|
July 19, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR LESLIE WAITE
IN CA
Hi Alexis;
First- don't panic! This is not the end of your hopes for
a good
college! I can guarantee that at least SOME kids from your
new school
have gone on to excellent colleges, no matter how poor it
is
academically.
Universities WILL take into account that you changed schools
mid-stream, and understand how hard this is, so take a deep
breath-
it's Okay...
Now, as for the things you list:
The important thing is not to shut doors on yourself that
aren't really shut.
If your new school does not have the AP programs that were
available
in your old school, it can't be held against you that you
didn't take
what was not offered. If it DOES have some AP courses, but
you needed
to have "qualified" for them in your freshman and
sophomore years, I
would talk to the principal of the school about what you can
do to
qualify. It is entirely possible that a letter or phone call
from
your old principal or teachers of the appropriate courses
letting the
principal know that you are a good candidate for AP courses
may very
well get you into them.
I am uncertain what IB is, so I can't speak to this specifically,
but
this may also be something that if you get folks at your old
school
to verify that you are up to it, you may be able to play "catch
up"
and join in on at the new school.
If there are classes you wanted to take at your old school,
that are
not available at your new school, consider taking equivalent
courses
at a local community college. Some High Schools will give
you special
permission to go off campus to attend such classes.
If your new school truly is less demanding academically, then
I would
study hard and make sure that my grades were as good or better
than
they were at my old school. This is something tangible that
Universities can look at to verify that you have the goods.
Also- let
new teachers know that you are interested in college, and
ask for
additional assignments that can help you on the SAT or ACT.
They may
have ideas of things you can do that will help you do well
on the
standardized tests that will give Universities an idea of
where you
are academically regardless of which High School you attended.
Don't forget also that sometimes when a school is considered
less
demanding academically, it is not necessarily the classes
that are
easier; it is the lower percentage of students who do well
in them.
That is to say that you can still find excellent teachers
and courses
in schools that are supposedly less academically challenging.
It can
be a matter of how hard you work.
As for leadership positions, I have a few thoughts:
First, as for something like student council or other spots
that
require people knowing you:
True, you won't be able to run this year, but you may next
year.
Second: there are a lot of leadership positions that are not
elected.
Consider volunteering for the drama club building scenery
or joining
any of the other clubs that may be at your new school. Join
an
athletic team. Get involved in your community doing volunteer
work.
Leadership doesn't just mean being THE leader; it can also
mean being
A leader by contributing to your community, be it school,
church, or
town.
And finally, on a personal note:
My Mom changed schools her SENIOR year- talk about a rotten
situation! BUT even though she hadn't gone to school with
her
classmates for the first three years, she still was able to
make some
good friends and enjoy her senior year. Just be yourself and
get
involved in activities that you enjoy, and friendships will
follow.
Good luck!
********************
A: FROM MENTOR DENISE HARBERT
IN IL
Hi Alexis!!! I have been in the GEM-SET program for 2.5 years,
during which
time I have seen the name "Alexis K in VA" a LOT!!!
Being a statistician, I
decided to go to the GEM-SET website's Daily Digest Archive
at www.gem-set.org
and analyze some data on you. Your name started appearing
on the Digest in
February 2002 and has been there ever since. You've posted
over 40 Q&As to the
Digest and you've answered almost every Quiz-of-the-Week question.
Not only
that, but your Digest questions are very advanced and cover
vastly different
topics: the countries you've lived in (at least 3), the languages
you speak
(3), the books you read, gender obstacles in SET, the physics
of air movement
around a moving car, recycling, systems engineering, dust
and allergies,
concerns about starting high school, floods, types of colleges,
how pfiesteria
cells relate to disease, naturalists, geophysicists, neuro
sciences, writing
and drawing, group work, wildlife conservation, robotics,
multicolor glittery
enamel paint, the Mars orbit, great inventions, atomic clocks,
sinkholes, etc.
(That's where I gave up reading, but that's not the end of
your questions!)
