<p>I'm having a bit of trouble deciding about a certain course in my senior year.</p>
<p>Currently, my course list looks like this:
College level Spanish
AP Physics
AP Calc
AP Computer Science
AP US Government
Robotics Honors</p>
<p>The class I take issue with is AP Gov. I signed up for the course because I know a challenging curriculum in senior year is important and I wanted the AP credit. However, I really don't like politics. Furthermore, it seems to me that the AP Social Studies classes give by far the most work out of any other class, so much so that the vast majority of my work load would be in my least favorite subject.</p>
<p>Because of this, I'm considering dropping AP Gov and instead taking Economics, which is a one semester course, and another one semester social studies course for the second half of the year. However, I'm worried that taking an easier class will weaken my program's strength in the eyes of colleges. Also, I'm not taking any english courses, so I'm afraid that dropping Gov would also make my course list less diverse.</p>
<p>Simply put, my question is this: would it significantly hurt my admissions chances if I dropped AP Gov for easier social studies courses? Also, would my program's bias towards math and science hurt my chances? (I plan to major in physics, I don't know if that changes the answer though)</p>
<p>Talk to your school guidence counselor. They are the ones who have to fill in the box on the recommendation form that indicates whether you took the ‘most rigorous’ courseload possible or not. Whether dropping the AP class would also drop you into a ‘less rigorous’ category depends on what’s typical at your school. You are evaluated against what your school offers and the norms for that student body.</p>
<p>My gut reaction, by the way, is to get worried that you aren’t taking English. Have you completed 4 years of high school English early somehow? If not, that’s going to be a bigger issue for you than AP Gov vs. other social studies options.</p>
<p>Yes, English is the bigger question. Unless you have already taken all of the English courses available in your high school, that is likely to look like a bigger omission or question mark than choosing social studies courses.</p>
<ol>
<li>You need English unless you’ve exhausted the curriculum.</li>
<li>I’d recommend keeping the AP Government, but unless your counselor will indicate that your schedule was less rigorous by dropping it, I doubt it will much of a difference.</li>
<li>Government courses are not necessarily politics, and are definitely not the crap that they call “politics” today.</li>
</ol>