<p>Hi everyone,
I’m sorry if this question has already been addressed. I am posting this on behalf of my sister.</p>
<p>She is currently picking out classes for Sophomore Year. She did not do so well in Honor’s Biology and has to repeat the first semester in Summer School. She also intends to do Geometry of the Summer in order to advance to Algebra 2 for the Next Year. </p>
<p>She is very passionate about Social Science/Language Arts…not so much the Science/Math subjects.</p>
<p>In order to keep the course load moderate and not to burdern/stress her or my parents out, I have suggested her to take the following courses as requirements.</p>
<p>English: Honor’s Language Arts…she really wants to take it.
Social Science: She has a choice between AP European History, AP Government, AP US History and World History (regular and not Honor’s)…I suggest she take World History
Math: Regular Algebra 2
Science: I made the suggestion she take regular Chemistry.
Language: Just Regular/Non-Honors Spanish 2
Should she take an Elective? Any easy classes you guys would recommend?</p>
<p>What do you guys think about the selection so far? I feel that it would be best to just keep it to one Honor/AP class…is this too little especially for the upper-tier UC’s like UCI and UCLA? She wants to stay close to home and its really competitive to get in these days so I just want her to get good grades but also remain adequately on-par as far as what the expectations/ average stats of matriculants for these schools are.</p>
<p>Additionally, suppose she goes from say Honor’s Language Arts in Sophomore Year to Regular Language Arts, is this going to negatively impact her a great deal? Even if this change was accompanied with going from Regular Chemistry in Sophomore Year to AP Biology/AP Chem in Junior year? </p>
<p>Forgive me if my questions sound trivial, I have been out of the loop for quite some time. My parents aren’t too acquainted with the system and I really don’t have much faith in
the school counselors either. I badly want her to succeed and do well and she really wants to stay close to home. Getting into UCI has gotten so hard since I got in! LOL</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for any help…also sorry if I have posted in the wrong forum as I am not too familiar with the site! :)</p>
<p>First of all, it’s important to mention that your sister’s high school seems to operate much differently from mine. That being said, I’ll take it one class at a time.</p>
<p>English: I have taken the highest level of English offered at my school all four years in high school. I remember Sophomore year actually being quite a bit easier that Freshman year (likely because I had a much better teacher.) It will be quite a bit of reading and higher level thinking, but since she seems geared towards humanities, she should do okay.
History: let me start by saying that I took AP US History Junior year and it was by far the hardest class I have taken in all of high school (next to IB European History this year.) At least in my class, we were required to take hours upon hours of reading notes every week, and the test questions were based off of the AP test. I took regular world history Sophomore year, and it was extremely easy; I personally would suggest that class because AP History classes are rather difficult, especially for a Sophomore.
Math: seems pretty set in stone; just make sure she knows she will be taking Calculus senior year (I’m assuming she’s taking four years of math if she’s looking at the top tier UCs.)
Science: regular Chemistry sounds good; I took IB Chemistry Junior year, and even as a science/math oriented person I found some concepts quite hard to grasp. And AP Chemistry is supposedly even harder than IB Chem.
Elective: I did not have an elective Sophomore year, just 5 core classes and PE. It’s hard to say what elective she should take; for example, at my school intro to drawing is one of the most time consuming classes offered, while art at other schools seems to be a joke. If her school offers guitar, that was one of my favorite and most useful classes I’ve taken all four years.</p>
<p>To tell you the truth, it’s fine to not have many honors or AP classes Sophomore year; while I did have honors classes, none of my classes were actually weighted until Junior year. Wait and see how she does this year and then you can recommend she takes some weighted classes. One thing she might want to consider is, if her honors English class is not weighted, she might want to replace it with an AP history course. That extra AP class sophomore year could give her the edge GPA-wise over some applicants. If she plans to take 4 weighted classes Junior year, however, this is irrelevant (UCs only count up to 8 semesters of weighted classes.) This probably sounds really convoluted, but basically she should try to take 4 weighted classes (or as many as she can handle) between Sophomore and Junior year to maximize her GPA, and it’s up to her how she distributes the weighted classes.</p>
<p>Going from Honors classes to regular classes will not hurt her; she should, however, be taking the most difficult schedule she can handle while still maintaining good grades. A difficult schedule could make all the difference. Just make sure that if she takes AP Bio/Chem that she is prepared; those classes are not easy, especially if science isn’t her forte. </p>
<p>I tried to answer everything as concisely as possible hopefully I didn’t miss something. There really is a lot to think about as a college bound student; let me know if you have any other questions, if I missed something, or if I made absolutely no sense. :)</p>
<p>Kind of a long post which I don’t have all the knowledge to respond to, but it’s important that your sister is challenging herself in the areas that she can succeed in. Generally, going from honors to regular classes is looked down upon in comparison to going from regular to honors, it might be a necessary change if her grades are going to suffer as a result. (GPA will likely continue to be the MOST important admissions factor even when she applies years from now.) </p>
<p>If possible, she needs to take AP classes if they are available, because they would make her look competitive, and it would also be unfavorable if there were plenty being offered and weren’t being taken advantage of. Encourage her to challenge herself and take difficult classes in the subjects she excels in, and maybe 1 or 2 classes which she knows will be an extra challenge.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for the valuable information! I really appreciate your time and dilligence. I am going to run over this again and relay it over to her so we can hopefully get the ball rolling in the right direction. Thanks again guys! I’m very blessed to have been amongst the company of such helpful sources of information.</p>
<p>If you’re sister doesn’t care much for science and math, you don’t have to take honors in those subjects. Personally, I went from an AP English class in junior year to a regular World Literature class in senior year. It may just be my school, but it doesn’t feel as productive and I’m not learning as much. If you want to think far into the future, colleges only really look at your grades from sophmore year, so its better to excel in a regular class, than to fail in a honors/ap class.</p>
hopefully I didn’t miss something. There really is a lot to think about as a college bound student; let me know if you have any other questions, if I missed something, or if I made absolutely no sense. :)</p>
I’m very blessed to have been amongst the company of such helpful sources of information.</p>