<p>My school doesn't offer classes designated as honors. It offers pre-AP courses which are more advanced than normal courses, but not as rigorous as AP.</p>
<p>Will colleges view pre-AP courses as "honors" when looking at my transcript?</p>
<p>Difficult to say, and they’re probably of limited worth. Our school doesn’t do honors either, though they offer a few “Advanced” classes to distinguish them from more elementary versions of the same class. They are mostly at the freshman or sophomore level. APs are really what counts, unless your school doesn’t offer them.</p>
<p>My son’s school has pre-AP English and Bio, I am not sure about colleges viewing them as Honors.</p>
<p>Honors and pre-AP were synonymous at my school. So I think colleges will consider them “honors” courses, but also courses that are not as rigorous as AP courses-- they’ll understand that they fall somewhere between on-level courses and AP courses. Your school also sends along a school profile that lists all the levels of courses offered, and colleges can evaluate accordingly from there.</p>
<p>At my kids’ HS, pre-AP designates courses for freshmen and sophomores, in general, that are more advanced than the regular courses. For example a freshman can choose “9th grade English” or “Pre-AP 9th grade English” and in the latter, have more summer reading, write more and longer essays, and move through more material over the year. Pre-AP is offered in math and science and English, not in history or foreign language, at this school.</p>
<p>As our HS allows very few underclassmen to take AP courses, pre-AP courses are the most rigorous available in most cases, until junior year.</p>
<p>So while our HS doesn’t weight them differently, they are the harder courses for frosh and sophs.</p>
<p>We don’t have courses designated as Honors so pre-AP = Honors.</p>
<p>^^ Sounds very similar to our school, which I described above, but not in as much detail. Only we call the Pre-AP course Advanced, but it’s the same idea, it’s the course leading up to the AP course.</p>
<p>How the college will view the courses depends greatly on how your high school describes the courses in your School Profile. Any family should be able to request your School Profile from your guidance counselor. Colleges depend on the Profiles to give them vital info about how your school may rank or not rank, etc. My kids’ HS for example, does not rank, and limits AP courses to one in 10th, three in 11th and 4 in 12th; discourages awards; and focuses heavily on collaborative learning and authentic learning. All of this info is in the School Profile.</p>