Rigorous Course Concerns?

Applying to College
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<p>I’m a rising senior and I go to a small public high school, ranked in Newsweek’s Top 100. It’s an IB school, therefore offers the full IB Diploma courses, to be taken in junior and senior years. However, I’m not a full IB student. I faced a dilemma in sophomore year when choosing my courses: I really wanted to take full IB, but by doing so that would mean I would have had no room in my schedule for the next two years for any other electives; it would be straight IB classes. I really wanted to take Anatomy & Physiology (at that point I was interested in becoming a Pathologist or something, and really wanted to learn more about the human body), Psychology (always have found the way the mind works fascinating), as well as Physics (also looked pretty interesting).</p>

<p>So thus, I didn’t take full IB. But I didn't exactly slack off either, I’m still taking four IB classes (out of the normal six + TOK). Last year, I took IB Bio and Lit (both Higher Level), and this year I plan to take IB Bio, Lit, Math, and French (the latter two are Standard Level). I decided not to take HL IB History of the Americas and HL IB Art or Music (and TOK..). My school is pretty small and focuses more on IB, so it doesn’t offer many designated AP classes. Nonetheless, I still took the AP Psych, AP USH and AP Lit tests, even though I just took the regular class equivalent (except for AP Lit, which was IB Lit class). I also took a Dual Credit course with a local state university for French 5 & 6 (but I would’ve had to take French 5 & 6 anyways to prepare for IB French).</p>

<p>My question is, since my school is IB but I’m not doing full IB, I guess that means my counselor automatically would have to check off “Very Demanding Course Level” instead of “Most Demanding”, right? I’m planning on explaining to her how tough it was to pick between the two options, and make sure she knows I took all those AP tests and such, so I’m hoping she’ll tell them about it and explain that. But even so, will that negatively effect me, in the eyes of the admissions committee? My school is a well-renowned college prep high school, none of our standard classes are really “easy”, anyone in the region knows that, and I didn’t take any blowoff slacker electives like Piano & Guitar or something, I took all actual classes. What do you guys think? Colleges always claim "take courses that interest you!", so I did lol. Does that count for something?</p>

<p>The main two schools on my radar right now are University of Chicago and Duke, btw.</p>

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<p>Wow, I’m also an IB student so sorry this didn’t work out for you. Too bad your school didn’t offer IB physics or IB psychology, my school has both of those. Just FYI though, unless it’s extremely special cases (being ahead of math for 3 years or something) when you are a junior you are in SL classes (Bio SL, Lit SL, etc), and when you are a senior you are in HLs.</p>

<p>As for your situation…I do think the case is you have to take X number of higher level courses to be considered most demanding, see if you fall under criteria. Most colleges will like to see most demanding over very demanding.</p>

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<p>Hmm, that’s interesting. At my school, they just call all the two-year courses HL and the one-year ones SL, I guess cause there’s only like two SL classes or something. Or cause you have to take atleast up to Trig to take IB Math, so some kids get to take it in either junior or senior year depending on their placement. Same with foreign language, you have to take 5&6 before taking any IB class, so it depends what you did freshman year.
And my school is small so there’s no choices for which IB classes you take, there’s a set list; aka your science WILL be IB Bio, your english WILL be IB World Lit, etc.</p>

<p>Ohh I hope so! Cause four is almost there! Maybe my counselor will check it off anyways cause she likes me… :slight_smile: lol</p>