<p>Since colleges won't be basing admissions decisions on grades from the coming semester, I wonder how many of your kids are either scaling back their course load or taking some fun things instead of serious academic things.</p>
<p>Mine is, sort of. After one absolutely killer biology class, he had the choice of replacing it with another one, or instead with something lighter. He chose choir. I'm glad he's doing it. I figure, he's got the rest of his life to work hard; when the opportunity presents itself to take it easy a bit, he should do it. Not that it will be easy, but easier.</p>
<p>Anyway, I think that, in the mad rush to impress colleges, our kids often steer clear of things they truly enjoy in favor of things that will impress. But the key to happiness in life is doing what you enjoy, and this is one of the rare times they can do that without risking much.</p>
<p>On the other hand, maybe some of your kids have very good reasons for continuing to take a full, extremely challenging course load with no let-up, and I'm interested to hear what those reasons may be.</p>
<p>D is doing “senior project” 2nd semester. She’ll have it as an elective class, 1 period per day, during 3rd quarter, and she’ll have to write a 10 page paper during that time. 4th quarter she won’t be in school at all, just doing 70 hours of “work” at her site over 5 weeks, followed by giving a presentation about her project. Whatever she learns in her academic classes by the end of 3rd quarter is what she’ll learn for the year - the teachers cannot require ANY work 4th quarter. The only exception is AP courses, and her AP Stats teacher assures her all they do 4th quarter is review and do a project, and she’s exempt from the project. So I’d call that a lighter load, but her college is aware of it.</p>
<p>When I looked at the title of this thread, I thought it was for current COLLEGE seniors. At my kids’ high school, almost ALL of the courses were year long ones…with very little option of “lightening the load” as a second semester senior.</p>
<p>Re: college…DD is a senior and her courseload for her final two terms is as rigorous…if not more so…than it has been all along.</p>
<p>S1 actually had his heaviest load second semester senior year, but he loved it.</p>
<p>S2 had a schedule conflict and has one free period second semester. He’s supposed to work in the IB office instead. Is still making noise about self-studying an AP, but if he decides not to, that’s fine by me. Has decided to be involved in the spring musical, which I’m pleased to see. He really enjoyed it two years ago and football conflicts with it in the fall, and last spring was too crazy.</p>
<p>Still has six IB classes, but by mid-March the worst of the crazy workload will be over.</p>
<p>DS2 dropped an elective accounting class after the first semester. He didn’t need it to graduate and since it was an elective it was “no big deal” to drop it.</p>
<p>Once he dropped that, all he had left was 3 AP Classes and religion (Catholic school). It made second semester a breeze, which was good because they had a senior trip to on. He graduated 2nd in his class and gave the graduation speech - so it didn’t hurt him at all. :)</p>
<p>My son had intended to have a heavier load this year, but couldn’t figure out any way to get AP Stats in. (He loves the teacher.) He couldn’t find anything else he liked, so he ended up with a free period. He’s enjoying it. All his courses run the full year, so 2nd semester is no different than the first.</p>
<p>At D1’s school she also didn’t have the option of dropping any AP or Honor courses. She was told if she did, they would have to inform colleges she has applied to. All her classes were also year long classes.</p>
<p>My son is much like yours…sigh…he’s got three acceptances one with a Presidential scholarship and has his apps done for a couple colleges we won’t know the answer until spring. He dropped Physics B in favor of 3-D design…sigh…he rewarded himself for getting all As and one B on his report card, which I guess, is a good thing. He’s driving his own train now.</p>
<p>I was thinking this was about 2nd semester freshman in college
my daughter registered for a pretty heavy load I thought fall qtr- but she didn’t take into consideration that college courses generally require more reading and writing than in high school, so she ended up dropping one early on.
For next qtr, I thought her schedule was good, if a little light, but then she said she got into Arabic.</p>
<p>There’s a place on the common app where the kids list their fall and spring classes, so dropping something requires one to tell the schools. Nonetheless, most of my kid’s classes are a full year anyway. </p>
<p>The best part for seniors: during the last six weeks of school, all the seniors can elect to go on an internship program, arranged by the HS, within major companies in the area. Kids love it, gives them terrific experience, and it avoids senioritis.</p>
<p>I thought you were referring to second semester of college freshman year.
My kids did not lighten the load of their second semester freshman year in college and none of them lightened the load in highschool. There was definitly no choir in their curriculum…not that choir is a bad thing.</p>
<p>I am not sure about this because most of AP are year long classes and one may need a 4 or 5 to get any credit at college. Our HS has this senior project thing and one could do just about any thing to fulfill that requirement. May be that is an easy thing for some kids.</p>
<p>By 1/1/10, all the applications should have been in. I guess applications for the summer job will soon start.</p>
<p>Same here - all of the ‘core’ classes are year-long. Only some electives are by semester. However, it will get progressive lighter as the year goes on because he is done with football, will have finished his college applications by Jan and will have finished his senior thesis by March. Also, he has been pushing to maintain a high A average in his 4 AP classes this semester for college application purposes. </p>
<p>He’s had major senioritis since the beginning of the school year and has been working very hard to push through it this semester. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if his grades dip a little in the spring.</p>
<p>After AP exams, S’s school has senior program so anything beyond AP’s was pretty easy IF he was even taking a class. He had AP Bio, AP Latin, AP Calc, and then took an art and honestly I think that was it beyond English which since they already took AP was more like a senior Book Club kind of class. Yep… once those AP exams were done, so was S but bio and math held his attention until then. But still… after taking such heavy loads for so long, 2-3 hard classes weren’t much of a back-breaker for S.</p>
<p>Ds’s load in the spring is lighter. He goes from six APs to four so that he can fit in all the required courses for graduation like health and speech. But he plays a spring sport and so will be plenty busy. He told me he’s not looking forward to the four electives he has this spring because he’s afraid there will be a lot of tedious projects.</p>
<p>If I remember the common app had a place to put senior year classes, but I remember when my son put that info in he had to jockey it around anyway as if I remember it was set up for 2 semesters and our schools is structured in tri-mesters. When he made the pdf of the apps for his colleges that information didn’t pull into any of the pdfs. Since the common app asks for all sorts of info because it’s universal, I’m guessing the colleges pull what info they want or the info would have come through on the pdfs. I told him after the acceptances come in we’ll double check and see if it makes any difference if he seriously considers one of the schools, my guess is that it won’t for him. My son is most likely going to minor in art at colleges that have minors and being able to take art classes if he decides on another major was his number one question for the colleges. Since he’s already had 2 physics classes, dropping Physics B in lieu of an art class didn’t feel like a horrible decision and it was his decision. If a college had a problem with it he’d probably drop that college like a rock anyway. For better or for worse and to add to my stress, my boys seem to be all about what they want and less about what the colleges want. And by the way S1 did lighten his load in college 2nd semester. He took 18 credit hours in the fall and realized that was not smart and dropped to 15 for 2nd semester. He’s been keeping it at 15-16 (tbd labs) ever since and doing well and on target to graduate in 4 years. At his school 12-19 credit hours is considered full time.</p>
<p>Next semester, S will be taking the toughest course in his major, a course that requires an 80-100 page paper. And he also will be continuing to work about 12 hours a week plus have major tech roles in theater productions.</p>
<p>He loves his major and is happy about all of this. I am happy for S. I didn’t have that kind of intellectual bliss until I was in grad school and got to sink so deeply into a field that I loved.</p>