Junior Year + Senior Year Classes Help!

Applying to College
1

<p>I attend a competitive boarding school and I was wondering if my planned courses look good for college. Students at our school normally take 5 classes but if you are on honors, you can petition to take 6 (I'm on honors). I am planning on majoring in human rights / international relations. Some of the colleges that I like right now include Colgate, Occidental, Fordham, Trinity, Bard, BC, George Washington, Macalester, Brandeis, Tufts, Oberlin, and Columbia. I'm required to play three sports at my school and I'm also an editor for the newspaper, involved in three clubs, and do community service once a week. I will be a junior next year.</p>

<p>Sophomore Year:</p>

<p>AP Calculus AB
AP Biology
Sophomore English
Sculpture
Spanish 2
Religion (1 semester)</p>

<p>For junior year the core classes I will take are:</p>

<p>AP Statistics
AP U.S. History
Spanish 3
Junior English</p>

<p>Then I have two class spots left, but three possible options:</p>

<p>1) Two Semester Religion Electives
2) Two Semester Social Science Electives
3) AP Psychology</p>

<p>I wanted to take numbers 1 + 2 because they related to my interest in human rights but should I take AP Psych just to have another AP. I am interested in psychology but not as much as the elective classes I could takes. Does my schedule look weak without a third AP?</p>

<p>For senior year, I had planned:</p>

<p>AP Human Geo (or AP Gov)
AP Spanish Language
English Electives (or AP Lit)
Science Electives (or AP Phy or AP Chem)
Independent Study in Human Rights </p>

<p>I'm only planning to take 5 classes senior year since most will require a lot of work but I don't know how many APs would be too much to handle especially at a competitive boarding school with all my activities. The independent study would require as much time (if not more) than an AP class.</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

2

<p>Any ideas?</p>

3

<p>I wouldn’t say it’s weak, especially with three sports and other involvements. But if you want to study human rights I could see how psychology could be a beneficial class to take. But choose between religion and psych, keep the social sciences courses.</p>

4

<p>Take as many AP classes as possible, regardless of whether they “fit” your “intended major”. I really think it helped me a lot in the college admissions (took 7 APs senior year, 3 junior year and 1 soph. year). </p>

<p>The truth is that colleges probably aren’t going to care which electives you take in high school, unless those electives involve substantial out-of-class research/ service projects etc.
Most schools don’t admit you to Human Rights specifically… They just admit you to the Social Sciences college.</p>

5

<p>I didn’t think it was that important to take a lot of AP classes. At my school all of the classes are considered to be at honors level (except for the ones designated AP). Would it be better to take two interesting electives that I’m really passionate about or to take an AP that I’m also interested in but less so than the electives just for the purposes of college admission?</p>