<p>"Uh, where does it say that?"</p>
<p>In the context of applying to the "ultra selectives" such as Y, you're in extremely heavy competition. Not having a strong science suite in your transcript, especially if it's available at your high school shouts one thing: not academically motivated.</p>
<p>You're dead in the water before the whistle blows.</p>
<p>That being said, there are many, many quality colleges that WILL be a good match. But not the ultra selectives.</p>
<p>What classes count as strong sciences? What if I were to take them my senior year?</p>
<p>What if I'm not interested in science at all? I mean I've taken Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science and AP Chemistry, but where does it say that I have to take "at least two lab sciences"?
I don't think that is fair or makes sense if you're not a science person. You should be able to focus on what you enjoy.</p>
<p>Spiffy: Sorry I overstated. You have a goodly selection of sciences as far as I can tell. I'm referring to someone who only knocks out Bio and maybe Earth Sciences -- basically taking the bare minimum.</p>
<p>If you clearly aren't going to pursue sciences, just be sure your transcript is strong in the other areas. I don't think your sci choices are weak or would hurt you per se.</p>
<p>My schedule has been extremely awkard for the past three years (15 APs, no science ones), so for some reason, I am stuck with taking all three AP sciences my senior year. I hope not having taken them earlier does not have a negative effect on admissions. That was my original question.</p>
<p>kyzan,
Although I'm not as much of an "insider" as T26E4, I hope I'll be able to give my perspective on your questions. How does one define rigorous? Everything's compared with that of your classmates, so if your school offers courses at the AP level, then you should take that over Honours IF you want the most rigorous courseload. And you can work down the scale from there. However, if you are not going into the science, then IN MY OPINION it doesn't hurt to have few science courses, as long as your course selectioni correlates to your areas of study. Of course, Yale and other schools would like to see well-rounded applicants (and not to mention that one should try anyway to take courses from a wide array of subjects to broaden his knowledge and perspectives), but they certainly don't slap on a formulaic high school courseload when judging applicants. </p>
<p>If you want a convincing example, I guess you can have my story. In Ontario, Canada, the graduation requirement is general sciences (combining bio, phy, chem, and astronomy) in Gr.9 and 10, which are really shallow in depth. I applied to Yale with those courses and one honours chemistry course in Gr.11, yet I still got in because all my other courses were strongly social science/humanities-oriented. :)</p>
<p><em>waves flag for strongly social science/humanities-oriented classes</em></p>
<p>:D</p>
<p>I'm an odd person. I am heavily math and literature/philosophy/history/classical art focused. I didn't think much of sciences until my late sophomore year in high school, when I realized how many applications multivariable calculus had in physics. Needless to say, I have become more fascinated by science as of recently and wanted to take more science classes, though the physics class seems a bit too easy.</p>