AP, Honors, or dual enrollment? Which one?

At every college information session, a parent will ask, “Is it better to get a “B” in an AP class or an “A” in a regular class?” The admissions officer answers, “It’s better to get an “A” in an AP class,” and everyone moans. With an increasingly intense admissions process, decisions about what higher-level classes to take can feel daunting. Honors, Advanced Placement (AP), and Dual Enrollment all offer a competitive edge to applicants; however, there are differences between the levels of rigor, work, impact on GPA, and attainment of college credit.  

A student’s curriculum is evaluated in the context of their high school, so if ten AP courses are offered, and a student has just taken one, admissions officers at competitive colleges will wonder why. But if a high school only offers a couple of AP courses, students can’t be expected to take classes that don’t exist, and they would not be at a disadvantage in the admissions process. 

While students in honor classes usually cover the same material as in the regular class, honors provides a rigorous study of each subject, requiring more projects, tests, and time. Honors courses follow a teacher-designed curriculum. Honors are valued in the admissions process. However, unlike APs, they don’t offer college credit and are not as highly regarded.

APs are designed to give students a college-level course experience within a high school setting. We recommend that all students who take an AP course, take the exam in the spring.

AP exams are scored on a system from 1 to 5, with anything above 3 considered to be passing. While every university has a different policy, many colleges award credit for scores of 4 or 5 on an AP exam, and some for a score of 3. If they don’t give credit, APs can be used to place out of introductory courses, have the flexibility to double-major, or even help you have a lighter class schedule while doing an internship. 

In dual enrollment classes, high school students can take actual college courses taught by college professors or a high school teacher who has been trained and approved by the university. Programs, pricing, and course schedules vary by school. Classes are graded on assignments and tests, so unlike they AP system, one exam does not determine the outcome. Further, it’s not a guarantee that all dual enrollment classes will be accepted for college credit. 

Taking higher-level classes prepares students for a more successful future in college, while simultaneously giving them an extra nudge on the admissions table. Preparing for college is important, but so is preserving mental health and not overloading the plate with challenging classes. This might involve opting for AP classes in one’s stronger subjects or selecting a handful of APs to spread out throughout high school.

Admissions officers, of course, like to see intellectual curiosity, but they also like students who will contribute to the college community. Students who also spend time discovering and pursuing their passions outside the classroom will be attractive applicants. This means that finding a healthy balance between scholarly pursuits and extracurricular activities, community service, or other interests is just as important. Colleges are searching for dynamic individuals with various talents and perspectives who will diversify their campuses.

The Markers of College Readiness

Your teen may be academically ready to move on to college, but are they mature emotionally and psychologically? At home, they are surrounded by family and friends. Once they leave their support system, will they be able to thrive in their new surroundings?

In the book,The Stressed Years of Their Lives, authors, Hibbs and Rostain identify eight key components of social maturity that are considered predictors of college success:

Conscientiousness Is your teen ready to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions? For example, if they are caught cheating on a test, do they own it and understand why there are consequences, or do they make up excuses?

Self-management Are they ready to take over routine tasks? Can they wake up on their own? Can they complete their chores and make and keep appointments? Do they know how to rearrange their schedule, if needed? Are they able to demonstrate these skills in different environments?

Interpersonal skills Are your teens ready to make friends, deal with roommates, and find healthy social activities? One of the biggest challenges at college is navigating friendships and dealing with roommate conflicts and romantic relationships. Young adults with learning differences or social-interaction difficulties add another level of challenges. The impact of social media further complicates social relationships.

Self-control Can your teen resist temptation? Going off to college can feel like a free-for-all. They can stay up late, go out with friends, eat whatever they want, and play video games all night. Sounds simple, but do they know when and how to say no to staying out late, when there is a paper due the next day?

Grit Are they ready to cope with frustration, disappointment, and failure? Can your teen tolerate distress and find their motivation after a setback? Learning how to “hang in there” helps develop inner strength.

Risk management Can they have fun without taking too many risks? Remember that the immature development of the late adolescent brain contributes to “risky decision-making and reward-seeking drives.” Keeping communication open with your teen is essential in helping them navigate the decisions they make or want to make.

