It was a Herculean task to get my D’s senior schedule to work out with her DE classes. The original plan was for her to take AP Calc BC, AP Physics, Senior Engineering Project (or other eng class) and “something interesting” at HS, while taking two other “something interesting” classes at college.
Without diving into the dirty details, she’s ended up with the Calc and Physics AP classes, but instead of a real eng class she’s a teacher’s aide for Intro to Eng (pass/fail). At college she has an electrical engineering class and a humanities class. So we went from six classes to four and a half-ish. It is impossible to fit another HS class and too expensive to add another college class.
Should she use the “additional info” area to explain how this schedule came to be, or would that come over negatively? I’m thinking I should get her to do something valuable with her extra time, but I’m not really sure what. School just started this week, so I don’t know yet how easy/hard it will be for her.
The college classes only last one semester, right? What would she take in the spring?
I don’t think engineering classes should interfere with a high school student taking core classes in English, history, foreign language, etc. and I think selective colleges would generally agree. Has she already completed the available AP classes in these subjects?
If you want to add something else right now, it might be possible for her to do an independent study of some subject with a teacher at the high school.
It’s not necessary to continue taking foreign language if the student has already completed the number of levels required for admission to the colleges she plans to apply to. Not taking any social studies is mildly weird but is probably explainable for a student with this one’s unusual interests. Not taking English astonishes me. I thought you absolutely had to have four years of English to graduate from high school.
As far as core classes, she has satisfied all the requirements for the colleges to which she’s applying (she doubled up on English earlier). She’s not applying to any super-selective colleges, so perhaps the requirements aren’t as intensive. Most of her schools (other than some reaches) are in the 50%+ acceptance rate category. I’m not sure if this makes a difference.
I don’t expect her to get the “most rigorous” box checked. She’s done all her STEM classes at AP or highest level offered and English at advanced level, but her other classes have been at the regular level. I think three or four of those could have been AP.
We don’t have a definite plan yet for next semester, though she’ll most likely take another college engineering class. Hopefully the scheduling will work out better.
I will definitely talk to the GC about this. I think an “explanation” of the schedule will look better coming from her than from D. I also like the idea of an independent study. She’s taking renewable energy engineering as her college class, which is the field she wants to go into. That might be a great way to integrate independent study with the high school – take a project she likes from that class and make it into something bigger.