Taking college courses over the summer can increase your HS rigor when applying to colleges. Would these be dual enrollment courses? Will they show up on your HS transcript?
A warning about taking college courses: Make sure you get A’s in these courses since they will be on your permanent college record. This means if you apply to graduate or professional schools, you will have disclose these grades.
Colleges do not expect HS students to take courses outside their normal curriculum so your current HS schedule looks rigorous and competitive if you have get good grades.
You are better off getting involved in meaningful EC’s during the summer than taking college courses. Schools do not want academic drones.
I can’t speak to Harvard in particular b/c I didn’t apply there, but for students applying to the Ivies/T20s, it means that you are taking most (don’t have to take all) of the AP/IB courses offered at your school.
Let’s consider some examples:
If your school only offers 3 courses, selective colleges would expect you to take 2-3 of them, and would consider that as “most demanding,” however it’s a good idea to supplement this with outside courses/honors courses (some districts will pay for community college classes for Juniors/Seniors, check w/your school.)
However, if you go to a school like mine with 18-20 AP classes, highly selective colleges will expect you to take as many of those as possible (most students going to Ivies/T20s from my school took ~14-15, BUT YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY, especially if you have other demanding extracurricular activities like varsity sports etc.) and wouldn’t accept the same 3 courses as the earlier example applicant as “most demanding,” b/c you have access to more courses—and are expected to take advantage of that fact.
Also note that your HS counselor will assess your course-load as demanding etc. as a part of their LOR forms in the Common App, so if you have the chance to take a more demanding course (AP/IB vs. Honors/Regular,) take it if you’re confident you can get an A or a B in the course and would enjoy the course (don’t take AP english unless you love reading lol.)
As @skieurope says, don’t do this, UNLESS you’re motivated by an actual interest in the subject and wouldn’t be able to take it during the regular school year. Also, academics is only one part of the puzzle: colleges look to the remainder of your application for proof that you will take part in campus life, especially if the school is a residential campus like Harvard where the majority of students live on-campus.
I did not take any AP classes during the summer (my school only offered non-AP classes during the summer,) but I did take pre-calculus over the summer at the local community college AND IT WAS THE WORST DECISION OF MY LIFE.
I don’t like math very much, and the community college class, due to less class time compared to regular HS, did not cover some concepts referenced in AP Calculus AB, and the class was much, much harder for me than it would have been w/o having skipped pre-calculus over the summer. I didn’t gain any real advantage from doing this, apart from having finished BC as a Junior and being able to take Stats only as a Senior, a class I wouldn’t have taken if I was taking BC as a Senior. I
If you genuinely love math and are considering skipping algebra I or II that isn’t as crucial to calculus as pre-calc, then by all means go ahead, but make sure you understand what concepts might not be covered during the summer and you are expected to make up on your own time.
I’m sorry for asking too many questions. The reason I’m asking about AP Courses is because at my school they only offer them to Juniors and Seniors , and I’ve read on other College Confidential threads that Harvard hopefuls take at least 10 APs. Also because when I’m a Junior I will be scheduled to take Honors PreCal, Honors Physics and Honors Spanish 4 along with only two APs English Lang and APUSH.
Not everything people post on CC is fact based. This is an open forum and anyone can give their opinion.
Listen to the college counselors and the professionals. You will be assessed within the context of your school. Period. You don’t need to find courses outside of what’s offered to take more AP courses.
My D’s HS severely restricted APs too. 0 for freshmen, 1 for sophomores (only option was AP euro), 3 for juniors, 3 for seniors. That’s it. Her school still sends students to Harvard.
Once again, you cannot take what is not offered. Restricting AP courses to juniors and seniors is not unique. After all, they are meant to be college level courses. Whether all are at that level is another topic. Additionally many high schools restrict number of APs per year. Every single AO will review your application in the context of what was available to you.
As a side note, the APs that 9th and 10th graders typically take are almost universally viewed as fluff, like APHG.