Self-acceptance Can your teen accept their faults and tolerate their mistakes without too much guilt or shame?

Open mindset/Help-seeking Often teens see setbacks or failure as shameful. Asking for help is a sign of strength and maturity.  Encourage your teen to ask for help - whether from a friend, teacher, or parent - since it is an important life skill. Maturity in adolescence is a work in progress that takes time and patience. 

These eight points should be developed over time and used as a framework for giving teens the skills to navigate the road towards adulthood. Further, your teen should be mature enough to handle the change that college will bring to their lives

Focus on Major: Data Science

With the widespread adoption of mobile phones and computers and the resulting huge quantities of data generated from these devices, there is now a demand for analysts to extract knowledge and insights from that data. It is now easier for organizations to learn about their users as they interact with the company’s website, social media, or mobile channels, all of which leave records that can be accessed and analyzed. Such datasets are information-rich and can help guide organizations to improve products and services. Accessing and analyzing this data requires trained data scientists, and demand for them is high. To address this demand, many colleges and universities have created programs specifically focused on data science and ancillary studies. 

What is data science?

Data science is an interdisciplinary field. In this major, students learn to combine statistics, computer science, mathematics, information science, and knowledge about systems to pull and analyze data for a specific purpose. As this is a rapidly changing field, data science degree programs aim to teach students how to think about the field flexibly and to engage critically with new problems.

An undergraduate studying data science will start by building a basis of knowledge in mathematics, particularly calculus and linear algebra, and take several statistics and computer science courses. While computer science will provide the programming skills needed to extract data and use helpful software tools, a statistical background will provide students with the analytical skills needed to interpret data scientifically. In addition to focusing on these core subject areas, many data science programs have specialized fields of study:

Machine Learning is focused on using data to make predictions. To do this, students learn the basics of neural networks and artificial intelligence to mimic how neurons in the human brain work together to solve problems and arrive at conclusions.

Data Analytics uses large data sets to find trends and answer questions. Data Analytics can be valuable to businesses and other organizations not only to improve decision making, but also to increase employee productivity and help create personalized customer experiences. 

Inference uses experiments, predictive modeling, and A/B testing of data to predict outcomes. Inference typically requires additional courses in statistics. 

Natural Language Processing (NLP) uses Machine Learning (ML) technology to enable computers to understand natural language as humans do. Whether the language is spoken or written, natural language processing can use AI to take data, process it, and make sense of it in a way a computer can understand.

What careers stem from this major? 

With an undergraduate degree, students can pursue junior-level roles as data analysts or data engineers at a wide variety of companies. While analysts focus on organizing and interpreting raw data, data engineers help build the systems analysts use. These careers can be found at both large and small companies in industries as diverse as healthcare, agriculture, technology, and consulting, to name a few. 

Within the role of a data analyst, there are specialties such as risk management, market research, and business analysis. Risk management analysts tend to work for insurance companies or on risk prevention teams. Typically, the goal is to ensure maximum profit. Students may also become database administrators, focusing their skills on overseeing a company’s database.

To pursue higher-level positions or research-based careers, students may also choose to obtain a graduate degree, which can take up to two years or more while they attend full-time.

Career Paths for Data Science Majors

Database Administrator

Data Analyst

Data Engineer

Market Research Analyst

·Applications Architect

Tableau Developer

Operations Research Analyst

Data Scientist

Business Intelligence Analyst

Risk Management Analyst

Market Researcher

Business Analyst

Clinical Data Manager

Quantitative Researcher

Avoiding Senioritis

Senioritis is a condition of the mind when high school seniors become unmotivated and feel academically apathetic. This usually happens in the last quarter of high school when mid-term grades have been sent, and college acceptances have been received. Students might decide to skip classes or turn in subpar work. It is important to remember that colleges’ offers of admission are conditional and often state, "Your admission is contingent on your continued successful performance." This means colleges reserve the right to deny you admission should your senior year grades drop. Students are expected to maintain their academic performance throughout their senior year. Every year, colleges around the country rescind admission offers. 

