Freshman Honors Classes

Depends what schools you are interested in. All Ivys told our guy to take all the AP classes he could. But if you throw 90 mph and have at least a 28 ACT they will take you anyway.

If he can keep the B, I would tough it out.

If he wants to go to an HA college, take the toughest schedule the HS offers and don't get any C's.

My suggestion would be to build a great base of a GPA in 9th and 10th grade. I personally do not believe that HA schools care as much about rigor in 9th as they do in 10th, then 11th and 12th. Build it. 1-2 AP's/honors as Fresh, then 2-3 as a sophomore, 3 as a Junior, and then see where you are at as a Sr.

A 3.5 GPA (unweighted as HA could care less about weighted GPA) as a Freshman can be really difficult to get to a 3.75 by end of Junior year. Especially as AP's and honors classes get more difficult and if baseball matters (you are here right?!?) your kid is going to be eating/studying/practicing/lifting/repeating a lot his sophomore/junior year. Add in girls and who knows what things might look like.

My 2022 had 2 A's and 4 B+'s in 9th (3.55), then 4 A's, 1 B+, 1 B- in 10th (3.69 & 3.63 cumulative), 3.69 & 3.65 after 11th. The school profile matters to HA schools, the extra curriculars matter, rigor matters, and ACT/SAT matters (or can help a lot if you have a good score). And you have to be better than average at baseball if you want to play at an HA that is good at baseball.

My kid had one B- in his first 3 years of HS. Zero B's and 8 B+'s. The B- teacher was his worst teacher (and many kids worst teacher and grade in 3 years...it was an honors class btw). I would not settle for a B as it could really hurt if there is a challenging class, teacher, or extenuating circumstances later in HS. If your kid cant move back up to honors sciences then I might "settle" for a B but if he can then I would drop down, book an A and rigor up for rest of HS.

@Around_The_Horn posted:

Have a brand new freshman in HS.  Has mainly honors classes, and does well in school (straight A’s).  Currently in Honors Biology (his school says it is basically AP Biology) but got an 82 on first test.  And now has tested positive for COVID, so he gets to do virtual school for basically 10 days if all goes well.  

Mom and I are worried how this might affect his GPA.  Do we pull him and get him in regular Biology where he would most like get an easy A or leave him and let him struggle and figure it out ( this is were I lean).

Any advice and insight of how colleges might view this decision is greatly appreciated.  And yes, he is our oldest child so we do over analyze every part of his life

Bolded is awesome. I think you if you are truly concerned about the life time GPA you drop it, if you are thinking long term you let him figure it out and and he will be better for it.

By the time your 3rd kid gets to this point you will be like "did you signed up for a science? yes, ok good deal"

I think part if it depends on the academic rigor of the school. My son's prep school is known for it's difficult academics. He went in his freshman year with honors and A/P everything. The honors English and A/P World History classes were rough. Literally 3+ hours per night trying to maintain a B+. Ended up dropping to on-level the next year for those subjects and loaded up on other A/P's that were more interesting to him. It has worked out since... I think. He's had straight A's since and we don't stress about homework. This year (junior) he got back into A/P social studies for micro/macro economics and will take A/P government next year. This path will put him into the toughest classes the school offers besides English.

This same thing happened to one of my sons.  The honors biology grade was almost entirely based on multiple choice tests, and he does not do well on them at all.  It took us too long to figure out that he needed to talk to the teacher and take advantage of every possible extra help in that class (they have in-school tutorial sessions), but he eventually did that, and his grade improved.  High school is agonizing because you realize that every grade is going on that GPA, so I don't quite know what to tell you here.  It's a good lesson to learn that he's going to have to work extra hard to master something, rather than dropping down to something easier.  On the other hand, if he never can master it (as in our case of multiple choice tests), then he will be stuck with the lower grade.  So the first thing to do is to figure out why he got the 82.  And, if he's out with covid and you can't get the extra help, it's a bigger problem - although presumably colleges will keep covid in mind when evaluating transcripts, as well.

I disagree that colleges aren't interested in weighted GPA's - my other son only sent the weighted, because that's all his school calculated.  The college will do with the GPA what they wish.  Keep in mind, a college application usually needs a letter from the school counselor; our school's counselor wrote in her letter that my son had taken the most rigorous classes the school offered.  What the college does with that will depend on the college.  I do agree with Smitty28, no C's for HA.

Good post anotherparent. First thing my son does when he misses a test question is to identify whether he just made a mistake or if he doesn't know the material. Prep schools should be willing to work with your student to figure it out so he doesn't miss it on future tests.

My son's prep school also does not do unweighted GPA's. This past year they sent 5 kids to H/P/Y and a handful of others to few other elite HA schools.

Your question will have different answers in different areas and for different schools.  If you lived in California and intended to target the UC and/or Cal State systems, the answer would be easy -- those schools do not recognize school-designated honors courses, only AP and IB, so drop down if that helps him get an A.  Your state and target schools may be different.  This is where a college councilor is a great resource, even for freshmen and their parents.

@JCG posted:

Your question will have different answers in different areas and for different schools.  If you lived in California and intended to target the UC and/or Cal State systems, the answer would be easy -- those schools do not recognize school-designated honors courses, only AP and IB, so drop down if that helps him get an A.  Your state and target schools may be different.  This is where a college councilor is a great resource, even for freshmen and their parents.

Bingo. If you are at a prep school then there should be a counselor on staff. If not, it may be worth it to hire a private college counselor, Especially if you have a HA kid. They will know the formula to increase his chances of being admitted to the target schools.

My son was at a large public school.  The counselor did not know him personally, but she could look at his transcript and state what kind of classes he had taken.  She would have met with him, or us, if we had requested it.  I fully agree that it's never a bad idea to meet and talk to the counselor, at whatever kind of school you attend.  Likewise, public or private, teachers are usually very happy to help students who want help, at least that has been our experience.  Covid has made that much more difficult.

Sorta related:  we were told by our son's college counselor that a 3.4 ish freshman year  gpa (the result of a learning difference we didn't know about) that improved to a 3.8 or 3.9 for each of his soph and  jr. year should be okay, but that wasn't always the case. Some HA D3 schools were pretty inflexible and he didn't get past the pre-reads  Other schools that we considered to be in the same level of the same pond had no problem with his pre-read.  Pretty random.  If he had a high SAT/ACT score to back it up he probably would have been fine, but he doesn't show well on those tests, so he never submitted the scores he had.

Having three kids go through this HA route, I completely agree with anotherparent  and the agony of sweating out GPAs. With grade inflation what it is, and with standardized tests being sidelined, at least temporarily, every single grade is critical, and some are more critical than others.