<p>On Harvard's website, they repeatedly state that the strongest applicants will have taken the most rigorous courses available to them, obviously. I am a junior in high school and unfortunately due to a scheduling problem, I opted out of honors math last year, and consequently I could not take an honors class this year either. I will be allowed back into honors next year (honors pre-calc) and otherwise I have a pretty decent record and a 4.2 GPA. However, I am curious if I should bother applying. And if so, is there anything I can do to make sure this does not simply look like slacking off?</p>
<p>It depends. Colleges only care about your unweighted gpa, btw. If you are a junior and aren’t taking any AP or Honor Classes your chances are next to slim.</p>
<p>You should be fine if all of your other classes are honors/AP, whichever highest is available. A scheduling issue is not your fault (I think?).</p>
<p>If you took non-honors math because of a legitimate scheduling conflict (e.g., it conflicted with your honors foreign language, or some other academic subject that really interests you), maybe you could ask your guidance counselor to include this information in his or her recommendation. </p>
<p>I don’t know how it works at your school, but at my daughter’s school, guidance counselors meet with rising seniors during the summer and in the early fall to discuss the content of their counselor letters.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input. I am taking mostly honors/AP classes otherwise. My schedule next year will literally be all honors and AP with an additional early bird ap course. And my unweighted GPA will be pretty high as well. I think right now i am salutatorian, and I have pretty strong EC’s in leadership, activism, politics, art…ect</p>
<p>As long as your guidance counselor says that it was due to a scheduling conflict, it will be fine. I am somewhat worried by the fact that you’ll only be taking Pre-calc as a senior since most other applicants are taking Calculus, AP Calculus, or another math course beyond Calculus. However, if you are doing exceptionally well in other subjects, you should be fine.</p>