<p>Countless threads include the advice to focus on "depth not breadth" when selecting classes and extracurriculars. </p>
<p>Here are my problems:
1. I actually enjoy school and the learning environment that accompanies it. I am taking every AP class that our school offers except for the various languages.
2. I cannot make up my mind between two incredibly distinct majors: biology and business.</p>
<p>I, as most students on this forum, would like to attend a highly prestigious school and the one I am interested excels in both of these subjects. So my questions lie within highly-competitive admissions; Is it risky to not specialize my classes?
A. I may look like a basic Ivy-drone who takes as many APs as possible in order to impress admissions (something I do not want to do)
B. Business classes at my school are a joke, I would rather take a challenging course that I enjoy instead of taking "Business Management 101" just so that my interest will appear on my transcript.</p>
<p>That will account for all of my high school predicaments but if I do get accepted into this University, I am presented with another problem. I would like to study bio medical sciences as well as business... Is it risky to attempt to pursue both of these majors?</p>
<p>At most colleges, students apply as liberal arts majors and select a major during their sophomore year of college. Although colleges ask about your “intended” major, Admissions Officers understand that 50% to 70% of students change their major at least once during their 4 years of college. So, colleges DO NOT and CANNOT use whatever you write down as your “intended” major as a recruiting tool because the data doesn’t correlate to the major a student will eventually graduate with. So, it doesn’t matter if you write down “bio medical sciences” or “biology” or “undecided.” Colleges are asking the question just to gauge your interests. The exception to that rule is if you are applying to a specialized school, such as Wharten at UPenn or RISD etc – then your major must align with what the school is teaching. </p>
<p>NOTE: Most colleges, including 7 of the 8 ivies DO NOT offer an undergraduate degree in business. Listing “business” as an intended major at a college that doesn’t offer that degree IS risky, as it shows you haven’t done your due diligence on the college.</p>
<p>If you are interested in business, take a business course. You don’t gain anything admissions wise by taking an AP class over a class related to your interest. When you put it on your application that you are interested in being a business major, colleges will immediately wonder why you didn’t take advantage of te business opportunities provided for you. It will make the college question whether you actually have a commitment to something or are just a student who adds arbitrary classes. You should not be doing things just so you will look good for an ad con. You should be doing it because you are passionate about it. And whether it is easy or not, you are missing out on information that you will need in the college world because you elected to take something unrelated to your major. </p>
<p>What is your schedule so far? That may give us a better idea of whether there is any passion demonstrated in your classes, and whether it appears that you are just taking AP classes to take AP classes. </p>
<p>I would take the ap class or challenging course over the business course. I wou
d argue that for something like business in the high school level it is not necessary to take courses in it even if you want to major in it and is unlikely to affect overall adissions. You can show your personality through your ecs, recs, and essays not through your schedule. if you have and fula or deca club you could consider joining that. At my school, the business classes were too a “joke” and I’d imagine everything we learned in an entire semester was basic information that could be done in one week in a college course.</p>
<p>Use your ecs to explore your interest, which I believe you will get more out of than the 101 class. You can really get a feel for the major when you are in colleg. I’d imagine the apps would also help you in the long run in satisfying distribution requirements, showing a rigorous course load, and exploring your interests in those other areas. Taking science related courses should also be important if going into premed is a possibility.</p>
Take all the writing classes you can sign up for. The ones with the toughest teachers who let red ink flow like water. If thes sentences I’ve quoted are representative examples of how you write, your style is stiff and awkward to say nothing of grammatically incorrect. Inability to express yourself is going to hurt you in admissions when they read your essays, and will follow you into college whenever you have classes with term papers or essay tests.</p>
<p>@MrMom62 That’s what I was planning on doing but I feel like I wouldn’t get accepted into an MBA program since biology and entrepreneurship are not particularly compatible.</p>
<p>@AnnieBeats I would rather take an AP class though as opposed to a more applicable course simply because I enjoy more rigorous learning environments (or I am “passionate” about the environment/material). I do have several opportunities to work in a more realistic business environment as opposed to a class. Would these alternative or “ECs” suffice for an indication of my commitment?</p>
