According to the catalog you download from their website, they list required classes a student should take in high school in order to attend UA. My D19 is thinking of attending UA and is currently scheduling her senior year HS classes.
Most of the requirements are not a big deal, because they match the classes she needs to graduate high school (e.g., 4 years of English, 3 years of math and science.)
The one that is worrisome is 4 years of social studies. D19’s high school only requires 3 years of social studies. She is currently scheduled to finish 3.5 years of social studies (world history, US history, econ, government, and psychology). She needs to know if she has to take another half credit of a social studies class or if UA is lenient in considering what classes are social studies. She has two classes that she would argue fit under the category of social studies (teen leadership and interpersonal communication). IOW, if they consider psychology to be a social studies class, why wouldn’t they consider the other two. As she put it, “interpersonal communication is literally the study of being social”).
The catalog provides no definition of “social studies”
She will otherwise meet all requirements for admission to the honors college of UA (ACT and GPA).
Will they really look closely at each person’s transcript to determine if they have 4 years of social studies? That wouldn’t seem to be a good use of their time. Especially since every school has classes with different names that may be the same thing.
So my son took: world history 9th grade, none 10th grade, US History 11th grade and government/civics then economics 12th grade for half year each. I count that as 3 years of history. He was accepted to UA with scholarship and honors program. I never even looked at that as I thought history was pretty consistent. I do know most schools want 4 years of math and English, and STEM fields like 4 years of science.
That’s what I thought would happen. It seems that many school districts only require 3 years of social studies. I know both of D19’s school districts required only 3 years. And many people I asked online also said their kid only took 3 years. So UA requiring 4 years is a little odd.
With 5000 + incoming freshman, it doesn’t seem likely they are going to carefully peruse each transcript. Especially since they are a strict statistical admission school, as opposed to holistic admissions.
My D19 will have 4 years of math, Spanish, and English, and 5 years of science, so those aren’t a worry to her.
@gusmahler
My DS ran into this issue. They absolutely do peruse the transcript! UA was able to use other classes to satisfy his missing requirement. If I recall correctly, they used his excess semesters of foreign language to satisfy his missing social studies semester. It held up his application at the time, so it may be worth talking to someone in admissions ahead of time.
UA’s requirements are based on the requirements for Alabama HS students, so they are very aware that not all states have the same.
Thanks. D19 ended up choosing AP world geography instead of interpersonal communications.Solves that problem. Unfortunately gives her a new problem of an additional AP class and test, though.
@flatKansas when did they do that review? My son has been accepted, awarded scholarship, etc. and not a word about history classes. And, we have only two years of foreign language.
@ChattaChia UA only requires 1 year of language (see page 36 of the undergraduate catalog.
@chattachia they did it before he was accepted, so if your son was accepted it should be fine
I just received an email from the Texas rep for UA. She said that this is a common situation for Texas students because most school districts only require 3 years of social studies. However, since most school districts require 2 years of foreign language and UA only requires 1, UA will consider a second year of a foreign language to count for your 4th credit of social studies.
Interesting application of “foreign language” but we did have two, so that must be how it was applied. I wonder if anyone has actually been rejected for this?