D20 is setting her Senior year schedule this week. She is currently taking 4 APs, advanced pre-calc and an online class for her fine art requirement this year and doing well. She will only need 4 classes next year to meet her graduation requirements. She is planning to take: AP Lit, AP Micro/Govt, AP Calc AB and AP Stats. She will take AP Macro this summer and is considering online AP Comp Govt for the Fall, which will give her time to pursue a significant internship at the State Capitol next year along with time for her college apps. Any insight on whether only taking 4 classes would be considered “too light”? She is planning to pursue poli sci/public policy and is not interested in taking any more science classes…
What level of foreign language has she reached. Many “top schools” want at least 3-4 years of FL.
Also, has she taken some level of bio, chem, and physics? Again “top schools” want to see at least one of each.
She is taking AP Spanish this year. There are no Honors level courses at her school, only regular, “advanced” and AP. She took Bio, Chem and AP Eviron Sci(which is considered a “lab” science at her school). Totally uninterested in Physics and refuses to take it. I don’t think this would hurt her as much with regard to private universities as she has excellent ECs in her area of interest, and will have taken all available humanities/social science APs available to her, but I know the UCs have a more cookie cutter approach to admitting students. I guess I’m just worried that they will see 4 HS classes (and a reported online AP class) for her Senior year, without knowing the extend of her extracurricular activities, and consider this to be “lazy”. The only way she can feasibly have an internship (which is a 30-45 minute drive each way) would be to get out before noon a few days/week. The question comes down to: 5 classes at school or 4 classes and a kick-butt internship?!?
At my kid’s former HS, a lot of seniors do only take 5 classes. But the smart ones usually take a CC course or online course to substitute as that 6th class. You should be able to find some online CCC classes that would be good. Speaking for UC-Berkeley as an example, classes that would fill a GE breadth that are online at our local CCC would be classes like Nutrition, American Stories, Intro to Art, Cultural Geography and Intro to Psychology. I would highly recommend taking at least an additional CC course instead of just having the 4 courses. Remember too that the typical applicant at top UCs will be way over on number of a-g classes.
Thanks for the input PRof Plum. We do have a local CC and D20 is thinking about taking an online Intro Philosophy class which would be UC compatible. The only caveat would be that she would have to take the CCC very seriously as she is considering law school and apparently all college transcripts are pulled…
@KBTDPT, for what it’s worth, my S18 is at UCLA and took only 5 classes senior year (pretty much the same as your daughter’s proposed schedule, except he took ceramics instead of AP Gov/Econ and he took AP Spanish). He had taken AP Gov/Econ early, junior year. He did not take physics, just chem, bio, and AP bio. He was very ready to be done with science after junior year of high school and knew he would not be a science major in college.
He was also accepted at WashU, NYU, UCSD, and had lots of other good choices . . . not sure if these are considered “top” schools to all people, but just wanted to share our experience.
@KBTDPT my kid pretty much took one CCC class per semester, mostly online, starting from the winter of his sophomore year in HS, so he managed to take 7 or 8 classes. Most of the classes were STEM CS or Math classes, but he did take 2 which he thought was interesting and that would also fulfill a UC breadth/GE class. One was a Nutrition class, the other was a American Short Stories Literature class that satisfied the American Cultures requirement for UCs. My kid said that the level of the class was about the typical level of an Honors class or maybe a half-step below, ie the level of effort to get an A was nowhere close to that of an AP class. That being said, yes, these classes count so yeah do take them seriously. I’m guessing he spent maybe 3-4 hours max a week with these 2 classes with homework/papers/studying.
Ideally you’d want to go to assist.org, figure out a ideal target UC school, and find classes from the CCC that satisfy GE/breadths for that UC.