Currently, I’m in my third week of my senior year of high school. I signed up to go full IB and get the diploma and last year wasn’t bad, but this year I already feel overworked and extremely stressed. My mental health is pretty low and I don’t want to sacrifice my mental health to finish IB. However, if I were to drop IB, the classes I’d drop are IB English 2, which is the most stressful class for me, and of course CAS and the EE. My course load would be
IB Bio HL 2
IB TOK 2
IB Latin 2 (which is a class with me and one other student as my school discontinued the Latin program the year after I started)
IB History 2 (I believe it’s SL)
IB Math 2 SL- Calculus
Anatomy and Physiology (my 6th subject was SL Chemistry, which my school does in one year rather than 2 so I had an extra free period)
Then of course I’d be dropping down to a college prep english course and probably filling my EE with another one semester elective.
My top university choice right now is UVA and I’m an in-state student so I already have a bit of an advantage there. I also wanted to apply to Yale and Johns Hopkins because I want to do surgery when I’m done with school. I’m in the Upward Bound program, so I get free applications and money wouldn’t be a problem there.
My SAT score is 1430, 730 R&W and 700 Math. My cumulative GPA on a four point scale is 4.15 (if it matters, class average is 3.28) and I’m in the top 10% of my senior class of 309 students. I’ve taken courses with high school credit since seventh grade and have only gotten As and Bs.
I want to drop IB so I can hopefully improve both my mental and physical health, but I don’t want it to affect my chances of being admitted to a college too much. I also have a problem with feeling like I’ll look stupid for dropping but there’s nothing I could really do about that. I mainly want to be able to go to school everyday without a feeling of constant dread and anxiety, but if it would affect my chances of getting into a good school too much, then I’m not sure what to do.
Thanks in advance for the help!