Signs of senioritis can be difficulty concentrating on schoolwork, caring less about grades, poor attitude, and out-of-control behavior. Suggestions for “curing” senioritis:

• Accept the feelings you are having and know that they are normal.

• Set academic goals in order to have a strong finish.

• Get a job and make some money to use for college.

• Find time to try something new that will feel invigorating, such as volunteering or trying a new activity.

• Spend time with family and friends.

• Celebrate your accomplishments. 

Colleges admit you based on the information in your application, and if there are any changes, you need to let the college know. If you have dropped a class that was listed on the transcript you submitted to colleges, your application has changed. Colleges receive your final transcript during the summer, and you don’t want to find out in July that you no longer have a place in the freshman class. 

It is much better to be proactive and explain why you dropped the class or your grades have dropped. If the drop in academic performance is severe enough to jeopardize your acceptance, admission officers can advise you on how to salvage your admission.
There’s another reason to keep working hard in school. It makes the transition to college-level work easier. That’s one of the advantages of taking AP courses, which require a high level of commitment throughout the senior year to prepare for AP exams in May. The anti-slacker curriculum built into AP classes will help you adjust to college coursework more easily.

If you start procrastinating during senior year, it’s difficult to get back to good study habits when you arrive at college, where there will be lots of distractions and no parents reminding you to finish your history paper before you go out for pizza with your friends.  

While you do need to keep your grades up, making sure you have some fun will help you avoid burnout. Just don’t go overboard. Summer is less than a few months away, and you will have plenty of time to work and play before going to college. 

It’s not only lower grades that can torpedo an offer of admission. While spray painting the school gym might seem like a fun prank to you and your friends, a disciplinary issue can also mean the end of your college acceptance.

Students who keep senioritis under control will get their reward when they embark on the great adventure of college, in just a few months. 

What Makes a College Experience Successful?

When it comes to satisfaction with work and life after college, it’s not where you go to college, but what you experience in college that matters, finds a study from Gallup and Purdue University.

Researchers surveyed over 30,000 U.S. college graduates about their job engagement and overall satisfaction with life. The study found that the type of college attended – public or private, small or large, very selective or not very selective – had little effect on a graduate’s long-term work satisfaction or sense of well-being.  

Instead, researchers found strong correlations between the types of experiences students have in college and their odds of being engaged at work and thriving in other areas of life.

Specifically, college graduates were more likely to report feeling engaged in their current jobs if they’d had one or more of these key experiences in college:

• An internship or job that allowed them to apply what they were learning in the classroom.

• Actively participated in extracurricular activities on campus.

• Worked on academic projects that took a semester or more to complete.

• Had a professor who cared about the student as a person.

• Had a professor who made them excited about learning.

• Had a mentor who encouraged them to pursue their goals and dreams.

Students who reported that they’d had three or more of the above experiences more than doubled the odds of work satisfaction after college. 

Additionally, the study found that finishing college in four years or less doubles the odds of work satisfaction for working graduates.  

Commitment to work is an important indicator of whether or not a graduate feels they are thriving in other areas of well-being, such as feeling socially connected, healthy, and financially stable. The study found that a college graduate’s odds of thriving in other aspects of well-being are four times higher if they feel they are engaged at work. Not surprisingly, if graduates felt that their college had prepared them well for life outside of college, they were twice as likely to express satisfaction with other aspects of their well-being. As with work engagement, however, the type of college attended had little correlation with other aspects of well-being.  

Another key factor in the future well-being of college graduates: student debt.  The study found that the higher the amount of student debt, the worse graduates scored on well-being. Only 4% of graduates owing between $20,000 and $40,000 in student debt were thriving in all areas of well-being, compared with 14% of those who did not take out loans to pay for college. 

What implications does this study have for students and parents weighing college options?  “When it comes to finding the secret to success, it’s not where you go, it’s ‘how you do it,” note the study’s researchers. “These elements – more than any others – have a profound relationship to a person’s life and career.”

Resource: The full Gallup-Purdue University study, Great Jobs Great Lives, can be downloaded at this link: http://www.gallup.com/poll/168848/life-college-matters-life-college.aspx.

