Hi everyone!
At my school, one of our graduation requirements is a mandatory pass-fail course our senior year that doesn’t factor into our grades/college admissions . For some kids, this class happens second semester, so they get to take a first-semester course that colleges see grades from, and others, this happens first semester, so their elective would be in second semester. I will be finishing this course and first semester soon, and I was planning on finding a second semester course. I’m contemplating taking a semester of physics, since scheduling issues (my school is so small that really only one section of each available course runs per year/semester). My question is, being in my senior year, would it even matter at this point if I chose to take physics? Colleges wouldn’t see any grades for the course, so would it even factor into their considerations if I were to let them know I was taking this course?
Probably not unless you intended on taking an AP exam for it. If you like the subject for yourself, go for it and it may add to your background knowledge for later, but I doubt it’d add to college admissions if you’ve already sent the app
You’ve already submitted your college apps so you ought to know the answer based on what you had to fill out. Some colleges want to see a list of the courses he will take senior year. While they won’t be able to take the grade into account, they can at least see that you are continuing to challenge yourself. If none of the colleges you applied to ask about your planned schedule, then it probably doesn’t matter.
@mikemac Well, seeing as the common app asked for my senior schedule, all of my colleges asked to see my planned schedule. I didn’t include physics when filling out the common app because it’s so hard to get into classes at my school, given how small it is, that it was impossible for me to predict at the time what class I would be taking, so I left it blank. My question now is whether or not I should email them about it, because I’m not sure if they care, especially because it wouldn’t be AP, and I don’t want to come across as desperate/annoying by telling them.
You do need to put on the application your second semester schedule and the adcom will take that into account. Also, they will need your final school report and many students got rescinded every year with poor final grades in the second semester.
If you do change the second semester schedule after submitting application, notify the adcom.