Now let’s complicate this problem by having high school students take college level courses, often times with college credits at
stake. Let’s have them take several of these classes at once. Let’s encourage them to become well rounded human beings by
taking part in school activities, clubs, sports, band, community service, and volunteer work. Let them be involved in their
church. Let them maintain meaningful and fulfilling relationships among their friends while attending all family functions that
may be required. They must learn to drive, maybe go to the prom, take the SATs, apply for college, and quite possibly fall in
love with another poor human being who has a similar demanding schedule.
Let’s consider the time mathematics for a moment. You have eight classes, of which seven are demanding academically. For
these classes, teachers are trained to give an average of 45 to 90 minutes of homework per session. We will use the number 60
minutes for convenience sake (although you know that studying for test or completing papers and projects may exceed that)
for an average in a honors class and 75 minutes for an AP class (these numbers are very rough estimates at best). Let’s ask our
students to get the required 8 hours of sleep per night. Let’s get them to the bus at 6:45am and return them from school at
3:15pm. Let’s eat breakfast and dinner (lunch is served at school and doesn’t take additional time). Let’s have them shower
(some students may have additional grooming: hair, nails, makeup) and take care of their teeth.
So, for a student taking just one AP science class with six honors or college prep classes, we are consuming 3.5 hours per day on
homework, 8.5 hours on class work and travel, 8 hours for sleep, and 3 hours for grooming, eating and other personal needs.
That leaves an hour each weekday to socialize and be with your family. The weekends can be used to complete projects, study
for tests, meet family obligations, learn to drive, etcetera. It is a tough schedule, but achievable.
For each additional AP class, let’s add additional homework time each week day as well as additional projects, papers, and
exams that, perhaps, can be done on the weekends. For each club deduct about 30 minutes per week (unless you are doing
some sort of academic competition which would require more). For a sport, deduct 2.5 hours per day for practices for the
entire season. Add additional travel time and time for competitions – some of which may involve weekends. If you are in the
marching band, your competitions consume most of your weekend. I will not even speculate the amount of time you would
need to dedicate to SAT review, club activities, student activities, prom, learning to drive, volunteer work, dating, family trips
and celebrations, and religious observations.
In other words, to be the ideal student, you would need a day much longer than 24 hours. Many students, however, sign up for
this sort of schedule. They must suspect that they cannot possibly do all that is required of them, yet they sign up anyway.
Why?
I think there are several reasons. First, students (and their parents) over-estimate student brilliance. They simply believe that
they will be among the few who will be so intuitive and insightful that they will not need much time to study and complete
homework. Therefore, the optimal schedule described above doesn’t apply. Second, there are outside pressures which demand
that the student take as many AP level classes as possible.
As far as outside pressures are concern, I do not have much expertise to offer an evaluation. There are some very positive
aspects of cultures that demand their children be studious. In am in favor of this sort of parenting and will not be critical. The
difficulty involves deciding if the student is mature enough to handle the situation. In other words, are parents putting their
children in a position to rise to the challenge, or are they inadvertently setting them up for failure?
Complicating this is the college admissions process. Times have changed since I was in school. I had good grades (not straight
A’s), excellent SAT scores (top 1% but not perfect), I only took two AP tests, both of which I took on my own – we did not have
AP classes at my school (AP Calc BC and AP Chem, both of which I only scored a 4), and I took Calculus II from Penn State as an
independent study course during my senior year (they ran out of math for me and I didn’t have a Dr. Cakir at my school). I was
involved in sports year-round as well as several clubs. I applied to five engineering schools (Columbia, Cornell, North Carolina,
Penn State, and Rutgers) and was accepted to all of them. Today that would not seem like an impressive resume, similar
students would not get into Cornell and Columbia. What has changed is the nature of evaluating students.
I spoke to both the Admissions Director and the Marketing Director at Christopher Newport University in Newport News,
Virginia for clarification concerning the process. CNU is a small university that is currently ranked fourth among schools in
Virginia by Forbes magazine (behind the University of Virginia, William and Mary, and Virginia Tech, but ahead of James