<p>Hi, so I know I am probably posting this in the wrong place, and it may sound ridiculous but let me explain. I'm a junior right now in high school. Through out the past year or two I've had a lot of mental health issues, and ended up in various hospitals. I suffer with an eating disorder, depression, and anxiety. As of now i'm in a better place. But lately I've been feeling that I am not taking the correct or hard enough classes junior year. I was in AP chem and APUSH in the beginning of the year, and my counselor and psychiatrist basically made me switch out of them to reduce stress, so I wouldn't end up in another hospital. But i'm just so anxious that the classes I'm taking aren't hard enough, and it's the most crucial year, so therefore it will affect me getting into a good college. I have a 3.8 GPA, and sadly they switched my schedule around to look like this: I'm taking
- pre-calc/analysis
- english honors
- u.s. history
- AP environmental science
- AP French
- Choir
- Adv. vocals</p>
<p>I'm literally having break downs these days that i'm not working to my potential and colleges will think i just "slacked" off. I'm thinking about applying to small, rural, liberal arts colleges like Colorado College, Middlebury, the Claremonts, Whitman, Carleton, Kenyon, Colby, Oberlin, William & Mary, Reed, Bates, etc.
Please just tell me if these colleges will or will not understand that I wasn't given the chance to taken the classes i wanted (AP Chem, AP Bio, APush), or will they just blow off my entire app, once they see that my classes weren't too hard. Next year, I plan to compensate by taking AP Bio, AP Psych, AP Calc AB, AP English, and AP Stat. Do you think if my plan goes accordingly, and I keep up with my straight A's, that I have a chance at somewhere like Middlebury or Colorado College? I have really great extracurriculars (choir, lacrosse, voluntering) , and i've been through a lot this past year. (when someone has anxiety issues, all they do is look for reassurance so anything would sincerely help me).</p>
<p>Your guidance counselor will have the opportunity to explain that health issues impacted your courseload, and admissions officers will surely take that into account–and your courses, by the way, are perfectly fine for a junior. But in any event you can’t change your schedule now, so there’s nothing to be gained in fretting over it. (What if the answer to your title question was “no, you aren’t taking the right classes”? What could you do about it? Nothing, so why even ask?) Just do your best in your classes and you’ll be fine. However, I am concerned that your anxiety over an issue you can’t do anything about–“literally having breakdowns”-- suggests that you don’t have your illness sufficiently under control to take on a senior year with heavily demanding classes and the pressures of college applications. Please take care of yourself first–consider a less demanding courseload and the possibility that you may be best off taking a gap year or entering college a semester late. Letting up on the pressure could be critical to your emotional health and your ability to achieve your long-term goals. Life isn’t a race.</p>
<p>Just because you didn’t take every single AP class available to you doesn’t mean you slacked off and those colleges aren’t going to think that. You course load sounds plenty rigorous as it is and even if you didn’t take ALL those APs next year you would still be a competitive candidate for those schools (assuming you keep your gpa and test scores up:)) And when your consoler explains your medical issues the colleges will be even more impressed because there are plenty of people out there that take WAY easier classes and have no medical issues at all! Seriously don’t even worry about it your doing awesome as it is:)</p>
<p>I agree with MommaJ 100%. Be forewarned that colleges are much more likely to turn you down because they are concerned about your ability to function effectively under pressure (‘literally having breakdowns’) than they are because you didn’t take the max number of AP classes available. You handle pressure by ratcheting it down - taking less intense courses, cutting back on the ECs, etc… If you can’t do that without intense anxiety, than I think colleges would be justified in their concerns.</p>