I have a question about something that has really been concerning me. I have recently realized how important course rigor is to colleges and I feel like I’ve almost screwed myself over… I am a junior and so far I have taken 2 honors classes (one in freshman year and one in sophomore year) and this year I am only taking 1 AP course and 1 honors class. I have gotten straight As and I am continuing that trend this year.
At my high school, you can’t take APs freshman year and not a large amount of people take APs sophomore year (if they do, they take 1). You can only take 4 classes a term and most people will only take 3 APs (year long usually) at a time. I believe only 4 honors classes are offered and I will have taken 3 of them by the time I graduate (I don’t need to take the fourth since I am in the AP class). Next year, I am planning on taking 3 APs and I am trying to switch into another AP this year. I am super worried it will look like I am taking the “easy way out” because some of the other people on these forums say that they will have taken 8-10 APs by the time they graduate…
Everyone’s school is different, and you’ll be compared (by your guidance counselor, who knows your school) to your classmates. The specific question they’ll answer reads:
Colleges aren’t going to count the number of honors and AP classes you have and compare that directly to other applicants. They’re going to see what category your counselor says you fall into, and compare that category to those of other applicants.
The school report your counselor fills out has a bunch of other questions that let colleges see how you compare to your classmates - that’s how they see what you did with the opportunities that were available to you. They don’t expect you to have taken advantage of opportunities that weren’t available to you, just because other schools did have them.
Okay, thank you! Do counselors compare you with students in your grade or all other students in the high school typically?
The person to ask is your guidance counselor, not any one of us. Rigor is relative to what courses are offered in your HS and what other students take.
Assuming there’s nothing wildly unusual about your graduating class, those two pools are the same. The other questions requiring similar rankings refer specifically to grademates, not the school as a whole.