<p>Just wondering, where do you guys draw the line when it comes to deciding between taking a course that you think would look good over a course that you'd enjoy? How much work are you willing to put yourself through in order to look good for colleges?</p>
<p>I’m in full IB diploma program and don’t have much choice. I could be taking one more IB course but it would be chemistry or biology, and I’m not really a science person. Other than my IB-mandated basics I only have a little space for other state graduation requirements. If I have any spots up to me I want to take something personally interesting but possibly at a higher level, maybe online AP art history.</p>
<p>I always take honors classes. My school isn’t that great, so they’re easy anyway, and the kids in the regular classes are annoying and disrupt the class every two seconds.</p>
<p>I take what would be good for college, as long as it’s not actually something I’ll dislike. Firstly, that would just be stupid and secondly if I hated a course I wouldn’t be able to motivate myself to do well.
For example, I’ve chosen History over Ancient History because it’s better respected, but I would have prefered Ancient History. I would enjoy both of them, so that wasn’t an issue.</p>
<p>There are some classes I would probably enjoy more at times if they were not honors/would then become easy A’s (such as math). That being said I would rather challenge myself and learn then do nothing all year (the one year I did not take honors math I did nothing to the point where the teacher would give me a months worth of assignments and I would do them in one night and then not have to go to class for a month). After the experience as well as a bad experience in non-honors Spanish I decided to start taking all honors/AP classes. My school is fairly small you tend to not be able to pick classes (besides the level) until senior year.</p>
<p>I usually take classes that I enjoy. I enjoy Biology and Chemistry, so this year I’m taking AP Biology and AP Chemistry. I really don’t like history, so I’m not taking APUSH because I’ll most likely sleep in that class and get a bad grade. Even though my counselor was really pushing to take APUSH, I couldn’t do it, I like my GPA so far and I don’t want to ruin it by not taking the class seriously.</p>
<p>Would you ever take an AP class over an elective just to improve your class rank? How competitive are the class rankings at your school?</p>
<p>^ Good question. Yes I have. During Sophomore year, I had the choice to take AP World History (Yearlong) or Pre-Veterinary Large Animal & Pre-Veterinary Small Animal. The Pre-Vet electives are semester classes, and I couldn’t come to a decision whether to take the Pre-Vet classes or try to raise my class rank. As I stated, I can’t stand history, it bores me to death. So I choose the Pre-Vet electives. In my school, some people take class rank seriously, and some don’t. I don’t personally, because It’ll stress me out even more.</p>
<p>Once I starting getting a lot of the grad requirements out of the way, I can now pick more. For example, I was taking all hard honors/AP science courses that I wasn’t particularly fond of but only because I had to get them out of the way to take the fun AP courses that I’m able to take now. I pretty much take any AP course I can though regardless.</p>
<p>APs. If I took a French elective instead of AP, I could be in this science elective I’m dying to take, but obviously I shouldn’t/can’t do that [especially because I’m a rising senior and the only APs I’ve taken are Lit and Lang].</p>