<p>My junior son wants to major in engineering. He will graduate with Calc 3 and 8 AP courses so he will have his core requirements and beyond. He plays bass in the Symphony Orchestra. Finally next year he has a couple of hours for electives and he wants to take Chamber Orchestra in addition to the Symphony, plus Advanced Drawing. His father, an engineer, thinks he should take something more meaty like AP Stats and drop the "artsy stuff". I'm telling him to do what he enjoys. Really, would it hurt his chances at a top engineering school like Northwestern or Cornell?</p>
<p>If it hurts his GPA, don’t do it. If the GPA/rigor stay the same, do it. On the other hand, determining unique-ness
is important to colleges. I would say taking the electives is perfectly okay, as long as the academic profile stays strong.</p>
<p>Not taking AP Stats? No, it wouldn’t hurt him. AP stats is algebra based and isn’t equivocal to a stats class an engineer would have to take (and even if it were, it probably still wouldn’t hurt him to not take it). </p>
<p>If he’s gone through the general requirements for engineering (With AP CS, Chem, Physics C Mech + E&M, BC + Calc 3) and he wants (not your husband) to keep going on, DiffEq and Linear Algebra is what he should look at next. Depending on what engineering field maybe also Econ. If he just wants to take drawing right now, it’s not going to cause problems admissions-wise (though taking those other engineering pre-reqs may help). </p>
<p>He’ll still be far ahead of the average person when he goes to college with what he’s done so far.</p>
<p>Your husband thinks Advanced Drawing is “artsy stuff”? Bogus to me. Your son sounds like he’s got a load already - and also, just because he’s taking those AP courses, doesn’t mean he’ll get credit from the AP test (some colleges require 5’s for stuff) and allowing him to take artsy courses will allow him to focus more on studying for those tests.</p>
<p>BTW what type of engineering…? That is really important too, because if it’s something like Civil, some kind of social/development course would be artsy and help with his profession.</p>
<p>Nothing wrong with drawing, but maybe he should do it outside of school rather than taking a class? Just a thought.</p>
<p>He’ll went to take some sort of chemistry and physics class. Any ABET-accredited school requires at least one calculus-based chemistry class in college and I think two calculus-based physics classes. He won’t get into those classes without either high school chemistry and/or physics or taking the university’s introductory chemistry/physics classes. Not having had either physics or chemistry in high school (which, for me, was over ten years ago), I’m currently finishing up the introductory, non-calc physics and I will later have to take the introductory chemistry. Only after the introductory classes can I take the needed calc-based ones. So doing chemistry and physics in HS is a real help. Or if there’s a chemistry CLEP exam, maybe he could pass that. Hey, maybe I could! I’ll have to look into that…</p>
<p>“Any ABET-accredited school requires at least one calculus-based chemistry class in college”</p>
<p>Not true</p>
<p>“He won’t get into those classes without either high school chemistry and/or physics or taking the university’s introductory chemistry/physics classes.”</p>
<p>I would assume he’s had these, but regardless not true again. At least not true at all universities. I would imagine not true at most universities. </p>
<p>I know it’s a bit rude, but please don’t take this as an attack.</p>
<p>Thanks to all for the input.</p>
<p>The music and art classes won’t hurt his GPA. His senior core classes will be AP English Lang. and Lit., AP Government/Humanities(district requirement), Calculus 3 (highest math school offers), regular Physics (he’s in AP Chem now), and German 4. It sounds solid enough to me so I will sign off on his registration.</p>
<p>Stop attacking me! I only report what I’ve heard. Thus far, what I said has fit the facts at the schools I’ve been looking at, however, if I’m mistaken, then I’m mistaken.</p>
<p>AP Stats is the worst decision I ever made. Should have taken Physics C. Stats isn’t even a math class in all honesty. The most math I have ever done in there is multiplication. What’s even better is we get to use calculators which can perform any statisical test for you without even having to know the theory behind it. Absolutely worthless. So take the advanced drawing course.</p>
<p>Is the advanced drawing course at all similar to a drafting course? Even if it’s not, will he gain the sort of skills that would be useful for sketching simple systems or machines? I’m an engineer with absolutely no skills in art and really wish I had some, since I regularly need to draw quick schematics and such to try and explain my ideas to my labmates. I could definitely see it being more useful in terms of payback over his whole life versus AP Stat.</p>