College tracks

Grade 9 — start one project

You are on one track. The project lasts four years. This year you start it and keep a log. The log is the start of the file you will send. Do not open a second project.

Every week, do four things inside that project:

1. Compute a quantity with units, state the uncertainty, and say what decision it supports.
2. Write one claim, two reasons, and one real objection. About one page.
3. Read one short original — a figure and its caption, a statute section, a schematic, or a specimen — and write what it says, separate from a summary.
4. Add to the log.

Finish these rungs on the First Principles ladder. Each one has a gate. The rung is done only when the gate is done.

1. Instructions a machine could follow
2. Loops and branches
3. Variables and state
4. Function as a black box
5. Balancing equations
6. The coordinate plane
7. Python: syntax and types
8. Python: files and automation

School courses beside the project: algebra and geometry, and a first lab science, usually biology.

Pre-med

Choose one mechanism from biology. Write the causal chain. For each link, write the observation that supports it, and mark which observations you have only from a summary. Any concentration or dosage arithmetic stays balanced on both sides.

Done when a stranger can point to the link whose evidence is weakest, and you can say what measurement would strengthen it.

This week. Explain why breathing gets faster during a run. Write the chain: muscles use more oxygen, carbon dioxide in the blood rises, sensors detect that rise, breathing rate increases. For each link, write the observation that supports it. Mark any link you only have from a summary. Name the measurement that would test the weakest link, such as a change in breathing when carbon dioxide changes and exercise does not.

Log for this week. Date. Four links in the chain. Observation for each link. Which links are summary-only. Weakest link. Measurement that would test it.

Grade 11 — let someone break it

Same project. Someone outside your household tries to break the result. Their paragraph stays in the log. That person is the one who can write the letter.

Before you register for grade 12, write three lines from the course list your desired college publishes: courses you will have finished, courses still missing, and the term you will take each missing one. Add a missing course around the project. Do not drop this track’s mathematics, lab line, or memo to make room for an elective.

Every week, inside that project:

1. Use a rate, an accumulation, or a comparison, with units and the uncertainty, on the project's claim.

2. Write a timed page a stranger could grade. Answer the other side in the text.

3. Cite one paper, case, dataset, or specification. A textbook restatement does not carry the claim.

4. Put the outside reader's paragraph in the log before you answer it.

5. Limits

6. The derivative

7. Rules of differentiation

8. The chain rule

9. Integration and the fundamental theorem

10. Series and convergence

School courses beside the project: precalculus finished and calculus started, and physics.

Pre-med

Write a one-page explanation of the mechanism with no notes, in one sitting. Include one physical quantity: pressure, flow, diffusion, an electrical signal, or a rate.

Done when a stranger, in twenty minutes, marks the sentence where the mechanism skips a step, and you can repair that sentence from evidence.

This week. One sitting, one page, no notes. Explain the breathing chain and include one quantity: breaths per minute at rest and during the run, or the change you predict if carbon dioxide rises at rest. A stranger marks the sentence that skips a step. Repair that sentence from an observation, not from a smoother phrase.

Log for this week. Date. Quantity included. Sentence the stranger marked. Observation used to repair it. Passage practice done this week (yes/no).

Once a week, read a passage that is not this project. Answer only from the passage, timed. The medical school admission test grades that skill apart from the science. The passage does not replace the mechanism page.

Grade 12 — an artifact a stranger can grade

Same project. The artifact is what a stranger can grade. One reviewer has watched the work long enough to describe it.

Every week, until that artifact is the one you send:

1. Use the mathematics your first college course will assume, on this project, with units.
2. Keep the claim in a piece a reviewer can check against the sources.
3. Let a primary source carry the claim. A summary does not.
4. Write in the log what would change the conclusion.

Calculus is already finished. Finish these rungs:

38. Continuous distributions and PDFs
39. Expectation, variance, covariance
40. Bayes' theorem

School courses beside the project: calculus underway or complete, and statistics as a second mathematics course. By the end of this year the lab sequence is biology, chemistry, and physics.

Pre-med

Write the mechanism memo a stranger can grade: claim, evidence, the best objection, and the result that would overturn it. Use a health or biology dataset for one uncertainty, with a mean and a variance.

Done when the overturn condition is a real measurement, and a stranger can find it in one reading.

This week. End the memo with one sentence a stranger can find without hunting: “I would abandon this mechanism if ___,” and fill the blank with a measurement, such as breathing rate staying the same when carbon dioxide rises at rest. The sentence is a measurement, not a softer wording of the claim.

Log for this week. Date. Abandon-if sentence with a real measurement. Passage practice done this week (yes/no).

Keep the weekly passage from grade 11: a text that is not this project, answered only from the passage, timed. It still does not replace the mechanism memo.

What you send

The application is this project. By the time you apply, the file has these parts:

1. The grade 12 artifact for your track.
2. The log, showing the same question across four years and what changed.
3. A letter from the person outside your household who tried to break the work.
4. The course record this lesson names: calculus and the lab sequence where your track requires them. Also take the courses your desired college publishes as required. If one of those crowds out the project, add it around the project. Do not drop the lab line or the mathematics line to make room for an elective.
5. The undergraduate admission test that college requires, on the calendar that college publishes. If your track has a mathematics line, take the test after that mathematics is underway. This is not the medical-school, law-school, or doctoral test, and it is not a substitute for the project.
6. An essay that states the claim, the best objection, and what the project changed. It is not a list of activities.

What you enroll in

The first year of college keeps the next gate open. Add a course only when it serves that gate.

Once a week, in the hardest course you are in, take one problem the exam could ask. Close the notes. Write the diagram, the equation, or the rule before you look up the solution. Record whether you finished it and where the solution disagreed. That page is the log. A course you only follow in lecture is not done.

Pre-med. General chemistry with lab and biology with lab in the first year. Organic chemistry and physics follow, then biochemistry. Statistics is in the plan before the medical school admission test. Once a week, a passage that is not the science course, answered only from the text, timed. Clinical hours stay short enough that the science sequence is the work.

Through the degree, to the gate

The first year is the start. The gate opens only if the later courses are the same kind of work.

Pre-med. The science sequence finishes before the medical school admission test: general chemistry, organic chemistry, biology, physics, biochemistry, and statistics, each with the lab the school requires. One course in psychology or sociology covers the behavior section of that test. It does not replace chemistry. The mechanism memo is how you practice the timed explanation. Medical school is the gate. The first year there is a heavier version of that memo, not a new kind of work.