I’m a senior in high school and taking 5 AP courses, 4 of which being in the STEM field and the other being English lit. I’m going into the STEM field so I wouldn’t prioritize my English classes anyway. However, the teacher I have is very stingy in her grading and I have been struggling a lot in the class so far. I can barely maintain a low B in that class, which is very low compared to my grades in my other classes. I was wondering if dropping this class would adversely affect my admission to colleges (I’m pretty set on going to UT Austin as of now). Would it be a better choice to keep the AP class to show that I pulled through, or switch to a regular level English class and maintain a high A (which would be better for me in terms of GPA)?
If you drop out of the class in the second quarter (or mid-first semester) you will get a Withdraw mark (W) in your report card, indicating that you took the course and dropped out.
Two choices for you are:
- Do better in the remaining semester and raise your grade.
- Get a withdraw mark, start a new course and make up all the works that you failed to do in the first half of the semester.
When I was in HS, I was exactly in your position. I am STEM oriented but kept getting B’s on my essays. One day I went to my notoriously stingy teacher and said “What do I have to do to get an A on this paper”. The we worked on it and worked on it until I at least got an A-. Even if you don’t get credit for it, work with your teacher until she would grade your paper as an A so you learn what they are looking for. After that I kind of figured out the “formula” for what she wanted.