My daughter is taking
AP Eng Lang,
AP US History,
AP Spanish Lang,
AP Physics and
AP Calc AB
Engineering 3 Hons
this (Junior) year. Her school operates on a 7 period schedule and she had hoped to also take the Hons Personal Finance Course that is mandated by state for all high schoolers this year. Due to some schedule difficulties and the fact the Virtual Personal Finance course is full, she wants to now take a free period in her 7th slot and do Personal Finance over the summer. I think its technically credited to Senior year if she does this. Do you think the free period looks’ less rigorous’ and will hurt her college application. She hopes to go to UVA.
No to both parts of the question.
No. She has five core courses at the highest possible level +an academic elective. That’d be good for any elite school – there’s no “super duper rigorous” category and her schedule meets the definition of most rigorous.
No. Just understand UVa is very unpredictable.
If you think she should have something that period but don’t want it to overtax her considering the rest of her workload, think about TA’ing a class. I would imagine something like that is a good compromise. Shouldn’t be too time consuming, yet it shows another dimension to her high school career.
One free period is fine. In fact our HS encourages students to have a free period (at least a few times a week) so there is a bit of time to meet with teachers, guidance counselor etc if needed.
DO NOT ever have a top student waste their time TA’ing a course in HS (or as an undergrad). She does not need the busy work she would be doing- she does not need to learn what teachers do unless it is considered a step in her plans to be a HS teacher.
Your D has a full enough schedule that a free hour can be useful in doing the work. There is no need to add a frivolous course just to fill the time. The only reason to add a course that fits her schedule if it is something she wants to do for fun. That can wait until college.
I used a free period to practice piano. It was great! 
While your D’s schedule is plenty rigorous, what’s typical at her HS? None of the top kids at my D’s HS took study halls and if they did, it would unfortunately have cost them in ranking since the top 20% of the class was so competitive.
Her schedule is plenty rigorous without adding an additional academic class, in my opinion.
I’m surprised not to see physical education/health on her schedule…or an Arts class…band orchestra chorus art drama…
@momofsenior1 at our HS, rankings are based on GPA, not the number of classes you cram into a day. Plus, our HS ranks in deciles now, as do a lot of schools. Having one study hall wouldn’t affect rankings…at all.
At our kids’ school it’s the opposite @momofsenior1 TA and study hall are p/f so don’t enter into gpa. Kids take them when there is no weighted option to boost their gpa and rank. By junior year, pretty much none of the kids are taking all 8 periods.
That’s why I said to check with the GC. Every HS is different ; ). At my D’s school it also could have impacted the rigor box. The local public HS had nearly every senior with 2 study halls without any impact.
@momofsenior1 did your kid go to a private school? You say there would have been no impact at your local public school. The standard for “most rigorous” does vary from school to school as you noted.
On another thread I noted that both of my kids got “most rigorous” checked by their school counselor. Neither had more than 3 AP courses. Both had study halls their junior and senior years. And both took non-honors classes their senior year (culinary arts…and it took a song and dance to get them into that class…which they loved).
Yes, D was at a private, college prep HS. 99% of students went to 4 year colleges. The other 1% to the military. Very different grading scales, weighting, course rigor requirements, etc…than the public HS.
Semantics, but the OP called it a “free period” not a study hall. Obviously a GC discussion is warranted, but at least IME, it was neither required nor expected that a student have a class every single period. Generally (and obviously it depends on school) there are more periods than the standard courseload. At my school, any courses over the standard had to be approved, and even then were subject to teacher/class availability; the master schedule was not going to be manipulated for overloads.
DD is in public high school, and a free period could potentially cost a student .22 on his/her weighted GPA for that particular year (but would cost nothing on the UW). The high school doesn’t rank, but it does tranche. There are also a lot of required classes that are all unweighted (consumers ed, drivers ed, four years of gym, one fine art or applied tech class, language classes below the AP level). Competition would probably get heated if the school ranked, but even the high performers aren’t loosing any sleep wondering if that .22 is going to dump them into a lower tranche. There are too many unknown variables in play to even begin to game it that closely.
I’ve never heard of “tranche.”
Well for starters, that is a lot of APs. Personally I feel that you have nothing to worry about.
Please clarify…no physical education or health? This is required in my state every year. I know that might not be the case everywhere. And no arts elective? That is also required in our state although not every year.
@MaineLonghorn
Not sure if there’s a better word than “tranche”. Maybe decile? Basically there are no rankings, but the transcript will state if you’re in the top 10% or 20% or whatever. Even if, while unbeknown to you (because no ranks are given), you’re #1 in the school, all the transcript will say is “top 10%”. That’s just how our school does it, I suppose to shut down possible court cases from parents over who should be valedictorian over a .0004 difference in GPA.