Honors vs Accelerated

Are Accelerated classes the same as Honors? There aren’t classes with “honors” in their name at my school, but I have taken a lot of classes with “accelerated” in their name (non-AP). The accelerated classes are on a 4.0 scale (only AP classes at our school are on the 5.0 scale.) We also have the “regular” classes as well.

I have been putting accelerated as honor for now, since it don’t find it fair that I’m taking faster paced classes and not getting the “harder class” credit in my application. Please let me know if I’m doing this correctly.

If your school does not offer “honors” titled classes then I would consider these honors type courses even though you don’t get more credit.

Ask your guidance counselor. They must have a recommended way of handling this since it will affect many students at your school.

Curious what scale a “regular” class is weighted on at your school. Our school has 4 levels of classes - Academic (weighted on 4.0 scale), Accelerated (weighted on 4.5 scale), Honors (weighted on 5.0 scale) and AP (weighted on 5.3 scale). I’m surprised to hear of a school that doesn’t give any extra weighting to a class that sounds like it is intended to be more difficult than the “regular” class. Therefore, I’m not sure whether it sounds like it is in fact an “honors” class for purposes of completing college apps. However I concur with the previous poster who suggests asking your guidance counslor.

Do not make up different titles for your classes. When schools send out a transcript they also send out a school profile which details the levels of classes among other things. Schools will be able to see the exact rigor of your coursework from that. I suggest that you check with your guidance counselor to see what the transcript sent to schools looks like and if the accelerated classes are noted. In our HS the level of class taken is very clear from the course number (which is explained in the school profile). If you make up a level like “honors” that doesn’t match what is on the school profile, it will look like something is wrong. Why not use the school term – accelerated?

@happy1 not sure if this was the genesis for the OPs post but some apps ask a generic question like total number of honors/AP courses taken (Penn State for example). So the OP would need to know whether these accelerated courses could be counted as honors courses for the purpose of answering that question.

Yes, accelerated classes may be honors or may be regular classes simply taken a year early. Sometimes earth sciene or algebra are taken by competent students one year earlier than they are by less competent students. If they don’t cover material that isn’t covered in algebra or earth science taken the next year, they are not honors.

If there is any doubt as to how to classify classes for a particular school’s form then the OP should talk to his/her guidance counselor.

Our regular classes and accelerated classes are on 4.0 (only AP’s are on a 5.0 scale). Also, I’m 90% sure the word “accelerated” or “accel” or “acc” are next to the name of my accelerated classes. At our school, many people take accelerated classes in the year they are suppose to take that class.

And like adlgel mentioned, some schools only have the choices AP, IB, honors, regular, or something like that. You don’t type the name of the class.

Also what is OP? I have never heard of this term Thanks.

OP is Original Poster, the person who started the thread.

What did your guidance counselor say that you should do?