<p>So we've all heard that colleges (particularly Ivy League or similarly ranked schools) like students to have 4 years of English, history, math, and science. I'm hoping someone on this board knows how flexible that is--what if a student (cough cough) opts out of a full 4 years of math if their prospective major has nothing to do with math? For others who might also be wondering, what about English? Science? History?</p>
<p>Unless you win the Nobel prize in whichever respective field you want to skip four years of, I imagine you'll want to at least cover your bases by doing three years.</p>
<p>I majored in Engineering, but I still had to take a freshman English course (as well as a bunch of other humanities classes I use even less than an English major uses Chemistry).</p>
<p>high school is there to connect your neurons and help you think in all sort of different ways that will eventually help you in your life whether or not you realize it. every subject has its advantage and you should take the full opportunity to take advantage of them. However, if youre not interested in a subject u can take like 3 years of it and then watever. For example, I am going to be taking 6 years of sciences by senior year and only 3 years of history.</p>
<p>Even though there are some subjects that I know probably won't be related to my focus in college, I'm pretty sure that I'll take all 4 core subjects all 4 years, and I also want to do Spanish through AP just to finish what I started. I'm definitely putting a science focus on things, and like paki, I'm probably going to end up taking 6 years of sciences too.</p>
<p>I'm in the opposite situation of paki and Mike, I have 6 years of English credit and 5 years of foreign language credit but only 3 years of science. Is that going to be OK, considering I've already planned an English major with a foreign language minor?</p>
<p>Generally speaking, as long as you have three of each (maybe four of English), you should be fine.</p>
<p>You probably need three years to be set. Some colleges strongly recommend four of certain classes... it depends.</p>
<p>I can't believe that your school would let you forget about math... probably not a good idea at all to not take any. It would probably be pretty bad, actually.</p>
<p>For some schools, its very flexible, for others its not. But I'd recommend taking four years of English and Math unless you really have nothing to take... Science and history might be understandable. </p>
<p>For our school. You need four years of English to graduate. :)</p>
<p>yeah stick to your focus but do not forget that being an English major or whatever duznt mean being an expert only in that.....that will make you too narrow minded and you need to be well-rounded</p>
<p>I'm most into political science and history and so I found a way to sort of connect that into all the classes I take (granted, I go to a tiny school where the average class size is 13 and we just added a course about Tibetan Architecture). </p>
<p>I'm really good at math, history and classics but not so into science, and so I'm taking Economics and the Environment as a science course (I took AP physics over the summer) for one term and Social Psychology (which my main project is about the psychology of voters, etc.) for the two others.</p>
<p>
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For our school. You need four years of English to graduate.
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</p>
<p>Is it the case for all schools?</p>
<p>It was the case for my school. They also required four years of math, social studies, and science.</p>
<p>just take it. Unless you are failing and it's making you want to kill yourself, just take it. Most colleges make you take a class or two in each subject</p>
<p>I hope this is flexible because on my current track I'll need to take Differential Equations in senior year. Maybe I'll just take Stats.</p>
<p>It kind of depends on what your high school offers. My school won't even have four social studies courses until next year, so it's not a necessity.</p>
<p>Most high schools require four years of English, and at least 3 of math, science, and social studies.</p>
<p>I agree with RacinReaver and proletariat2. It's pretty important, but not that important. There's a <em>pretty good</em> college near me that supposedly requires 4 years of history, but pretty much everyone from our HS (which only gives 3 years of non-elective history) applies there, and pretty much everyone gets in anyway. But these days 4 years of English especially is pretty darn important. And yes, colleges understand that it depends what the HS offers, and they don't want to penalize you for something your HS doesn't offer.</p>
<p>Rise of the dead... shoot this thread back down.</p>
<p>Like you said, it really depends on where you're applying. The Ivies really do strongly prefer you to have four years of the standard core subjects, including, as far as I know, language. But if you're applying to less competitive schools, there's a lot more wiggle room.</p>