Majors, Minors and Concentrations

Students are typically asked to choose a major when going to college. Understanding choices beyond a major allows students to broaden their area of expertise and interests.

Majors: Your major is defined as the specific, primary area of study you will focus on during your college career. Typically, you don’t have to declare your major until the end of your second year to graduate on time. Anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of your classes will be within this area of study. Your major selection will appear on your official transcript. Coursework will move from introductory classes, through the intermediate level and on to advanced senior level in a cohesive arrangement. 

Minors:  A minor course of study is a set of classes, from 15 to 18 credit hours, designed to complement and enhance your choice of major. Some college majors require a minor, but typically, the choice of minor is an individual one for each student to consider. A minor can be your opportunity to explore a new subject of interest or add coursework that enriches your choice of major. Many colleges permit more than one minor and will identify that minor on the official transcript.

Concentrations: This is a coordinated group of coursework that represents a sub-specialization or emphasis within a specific major field of study. Concentrations are defined within your major and allow you to customize your experience. The selection of your concentration, sometimes called a ‘track,' will provide a potential employer with more information about your specific areas of interest and expertise.

Most high school students have no clear idea of what they want to study in college – they just know they want to get into a great college that will help them realize their unique goals and ambitions. 

When looking at colleges, it is important to review each listing of academic majors available. Is there more than one that draws your interest? According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 80% of college students change their major at least once. As a nod to the understanding that many young people are unclear about their choice of major, some colleges are creating programs designed to encourage exploration across the range of liberal arts disciplines. One more great possibility for some hard-working and talented students is the completion of two majors – this is known as a double major. Careful attention to graduation requirements is critical to successful completion. 

The opportunity to broaden your undergraduate career by selecting a minor is easily available to most students. Colleges often offer many minors, and several allow students to complete more than one. It is important to work closely with your advisor to be sure that you graduate on time. Two strong reasons for selecting a minor are personal fulfillment and professional enhancement. It also reveals to a prospective employer that you are knowledgeable about several fields, thus making you a more desirable candidate.

Students who resist being ‘put in a box’ will be excited to review concentration options within their choice of major. This gives students the chance to choose something that matches their interests, allowing them to explore and gain expertise in a sub-specialization of their major. Examples include Tourism and Hospitality Management with a concentration in Destination and Event Management, English with a concentration in Science, Medicine, and Literature, and Business Management with concentrations in Entrepreneurship and Accounting. 

Have you heard of Shakespeare’s metaphor about the world being your oyster? Well in this case, a college degree can be your own personal pearl - to be selected, enhanced, and completed through a variety of course offerings, all designed to create a customized degree program that will reward you with both personal growth and professional opportunities. 

Comparing College Financial Aid Offers

After months of anticipation, your child’s college admissions decisions have arrived with great news. Congratulations!  But, before making a college choice, many families still have one more very important thing to do: compare the financial aid offers from all of the colleges to which their student has been admitted. 

Your family should receive financial aid and scholarship offers from your child’s colleges by April 1. If you have not received a financial aid offer from a college to which your child has been admitted to by that time, call the financial aid office immediately. 

Once you have received all of your child’s financial aid letters, the following three-step process can help your family accurately compare the offers and make a smart decision about which college to attend.

Step 1: Determine your total cost of attendance for each college 

While colleges provide estimates covering tuition, room, board, fees, and additional costs like books and personal expenses, these may not align with your family's actual expenses. Certain majors or distant locations may incur extra costs (e.g., lab fees, and travel expenses). Research specific factors like airfare, major-related expenses, and local living costs. Don't rely solely on the college's estimate; create your own "estimated total cost of attendance" for accurate comparison when evaluating financial aid offers.

Step 2: Compare your family’s out-of-pocket costs for each school

Every college expects each family to contribute something to their student’s education.  To make sure you’re accurately comparing what each college will cost your family, compare each of the following items from each financial aid letter one by one:

Student Aid Index (SAI): The SAI is used as a guide by college financial aid offices to determine how much aid a student is eligible to receive. This figure is determined by parental and student income and assets declared on the FAFSA.

