<p>I am a parent from NJ; I am helping my nephew in California with his high school curriculum</p>
<p>Where I come from, it it important for college admissions that a student have 5 academic courses/ year at a minimum from 9-12 grade. </p>
<p>His high school counselors have told him (as a 10th grader) that it is fine that he only has 3 academic courses this year (no foreign language or history) and that it is not necessary. He does have electives that are filling the schedule, but I am concerned. </p>
<p>Am I crazy or just "geographically challenged"?</p>
<p>Taking additional academic courses beyond the minimum (e.g. precalculus or calculus for math; third, fourth, or fifth year foreign language; all three of the foundational sciences) is generally helpful both for admissions (including to non-UC/CSU schools) and as preparation for university level work.</p>
<p>Note that the 15 high school courses minimum means 3.75 per year average. For UC, at least 11 must be completed by the end of 11th grade, which means 3.67 average per year in grades 9 through 11. However, a student already advanced in math or foreign language may not need to take that many courses – e.g. a student who completes Spanish 3 in 9th grade is counted as having “3 years” of language other than English.</p>
<p><a href=“A-G Policy Resource Guide”>A-G Policy Resource Guide; can help find which courses at his high school fulfill each category in UC/CSU preparation requirements, and which of them are designated as “honors” for +1 weighting (up to 8 semesters’ worth of course grades in 10th and 11th grade) in calculating high school GPA for UC/CSU admissions.</p>
<p>Schools in California vary a LOT in terms of advisors and student culture. At my kids (tiny Christian) school having the minimum required to apply is encouraged and expected, but taking extra is not. Many required classes, and classes offered, are not “A-G approved” ( i.e. religion classes). At the same time, it is also not typical for those kids to go to UC’s or privates. For years there WAS no advisor, and when there was, he said go to a CC first, then transfer to save money, and take the SAT and ACT exactly one time each. At the public nearby, the most ambitious students have WAY in excess of the minimum, and if you look at UCLA’s freshman profile (at or near the top of the food chain), most applicants have way in excess of the minimum. (they average 25 year long courses or 50 semesters, not 15/30) .Further,some seem to have enough AP credits to enter as sophomores and get out in three years. At the third school, graduating is a pretty big deal.</p>
<p>You have to check each school to see what its requirements or recommendations are.</p>
<p>However, in general, it would be good to use the UC/CSU requirement pattern as the minimum preparation, but add math up to precalculus/trigonometry or calculus, foreign language up to at least the third or fourth level, and available academic electives to that, at least for the more selective schools. In general, universities like to see that students took the most rigorous and advanced courses available to them at their high schools.</p>
<p>A high school student aiming for a top public or private university probably takes around N-1 academic courses every semester, where N is the total number of course periods at his/her high school (the last one usually being something like PE or a non-academic high school requirement like health education). These usually include one each of English, math, foreign language, history or social studies, and science, unless the student has exhausted the high school’s offerings in the subject.</p>
<p>Exactly my point in the original post ; his guidance counselor is telling him it’s fine to have only 3 academic courses in 10th grade. Shut out of foreign language class; no option for a history at all…</p>
<p>If it wasn’t for my intervention in 9th grade, he would not have been in a science course at all…</p>
<p>And this is supposedly a top public outside of SF…</p>
<p>I will recommend an online FL so he can get more as well as possibly an online history/ social studies. </p>
<p>Anybody know of an online social studies curriculum?</p>
<p>Perhaps he has a not-very-good counselor who thinks that he is not a very high achiever?</p>
<p>Community college for some courses is an option, although many community college courses are completely full. Use [Welcome</a> to ASSIST](<a href=“http://www.assist.org%5DWelcome”>http://www.assist.org) to check community college courses for transferability to UC and CSU.</p>
<p>Thank you for the link; not sure what the counselor is thinking since he is already ahead of his class in both science and math but now will be behind the rest of the country in history and foreign language. And I know that science and math are more significant for what he plans on doing, but this red flag is not something I choose to ignore. </p>
<p>This doesn’t sound right at all to me. We are in NorCal and both kids went to the same local public high school. Typical sophomore year is five academic classes with PE as the sixth (required in Calif at the time my kids were freshmen and sophomores). Those five would be math, science, history, foreign language and english. No one gets shut out of a foreign language or history…I’ve never heard of such a thing. I’d call the counselor.</p>
<p>Exactly what I said; he was originally enrolled in AP euro (as per my suggestion). Way too rigorous for him as a sophomore, according to his mom. So guidance had him drop it without offering another SS substitute (and told her that most sophs don’t take history). They wouldn’t let him fill the opening with Spanish because it was already a month into school. (Same period)</p>
<p>Typical sophomore history is World History, Junior is US History, Senior is one semester of American Government/one semester of Economics. </p>
<p>Freshmen have to take a semester of World Geography and second semester is Health which was a requirement at that time (not sure if it still is).</p>
<p>So…history is taken all four years. I have never heard of sophomores not taking history. Completely understandable that AP Euro might be too rigorous but then he should be put in the regular track of history or Honors. I would investigate further. Look on-line at the school district’s catalog of classes, and typical history and FL tracks for each grade.</p>
<p>Not sure how well standardized the order of history and social studies courses is (there is more leeway for varying the order of courses there than in math or foreign language, for example), but you can try looking up the high school on the web and reading its curriculum guide, which should list the courses offered and typical progressions in each subject.</p>
<p>Also, <a href=“http://doorways.ucop.edu%5B/url%5D”>http://doorways.ucop.edu</a> lets you see what courses at each high school (including some private schools as well as public schools) satisfy each category of UC and CSU admission requirements.</p>