I am at the end of my junior year in high school and signing up for classes. When I was in 8th grade, the high school I attend now was offering a ‘dual enrollment’ type deal for highly ranked 8th grade students at local middle schools where you would take freshman math and English at the high school and the rest of you classes at your middle school. This was sold to us as a way to free up our schedules as seniors, because by that point (the end of junior year) we would already have all 4 required years of math and English under our belts. Now, at the very last minute, they are suddenly taking back what they promised us: we must now take math and English next year. This may not seem like such a big problem, but the way the school is going about the courses is strange. There are AP math courses available that I would not love to take, but the school practically forces the top 20 or so into these classes, and look down upon people who choose not to take them. (I don’t feel very strongly about my math skills, I’m better in English). However, the real issue comes with English: many of the top ranking students who started high school English in 8th grade had schedules like this:
9th grade–10th grade English
10th grade–AP Lang
11th grade–AP Lit
12th grade–???
There are no more available English courses. Lit is the highest available AP English and is intended for seniors. They are planning on inventing some kind of English class for us that would be heavily weighted (as an AP? not sure. this could bring a lot of the higher ranked seniors down as opposed to incoming seniors who chose not to take the ‘dual enrollment’ classes in 8th grade and will be taking AP Lit next year)
I guess my question is, will colleges consider the high school classes taken in 8th grade as one year of these high school classes, as my disorganized school promised? And is it necessary or just to force kids into classes they may feel they are not skilled enough for in the subject, or invent classes last minute?
Yes, but with one big caveat - the expectation from colleges is that all students will take English every year in HS, regardless if they got 8th grade credit and regardless if they doubled up one year in HS. To a lesser extent, for non-STEM students, the same is true for math.
Can the HS “arbitrarily” change requirements? Yes.
Your school is not forcing students into AP Calculus just so you can look down on those not taking the course. If it’s a school where the top 20 or so students set their sights on the most selective schools, having that rigor in math is important for those kids. If you are not applying to such colleges, then that’s a whole other story.
My nephew was a math adverse high school student who did very well in his highly rated school, had great ECs, wonderful person, straight As in all courses he took. He did not take calculus and was flat out told that it hurt his admissions to a number of selective colleges. By the AOs. He was not interested in the maths for college—history major and ended up taking Precalc and stats to fulfill his math requirements in college. He ended up in the aeronautics field, and now has been flat out told, that the weak math is an issue in moving upward. Even though his job does not touch on calc and physics!
These days to get top rigor designation on your high school curriculum, you gotta get to Calc. You also have to have the Holy Trinity of Scirnces at most schools and take a certain number of AP courses, with emphasis on certain ones …like Calc. Yes, it’s that important if you want to have a good shot at the most selective schools
“And is it necessary or just to force kids into classes they may feel they are not skilled enough for in the subject, or invent classes last minute?”
I sympathize with why you feel they changed the rules after the fact. However, if you were “not skilled enough” in those subjects, you wouldn’t have been put on the accelerated track in the first place. And be honest… if you knew as a 7th or 8th grader that you would still have to take four years of English and math in high school, you’d still have wanted to sign on to that accelerated track when given the choice, wouldn’t you?
You can still jump off the accelerated track senior year if you wish. It will have consequences in terms of getting into highly selective colleges, but there will still be about 2,000 from which to choose.
Check your high school’s course catalog. There may be some English electives that you could take senior year (or before then, if you want to save AP Lit for senior year). Some examples: AP Seminar, AP Research, or AP Capstone classes, journalism, speech, world literature, drama as literature, American literature, etc. Or you could take dual enrollment English at a college, and the credits may transfer to your four-year school. Research your options and embrace the opportunity that your hard work has given you.
Math is mostly sequential, so completing precalculus or calculus satisfies many (but not necessarily all) colleges as “four years of math”.
English can be more of a question, because it is less common for students to complete the highest level of high school English courses before 12th grade. You may have to take a look at (or ask directly) specific colleges of interest to see what they want to see in your situation where you complete both AP English courses by 11th grade.
I envy your position for English. I’ve always thought that my school puts far too much emphasis on APs at the expense of other, perhaps more interesting, options. By taking both AP English courses prior to senior year, you are now free to take some of those more interesting English electives in your final year without worrying that colleges will designate your schedule as less “rigorous.”
Take non AP English classes for seniors or look into dual enrollment options (English, Composition/Writing, Comparative Literature, Philosophy should all be options through dual enrollment).