Keeping this simple: New York student looking to go to a public college out of state (West coast).
Some honors classes are in preparation for regents, while others are 2-year courses preparing for regents.
Questions for the applications:
- Should I say that the class is honors or regents? Which one is viewed better?
- Should I state that both years of a 2 year non-honors course is regents, or keep them both as regular?
Typically, I’d think that regents courses are rated lower than honors, as that’s how it’s generally considered in my school. However, I’ve heard that many colleges view regents as important prep for college and may want that over honors. Thoughts?
Any specific West coast colleges you are interested?
For the California UC’s and Cal states, Honors or Regents are not recognized as Weighted courses for OOS applicants in their GPA calculation however you should list them exactly as how they are listed on your HS transcript.
A few UCs, UW, and USC at the moment. My high school uses an unweighted GPA.
The issue with reporting as it is on the transcript is that it’s simply listed as R. For example: “Global Hist 10 R”, which could be Regents or Regular. Honors courses say honors and not regents though (“Chemistry Honors”) so those would be kept as honors. Not sure about other R courses like Global and US history (regents after 10th and 12th grade, respectively) and French and English (no regents and regents after 11th, but cancelled out by AP English).
Would it be safer to report them just as Regular unless it explicitly says Regents? (eg: Earth Science Regents)
I cannot answer for UW or USC, but for the UC’s, you can only mark courses as Honors if they are UC approved which for OOS applicants is not applicable. At least for the UC’s, you would mark as regular since the Honors drop only lists AP, IB or HL (UC approved Honors).
If the transcript lists Earth Science Regents, you can type that name into the UC academic history.
Also, you do realize that the UC’s offer little to no financial aid as an OOS applicant, so you will close to full pay at $65K/year to attend?
Thank you for the feedback. Do you know anything about for the Coalition/Common application?
Past forums users stated that they should be marked as HL for now, as the application reader would understand that they aren’t UC approved and that honors credit wouldn’t be afforded for them regardless.
The Earth Science Regents course can’t be typed into UC academic history as it would go in the 7/8th grade sections, which don’t have the option for a non-LOTE/Math course, which is an additional challenge.
The financial aspect will be a problem, but for reasons I can’t discuss here, location is more important, regardless of how illogical that seems.
Follow up, since you seem to know about UCs: Where would a Science Research elective go? Year 2 is dual enrollment and would go under the college name. Year 1 was purely high school enrollment… would that be an interdisciplinary elective, interdisciplinary laboratory science, or one of the science electives? (Biology, integrated, physical)
@AvgZing: I am not familiar with Coalition/Common Application only the UC and Cal State Apps.
For the UC application, I would put in the category G- College Prep elective.