<p>I'll try to make this short because I don't feel like typing a lot, and I know you guys probably don't feel like reading a lot.</p>
<p>Long story short, my school is pretty bad. Urban school, poor performing, etc. Going into my senior year, I have taken 6 AP classes. My senior year, I plan on taking 5 more. I finished up my schedule with a counselor today, and he told me for the schools I want to apply to (the biggies) my schedule lacked rigor because despite taking 5 AP classes, I'm leaving half of my day blank. </p>
<p>Now, I can't take any more AP classes others either don't fit my schedule or are language classes. He said it would be better if I put more classes - any classes -in my schedule to make it look as full as possible. The problem is, if I add classes, I'll be stuck in a class that is boring, not challenging and filled with people who don't know that 11x11 is 121. I kid you not.</p>
<p>I don’t get how 5 ap classes can “lack rigor”. Colleges will get your transcript. They aren’t going to get your daily schedule to judge when you went to Science, when you took lunch, when you went home. If he just means you need to have 6 classes instead of 5, pick an elective you like - art, music, whatever.</p>
<p>My understanding is that adcoms consider whether you took advantage of the most rigorous courses that were available at your school. If your school had limited options, that’s not your fault. Seems that your school does offer quite an array of AP courses – other than language, which others COULD you take (schedule permitting)? Don’t take a course just for exploratory purposes unless you see something in it you’re really motivated to learn. (My son decided to take an art course to fill out his schedule and practically got kicked out of school for getting into an argument with his teacher over how work was to be evaluated. A 1-day informal suspension didn’t go on his record. And a B in art didn’t damage his record since this was in no way a major area of his interest.)</p>
<p>So I’m sympathetic with your position on one front. If you take a boring non-AP course when there’s an AP alternative, there’s a reasonable chance you’ll get a B, and that would be doubly bad. But take a close look at what interesting or challenging courses you might yet add to your schedule.</p>
<p>That said, there’s a lot more to your credentials and application than your courses. If you’ve got a major involvement in a time-intensive EC, and you’re learning and achieving something from that, that’s a plus relative to mere filler on your class schedule.</p>
<p>Your problem here is not that your schedule isn’t rigorous enough, it’s that you are taking 4 study periods.</p>
<p>It seems to me like you’ve never taken an elective? The one thing you’re lacking is dedication to the arts. Yes, you have taken hard classes. But it looks good to also be dedicated to something else. For example, if you had taken an art class each year, and built your way up to AP art. Then you could have dispersed these 4 study periods into one each year, and filled it with an elective class you enjoyed.</p>
<p>You pushed yourself too hard too fast, and now you have nothing left to do. My advice would be to take some art classes (not necessarily drawing, but something like dance, theater, choir, photography, animation, band, ceramics, anything really). That way you can show that you’re well rounded and not just an AP hoarder.</p>