<p>I am currently a junior, and I am only taking 2 Honors courses, 1 AP course, and Japanese 4 (the highest level offered my school). Do you guys think it is OK to make up for the lack of rigor of my junior year by taking 4 APs senior year? I know that colleges look at senior the most, but will they consider the rigor of my senior year as well? The reason why I didn't make my junior schedule very rigorous is that at the time when I put together my schedule, I thought that keeping up my GPA looked better than possibly ruining it with too many AP courses.</p>
<p>There is still time to salvage the situation. You should do extra AP courses your senior year, but you should know that your chances of admission have been damaged. </p>
<p>My advice is to write an essay about why you didn’t take AP classes during your Junior year in the additional comments section of the CommonApp. Talk about how you were told that the rigor of courses and how much you challenged yourself ISNT what colleges looked for, but you really wanted to take them (colleges really do look for rigor of classes, but you’re trying to make a case as to why you DIDN’T take the hardest courses). Tell them that you were interested in the subject matter and desired to push yourself, yet the pressure of your parents/friends/guidance counselors told you otherwise, and that not taking those AP courses is a big regret for you.</p>
<p>Also, join or create a club RIGHT NOW about your interests or potential college major. Because you didn’t take the hardest classes, colleges will be more critical of your extracurricular activities and will look to see if you explored the knowledge that is in the AP classes outside of the classroom. For example, if you want to study math in college and you didn’t take AP Calculus AB/BC or AP Statistics, they would potentially look to see if you join a math club or started one yourself to compete in math competitions. It is things looks that that will show to the admissions staff that you still care about your subject even though you didn’t have the opportunity to take an official class on it.</p>
<p>Depends-- what colleges are you targeting? Are you saying that your rigor is less than classmates who will also be applying to the same colleges. Or is your schedule aligned with what is expected at your target colleges? There is a delicate balance between getting good grades and overloading and getting weak grades. It is a judgment call you made, I guess you have to own it–you did what you thought best. Your schedule is certainly more than decent.</p>
<p>I do not agree with the first reply that you have damaged college admissions. Use essays for showing your strengths. That suggested essay topic would be a bad idea, and making up those excuses, poor. I couldn’t disagree more.</p>
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<p>I’m with @BrownParent - it really depends. For most colleges, if you have great grades this year with 2 APs then step up to 3 or more next year - you are way better off than getting Cs in 4 APs. Many college cap your GPA anyhow.<br>
Good luck!</p>
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<p>It probably depends on what schools you want to attend. If you are applying to the top notch schools, it will hurt you. If not, make it up in your senior year and you’ll be good. </p>
<p>Senior year never really makes up for junior year, there simply isn’t going to be as much info to go on, including final grades - but taking a tough senior year is better than not taking one. You can’t undo junior year, so just look forward do what you can senior year. Maybe it’ll be enough for the schools you want to attend, maybe you’ll have to change what schools you apply to, but what’s done is done, adjust accordingly.</p>
<p>I just want to go to the best university that will give me the most money to go there. I currently have a 4.0 GPA and a 33 ACT. Also, my school doesn’t even give weighted GPAs, so does that mean that APs don’t matter as much at my school?</p>
<p>Absolutely not. Just because your school doesn’t weight them means nothing in how colleges view them. If your school offers them, then colleges expect you to take them.</p>
<p>Well, while we are on the topic of this, do you have an idea of why my school doesn’t weight GPAs? They don’t rank students either.</p>
<p>Neither does our school. On the whole, everyone at our school prefers it that way. </p>
<p>Ranking really doesn’t make sense when students can take so many different classes - how can you possibly distill students down to a single number when no two schedules are the same. But if you don’t weight, students are tempted to take easy classes to maintain their meaningless rank. But if you do weight, it then becomes a game to take classes to gain points rather than take them for the right reasons - and without ranking, there’s no point in weighting. (I once taught at a school where every kid in the honors class was expected to be granted an A or B, regardless of what they actually did in class. Talk about having to curve tests! A’s sometimes ranged from 95 to 78, Bs from 77 to 60.)</p>
<p>The other reason to avoid ranking is it makes colleges actually look at the transcript and evaluate it, not just look at some number and decide how good (or bad) a kid is. And when kids in an accomplished class could move 10 or 15 or 20 places simply by getting a B+ instead of an A-, it doesn’t really seem fair. </p>
<p>What colleges do you want to attend?
For some, this junior schedule is going to be plenty rigorous.
Going from 1 AP to 4 APs may be overdoing it - what would these AP’s be?
Be careful not to overload - you must ensure you can be sure of at least a B in every class you take senior year.
You mustn’t take a “free” period, unless it’s mandatory at your school, but you should try and have one “fun” class or a class you’re really passionate about.</p>
<p>Taking a free period as a senior is perfectly fine - if you’ve had a demanding schedule up to that point and you’ve got 5 cores senior year. That does not appear to be the case here.</p>
<p>Yes and no. The higher rigor level in senior would help. Some HS only offer AP to senior for instance. Nevertheless, it would not help to add value to your GPA (up to junior) as there is little weight to be added. It would have some negative impact if your school do offer honor and AP classes but you did take much in junior or earlier.</p>
<p>Just take a challenging schedule Sr year and do well. One thing I can think of is that the GC usually indicates a box for hardest level of classes taken on a notch down and so on, so now that you see that you might have been able to handle more Jr year, try to take the sort of classes that will compel him to check that box if still possible. Don’t worry about ranking. If your school doesn’t rank (my daughter’s didn’t) sometimes the GC will indicate top 10%, to 25% in the letter, or not. It doesn’t matter if your school doesn’t rank. Same with weighting, the colleges will usually be looking at 1) UW gpa and 2) rigor of courses themselves anyway.</p>