“I believe she might be able to take AP Bio or AP Chem instead of AP Stats her senior year, but is it really worth it considering it’s a college/scholarships apps year - would it even make a difference at those tippy top schools? Thanks!”
Check with the GC so you’re clear on the rigorous designations. That being said, one AP science is more than enough for non-STEM, and it’s totally fine even for STEM. Taking AP Spanish as a junior is pretty impressive as well, I don’t believe most of what adcoms say, but when they say that you don’t need 10-15 APs, I believe them. However they have to be the right APs, and your daughter has them. Whether it’s worth it has to be decided between yourselves and the GC. Good luck!
@happy1, thanks. D is applying to only one super elite school where she is a legacy and they have an extremely strong FL department that she is interested in. Her legacy status won’t give her more than a second person’s application read, so she is essentially an unhooked applicant. She has some very strong preferences as to geographic location, departmental strength, study abroad opportunities a college provides, etc., so her school list is quite limited. While it may change, right now she is very opinionated, I.e. “no sense in applying to Berkeley, since I won’t go there even if it’s the only school I am admitted to.” She does like one other top UC and ruled out four others, I am holding my fingers crossed that two more UC’s would actually make her list. When I talk to her about safeties, she claims a community college would be a true safety since then it would give her a better chance to transfer into UC she likes than any other college. I’d love to have her home for another year of community college, but not sure she would really enjoy that as much as she thinks she would
@ucbalumnus, yes, I know. She wants to double-major in something like IR or global studies to maker her more marketable, but doesn’t want to go to college with sub-par FL dept of her choice even if that school has stellar IR/PoliSci dept. Again, priorities change. My plan as a mom is to let her apply REA to the lottery school, UC’s and another lower reach (allowed under REA policy due to scholarship component), and then in December, if she is rejected (and 95% chance is, she will), maybe she would consider more schools. Will see - I am not looking forward to senior year
@VickiSoCal, the school does, but restricts it to heritage speakers only. I’d like the counselor to mention it in her letter, along with the fact that school only allows kids to take journalism if they are in a specific track chosen freshman year (D did not choose that track because it has other restrictions). Whether the GC agrees/remembers to do that, I have no idea. I wonder if it makes sense explaining it in the additional info section of the CommonApp just in case, but not going to worry about it for now. Thanks for the suggestion though!
It’s July, but I hope you know they grow a lot between the end of jr year into September. And then from Sept to Dec 31. My first didn’t even visit what became her first choice until Oct or so.
If you use Addl Info, keep it brief. I don’t now what the journalism connection is (eg, academic or as an EC,) but if the more competitive college target doesn’t offer journalism, be careful with the wording.
@lookingforward, yes, I am totally counting/looking forward to that growth and maturity, but I don’t think anything would take that one high reach app off the table, so preparing for the toughest case scenario I guess.
@typiCAmom I would be LIVID. Any student who does well in AP Spanish Lang in junior year at our school can take AP Spanish Lit their senior year. In fact the teacher is always trying to get more kids to take it.
I’m with @VickiSoCal on this one. IME, AP Spanish Literature, which relatively few schools even offer, is not one of those classes that is traditionally filled to capacity/overenrolled. And even if it were, limiting it to heritage speakers ranks as among the dumbest rules I have heard of. I would certainly challenge policy that with the school.
@skieurope, I was more frustrated about AP Art History - our school lists it in their profile, but every year they cancel it “due to under-enrollment.” That was one of the classes D wanted to take, even offered to go around and collect signatures, until GC told her point blank “we’ll probably cancel the class anyway because we only have one Art teacher who will have her hands full with regular art classes. Oh, well…
Now that I think of it, I wonder if our AP Spanish Lit is the same fan thin as AP Art History and heritage speaking kids who ask for it are told it is cancelled due to under-enrollment…
That one is frustrating, but (more) understandable. Every school has a salary budget that they need to live within and, assuming the HS has an arts requirement, required courses need to be covered before elective courses. But, yeah, if the school never intends to offer it, they really should not say they offer it.
Perhaps if they allowed anyone with a sufficiently high grade in AP Spanish language or sufficiently high score on that AP test, as well as others (including heritage speakers) who pass placement testing, to take it, they may get more enrollment. But then maybe they would have to offer the course (as opposed to cancelling it “due to lack of enrollment”).
@typiCAmom , when I first read your post, I thought you were asking for advice about HYPS etc (“top 5” colleges), but later I see you saying she is considering a UC and possibly more than one UC.
I’m not able to offer any advice about applying to top 5 private colleges, but my S18 is a humanities kid who will be attending UCLA in the fall. So, I will share his anecdotal experience with this issue in case it’s helpful.
He took all the math offered by the high school (AP Calc AB, AP Stats), but nothing additional. For science, he took only three years: bio, AP bio, and chem. He took a fair number of other AP/Honors and some community college classes, but nothing else in math or science. He ended up being admitted to all UCs he applied to.
He was concerned about not taking a fourth year of science, but really did not want to take it and decided he was o.k. with whatever impact that might have on admissions. He did receive the most demanding/rigorous designation from the school counselor.
@lookingforward You know, I think you’re right. We might have inadvertently started down a wrong path here since the OP didn’t suggest that the kid wanted to do another year of Spanish past AP Spanish (and unless she’s interested in it, there’s no reason she needs to do so).
Just adding one thing because my time to edit post #36 has expired. Although my S18’s school counselor ticked the most demanding box on the Common App, that’s not something that is provided to UCs, so it would not be relevant to UC admission.
