Four college courses over summer?

Applying to College
1

<p>Hello everyone,</p>

<p>I'm currently a high school Junior. To increase my weighted and unweighted GPA, I've decided to take some community college courses this summer. As of now, I'm looking to take Biological Psychology, Understanding Motion Pictures, Music Appreciation I, and Pre-Calculus. </p>

<p>My courses run from June 16 through July 19, and are every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. They start at 8am with Biological Psychology and end at 9pm with Pre-Calculus.</p>

<p>I'm kind of "used" to college level courses, taking 6 APs this year (Chem, Lang, US, Psych, Environmental, Geography). How stressful will my load be? Should I split up my courses? For example, Pre-Calc and Music Appreciation I during the first half of summer, and maybe take Motion Pictures and Calculus I during the latter half of summer? Or would these (hopefully easy?) college classes not be a big deal, and then the latter half of summer take another four college classes?</p>

<p>I'm currently looking at Cal, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, NYU, etc. as possible universities. </p>

<p>If I take four classes this summer (split them up or not), my Weighted GPA would be a 3.96. On the other hand, if I take eight easy college courses like music, theater, etc. I'll have a 4.1 Weighted.
With four college classes, I'll have a 3.6 unweighted, and with 8, I'll have a 3.65. I know that either way, these stats are lower than the universities that I've listed's averages, but I have great extra curricular activities and an good SAT (check out my chance me if you'd like).</p>

2

<p>I won’t weigh in on the taking of classes to increase weighted/unweighted GPAs.</p>

<p>I’ll just suggest splitting these into two summer sessions if you can. You will likely have a bunch of homework due very quickly for each course. You don’t have a lot of room in your short schedule. For example, your pre calc class likely has daily homework. It may be due on the next day or two days later and if you are done at 9 pm each day then you’ll be up a lot later doing homework. I imagine some of the other classes you mentioned will have some serious reading involved so when do you do that? Taking two at the beginning of summer and then two at the second summer session will give you more time to do a thorough job of the homework/reading/studying. </p>

3

<p>Oh, alright. So, something like this?</p>

<p>Session one (June 16 through July 19)
Sociology 1, Pre-Calculus</p>

<p>Session two (July 21 through August 23)
*Music Appreciation 1, Calculus I</p>

<p>It seems manageable, thanks!</p>

<p>Does anyone know about the difficulty of these courses? </p>

4

<p>Calc 1 would be roughly equivalent to Calc AB. You’d be taking it in four weeks instead of an entire school year. </p>

<p>As a parent, I’m specifically not allowing my kid take Calc 1 at the local state university this summer. He’s just finishing pre calc as a freshman with an A in the class, but I want him to take Calc 1 for the year not for four weeks. Why? Because it happens to be a really important foundation for the remaining calculus classes for the next couple of years (and diff Eq, etc). So I don’t want him rushing through. I want him to absorb it in detail so that he can get a 5 on the AP exams. (He can take calc 2 next summer though but that’s a strategic move based on his options for calc 3 the following fall.)</p>

<p>Be aware that for pre calc you may need to take a university math exam to show you are ready for it. Most of the math classes (even preCalc) have pre requisites. You may be able to arrange to do that soon, or you may be able to talk to their math department and have the instructor waive the requirement.</p>

5

<p>Frankly, looking at the courses you are planning to take, your plan is extremely unlikely to impress college admissions, and is more likely to underwhelm. Also your stated reason for taking the courses (to increase your GPA, and consequently to impress admissions) is unlikely to have the effect you want.</p>

<p>If you must take summer courses, pick one or two core courses, and spend the necessary time on them.</p>

6

<p>Considering even most college students don’t take four college classes over the course of a summer, your plan verges on undo-able. And those 6 APs are no where near what four real colleges classes are - never mind the fact that only Calculus on your list is likely to impress any college, but taking it in four weeks will not - they are very likely to question the quality of any class taken in such a short amount of time unless they give it themselves.</p>

<p>In short, colleges are not stupid, and an attempt to artificially inflate your GPA with a stunt like this will not impress anyone. I would advise you just take pre-calc over the summer and sign up for Calc I (or AB) your senior year in HS - that will be more than sufficient to impress most schools, won’t kill you, is likely to result in good grades, won’t look forced, and you are a lot more likely to retain the material more than two hours after the final test.</p>

