Our three children are all grown, the youngest being a college sophomore. But the memories my wife and I have of their, and our, high school questions are still fresh. Three issues — course selection, extracurricular activities and college pressure — seemed to cause the most trouble, and now that I think about it, they were all, in a way, the same problem.
What makes high school different is that what happens there counts for college. If a child struggles with reading in the third grade, that is a cause for concern, but the solutions are obvious and there is time for elementary tutoring. If, in the middle school classroom, peer pressures result in a decline in the quality of schoolwork, no one is going to notice and new rules can be set.
But once high school starts, a parent or child cannot help but think how high school academics will affect the rest of their lives. That is because most American families think that getting into college, the right college, is the most important thing that a high school student will do. There is some truth to that, but if you break down the difficulties of high school one by one, the whole ordeal becomes easier to manage.
1. Getting What You Need
One issue likely to be overlooked is the courses that your child takes. Are they challenging enough? Often, they’re not.
I have learned over the years as an education reporter, and as a parent, that most schools will actively try to keep your student out of the Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) classes, which introduce students to college level work and the chance to earn early college credit, if they think your child does not have a high enough grade point average.
Kerry Constabile, a student at Mamaroneck High School in suburban New York, was told by the chairman of the social studies department that she would not be permitted to take AP American History, a course she had her heart set on. Her freshman and sophomore grades were not good enough, he said. Constabile solved the problem in an unusual way: she prepared on her own for the AP American History test, given each May to anyone who can pay the $82 fee. She borrowed homework assignments from friends who were allowed in the AP course, and received a passing grade on the exam.
It would have been better if she and her parents had been able to persuade the school that its placement policies were wrong. Two major studies show that even students who struggle in an AP course and FAIL the exam are more likely to graduate from college than those who are kept out of the course and the exam altogether. So it is important to impress on the school how vital it is that your child have this chance.
And your gentle pushing may have to start even before your child gets to high school. When my daughter was in seventh grade, I discovered that she had been put in a math track that would not prepare her for AP calculus in her senior year. She was a good math student, but her advisor thought she was more interested in literature, and did not want to work that hard in math. We argued otherwise,her courses were changed, and today she is thinking of making math her college major.
2. When Less Is More
Choice of extra-curricular activities is a similarly overlooked danger spot. The student’s instinct is often to try to do many things, in hopes that a long resume of activities will impress colleges. Actually, college’s impression of your child and your child’s own enjoyment of his or her life outside of class.
Our eldest child, for instance, was a very enthusiastic athlete but did not join any high school teams until the last semester of his senior year, far too late to put on his college applications. Instead, he spent every spring doing what he had done since he was 13 years old — coaching a Little League baseball team. That activity, and his work on the student newspaper, took up most of his extra time. Some parents and students might think that would not be enough to catch the college’s eyes. They would be wrong. He got into his first choice school precisely because he had focused on just two activities. His choices showed that he was following his deepest interests, showing the passion that selective colleges look for. The Little League coaching was even the subject of his successful application essay.
What impresses colleges is not the number of activities on a student’s list, but their depth, and it does not hurt if the activities are sometimes outside the mainstream. Two students at South Pasadena High School in California told me about an underground newspaper they had created to show their dislike of the regular student paper. I asked them why they had not mentioned this on their college applications. They said they thought it was too undignified, too rebellious, and might make them look bad. The opposite was true, the colleges told me.
3. Pressure Point
So what do we do to avoid being burned out by the push for college? It is fine to worry about college. That provides a motive for diligent study in high school, which is what teenagers should be doing at that age.
But parents will learn, as we did, that they don’t need to worry so much about WHICH college their child attends. There are so many bright students and young professors being rejected by the Ivy League schools that hundreds of colleges now boast student bodies and faculties just as good as the famous ones. When you start high school, ask the right questions, pay attention, and it will all work out for the best.
Jay Mathews, the parent of three children, writes the education column for the Washington Post.