I am currently a sophomore, and wondering if not taking classes is going to affect me badly for elite college admissions.
To be more specific, AP Psychology is offered at my school, but I do not want to take it due to the fact that it is just a bunch of work that I believe will not help me in prep for the exam and might affect my grade, but I am going to take General Psychology at a local college. Another example would be my fourth math. I do not plan on taking Pre-Calc due to the fact that the teacher at my school is horrible, but I plan on taking College Algebra at a local college instead. With that being said, how badly will my chances be affected with this? Will I be affected due to the fact that there are other students who took those classes and not me? My school does not offer alot of AP classes, or classes in general, so I feel like being picky with my classes might negatively affect me. Thank you for your time!
To also add, my intended major is International Affairs, so I dont know if that changes anything in terms of the importance of specific high school classes to a specific major.
to also add, my intended major is International Affairs and then Law for grad, so I dont know if that might change anything in terms of importance of high school classes to that specific major.
“Elite” is a surprisingly big category- can you give some examples?
If getting to pre-calc is the highest that honors-track people get in your school, then DE is a good idea- but why Algebra instead of Calc?
Taking DE psych instead of AP Psych won’t hurt you
AdComms won’t look at your curriculum in terms of your proposed major. They will only be interested in your major to the extent that your interest shows something about you- such as how you spend your time (Model UN?), or how your interest developed (not just ‘I went to France and it was really cool’ but ‘while watching French TV5, I realized how differently they were reporting things happening in the US, so I started also watching BBC, to compare the French, British and US versions of the same events and then…’). It’s what you have done with yourself that is interesting to them, not a possible major (b/c they know that about 1/3 of students change their planned major) or possible grad school (ditto).
@collegemom3717 For “elite” colleges, I mean like prestigious ones, such as Ivy League, or rather top 30-40 national universities.
Pre-calc is the highest math offered at my school. As for why I am taking college algebra, it is the only DE math class I am eligible to take. After that, I am pretty sure I can take more advanced math classes. You think I should take maybe DE Pre-calc afterwards so that my application looks stronger compared to high school pre-calc?
As for your point regarding AdComms, I was planning on having a focus in my classes to social sciences (i.e DE Government and AP Macro/Micro instead of normal govern. and econ.). So that doesnt matter? Do you have any suggestions as to what I can do to show colleges of my interest in social sciences? Because I am aware of the whole “colleges like those with a specific interest and not well-rounded students”.
For social sciences, math is important, but not so much calculus as statistics. If you took DE precalculus and a statistics class (AP or DE) you would be well-prepared for college economics and other quantitative courses.
The colleges you are talking about like seriously motivated students- but not necessarily specialists. Have you read the MIT admissions blogs? These two really apply to all of the schools you are talking about (substitute social science equivalents for some of their more science-y examples!):
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/there_is_no_formula
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways
In other words, start with what is truest about you- and that is one of the hardest but most rewarding parts of the college process: figuring out what that is. You want to “show your interest in social sciences”. So, what IS your interest in social science? push beyond “human society and social relationships”- what is it about those that you are actually interested in? are you equally interested in “economics, political science, human geography, demography, psychology, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, jurisprudence, history, and linguistics” (and there are probably more) to specialize in during college? if not- which one(s) are particularly interesting, and why? how have you developed that interest? and if so, how come- what links them together for you? That could be the nub of a great ‘why us’ essay: a college will let you taste test a bunch of them and let you follow your interests into a muliti-disciplinary - even self designed major.
I agree with all of the above, but one point concerns me:
That will be viewed as an acceptable excuse by nobody. You may find yourself at a college where you have a required course for your major that is always taught by a less than stellar professor. You may wind up with a less than exemplary boss one day. Avoidance is not the answer, particularly if it affects your academic preparedness.