<p>//ugh retyping this because CC had logged me out automatically when I clicked preview post :/</p>
<p>Anyways, I'm an upcoming Junior at hs. I am needing some advice/suggestions about the choices I should make during my Junior year. Let me just post my stats so far before continuing..</p>
<p>Freshman year : Hon. Geometry, Hon. World History, Hon. Bio, Hon. English 9, Art 1, Spanish 2, etc extracurricular</p>
<p>Soph year : Hon. Pre-Calc, AP Gov, Hon. Chem, Hon. English 10, Art 2, Spanish 3, etc extracurricular + because my school does not have any AP art related classes I could take, I prepared for AP Drawing by myself (5)</p>
<p>Junior year (upcoming) : Calc AB, APush, Ap English lang/comp, VPA (magnet art program that takes up 3 periods), yearbook</p>
<p>My concern is that do art colleges really count for academics? My parents always pushed me to be one of those doctors or lawyers, so even if they know that I'm planning to attend an art college, they are still pushing me to take the highest class available in school. I had to figure out the process for the AP drawing by myself because my parents had no idea about how it works, and nor are they fluent in english. I had barely gotten that thing in due to my finals being on the same week as the due date and I literally spent about 1 hour each on all my concentration pieces because of it. </p>
<p>Up until my sophomore year, I didn't know what kind of path I wanted to take with college so I tried to keep up my academics above average and get as much as extra curricular stuff to widen my chances at whatever I end up deciding to do. I do have over 500 service hours as of now aside from 75 that is needed for graduation and is deeply involved with my school as a part of student government association and etc. After I decided I wanted to go to a art school and reading/researching about a lot of the colleges, it made me feel like I should from now on concentrate more on my art than my academics/extra curriculars? Most of the APs that I would be taking won't be counted towards as credits anyways which is a waste of money I think :/
Sure it would look good on my resume and give me higher gpa, but it is the bane of my life and gives me no extra time to work on art. So I thought if these things are not what art colleges really look and give importance to, I would rather bring down my classes to honors and have more fun creating art for my portfolio. </p>
<p>The colleges that I am really interested in visiting and is planning to visit is RISD, MICA (already visited during open house), SVA, CalArts and so on (illustration major to be specific) and I'm not really interested in liberal arts?? I don't know it just feels like I'm having a life crisis right now deciding things haha. I was also thinking maybe I'll attend to one of the pre-college programs my Junior year even though I'm not sure if that would help at all in any aspects? (I would appreciate any recommendations for pre-college programs for uprising seniors in this case.) I regret not going to one this summer but as usual I was out of the country traveling :/</p>
<p>Any advices / tips would be appreciated!</p>