<p>I mean, I guess they could help. But it looks bad on your behalf if you rejected taking a course just so you could take an AP to get into college. Colleges look at the APs you take and try to see the common thread between them. Now if you apply to a big state school, this may not affect you. But when applying to an Ivy League, they scrutinize every aspect of your application and if they catch that. It will hurt you. You sacrificed your passion just to “look good”. Your ECs may help, but if you are willing to pass up on a class tht informs you on knowledge that you need to know, that will hurt you. Imagine if you are doing an interview for a school. The alumni interviewer was a business major as well. How will it look if they ask you some basic things about Business, but you don’t know it because you missed Business Management 101? It’s your decision, but it may hurt you more than help you </p>
<p>My freshman year of high school I was not extremely knowledgeable or decisive about my course load. I look some prereqs and required classes but nothing too impressive.</p>
<p>This past year (sophomore) I took two APs (Lang and Lit) and thoroughly enjoyed both and I was actively involved in the development of supplementary resources for these classes in the coming years. Although I am not considering a career in either of these areas, I still gained an inexplicable amount and am extremely glad that I took them.</p>
<p>Next year I wanted to take some AP science classes but because I did not plan ahead I did not have all of the prerequisites completed. Because of this I am taking regular Chem as well as AP United States History (simply because I enjoy learning about history), AP Stats (extremely applicable to many areas of science) AP Psych (again, because the subject material interests me greatly and may also apply to science) and AP Macro econ (interesting, could apply to business).</p>
<p>In between my junior and senior year I will take AP Government at Princeton University mostly for the experience (I am the president of JSA at my school)</p>
<p>Senior year I will take Anatomy (no AP offered), AP Physics, AP Bio, AP chemistry and possibly AP Calc. </p>
<p>Slightly arbitrary but hopefully you can understand my reasoning</p>
Not really. But you will crash and burn with that senior year schedule on top of writing applications. Also your lack of foreign language is a big red flag.</p>
<p>@skieurope I have already taken German and I feel comfortable with my projected schedule for my senior year. It is not the course load that I am concerned about but more my justification for my scattered classes.</p>
<p>This is incorrect at a large number of schools which are divided into divisions which may have different levels of frosh admission selectivity by division or major, and which have internal admissions processes to transfer between different divisions or majors. In many schools, the undergraduate business major is more selective than the others for frosh admission, and/or requires an admission process to enter after enrolling at the school as an undeclared or other-major student.</p>
<p>Do not use Harvard and Yale as examples to generalize about “most [four year] colleges”.</p>
I didn’t base it off of just Harvard and Yale, but used the colleges that my kids and their classmates applied to, which is basically the top 50 liberal arts colleges. @lookingforward, who works in an Admissions Office as a reader has basically said the same thing in other threads – and (s)he should know better than you or I.</p>
<p>^^ I believe you are both right. It depends on the school. For instance, NYU and Michigan have different admission rates to their schools depending on major, but many schools don’t expect you to necessarily take an course in high school related to that major in order to be admitted.</p>
<p>@rstein3 I think for highly selective schools like the ones you are targeting, APs are probably more important than business electives, although if you have an elective/free period, I don’t think it would hurt to take a business elective, if for no other reason than to get a better grasp on the subject. Your schedule looks good, except that you should a) consider swapping AP Psych and one of the AP sciences you have planned for senior year if possible. @skieurope is right, AP Bio, AP Physics and AP Chem are all difficult, work-intensive courses. At my school at least, to take all three would be nearly a GPA death sentence. Is there any specific reason you feel compelled to take all three? Do kids at your school routinely do this? b) You didn’t say whether you will be taking calculus at any point if you choose to not take AP Calc, but make sure you do take some form of calc, highly selective colleges are looking for at least calculus, especially if your field of interest is even tangentially related to math (ha, pun not intended). </p>
<p>Liberal arts colleges are not representative either. Remember that a majority of bachelor’s degrees granted in the US are in pre-professional majors, not liberal arts majors.</p>
<p>Most people I knew in high school who went to college went to state schools, as did most of the college graduates I encounter now. The state schools are much more representative of “typical four year colleges and universities” than liberal arts colleges are. Due to budget constraints, it is very common for state schools to have some majors which are at full capacity and impose higher admission standards.</p>
Most people I knew in high school who went to college attended large private schools, like my alma mater Boston University, and most high school students I know today attend private schools as well. We have had vastly different experiences. And maybe I’m wrong, but I would guess the average College Confidential poster/reader, while having state schools on their list, is aiming for the top 50 colleges. After all, why does CC even exist? I highly doubt it’s because kids are all in a panic to get into a state school!</p>