Do 4 year universities frown upon light core class load sr. year?

<p>I met with an administrator at my daughter's school today and she was concerned with her class selection for senior year. She is planning on taking honors English, honors Calculus, AP Portfolio, Art History, Computer Art, Yearbook Publication, and a couple other art classes. The concern was she has taken 5 core classes her other 3 HS years, english, math, science, history and language and the person I spoke with thought 4 year universities would not look positively on this type of schedule. My d will most likely be applying to all universities, possibly one art school, and is thinking of interior design but not 100% certain. Her art teachers do not see a problem with this schedule. Should she add more major classes, such as a science or is this acceptable?</p>

<p>mom, of alex, I don't see a problem with it either. I have known kids to get into top schools having a weaker program than what your daughter is taking.</p>

<p>mom of alex, my son and I went around and around over his senior year courses. He wanted to drop math and science all together and I took those college recommendations very seriously. He won and took art, creative writing and religion (plus English, History, language, and theory of knowledge the IB philosophy course). Obviously his course load was heavily humanities driven, but that's who he is.</p>

<p>In the end he was admitted ED to a highly selective college with rigorous academics, I think BECAUSE of his obvious commitment to the arts.</p>

<p>thanks for the replies taxguy and momrath. I'm thinking you are right. Momrath, I would say your son's schedule is pretty impressive, even if there are alot of humanities. He still has several major subjects, where my d really only has 2 with math and english. I always got the impression math and english were musts for senior year no matter where you were thinking of going and it obviously looks good to continue a language, science and history but for my d, I don't want her to stress any more than necessary next year if it won't hurt her to drop the language and science.</p>

<p>mom of alex, the language decision can be tricky as many colleges have a language proficiency requirement once admitted. Thus it can be a choice of continuing a language in high school in hope of "placing out" in college or having to take a language as a freshman to fulfill the college's language requirement. This was a bigger concern for my son as he really didn't want to get into college level language courses. He resolved it by concentrating on colleges that didn't have a language requirement.</p>

<p>The key is to have a serious course load. You can make a case for humanities if that's your focus. What you shouldn't do is substitute super light weight courses for math and science just to goof off senior year.</p>

<p>The irony for my son is that he's now thinking about architecture graduate school (he's actually a rising senior at college) which means plenty of math and science, or graduate school in art history which means proficiency in one or two languages. :) It seems there's no escape.</p>