Hi, I am currently a junior and I am looking at what classes to take next year for senior year. My current class schedule for next year is:
English Honors
AP Spanish Literature and Culture
AP BC Calculus
AP Conceptual Physics
AP Statistics
AP Econ
and AAR, which is an unweighted research course offered by my school.
So i was wondering if it is better to just take english honors and the 5 ap’s or english honors, the same 5 ap’s, and AAR because if I also take AAR, then my weight gpa would be lower than if I did not. Would you rather sacrifice a lower weighted gpa to take an additional class. I am worried that someone who took fewer classes but all weighted classes would have a higher weighted gpa than someone who took the same weighted classes but an additional unweighted course. How do colleges view this issue? Thanks.
By the way, my current unweighted gpa is 3.955 and my weighted is 4.24. My ACT is 34.
Unless you have nothing else going on on in your life, senior year is a busy, busy year. Take classes you will do well in and won’t add additional stress. “What colleges think” - unless you’re applying to auto admit colleges which I doubt - is going to be holistic. If you apply EA or ED your senior fall grades won’t have much bearing but RD colleges will want to see your first semester or first trimester grades so don’t overload yourself. Don’t underestimate how busy senior year can be.
Either one is fine. In both cases the schedule is extremely rigorous. Take whatever is best for you.
I really, really hate that schools do this to kids. 5 APs and an honors English class is plenty rigorous. I don’t think any college will ding you for a small drop in your GPA for taking an extra course. You could ask your GC if she’d be willing to put a note in her recommendation that says what your GPA/rank would be if you weren’t taking the extra course.
I hate this too mathmom. Makes me wonder which colleges the OP is thinking of…it might make zero difference what he takes and I totally hate to see kids so consumed by incremental things they can’t enjoy their last year of high school.
Hi, I am thinking of tier 2 colleges and up. For example, the uc’s, top 100 schools, ivies. Like, do upper tier colleges value the course rigor more than the weighted gpa? Do colleges only look at the weighted gpa and not the number of classes one is taking?
Many of them calculate their own GPAs based on the transcript. Course rigor is more important.
This was an issue at my kids’ school, too. In the middle of my son’s high school years, they switched from calculating class rank/weighted GPA based only on the top 6 classes per year to taking into account all classes. The predictable effect of that was to discourage top students from taking extra classes, especially if they were unweighted, and that was really a terrible idea. (However, the old system failed to distinguish between students who “only” took 6 weighted classes vs. those who took 7 and did equally well in all of them.)
The minuscule difference that one semester of one unweighted class will make in cumulative GPA and class rank on your mid-year report to the colleges where you have applied RD shouldn’t make a difference, to them or to you. There are only a handful of colleges that are so competitive that one could even imagine it making a difference, but even there what makes a difference are things other than hundredths of a point in weighted GPA.
You should do what makes you a better person – better educated, more centered, more excited and engaged. That’s always good advice, but especially in the college admissions context. Trying to conform yourself to what you imagine admissions departments want is both futile and counterproductive. Making yourself into a good, well-educated person both makes you the best candidate for admission possible and assures the best chance of ultimate success in life regardless of what happens in the admissions process with this or that particular college. At this point, the choice of one elective or not isn’t really significant in any analysis, but the analytic structure from which you should be starting is “What makes me a good person?,” not “What makes me a good candidate for admission?”
My sister-in-law is still slightly miffed that she missed being valedictorian because she took a full schedule + orchestra and the guy who got the award took the same schedule + study hall. (She got into Harvard, I can’t remember if he did.)
The UCs in particular, have a very specific formula for calculating your GPA, which has nothing to do with how your school calculates it BTW.
I never did figure out how my younger son’s GPA was calculated. They supposedly only counted “academic” courses, but I never came up with the same number as they did - I tried keeping in one orchestra, both orchestras, weighting one, but not the other… etc. It was close enough, and most of the ways I did it, got a lower GPA than what the school was giving him, so we chose to ignore it.
Anyway, my advice is to take the extra course as long as you think you can handle it, and are taking it because you want to.
Take the classes you are most interested in. Your senior grades will not be counted when you submit fall college applications. Don’t worry about your final class rank- your HS career will quickly be ancient history. No one will care a year later if you were #1, #10… You will have moved on to the college that fits you- it won’t matter if another student is at a more prestigious college either. Whatever you do, do it for YOU, not class rank et al. It is your life and future, you will move beyond your HS and hometown childhood.