Given all that, I firmly believe the following:
***** YOU WILL DO WELL NO MATTER WHERE YOU END UP!!! *****
I do know how you feel, however, and I know that you are going
to face some
challenges. I went to 3 different high schools in 3 states.
My first high
school (where I was for 2 years) was a nationally recognized
college bound
magnet school with the IB program. (For GEM-SET members who
aren't familiar
with it, IB is International Baccalaureate. IB is like AP,
but the tests are
taken by students all over the world. AP is Advanced Placement
and is only in
the U.S.A.) At that time, the IB program had 2 years of college
courses in
each subject taken in Junior and Senior year, while AP was
only one year of
college courses taken in Senior (or sometimes Junior) year.
When I moved between Sophomore and Junior year, I went from
IB to AP and
discovered that I had already taken most of my new school's
Junior courses as
a Sophomore. I was one year ahead of my new school in everything
except two
subjects. Unfortunately, the school administrators treated
me with a lot of
hostility for being so far ahead and only allowed me to register
for the
classes open to Juniors that I had not already taken. For
the rest of the
day, they put me in empty period "study halls" that
didn't carry any credits.
My mother went up to the school and discussed the situation
with them, but
they only made a few compromises on the subjects that I clearly
had all the
prerequisites for. In the end, my first semester ended up
consisting of 4
academic classes, gym, and 3 study halls. My second semester
was 3 academic
classes and 5 study halls. Effectively, my second school flunked
me for a
year so their students could catch up to me. Making it worse,
the students
were very "clique" oriented. The football players
and cheerleaders were hugely
popular and everyone else was harassed and ridiculed. I only
had one friend
that year - a Senior - so I knew I would have no friends the
following year
when he went off to college.
I chose to move from my mom's house to my dad's between my
Junior and Senior
years so I could change high schools and qualify for in-state
college tuition
in my dad's state, which was where I wanted to go to college.
My third high
school was not as good as my first, but it was a LOT better
than my second.
The administrators were more accommodating and the students
were nicer to me
so I had more friends. Having been "flunked" my
Junior year, I was fairly
even with my third school's Seniors. I took a full set of
courses, but my
second school had done such a good job of setting me behind
that I didn't
qualify for the AP exams that I probably would have taken
otherwise. If I had
stayed at my first school, I would have started college as
a Junior instead of
a Freshman. As it was, I got less than one college semester
worth of AP
credits. (I got 3 college credits for AP English and 10 college
credits for AP
Calculus BC.) In spite of all the disruption in high school,
I graduated with
3 Bs and the rest As with high SAT/ACT test scores. Admittedly,
I felt cheated
out of everything I could have achieved if I had stayed in
my first school all
four years, but I wasn't nearly as "messed up" as
I thought I was at the time.
Even though I had a "black hole" of a Junior year
and didn't have many AP
courses overall, I still got in to the Honors programs of
all of the
universities I applied to (3 "Big Ten" universities).
So, having been through all that, I have a good perspective
on what your fears
are. (What could be worse than being "flunked" for
being too smart?) The good
news is that, regardless of how good or bad your new school
is, you WILL have
the ability to get into a good college! Don't worry that no
one at your new
school knows you. It won't take long for them to figure out
who you are. I
have never met you, but I can tell what caliber of student
you are just by
reading a few of your GEM-SET questions. If you ask a few
questions like that
during or after class, any decent teacher will figure out
who you are very
quickly. If you are as open and friendly with students as
your GEM-SET
questions appear to be, then you should make friends too.
Try getting a list of the extra-curricular activities the
school offers and go
to the first meeting for a bunch of them. (Ask for the list
early, because
some activities start a few weeks before school starts, especially
sports.)
Drop out of the activities that don't feel right and keep
the ones that do. I
changed activities between each of my schools because the
instructor/coach
style and the type of kids who signed up were different at
each school. For
example, I loved the low-pressure varsity diving coach and
buddy-system team
at my first school, but the divers at my second school were
too focused on
individual wins to have any sense of teamwork and the coach
was such a
screaming maniac that I quit before my first meet. On the
other hand, the
French club at my second school was pretty cool because the
teacher who lead
it was really good. French club didn't exist at my first school.
