<p>My high school is quite small, as a result we have a limited number of AP/Dual-Enrollment classes.</p>
<p>*All of the classes listed below are the most challenging I can take at my school</p>
<p>Junior Year: A's in everything-Chemistry, French I (I have had three years of Spanish and there's no Spanish 4 at my school), Horticulture, Dual-Enrollment PreCal, Office Admin., Advanced US History, Advanced Government.</p>
<p>Senior Year schedule (so far)</p>
<p>Dual-Enrollment English
Adv. Gov't
Dual-Enrollment Biology
Anatomy
Dual-Enrollment Calculus
French II
(Empty Space)</p>
<p>What should I fill this empty space with? I am pursuing a pol. sci/gov't degree (hopefully at William and Mary, I'm instate). I have a chance to take an "independent study" or two per semester, but if I take only one per semester I can fill this empty space with a HS class, which would raise my (<3.5) GPA. But should I do it? If I take a study hall I could do two independent studies (all of which give me 3 to 6 college credits). But I don't honestly know if I can handle two independent studies and 7 (somewhat challenging) classes.</p>
<p>*I will definitely take a US History independent study because I've already had the class, but as for the others, I am undecided.</p>
<p>So would the admissions prefer a rigorous schedule with some classes that don't give HS credit (that is much needed for me to raise my GPA) or an extra high school class (that won't be very challenging because there isn't a challenging class for me to take to fill the spot).</p>
<p>Oh, and sorry for being so long-winded... but I really need an opinion on this soon.</p>
<p>Here are a couple of suggestions based on some perceived holes in your curriculum:</p>
<p>1) Could you take physics either instead of anatomy or in the free period? If possible we recommend students take bio, chem and physics
2) What about dual enrolling in Spanish 202 at the community college? That’s equivalent to Spanish 4?</p>
<p>We’re a bit confused because you mentioned taking Advanced Government in your junior year and then listed it on your senior year schedule. Are those the same course?</p>
<p>We recommend that students take the most challenging curriculum in which they can be successful. If you believe that taking an independent study and a high school course will cause your grades to drop significantly then that may not be the route. Independent studies are certainly a great avenue to take when classes aren’t offered as long as they’re in academic subjects.</p>
<p>Let us know if this is helpful or only opens more questions. We’ll help you navigate your senior course selection.</p>
<p>Correction: I had advanced us history junior year, our school does not offer physics and I cannot take Spanish four so I’m in French (but if I tried to take it at the community college I would do horribly because we had a bad Spanish teacher.</p>
<p>But in my case you would reccomend taking two indepenedent studies with one study hall rather than a “slacker” class (which is all my school has left) and an independent study to do on my own time… I think I can keep up with that schedule.</p>
<p>would you be able to take physics at the community college? That might be another option to pursue.</p>
<p>If it’s not, we would encourage you to take the two independent studies assuming they are in academic subjects.</p>
<p>We’d also encourage you to explain the nature of the independent studies in your application and note that your school offers neither physics nor Spanish 4 so that we can better understand the limitations you met with when selecting courses. You can use the additional information section of the Common App to do this. Your counselor can also address this in his/her letter of recommendation</p>
<p>I am almost 100% sure that I cannot take physics at the community college, I will ask my counselor about that but even if I am able to, the college is a 20 minute drive and I already have a very tight schedule.</p>
<p>The independent studies are online (though the credits come from the comm. college) I enrolled today in US History-6 credits and sociology-3 credits for the first semester and Civil War Reconstruction and the Gilded Age-6 credits and Creative Writing-3 credits for the second semester. So that’s a lot of credits and I found out today that they are also for HS credit. You can do them on your own time, but I have one study hall to work on them anyway (and that is still a really tough schedule, especially compared to my classmates).</p>
<p>Another thing: our school will offer Spanish 4 for my senior year, this is because this year our school got a new teacher (that actually teaches), so nobody that had Spanish 3 with the old teacher is going to take Spanish 4 with the new one. I personally don’t think I would do well at all, because I can speak almost no Spanish, so I plan to continue with French. Will this choice really affect my application with my circumstances? I am actually enjoying learning French and have an interest in continuing the class at least through high school.</p>
<p>We would again just highly encourage you to explain the situation with the Spanish class so that we can understand that you couldn’t originally take Spanish 4 and once it was offered you felt underprepared. Without any explanation we don’t know what to think. We take all such individual circumstances as well as school context into account when making decisions so that we can evaluate the applicant individually.</p>
<p>I got accepted even though I only took three lessons (Physics, Chemistry and Maths) in my senior year. I might have been forgiven because of my school’s system, though.</p>
<p>We ask students to do the best they can within their given school environment. If a school doesn’t offer much in the way of advanced classes we don’t hold that against the student. We just ask any student to take the most challenging courses available to them in which they can be successful.</p>
<p>Generally we recommend a student take 5 academic courses at least in the senior year to give themselves the opportunity to enroll in the core subjects and to take challenging courses but of course this is not a hard and fast rule, just a suggestion.</p>
<p>If your high school works on a 4x4 block schedule and many of your more rigorous classes are unavoidably scheduled for the second half of the year, will that hurt your application? Or will the overall schedule for the year be considered?</p>
<p>Your overall schedule is considered. We want to see that you are willing to challenge yourself. Just be sure to include your first and second semester classes on the Secondary School Report portion of the Common App. If a student is taking Calculus second semester and not first, that’s just fine.</p>
<p>We do caution those on a 4x4 block however to not let one semester be without rigor. For example, even if one semester is AP Chem, AP Calc, AP Lit, and Government don’t let the other be chalk-full of non-acadmic electives.</p>
<p>Feel free to provide info on any scheduling difficulties or conflicts in your app</p>
<p>Yup, it certainly can. We just cannot emphasize enough that any scheduling difficulties you encouter should be addressed in your application (the additional information part is a good place) and if possible, addressed by your counselor in his/her letter.</p>