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Grades vs learning

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PhineasJWhoopee

Banned
My kids are in HS. I'm encouraging them to take all of the math/science and advanced classes they can. It's fine for my son because he's really bright. For my daughter, it's dragging down her grades a bit and could inpact her college choices.

So for my daughter, her grades are being sacrificed for learning. Am I naive?
 
Not naive for making them take science classes, but somewhat for thinking that just making them take more classes necessarily means they learn that much more. Taking harder classes doesn't necessarily mean that her grades must go down. Just requires more work and study.
 
Tough question. If the admissions folks look at the transcript then the hard classes can help. But if they glance at the GPA and move on to the next student the hard classes don't matter. I'd still go for the hard classes.
 
Harder classes will be better for her in the long run...but colleges won't look at it that way. It's GPA first, schedule difficulty is only a fraction as important.
 
IronWing said:
Tough question. If the admissions folks look at the transcript then the hard classes can help. But if they glance at the GPA and move on to the next student the hard classes don't matter. I'd still go for the hard classes.
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She's an excellent writer. Hopefully, the admissions people read the essays (I assume there are essays these days for college admissions?).

She's a junior so she knows she has to buckle down this year.
 
rcpratt said:
Harder classes will be better for her in the long run...but colleges won't look at it that way. It's GPA first, schedule difficulty is only a fraction as important.
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That's what I'm afraid of. Still, I'd rather she challenge herself and learn as much as she can. In the long run, that should serve her better than pumping up her grades with easy classes.
 
You really do not learn anything until college....so just get a good gpa for now. If she is not able to learn the basics like algebra, then that is just a loss for her.
 
Well, I learned plenty of important things in high school that set the foundation for things learned in college. Not sure what kind of high school you all attended.

edit: Is it just me, or are the forums really effing slow today?
 
How much "dragging" are we talking about here? If she is normally an A student but gets B's in AP chem/physics/etc then I would say that's fine. I can't speak for all colleges but my school would recognize that AP courses are tougher and would certainly put someone with a 3.5 and a rigorous schedule on par with another who never went past Algebra II and took 3 study halls but had a 3.8.

On the other hand, if she cannot muster more than C's then I would advise to take a lighter course load.
 
PhineasJWhoopee said:
My kids are in HS. I'm encouraging them to take all of the math/science and advanced classes they can. It's fine for my son because he's really bright. For my daughter, it's dragging down her grades a bit and could inpact her college choices.

So for my daughter, her grades are being sacrificed for learning. Am I naive?
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IMHO, a background in science give her wider education path in college and career choices. However, encouragement and positive involvement of the parents in the child education/s will go a long way.

PS. My niece signed herself up this summer for biology 12 with out anyone asking her or demanded of her and she ended up with a B grade that she isn't happy with, therefore she is retaking the course. She also took Physics 12 and happy that she got an A-.
 
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PhineasJWhoopee said:
She took physics as a 10th grader and is taking pre-calc this year, so she's mastered the basics.
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You said her grades were on the low side, though. How low are we talking? I always found that the science/math classes I learned the most from were the ones that I got B+ range grades on. In that range, I'm pushing myself, but generally understand the key concepts. Lower than that, and I was usually missing significant parts of what was important. Higher than that, and the course is too easy and I'm boring myself on details.

If you want her to learn the most, I would aim for that B+ range. As mentioned above, though, colleges sadly may not look at it that way.
 
crashtestdummy said:
You said her grades were on the low side, though. How low are we talking? I always found that the science/math classes I learned the most from were the ones that I got B+ range grades on. In that range, I'm pushing myself, but generally understand the key concepts. Lower than that, and I was usually missing significant parts of what was important. Higher than that, and the course is too easy and I'm boring myself on details.

If you want her to learn the most, I would aim for that B+ range. As mentioned above, though, colleges sadly may not look at it that way.
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IMHO, everyone have different leaning.

As for myself, I barely passed English and language courses but excelled in math & sciences with out breaking a sweat. And, all 5 of my siblings excelled in soft science (biology) humanity and language arts.
 
Grades are mostly bullshit in HS now anyways. 80% of your grade comes from your homework, this is an average among all high school classes, the rest from tests and projects and such. It's actually out of the ordinary for a girl to be suffering more from this "style of teaching" our educational systems have gone towards because it was mostly to cater to girls. I say just keep on her, help her study, and even if she gets Cs and Bs at least she's making the effort and that matters more in the long run imo.
 
I work at a community college. If your children plan on earning a 4 year degree at a university or 4 year college, they will be expected to take classes in wide range of subjects from economics, to socialogy to psychology to math to science to history to other humanities. There are some fields that require more math than others. However, some fields like medicine and criminal justice require almost no math.

A GPA of 4.0 is worthless if you are not ready to take college courses. A lot of people are just not ready to take college courses. Almost every class in college I ever took required some kind of written paper from 2-20 pages depending on the type of class. There should be moderation in all things. I took college algebra and statistics in college but I have never needed much more than simple mathematics.

Math is just a king of logical reasoning. No one should fear it. It is a juvenile cop-out.

At our community college you must have a HS 1 year course in Geometry with a C or better. D's in high school count for nothing in college.
 
mizzou said:
Phineas, you have all sorts of issues lately man!

Get some advice from your crazy german neighbors.
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My greatgrandfather was a fresco painter from Bavaria. I have nothing against Germans. I just generally don't find them very fun to be around.

I'm posting here, why would I want to confer with more crazy people? j/k.
 
She has about a 2.8 from a good school with no fluff courses to pump her grades.

In honors English, if she was interested in the book she got a 90 - 100, if she wasn't interested, she'd get a 50. That didn't help her overall grade much.

Hopefully with more maturity she'll realize that you have to make an effort if you are interested in the subject matter or not.

Although I have to admit, the choice of books in HS can be iffy. I recall the Deerslayer was on our summer reading list. Ugh.
 
2.8 at any school is pretty bad, no matter what courses your taking. Indicates a lack of effort for sure. And now with her junior year coming up, it's going to be hard to raise it. But it seriously needs to be at least 3.0.

At this point, I'd lean towards taking fluff to get it up.
 
rcpratt said:
2.8 at any school is pretty bad, no matter what courses your taking. Indicates a lack of effort for sure. And now with her junior year coming up, it's going to be hard to raise it. But it seriously needs to be at least 3.0.

At this point, I'd lean towards taking fluff to get it up.
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There's just not enough info.

gpa matters, but so does extra currics, jobs, sat/act, legacy and recs. I'm also willing to wager that a college understands there's an adjustment period to everything so if her grades steadily grow from sophmore to junior and junior to senior they will look favorably on that.

However, does your daughter's school weight ap/honors courses? Because if an A in AP is worth 4.5 on a 4 scale then yeah a 2.8 looks pretty bad...How did she do on the AP exams?
 
At my high school, I've always found that GPA tends to correlate directly with how much effort you're willing to put in. I've commonly stayed up late to finish essays and boring history chapters, and so far, my GPA has reflected the effort that I've put in. I can't imagine how much more different her school is from my school.
 
rcpratt said:
Well, I learned plenty of important things in high school that set the foundation for things learned in college. Not sure what kind of high school you all attended.

edit: Is it just me, or are the forums really effing slow today?
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That's great, but it looks better getting A in precalc senior year than getting a D in AP calc senior year.
 
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