<p>Hello!!
I am sophomore and changed my school this year from catholic school to the non-religious school this year.
This school required me to take 3 social studies class, so I am taking US history right now. However, I did not take history class in my freshman year, but took two science class (biology and computer science).
I am pretty sure that I will study science in the college, so I want to take history class as least as I can and take more science classes. Thus I asked my counselor that can the religion class be counted as a history class in this school, and he said yes, because this school has Theology class as an history class (but not required to take it! It is an optional).
Thus, I only need to take 1 social study class now.
However, my concern is that is the colleges which require 3 credits of social studies counted religion as a history class??
If not, I will take 3 history classes.
I need your help who went to the catholic or religious high school!
Thank you for reading my post!!</p>
<p>For what it is worth, my son transferred from Catholic to public high schools. The mandatory religion classes at Catholic high school were simply dropped off his new transcript, as if they never happened.</p>
<p>From a non-counselor perspective, it is hard to imagine that a college expecting 3 years of social sciences is going to accept religion as a substitute, particularly when those are usually taught as doctrinal classes rather than from an historical perspective. </p>
<p>The general advice is that if a college recommends a certain course selection, interested students should consider those functionally as mandatory – if they are serious about admission at that school. </p>
<p>You also should make sure your proposed course of study meets your state graduation requirements. At least in our state, a student must have Econ/Govt (semester each) plus full year of US History – for total of 4 semesters. That is far less than the minimum 6 semesters required and 8 semesters recommended for many competitive colleges and universities. </p>
<p>Make sure you are meeting your own state’s requirements for regular and, if applicable, Honors diplomas.</p>
<p>Only the less selective colleges or “directionals” with automatic admission would consider that any 3 social studies class including one US history would be fine.
More selective colleges will expect US history, either European or World history, and either another history class or economics, human geography, psychology, law, etc.
The most selective colleges will expect 4 years.
As for science, you should have 4 years of science, so you have biology and cs plus you should have chemistry and physics. Ideally if you’re aiming for very selective colleges and hope to study science, you should have at least one AP science, if your high school offers it.
Therefore, next year, you should have both science and history classes in your schedule and one more social study (Honors or AP) and one more science (preferaly AP) senior year.
The other “'core” classes would be Math, Foreign Language, and English.</p>
<p>For my daughters, the religion class became an elective. They still needed the required history classes of World, US, and Gov’t/econ (those are state requirements here, and actually were at the Catholic school too, but just came in later years).</p>