7

<p>At a quarter system school (with 10 week quarters), summer sessions are often 10 week normal quarters. So a typical course load in a normal quarter would be the same workload as the same course load in the summer.</p>

<p>At a semester system school (with 15 week semesters), summer sessions are often 8 week compressed terms. So one would normally take half of the normal semester course load during a summer session.</p>

<p>Either type of school may have even more compressed summer sessions like 4 or 6 weeks.</p>

8

<p>Colleges will see through your plan. They want to see rigor in your senior year more than a GPA inflated by easy courses. Plus I doubt the CC grades will count into your GPA.</p>

9

<p>Are you sure they will even let you do this? At a California CC my D (as a HS junior) could only sign up for 1 CC class until she had a special waiver signed by her HS principal and the district superintendent, and then they allowed 2.</p>

10

<p>Yeah, I’m sure that I’m allowed to do it.
I have the waiver, it’s not a big deal. </p>

<p>My senior year will be pretty rigorous.</p>

<p>(AP) Calc ab
(AP) Physics I
(AP) English Literature
(AP) US Government/ (AP) Macroeconomics
(AP) Computer Science
§ Team Sports/ § Life Skills</p>

<p>So, should I just stick to Pre-Calc and take two courses that I really love?
Like, for me, it would be Oceanography and a Creative Writing course.
Would that impress colleges?
I’d have a high enough GPA for UC, Santa Barbara and maybe even UC, San Diego, without looking like I am just pumping points into my GPA.</p>

<p>I like that plan. I wasn’t aware that Calc 1 would be a full out Calc ab course. That’s intense.</p>

11

<p>It’ll be easy if you split them up, don’t take all 4 at once. My summer before my freshman year of college I took 2 classes (six college credits) in a month. It was hard but totally doable. </p>

12

<p>Alright. That sounds fantastic. It’ll be a nice GPA buffer and I’ll lean some great stuff. Thank you, all, so much!!</p>

13

<p>College course rule of thumb: For every hour in class, spend 2 hours outside of class (homework) = 3 credit course is 9 hours of commitment per week. …But summer courses run double time, so if you’re in class 6 hours per week for a 3-credit course, then you’re putting in 12 hours outside of class on homework, for a total of 18 hours/week — in ONE course. So, run the schedule. Two courses would be enough, pretty much. YMMV, naturally. </p>

14

<p>Son took 4 gen-eds online (2 classes each session) between freshman and sophomore years as he had a rigorous schedule and wanted to get these out of the way. He found them pretty simple and liked to move along at his own (rapid pace). </p>

<p>I do question how it will effect your GPA. Will your HS add them into our GPA??</p>

15

<p>Is this GPA improvement predicated on getting A’s in all the courses? If you can’t get A’s in HS, what makes you think you’ll ace these courses. I’d sure check on the difficulty. It sounds awfully ambitious. Summer courses tend to meet for twice the hours that a school year course meets and moves at about twice the speed. </p>

<p>The UC’s also cap how many weighted classes they’ll count towards your GPA. You may not get the benefit of all this extra weighting. Your APs may already cap you out.</p>

16

<p>It’s not unweighted GPA that is more important, don’t loose sight of that. </p>

17

<p>I usually do get straight As in highschool. I’ve just been lost in my ambitions this year. I’ve dropped from a 4.0 unweighted, to a 3.0 unweighted.</p>

<p>I’m clearing my head and hoping to use the summer to catch up on life and get a grip on it. I may not do the courses, I’m not too sure, and cap out at my dream to attend UCLA or Berkeley; and go to a community college instead (sbcc).</p>

<p>Does anyone here know how hard it’d be to transfer to Berkeley from sbcc? Also, the recommended GPA? How about my AP credits, how would they transfer? Would they fit my Gen Ed requirements? Should I retake college Chem and US history for easy As?</p>

18

<p>Just remember, your goal is not to get into UCLA or Cal. Your goal is to get an education to help you be successful in life. Don’t retake a class for an easy A. That’s a short cut to nowhere.</p>