Senior year he plans AP government or econ, AP English literature, AP chemistry, a college biology class, music, Honors physics (the school doesn’t have AP physics), and maybe a college philosophy class. All subject to change, of course. He’ll take more Spanish the summer after Junior year.
At my daughter’s high school, band was indeed an academic subject and one that was taken very seriously. Many of the kids at her high school are now professionals in their chosen arts. Many colleges offer arts-focused major – music, dance, theater, filmmaking, etc.
There’s a kid who grew up on my block who was an athletic recruit to Stanford and joined a professional sports team when he graduated. Not many kids get into Stanford from around here – but he knew he was in at Stanford by September of his senior year, before other kids had even submitted their college apps.
In our school system, families in the know (through older children or through a grapevine of overachieving hard-driving parents) enroll their gifted students into accelerated programs at the local university, where the students finish four years of math and English in two years. By the time they are high school sophomores, they are taking AP English and Calculus BC; that opens their schedules considerably for other classes down the line. We, on the other hand, had no idea that the high school schedule was so limited and that it was so difficult to fit in all the courses and stay in music as well. (Decades ago when I was in high school, I think we had 7 periods a day with lots of time for classes, electives, study hall. Not so any more.) My son tested out of 10th grade English so he could take American Literature this year, and tested out of freshman science so he could take Biology. He tells me he wished he had known how easy biology was going to be, because he could have tried to test out of that, as well. His focus on science and math is an attempt to try to catch up to some of these accelerated students. He and several peers petitioned the principal to allow them to take AP English as juniors, but she refused. Frankly, he hates the classes that aren’t AP’s as the other students tend to be unmotivated and the material too easy. He’s doing AP World History this year and will take the SAT subject test in that and math. His transcript will have more courses on it than most because his summer classes in Spanish and government will appear there. No, he won’t look like every other kid that applies to top colleges, but he won’t, I think, look like a slacker, either.
He spends around two hours a day outside of school playing trumpet, whether in musical ensembles, lessons, or practicing. So saying that music isn’t demanding sounds kind of ignorant to me. He listens to classical and jazz in his spare time and definitely knows his stuff. He’s considering self studying AP music theory senior year. There is a reason Einstein played violin all through his life, and continued to perform in symphony orchestras. Music stimulates the brain in ways that other subjects (and sports, I suspect) do not. It certainly helps with concentration and creative thinking and itself is a form of communication. I’d never demand that my son give up music just to check off boxes on someone’s college recommendations list. How odd for so many people to dismiss it as unimportant just because it takes a spot on a schedule that could be filled with a more conventional class.
@MyrtleD - your kid is fine. He is actually very impressive. The only problem is that you are asking the wrong question – it should not be “can he get into X college” – it should be “what colleges will afford him the most opportunities in line with his interests and goals”.
Please take advice you get on CC with a big grain of salt. Your kid is not every other kid. The very most selective colleges are not counting up courses on the transcript – they are asking, “what does this applicant bring that the others don’t?” And they are looking for consistency. They want to see high school transcripts that match the student’s goals and stated interests.
I will caution that we found out that it was actually some of the less selective colleges that were stuck on certain requirements – my daughter ended up accepted at reach colleges and waitlisted at schools her g.c. had told her were matches. One was a university that specifically required 4 years of high school math when she had 3. If a college says it “requires” a course, then take that seriously.
If it simply lists the course as “recommended” – then the word means what it says.
@al2simon: I myself prefer a well-rounded liberal arts education. On the other hand, Oxbridge seems to have done fine producing mostly very pointy grads (and their alums have done fine too). Likewise, how much did your PhD program care about whether a candidate had picked up a well-rounded liberal arts education or not? Certainly, most of your admits from overseas would not have picked up a well-rounded liberal arts education in undergrad.
And I’m not worried about a kid who listens to philosophy lectures for fun being too concentrated in an area. If colleges can’t see that, that’s their loss. I also agree with whichever poster who said that this kid will be stellar wherever he goes.
My S has a learning disability that makes it almost impossible to learn a foreign language. In fact, the tester told us that he would need to waive that requirement. He refused to tell colleges or his HS that fact. So he suffered through Spanish 3, having to learn the material in a very laborious way, which he finished in his sophomore year and never looked back. He is very STEM focused, but also plays in the band and took the 2 year IB music course, along with AP English Lang, etc. He is going to a selective STEM college, which was his goal, as he know LAC was not a fit for him. So it is best to look at the requirements of the schools he wants to apply to. If he is much more interested in the STEM fields and schools that are highly ranked in that, I think the language will not be much of an issue.