I am a high school senior. I am already taking five APs this year. I want to join the choir program as a piano accompanist, but the only class period available is that of AP Statistics at my school. I have the option to take Introduction to Statistics at my local community college to smooth out the schedule conflict but I’ve heard that colleges don’t like it when you take already available advanced classes at your school at a community college. I want to major in Finance at university, so math classes are really important, but so is following out of school passions. Any advice?
Is the college course calculus-based (and have you had calculus)? If so, it may be more advanced than high school AP statistics.
If the college course is not calculus-based, it is probably similar in content to high school AP statistics.
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On other words, and in either case, the cc option is as good as, if not better than, AP Statistics.
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Neither of them are calculus based classes to my knowledge (although I have already taken AP Calculus AB at my school)
My main concern is that of colleges seeing that I had to option to take it at school and didn’t, and its not like I can tell them about the schedule conflict.
Your GC can. But really it’s not worthy of an explanation. Every single AO knows that schedule conflicts happen
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Alright, thank you!
But I need a forth year of math, which statistics was supposed to be.
My homeschooled kid opted to take statistics “dual enrollment” at our local community college. The teacher was fantastic and the course (which was online, by the way) was comprehensive and rigorous. I doubt she could have gotten a better basic intro to statistics class at a four year college.
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I don’t disagree that CC classes are generally less rigorous than those at say, an ivy, but OP didn’t specify how rigorous their school is. I think you will find that most high school AP classes are much closer to CC than ivy. However, there are tons of motivated students at community college–lots were good students in high school, but want to save money or transferred from a bad situation at a four-year college, many are more mature students who are interested in furthering their education, which doesn’t mean they’ll work less hard.
I would talk to GC and encourage OP to do choir and CC statistics (try to find calc-based if possible). Also, look into whether you can get a scholarship to enroll in the class if your school doesn’t already offer a dual-enrollment partnership. Most importantly, since you already have through calc, do what will make you happiest.
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My school is a California distinguished high school, and has a good AP program as a public school but I’ve taken community college classes before and thought that they were good, if easier than the normal AP class (then again, this was during COVID and online, so maybe that made a difference). And those classes were history classes as opposed to Math/Science which makes things harder for me to consider as well.
You can explain this is your application, AOs are sympathetic to scheduling constraints.
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Take the statistics class that fits into your schedule and allows you to be the piano accompanist. Colleges will not dock you for taking stats at the CC, especially considering how rigorous your schedule is.
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Note that high school AP statistics and college introductory (non-calculus-based) statistics are typically less rigorous courses to begin with, often aimed at students who do not want to take some other math course like precalculus or calculus to fulfill a (high school or college) graduation requirement.
So it is likely that the actual rigor level will not be all that different (although the college course will typically finish in one semester, i.e. a faster pace but leaving a free semester for something else). Choose whatever fits your schedule better.
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