<p>Right now I have two choices:</p>
<p>1)Take all my core classes now and the "highly recommended" classes (micro, macro, and stat) for grad admissions my last year</p>
<p>2) vice-versa</p>
<p>How does grad admissions work? Like if I apply my senior year, shouldnt I have taken the recommended classes for grad admin first? Or will grad schools understand that I plan to or currently am taking them? Essentially, which option should I do and why? thanks.</p>
<p>Whatever gets you the best GPA, since you can/should always send a list of your ongoing/current courseload at the time of application anyway.</p>
<p>Ya, but will it affect me negatively if i dont have a class grade yet?</p>
<p>I think they’d assume you would get whatever your current GPA is on those future classes. In my field at least, my junior year core classes were much more difficult than any of the senior year/grad classes. I’d expect that they extrapolate my GPA onto the classes that I list I will be taking the rest of the year.</p>
<p>Is there any reason why you can’t take half now and the other half next year?</p>
<p>I could, but I mean, I don’t see a point. I might as well decide to take all or none. If it helps me, I’ll take the recommended classes now, but if it doesn’t matter, then I might as well take them later and get my Cores out of the way.</p>
<p>Core classes for what: general education requirements, your major, the graduate program you’ll be applying to? You might get more helpful responses if you give us more information.</p>
<p>FWIW, I loaded up on courses for my major (same field as my PhD) in my sophomore and juniors years and postponed some general education requirements / fun electives till senior year. I had more successful admission outcomes than my classmates who took the general education requirements first and did more major coursework in their senior year. Did I fare better because of my course scheduling? I can’t say. </p>
<p>If you wanted to go into e.g. education policy and were wondering if you should focus on education/policy classes first or math/econ classes first: I agree with the posters above that I would take a mixed approach. Postponing all policy classes could undermine your demonstrated interest in policy. Postponing all math/econ classes could make for a super stressful senior year, and the admissions committee might not know if you’ll actually take those classes. I’d probably focus on education/policy first in that situation and add one math or econ class each semester, to start making progress towards the recommended supplemental courses.</p>
<p>It’s general distribution Core classes (Bio and art specifically) vs classes recommended for grad school. The advantage of taking the Core classes now is that I would get priority in picking the classes (= more fun classes).</p>
<p>Why would you structure them like that anyway? Take a mix of core classes and “recommended” classes all throughout.</p>
<p>*I could, but I mean, I don’t see a point. I might as well decide to take all or none. *
Why? This doesn’t make any sense. You don’t have to do it this way. You want to show graduate committees that you can cut it in those classes, but you also need to make sure you take your core classes. You also don’t want to load yourself up on difficulty at any particular time nor do you want it difficult for you to make your schedule because you need three econ seminars and they’re only offering 2 of the 3 you need.</p>
<p>You’ll want to pay attention to prereqs (you probably already know this, but I was occasionally surprised by a prereq I didn’t know I needed when I was arranging my classes).</p>
<p>If you have a choice, then take a mix. What juillet says is correct; grad schools will want to see you can hack it in the necessary classes. Put it simply, if you were emailing a POI, which do you think sounds better: I took classes in X, Y, Z (demonstrating interest and background) or I plan to take classes in X, Y, Z (demonstrating interest at best)?</p>
<p>Not to mention, you will be far less likely to be surprised by nasty schedule conflicts the more flexible you are. Don’t forget to balance class difficulty as well.</p>