<p>How do adcoms view independent study? What I mean is that my school doesn't offer courses and does not allow you to work with a teacher on a specific course, so I bought some cheap textbooks online. I'm not talking about learning relatively trivial things like "building a birdhouse" or "calculator programming," but I taught myself diff eq's... Does this count at all?</p>
<p>bump
I’m also curious</p>
<p>Indept study usually refers to an actual course that you design. I am taking one and it is subjective because I am my guide. If you arent taking it in school, it would depend on how you go about utilizing it in your app- be it an essay or something. And I think it will come down to how passionate and effective you make it appear.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what your question is. I mean, how do they view it? They probably view it favorably. It shows initiative and independence and motivation. But if you’re really asking how favorably, that depends upon the difficulty, the circumstances, and how well you present it in your application.</p>
<p>Maybe ask your guidance counselor to mention it in his/her letter of recommendation? Or get your normal math/science/whoever would understand it teacher to describe how much of an achievement it is, etc.</p>
<p>Hm. I don’t think it’ll be a huge plus when you’re considering standard big names. Generally, if you’re a pure intellectual, you really will not have a chance at those names…you need to be something else usually. </p>
<p>I mean, just being realistic here. I had favorable results from schools which primarily look for academic students, and was a heavy self-studier early on [learned lots of math ahead of time].</p>