I talked with a counselor the other day and they confirmed they’ll drop my online 5th period AP Gov class for me within a week. For context, the school I go to is highly rigorous (#1 in state), I have full household responsibilities, and there has been some family troubles that have interfered with my schedule. I dropped the class because it was cutting too much into my at home duties and other classes and, after discussing the class and how the teacher grades/ notes our work with other students, I’ve found that the teacher was very biased with grading; they’d create problems with our discussions or projects if there weren’t any and take significant points off despite the said issue not being listed in the instructions or rubric. I’m wanting to know is will having this class dropped be seen by admissions teams and will it negatively impact my chances? The decision is already set in stone and I needed to do it to keep from failing my other classes but I’m looking for some confirmation.
Ap gov isn’t a core class so youre okay. However what other classes are you taking?
Forensic Sciences, Anatomy and Physiology, Pre-calc, and a joint 2 college class course of general psychology and intro to sociology. Everything but the college classes are honors and the college classes are weighted like APs. The only class that isn’t necessarily difficult is pre-calc but I’m a slow learner in math so.
AP Gov is equivalent in breadth and rigor to College Psych+Soc, essentially you were doubling up in social science, so you’re good on that account.
However in terms of rigor, you’re not taking AP English or Honors English, Honors or AP Foreign Language, nor a core science (unless you’ve taken Bio, chem, and physics already, and don’t plan on majoring in STEM or are aiming for local colleges&public directionals).
What colleges are you aiming for?
What’s your current GPA?
I’ve taken all other social studies classes my county offers besides ap gov and that was the primary reason I signed up for it. All of my other remaining core classes are in the second semester. I’m considerably ahead of the state curriculum and at this point just taking classes that I enjoy besides my school’s college and career readiness core. When it comes to general competitiveness of my transcript I’ll be fine I just wasn’t wanting a dropped class to be detrimental. Thank you for worrying about it though.
Ok, if the rest of your transcript is rigorous then no, dropping that AP class won’t hurt you.
Are you on block scheduling?
I don’t see a problem with dropping AP gov.
Are you aiming high? As in top 20 or so colleges. Or schools with acceptance rates in the teens and lower?
Have you/will you have completed…
at least three years of foreign language?
biology, chemistry, and physics?
four years of English and four years of math?
Very generally speaking, very selective colleges like to see students taking a course load similar to the above. If you can, check to see what a few colleges of interest recommend their applicants have.
Never heard of block scheduling but going off of google’s definition, yes, we have 2 semesters with 4 one-and-a-half hour periods a semester. All AP’s only last 1 semester which is something exclusive to my county across my entire state.
I’m currently applying to Wesleyan ED1 along with a good amount of in state public schools. My test scores are strong, I’m at the top of my school/ graduating year for community service hours with all of mine being self-led. My interview with Wes is in early October but if it goes like my previous ones have I’ll be able to get a recommendation/ vouch out of it and overall I’m competitive for all colleges in state besides Duke. I’ve got more than enough credits in all subjects besides only having 2 in foreign language, which to keep short, I circumstantially got screwed in, but I’ve talked with admissions folks and they’ve said with my situation I’ll be fine on that end.
I think you are the first requirement meaning take care of yourself. If you don’t get into Wes, and this wouldn’t be why, then so be it.
I may be wrong but sounds like you live in NC, and you can’t go wrong whether UNCH, NC St, UNCC, UNCA, APP State. And if you want smaller than UNCA you might look at St Mary’s of MD as a public or lots of LACs not Wes such as Skidmore.
But if the class didn’t work and you have a compelling explanation as to why, then you did the right thing.
Since block scheduling means 3 or 4 classes each semester, not only does dropping that AP class not matter (since you already have 2 rigorous social science courses) but it’s also invisible to adcoms. As far as they’re concerned to have the most rigorous schedule available.