Student Loans: Most financial aid offers from colleges will include student loans.  You may choose to turn down loans or only accept part of the loan amount offered.

Borrowing a manageable amount to cover college expenses can be a good plan.  However, the keyword is “manageable.”  All loans are not created equal.  Federal student loans tend to have the lowest interest rates and, for some types of Federal Student Loans, interest does not begin to accrue until six months after you graduate from college. Some colleges include private loans in their financial aid offers. The interest rates on private student loans are significantly higher than Federal student loans. Use caution when considering taking expensive private student loans, even for a “dream” college.

You’ll want to carefully consider the types of loans each college has offered you and make sure you and your child understand the full cost of each loan, including loan origination fees and interest costs over the life of the loan. 

Parent Loans: To help parents pay their expected share of college expenses, the Federal government offers loans for parents called PLUS loans. PLUS loans, if used wisely, can help cover tuition, but keep in mind that interest and monthly payments begin as soon as you sign for a PLUS loan. Again, you can turn down any PLUS loans in your financial aid offers, but you will need to make up the difference out of pocket. Make sure to understand the terms and interest rate if you do borrow. 

Federal Work Study: Federal Work Study helps cover personal expenses and books by providing on-campus jobs. Students earn up to the awarded amount, contingent on finding a work-study job and working sufficient hours. Failure to meet the criteria affects the financial aid offer. Work Study funds are not available until the student begins working. Despite this, it offers valuable resume-building opportunities. Research indicates that students working 10-15 hours per week, the typical work-study commitment, often achieve better grades. Calculate the total of SAI, loans, and Work Study for each college, and subtract from the cost of attendance to determine the family's "out-of-pocket" cost.

Step 3: Consider the “free” money in each financial aid offer

After assessing out-of-pocket costs, focus on the "free" money offered by each college, such as grants and merit scholarships. Grants act as a discount on total attendance costs and don't require repayment. Be aware of GPA requirements for scholarships.

However, don't base decisions solely on grants and scholarships; prioritize total out-of-pocket costs from Step 2. The college with the most significant scholarship may not be the least expensive. Comparing offers accurately is crucial for an informed decision. Contact financial aid offices for clarification, and once you determine costs for four years, make a family decision for the most sensible choice.

What are you Doing this Summer?

Admissions officers want to see that students have spent some of their summer productively. As you explore options, remember to engage in something you are interested in or passionate about rather than choosing a program because you think it will look good on your college application.

With so many options, students need to keep in mind that there’s not one “best” summer activity. If you find something you are excited about doing, you’re likely to experience the kind of personal growth that makes for interesting college applications.

Some colleges allow high school students to attend summer sessions, where they can study subjects that are not offered in high school, explore possible college majors, and earn transferable college credits. 

Choosing a residential summer class housed at a university is a great way to experience life away from home. Living with a roommate and even doing one’s own laundry can help students feel more independent and self-confident. Many enrichment programs don’t offer college credit but do provide an opportunity for students to pursue their interests. Students who want to perfect their Spanish may want a homestay in Spain or Latin America. A budding engineer might enjoy a camp where they build robots. 

For others, community service is the way to create a meaningful summer experience. The Student Conservation Association sends crews of six to eight students with two adult leaders to national parks, forests, and urban green spaces to hike trails, build shelters, fight invasive species, and protect wildlife habitats.

Of course, you don’t have to travel across the country to be involved in community service. Many local organizations also offer the opportunity to stay involved throughout the school year.

Some students need or want to earn money over the summer. Having a job can help you learn how to work with people, prioritize tasks, and manage time. Earning a paycheck can also provide a wonderful boost to self-esteem.

Summer jobs can also offer opportunities to explore career interests. If a student wants to be a veterinarian, a job at an animal hospital is an excellent way to see what’s involved in being a vet. Working as a camp counselor is great for students interested in teaching or psychology.

Some students create their own summer programs. A prospective science major might contact professors at local colleges doing interesting research and see if they could use some help in the lab over the summer. This can be a way for a student to check out if microbiology is really where she’s headed, and if things go well, ask for a recommendation letter. Internship spots fill early; contact prospective mentors now.