Hi,
My 8th grader is in a very small, school district that prides itself on being academically strong. My kid has always been good in math and science and aspires to going to a good engineering school for college. Unfortunately, he was shut out of honors biology for 9th grade. Our district requires this course as the prerequistie to honors chemistry in 10th, and from there, the AP science sequence. I have been told that once a kid is off the honors track in science in our district, it is close to impossible to get back on. The cutoff is a 90 average for the first two quarters of the year only, and my son ended up with an 88, mainly due to misplaced labs in the second quarter. He always gets in the high 90's on the tests but is disorganized and has problems with losing lab sheets. We are filing an appeal, but so far the school will not budge on this. My son did qualify for honors geometry (he is in honors algebra right now, with an A) so happily he is still on that track.
Has anyone ever encountered such a strict district? Does anyone have tips for getting my kid back onto the AP science track? I have heard of students taking online courses but have no idea where we would find something that would prove to the district that he can handle the AP science track. Or should he look at a college course? If he self studied for the SAT II Biology test, which the honors biology students all take at the end of the year, would he have any hope of doing well enough on it?
My son is aspiring to engineering schools such as SUNY Stony Brook, Renesselaer Polytech, or NJIT. He is also working hard on getting better organized so this never happens again. He was a straight A student in 6th and 7th grade. Is there any hope of getting into these engineering programs without any AP science courses?
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