook in the “Search” field. If you do not use any textbook on the list or use a different edition of listed textbook, you can provide your textbook by “Click here if your textbook is not found in the pre-approved list.” You can also change up your syllabus mid stream without informing the College Board: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-course-audit/about This simply means that the teacher has reviewed the material, is aware of the content and skills colleges expected to see in any course labeled “AP,” and will use the document as the starting point for their own course plan, adapting and modifying it over time as the teacher determines what will best enable his/her students to develop the knowledge and skills required for college credit and placement.

I got the diagnosis as an adult, and I was first started on oral doxycycline and used it chronically until I worsening side effects. Then I was switched to a topical azaleic acid, which I use twice a day for over a year, no side effects and works great with no recurrences. (I'm terrified to stop, so I just keep using it.) It does leave white streaking on my face if I'm not careful. Good luck to your dd. I remember reading about all those so called triggers: too hot, too cold, caffeine, etc. etc. I remember thinking that living your life is a rosacea trigger.

Not an Ivy, but AoPS to Stanford.

I disagree that it's mostly her temperament. For the reasons above, it sounds like a nightmare class at a nightmare college. Yikes. I'd be fairly mad to pay tuition for this "education."

This won't be helpful to OP, but I'm wondering if gender differences are at play here. I asked DH (as a representative of men generally, lol) if he would feel anxiety in the situation your student finds herself. (I've never been in the situation where I was the smartest one in the room.) He said he would feel anxiety, but he would be anxious that he was receiving a sub-standard education. He recalls in elementary school a student leaning over and asking him, "What are you doing here? This is a school for dumb kids."

It sounds like your student was undermatched at her college. Is it an option to transfer to a school that enrolls high quality students?

@wendyroo When I try to categorize the types of students who are admitted to MIT (having very limited personal experience) I think of people like: (1) High achievers in math/science: so like winners of USAMO, USACO, USAPhO, etc., maybe Science Bowl winners (2) Makers: students who can build amazing things (3) Science Fair types and others do advanced research Is this accurate? Is there another archetypal MIT student that I'm missing? (I'm thinking a distant 4th would be the Car Talk guys.)

I'm enjoying reading everyone's perspective. I also had a couple of lucky tickets. I got to take algebra in 8th grade, which wasn't a given. I found out a friend was going to take the class, and I pushed my mom to get me in too, so I could be with the smart kids. My junior high selected me and some others to take the SAT in 7th grade for Duke TIP. (I don't think this was available to every student.) Algebra in 8th grade was key because then you can take 9th grade geometry with the smart kids and with the teacher who was nuts for the AMC and other math contests. (Back then it was called the AHSME.) It was my first experience with actual problem solving style math, and it wasn't until my junior year that I felt I handle on how to solve those problems and I didn't qualify for AIME until my senior year, just in time to get it onto my college apps. Qualifying for AIME was pretty much my only accomplishment of note and back then it was enough for a girl from a flyover state to get admitted to Stanford. Unfortunately the only thing I was qualified for at Stanford were my math classes. I sucked at science and liberal arts, so stuck to engineering as much as I could. So I get people like this guy: https://mathproblemsolvingskills.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/college-prep/ On the bright side, my math skills are rare enough that I can charge $150/hour just teaching AoPS and prepping students for AMC. Until parents stop being distracted by the culture wars and start demanding high academic standards, don't expect the needle to move much.

This was published before the pandemic. I've included some interesting excerpts below. https://stanforddaily.com/2019/02/21/students-educators-discuss-challenges-in-transitioning-to-stanford-from-under-resourced-schools/ “I’ve been told, ‘You just need to accept the fact that you’re not an engineer,’” she said. “And I did switch my major. It’s a harsh reality on this campus that many students are facing.” "Despite this support, some students said they also felt unprepared for the rigor of Stanford classes, compared to students who had experience in college-level subjects during high school. Students specifically criticized courses such as the introductory chemistry series." “It just seemed like everyone else around me but me had some kind of rigorous curriculum that helped them, that gave them an advantage when taking the class,” Adebagbo said. “I felt like my professors automatically assumed that their students had a sufficient background to at least understand the concepts that they were presenting in the class,” Cusic said. "Adebagbo grew up in Boston, and went to a school where only 26 students were part of her graduating class. She does not put her high school at fault for her difficult transition at Stanford." “There’s only so much you can expect from a fairly new school,” she said. “So I think a lot of my anger [is] toward Stanford — you knew who I was when you accepted me. You knew the kind of high school I went to. You knew the environment I was coming from.” “You accept a student like me into Stanford and you expect magically that I’ll figure myself out,” she said. “I’ve been in situations where [professors] are teaching students like me, when I’m asking questions, and I can see the frustration on their faces, because I’m the one asking the questions that caused them to explain things from a basic level,” she said. “I wouldn’t just say that having these resources on campus isn’t going to substitute or compensate for all those years of education that you didn’t have, or that access that you didn’t have before,” he said. “You can’t teach me something in 10 weeks that I didn’t learn for years.” “I want to make sure that when [professors] are actually talking to you, they’re taking time to break down the concepts, and speaking to someone as if they’ve never been exposed to the material before,” Cusic said. “Not in a demeaning or degrading way, but approaching the material as if we’re starting from a very very new foundation.” The Diversity and Access Office has worked with faculty through workshops centered on cultural humility, particularly with regard to professors’ attitudes toward students, Vasquez said. “It’s not like after one workshop someone has eliminated their biases,” he said. “I also think that it’s not just individuals but it’s also systemic. It’s the way that certain academic policies are made, the way that certain courses are sequenced or the ways that majors are designed.” Marcone, on the other hand, found chemistry professors very clear and helpful. “Chem classes have been some of my favorite, and honestly the teachers have consistently surprised me by how good they are at explaining the concepts,” she said. “When you go to a school where everyone is on free or reduced lunch, or some kids come to school solely for the purpose of eating lunch because they don’t have food at home, that is a whole different environment.” Cusic was also met with judgement from other students in the classroom when she asked simple questions, she said. She sees Stanford’s culture as skewed toward students who already know topics well when entering the classroom. “It’s not okay not to know right now at Stanford,” she said. “You have to know everything, or else you’ll look like a fool. I hate that.” Bah hopes Stanford will make changes to its culture and be more open to accepting students from under-resourced schools.

