Last year I was offered the option to take APUSH and AP Lit however, due to the course workload of both these classes I decided not to take them. After this year I’ve taken 7 honors courses, 5 APs, and 2 dual enrollment. Would this be enough to impress Ivy Leagues or does my decision of not taking the other two courses hurt my chances?
I need to ask…why the Ivy League?
But to answer your question…if you don’t get accepted to a college with an acceptance rate of less than 10%, you will never know why.
Continue to do your personal best! That’s really what is important.
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My opinion is that you should take the classes that make sense for you. This sounds like exactly what you have done and are doing. These are AP classes that I also would have skipped if my high school had offered them.
There are a lot of very good universities in the US. The Ivy League schools, and a small number of other “elite” schools such as MIT and Stanford, are all very good. However, they are all reaches for nearly all very strong students. You can do very well with a degree from any one of at least 100 and probably more like 200 or 300 other schools.
And @thumper1 is correct that if you do get accepted or rejected from an Ivy League university you are likely to have no idea what made the difference.
I think that you did the right thing. I would not worry about it.
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You are smart not to live your high school life based on admissions, and to make choices that are good for your well-being. The Ivies are all different. The only reason I can think of to prioritize them is financial aid, but there are other ways to make college affordable.
Check out the Colleges that Change Lives website and also look at your state universities. If you want tippy top schools you can also look up “little Ivies.”
I honestly wish more students would make the choices you did. You have plenty of rigor and I hope you have been able to keep down the stress plaguing so many young people today.
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There is too much we don’t know about you or your school.
Your app will be assessed in the context of what your school offers, along with other students at your school who pursue the most rigor. So, if most high achievers at your school take roughly the same number of AP and honors courses as you, that’s a good comparison. Your school isn’t going to be compared to other schools.
What if you don’t want to take as many APs as other students are taking? That’s fine too. You’re making a choice to preserve your sanity and there is nothing wrong with that.
The most rejective colleges expect the most rigor. You can meet with your guidance counselor and ask how much rigor your courseload has in comparison to others at your school.
I will say that tippy top colleges probably expect to see at least one of APUSH or AP Lit so I would try to get one of those in your schedule if possible, at some point.
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To answer your question, yes it will likely hurt.
It doesn’t sound like you took the most rigorous schedule possible.
That said I’ll echo the others and say who cares. Some Ivies have a 3%+ acceptance rate and even the person who took the most rigorous schedule is an unlikely.
And you need to go at your speed. If that doesn’t equal Ivy or top tier school, you’ll join the other 99% of society.
Don’t forget that going to a top school guarantees nothing in life and going to a non top-however one defines it-precludes you from nothing.
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so you are asking about rigor. colleges determine your strength of schedule or rigor by comparing what your school offers to what courses you took. If you school offers both AP Lit and AP Lang and you took Honors Eng 11 and Honors Eng 12 then you would not have the highest rigor for your english classes, a student who took AP Lit and AP Lang and then a student who took either AP Lit or AP Lang along with an honors Eng course would both be considered as having taken a more rigorous course load. They do this for each core subject so it is likely you have a moderately rigorous schedule for Eng and Social Studies.
Will it hurt you, who knows, but it certainly doesn’t help you - it really depends more on what the rest of your schedule looks like, what your GPA is, if you submit test scores, if you have a hook, what your ECs are, ect
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I’ll come out and ask it - why do you want to attend an Ivy?
Actually, I will rephrase that: why do you want to be accepted by “an Ivy League”?
To be somewhat brutal: do you even know what “an Ivy League” is? Do you know which colleges these are, why they are called “Ivy League”?
The colleges which are part of the Ivy League conference vary substantially in size (4,500 at Dartmouth to 15,500 at Cornell), strengths (for example, Cornell has a world class Ag program, while the others don’t even have that major), where they are located (Columbia is in the middle of Manhattan, while Dartmouth is extremely rural), etc, etc, etc.
What do you want to study? What do you want to do after college? What are you looking for in a college? How much can your family afford?
Those are the questions that should be driving your interest in colleges, not the athletic conference to which a college belongs.
Kids who are interested in studying engineering at a large public colleges are not asking “what do I need to do to be accepted to ‘a Big 10’”? This is true even for students who are interested in Engineering, for which the a substantial number of the very best schools are in the Big 10. Instead, high school students ask about specific colleges, based on the majors offered, the characteristics of the colleges themselves, and costs.
My final big question is: what grade are you in?
Assuming 5 academic classes a year, and 3 years by end of 11th, that’s 15 potential classes. It looks as if you’ve taken 14 of them at more than standard or college prep level - which is not bad at all. But the colleges will view your record in comparison to what was available. For example, at my kids’ high school, the top students go straight into AP sciences without having taken high school level sciences - most high schools don’t allow that. You will be rated against your classmates from your school (if any are applying), and according to what you could have taken. If your guidance counselor is able to put down that you took the most rigorous classes available to you, that is great. Most accepted applicants to highly selective schools (at least the ones who aren’t recruited athletes, wealthy donor families, or diversity admits) have taken the most rigorous classes available to them. That includes AP math and AP English, unless a person were, say, so incrediby impressive in STEM achievements that the school wouldn’t care that they’re not that strong verbally.
I’d say if you took AP Lang, and did well in it, it won’t hurt you that much that you didn’t take AP lit, especially if your year was full of APs, honors, and dual enrollment. Same goes for APUSH. I also would recommend that you register for as rigorous a courseload as possible for 12th grade, to show your continued commitment to rigor. That may help with early applications, even without any grade in them by November, and if you can get A’s in them first semester, it will help with regular apps, too. It won’t matter then if you get B’s second semester, or even a C.
I agree, don’t focus obsessively on Ivies. There are many excellent colleges that are not as selective as the Ivies. Consider flagship state U’s (including your own), and good liberal arts colleges, too.
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