If you have trouble fitting in with the students at your new
school, then find
a few students who "stick out" as being outside
the "cliques" and try to
befriend them. My only friend my Junior year was one of the
maybe 3 African
American students in an otherwise white school. I was experiencing
every bit
as much "culture shock" as he was, so we had a lot
in common. (My first
school was very racially and economically diverse and the
musicians were just
as popular as the football players, which was a far cry from
my second
school.) Knowing I wasn't alone in feeling out of place helped
a lot.
In terms of academics, take whatever challenging courses you
can and do well
in them. If your second school really is easier than your
first, then you
should be able to get all As or mostly all As. Increasing
your grade point
can't hurt you for college. Colleges will want official transcripts
from every
high school you attended, so they will know that you have
changed schools and
they will know that's hard for any student. Incidentally,
DO NOT allow your
last school to submit the transcript from your first school.
By the time my
third school got what the second school had on file about
my first school, my
records were very distorted. I contacted each of my 3 schools
directly and
asked them to submit ONLY the years that I attended their
schools.
You can also identify teachers that stand out as being better
at teaching or
more caring than the others. Talk to them about how you need
more challenge
and you're worried about getting into a good college, then
ask if you can do
an outside project with them, even if they're teaching a subject
you don't
like much. Good teachers can inspire you to be more interested
in any subject.
(My French teacher at my second school was wonderful and did
extra things to
help me outside the classroom.) Or, you could cut your losses
on extra high
school work and invest all your energy in college tasks instead
- visiting
schools, studying for standardized tests, filling out college
applications,
looking for and applying for scholarships, doing summer internships
this year
and next, etc. This takes a huge amount of time, so it might
be a blessing to
have easier courses while you're trying to do it all! If,
on the outside
chance, your new school has IB instead of AP, you could plan
to take the first
year of IB courses in your Senior year when the other students
are Juniors,
then study for and take the AP exam in those subjects instead.
One year of IB
courses is not enough to pass the IB exam but it could be
enough to pass the
AP exam! Just make sure you understand the differences between
what material
you are expected to know for the IB and AP exams.
Stay strong through the politics you will face with the administrators
at your
new school and ask a parent to go there to help you argue
any unfair
situations you encounter. I always had bizarre problems with
my grade point
average. My first school gave 4 points for an A regardless
of whether it was
gym or the second year of an IB course. My second school gave
4 for an A in a
regular class, 4.5 for an honors class A, and 5 for an AP
class A. My third
school gave 4 for an A in a regular class and 5 for an A in
an honors or AP
class. Thus, the second and third schools were always messing
up my grade
point from the earlier schools whose grading systems were
lower. My second
school tried to bring me in as the straight 3.9 that I had
at the first
school, even though I'd had honors classes in almost everything
and the first
school didn't award anything over a 4. The third school argued
that they
couldn't give me honors credit for one of my classes because
their school
didn't offer that class in honors. I pointed out that students
at their school
did have the opportunity to take an honors class in something
that I had to
take a regular class in because my prior school didn't offer
that class as
honors, but that didn't matter to them. None of the schools
felt it was fair
to "their" students to give me a grade point that
put me in contention for the
top spot in their school. I thought what I accomplished in
spite of all my
personal upheaval should have been appreciated more than students
who had 4
years of stability. It was unfair, but I survived it!
Your next 2 years might be overly easy or overly hard, but
always keep your
eye on college. Most colleges do take the stress of changing
high schools into
account when making their admissions decisions, especially
if you work it into
one of your application essays, but most high schools will
not make special
allowances for you. Be prepared for some unfair treatment
in your new high
school, but don't let it bother you too much because colleges
will treat your
experiences much more favorably! Good luck, stay in GEM-SET,
and write us for
support if you encounter problems at your new school that
you need advice on!
|