This is off topic, but I thought it would be interesting to readers of this thread. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/14/what-happens-when-an-elite-public-school-becomes-open-to-all Lowell High School is a public San Francisco high school, where you are admitted on merit, I believe it's a test score. During the pandemic they admitted students based on lottery. This follows that freshman class of students who won the Lowell lottery. "One freshman who she’d thought was slacking off turned out to have a third-grade reading level: he wasn’t truculent, just petrified." “I have three times as many students as usual failing—instead of one or two, I have three to six,” Wenning, the biology teacher, told me. “I have some students who have done no work the whole first grading period.” “I’m at the end of my rope in what I can offer,” he told me. “I don’t think some of these students would be doing well at any high school, which makes me wonder why they wanted to come to Lowell.” “The students who are struggling the most in this first grading period are our ninth-grade students,” he said. About ten per cent had a D or lower in at least one subject; the average freshman G.P.A.s that autumn fell ten per cent from what they had been before the pandemic.

Jeepers, for a fraction of $27 billion, they could remodel their student union a bit. That was a really cool NYT link you provided. I'm having fun comparing hte colleges.

This may be related to the fact that MIT does not favor legacy applicants, unlike the other Ivy+'s. I've wondered if this is the reason MIT's campus looks fairly crappy.

I agree with @Nancy K.. I've completed their online forms with this or that question and have found AoPS reps replied promptly to my questions.

Michael Clay Thompson language arts BFSU science AoPS math

Yes, people are concerned. I'm especially concerned about students who are going through 12 years of schooling and coming out unable to read challenging passages. I recently stumbled on a podcast Test and the Rest. The most recent interview is with none other than Erica Meltzer, who authors those popular SAT/ACT reading prep books that are so often recommended on hs2coll. She had some alarming things to say about the students she's tutored. When asked to read a passage out loud, her students skip words, or replace words they can't read with another word that shares the same first letter. They skip over an entire line of text without realizing it. They get totally blown away when they encounter a foreign name they can't pronounce. They don't even know that a name they don't recognize is a name. They read robotically, word word word word I don't understand and freak out! They don't read like a human who uses appropriate inflection in a way that shows they understand what they are reading. Students don't seem to get that the words on a page actually correspond to words they speak. Like we're pulling students who were raised by wolves and asking them to take the SAT. What have they been studying for 12 years?

I didn't use these curricula, so I'm not going to be much help.

There's a whole article in the Atlantic today that is relevant: "The experience of buying a new television or a double cheeseburger in a store has gotten worse in your lifetime. It’s gotten worse for the people selling TVs and burgers too. The most immediate culprit is decades of cost-cutting; by increasing surveillance and pressure on workers during shifts, reducing their hours and benefits, and not replacing those who quit, executives can shine up a business’s balance sheet in a hurry. Sometimes, you can see these shifts happening in real time, as with pandemic-era QR-code-ordering in restaurants, which allows them to reduce staff—and which is likely to stick around. Wages and resources dwindle, and more expensive and experienced workers get replaced with fewer and more poorly trained new hires. When customers can’t find anyone to help them or have to wait too long in line, they take it out on whichever overburdened employee they eventually hunt down."

The point about the ration of circumference to diameter might hit harder if you measured circular items of all sizes around your house. Measure using a string the circumference and diameter of a can, a round plate, a bicycle wheel, anything you can find. You can use a calculator together or even long division to find that the ratio is always approximately 3. I think that's more effective than having the numbers presented to you in a worksheet.

I should say that I'm hosting MK for a group of students. The person who runs the contest will receive the items, not the parent.