9th Grade course selection question

I think the scheduling argument is a good one. Both of my older kids were ahead one year in their foreign language, and it created scheduling problems that forced them to drop band when they were juniors. In our school, not doing band as a freshman would preclude you from doing it as a sophomore at the same level as everyone else. I would advise she stay in sequence as much as possible, since it will likely avoid scheduling problems later. If there is a way to advance using summer classes, that makes more sense, so her science slot stays her science slot and her social studies slot stays a social studies slot.

There are five cores – English, math, social studies, science, and foreign language. And although colleges want to see a certain number of years in each subject, taking one course in each field in each year is not necessarily required.

If a student is accelerated in a subject, it’s not essential to continue taking it all the way through senior year. One of my kids took AP BC Calculus in 11th grade and didn’t want to take AP Statistics (the usual course for such people) in 12th because she thought it would be a waste of time. (She was planning a college major that would require a more sophisticated statistics course.) So she didn’t take math in 12th grade; she took an extra AP social studies course instead. This caused no problems.

Also, there are sometimes practical reasons why it’s better to take two courses in one core field in one year and then double up on another field in a later year. In some school systems, you pretty much have to take two sciences in one year in order to be able to take AP sciences later. This usually means taking two social studies courses in another year (unless you’re sufficiently advanced in foreign language to drop it early). Colleges seem to understand this.