Just being honest, as a top-school interviewer (but not an adcom) who does have some insight into the typical applicant pool: To be competitive for Ivy- or Ivy-like schools, you need to progress through HS taking the highest level of math, science and FL available at your HS, unless you have a very clear “hook”. You have to “bloom where you are planted”: take the hardest available course load/options that your school offers (and for which you qualify) to be competitive. The vast majority of applicants will have bio, chem, physics (physical science does not count as physics) AND at least one other science at AP/IB level, if not more than one, even if they are not planning STEM. The vast vast majority will have 4 years of a FL at honors (or AP /IB if can) level if offered. The vast vast majority will have AP AB or AP BC calc or equivalent IB. Precalculus, if it is the highest you can get due to your math tracking, would also put you into consideration IF all the other subject areas are at top-level.
Not having one of these areas (as in science, since that was your original Q) means you would have to do the highest and hardest math, FL available AND excel in another area (the AP english and APush you have and the Gov/pol you are planning are great BUT you need to have rigor in your actual senior year–that matters more than summer, and all of your competitors will have it).
Look at what your HS offers: take the hardest science (likely physics honors or AP 1 if offered), Math, History and English offered. Take the 4th yr FL, at highest level they offer.
Also please consider that there are many, many amazing colleges in the US–do not aim just for Ivy or Ivy-like. Broaden your choices a lot so you will be more likely to have a few backup plans you actually are excited to attend.
@2Devils thanks for this insightful comment. I know there are a lot of great schools, but like many, I can’t seem to shake this desire of getting into an Ivy. I am taking as many hard courses as I can… is there anything else I can do?
My young relative - a nationally-ranked athlete - was recruited to play for an Ivy beginning this fall. She will have completed Honors Pre-Calc. by the time she graduates in a month; in addition, all her science has been completed through honors level (simply no time for AP math or science given her training and tournament schedules). She also took AP Euro as a junior (among other AP’s) and did well on the test so pretty impressive. Even with a significant hook, those Ivy kids are expected to be taking some pretty demanding courses in HS. Wouldn’t surprise me if other hooks are coming in with a lot of AP Math or science under their belts.
@JBStillFlying : yes, exactly! Even with a major hook, course rigor is extremely important.
@collegecurious49 : In addition to taking the hardest classes senior yr you can, as advised in many posts above, make sure your essays/application convey what makes you YOU: your passions, your interests, not a list, but why and how they are important. This is a huge factor at top schools of course, but it will help you at every school.
“My young relative - a nationally-ranked athlete - was recruited to play for an Ivy beginning this fall. She will have completed Honors Pre-Calc.”
Pre-calc honors while a tough course for sure would not be competitive with other ivy applicants, especially if they’re STEM majors. Typically they have Calc, Stats or even higher level math courses at a community college. I doubt the GC would have checked most rigorous curriculum for someone that has not taken Calculus if it was offered at the HS. The athlete hook definitely helped for sure, which it should as you point out, you cannot take many AP courses and be a recruitable athlete.
^^ Correct. Her ACT of 30 was also too low for an unhooked; however, for a recruited athlete her academic credentials and stats were stellar and above-threshold. She was specifically selected for her athletic talent; however, the Ivy’s do take very seriously the academic side. She most likely wouldn’t have gotten in with just regular-level classwork.
As her sport required a ton of travel, that’s factored in as well. Someone who is all-star at State but doesn’t need to travel to tournaments or abroad for world competition might be evaluated differently.
A lot of Ivy applicants will have transcripts similar to those of my kids, who attended Princeton and Duke. Their AP’s included Chem, Bio, Physics, Calculus BC, English Lang, English Lit, Spanish Lang, Spanish Lit, World History, European History, etc.
And many of those applicants will be rejected because, quite simply, there are many more qualified applicants than available seats. Luckily my kids were recruited athletes, which made their paths less risky.
@sherpa Thanks, but there is no substance in your response.
A rule of thumb to follow is that you take take as many of the most rigorous classes that you can do well in as possible.
If your school offers several AP/IB/Honors science classes, you should have taken at least one every year to be competitive (assuming you are an unhooked applicant). The same applies for other “core” academic subjects (Math, English, Social Studies, Foreign/World/Classical Language). It’s not like you will be automatically rejected if you do not follow these guidelines, but it makes things a lot more difficult in a world where it is increasingly common for people to have 30+ credits worth of college level coursework done before matriculation.
Actually, @sherpa’s kids might have cleared the hurdles by a large amount (it really depends on the sport), but it does underscore that a lot of Ivy-level athletes are coming in with several AP’s. We know one kid who was golfing for Yale and he was an AP-scholar by the time he was a rising junior (his school didn’t even offer AP courses, although that particular curriculum prepared you for the test anyway so many took them). Duke used to pride itself on having “scholar-athletes” so hopefully that’s still the case. If an athlete can take lots of AP he/she should do so. The trick is to do what the others are posting: bloom where you are planted, take as many challenging courses as you can do well in, rise to your potential, etc. There is no secret-sauce for the Ivies or other elite schools - it really depends on what skills they see you bringing into the class they are trying to build.
@collegecurious49 - I’m sorry that you missed my point, but I usually try not to be unnecessarily blunt; perhaps I was too subtle. To state it more directly, kids who are “aiming ivy” (your words) are competing with other applicants who have the whole package, including great test scores, excellent EC’s and, most importantly, an excellent transcript, including very high grades in a variety of subjects, typically taken at the highest level offered by their high school. Most of these applicants will be rejected.
Further, as you are surely aware, most Ivy League schools don’t admit by major; they accept students based on the totality of their interests and accomplishments.
So to put it more bluntly, an applicant such as you who hasn’t completed the “holy trinity” of the sciences (physics, bio, chem) at even a basic level, much less honors or AP, starts out at a profound disadvantage compared to the applicant pool as a whole.
In summary:
Q: Is my science course record sufficient for a top school?
A: Likely not.
OP - I think you aren’t thrilled with the responses you are getting but there is generally consensus that the answer to your question is ‘no’. The course rigor is just not there.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Actually there is plenty of substance. You can certainly feel free to ignore the advice given, but the reality is that many of these schools routinely reject 90% + off all applicants. And yet, every year, students come here and ask questions like “Do I really need to take Subject Tests?” or “Do I really need to take 4 years of Science/Social Science/Foreign Language?” Well, the answer is “No” you don’t need to, but I’m at a loss why any applicant to such a school would opt to submit an application that s/he knew from the outset would be less competitive. YMMV.
@skieurope alright I get the message. On that note, how many subject tests do I need to submit?
As many as the school asks for, of the type that they specify. Common requests seem to be none, any two, a math and a science, or three.
Agreed. More does not equal better.
Depending on the particular school and your proposed major of study, you are usually well off with a Math and a History. If you must take a third, doing a science tends to be a very good idea.
Math will have two levels of difficulty so figure out which one - Math I or Math II - will be more advantageous for you. For history the more popular tests are American and World. The American History exam is pretty rigorous - harder than the AP test (so I’ve heard).
All subject tests will deduct a fraction of a point for wrong answer - the exact fraction will depend on the number of multiple choices for each question (this actually varies by test).
for stem, it’s pretty straightforward, Math 2 and a Science, maybe two sciences if you want to show breadth of knowledge or the school recommends three (I don’t think many do).
for non-stem, it’s a little trickier, I would still encourage Math 2 as you’ll be applying to the college as a whole or the arts and science college which will want to see math 2. Then a history or Lit or a language.