Will my courses be a problem?

Applying to College
1

Hi everyone. I’m applying to a plethora of T30 schools as an international student from Canada, many of which follow a liberal arts curriculum.

With this, I am aware that many of these schools, including the Ivy’s, expect high school students to have three to four years of lab-based science completed in order to have a certain amount of “course rigour”. However, I took science in grade nine and ten (combined physics, chem, bio) and am only taking environmental science outside of regular school in grade eleven.

For context, I am planning on going into economics and possibly political sciences on the pre-law track. By graduation, I will have ten extra credits as well as a couple AP credits taken outside of school; we do not have IB or AP. Further, my grades themselves are overall great and include many math, social science, and humanities-based coursing.

Will this be damaging to me? Will they not consider me to have the same course rigour that they expect? Do I really need so much science?

2

It’s really not a lot of science courses when you think about it.
Also, consider that you’re an international candidate and most of the students applying to the schools, where you’re applying, will have those science-based lab courses.

You should apply, but know, going in, that overcompensating with humanities courses doesn’t necessarily mean that it will compensate or give you a pass for the lab-based courses. The admissions officers will review your transcript in accordance with what’s available in your school. If you are applying to the top 30 schools in the US, you’re going to have some issues if you’re lacking in the science area. Also make sure that you can afford the schools that you’ll be applying to because aid is extremely limited.