Harvard does not require 10 APs for admission. Your fellow HS students are not the font of all knowledge. Even some of the adults on CC give bad info. I personally have been wrong at times. But this is not one of those times. ?
You need to meet the basic requirements of the colleges you’ll be applying to, typically one course in math, one in science, one in English, and perhaps one in a foreign language. The most demanding schedule means that you take the most challenging course you can take in each of these subject areas (whether AP or not), consistent with your progression in that area. For the remaining electives, select the most challenging courses based on primarily your interest and overall objective, not because it happens to be an AP course or whatever.
Thank you for the helpful advice. I was just concerned that I would have to go to summer school for PreCal and Physics to fit more APs in my Junior year schedule. After all I don’t want to overwhelm myself.
Pdecalc is a prerequisite for calc. Depending on the HS, physics may be a prerequisite for AO Chem, and is almost universally a prerequisite for AP Physics C. There is no requirement that these be taken in the summer.
On another of your threads, you say you are applying as a history major so why are you jamming in all these STEM APs?
On most college applications, you will not have an opportunity to list minors that you are interested in, ONLY major(s) or broad fields of interest. If you are interested history, I would recommend you take more AP Social Sciences (Psychology, US/World/European History, Economics, Government) vs. STEM b/c it will make it easier to show through your application that you have a genuine interest in the field. Otherwise, it’s sort of like if your high school offers multiple CS classes and you never take one, but apply to college for CS: admissions offices have to read through tens of thousands of applications, so they’re really looking to your course schedule as proof that it’s both challenging but also in the right fields that interest you; you don’t have to take every AP class offered by your school, and at a lot of high schools, that is impossible to do so.
Regarding your question about pre-calculus & physics over the summer, none of us know about your school’s policies more than your guidance counselor does, so it would be more beneficial to ask her. For example, some schools will allow you to self-study certain courses during the summer to test-into the higher level course in the sequence (usually math.) From my experience, however, I would not recommend you take classes during the summer: the time can be better spent doing something that interests you, such as volunteering, internships, hobbies etc. Colleges will NOT expect you to be taking summer classes, and will value more what other activities you do outside of schoolwork, as @skieurope said in an earlier post.
Also, as @momofsenior1 says in an earlier post, not everything on CC is true OR applies to your situation. There are thousands of high schools across the country, and grading policies and curriculum vary widely, even within the same city: colleges will take into account your school’s curriculum and limits on AP classes, given that other applicants from your school would have been held to those same limits, and guidance counselors will typically write about the school’s curriculum in their Common App LOR.
TL; DR: It’s not as imperative to take AP classes outside of your field(s) of interest as long as you are challenging yourself in your field(s) of interest. But if you have the opportunity to take a honors course vs. regular outside of your field of interest, definitely do that if you’re interested in the subject but don’t want to devote the same time/resources as for an AP Class, and are confident that you can get an A/B.
If you are already on track to finish calculus BC in high school, it is unlikely to be worth the extra effort to finish calculus BC any earlier.
Maybe, just maybe, it may be worth the extra effort if (a) you are really passionate about learning math (not because you think it will “look good to colleges”), (b) there is a college nearby where you can take math beyond calculus BC while in high school, (c) you likely college majors include math beyond calculus BC, and (d) the usual pacing of high school math is boringly slow, and you are earning easy A+ grades with minimal effort. But that would be an exceptional case.
a) Not really passionate about math, but I plan to study economics, which sort of require the extra math. I also hope to double-major or minor in either CS or math.
b) I already took BC online via JHU CTY, and I can take online linear algebra, multivariable, and partial differential equation. I can also take the classes from nearby jc or Cal State.
d) Math is pretty easy, but it’s still hours spent on homework etc. that I can spend elsewhere. I can say I’ll invest those hours in EC, but they’re really going towards tiktok and video games. I’d do much less of the extra math if it doesn’t pay back in admission “points”.
