choosing classes: my guess is that you've probably already gone through pre-registration and done this. However, when I say "choosing classes", I mean for all of high school. Now is a good time to whip out the course catalog or whatever your school provided you with and plan all four years out. Make a nice griddy-looking thing that has each semester/quarter listed under each year in high school, and fill in the spots. Start with getting the state-mandated, crappy classes out of the way, and then fill in the crucial academic courses (i.e. language arts, math, science, social studies, and foreign language.) If you desire to get into a selective college, then I recommend four full years of English and math and at least three years of everything else. Whatever spaces are left can be filled up with arts, theater, debate, band, choir, extra elective credits, APs, or a study hall. Personally though, I don't think a really-freakin'-motivated student should or need to take a free period/study hall, and unless it is required to, try and have something going for every period of every year. This may sound overwhelming, but with careful planning the semesters that have more intensive courses can have less stressful ones, like PE, to balance the workload out.
One little note: choose your foreign language carefully if you have never taken one. My recommendation is French, but my school it seems that in general, French students are less slackery than Spanish students because more kids take Spanish. Neither is really harder, but if you don't want to be frustrated listening to idiots mispronounce simple words, take French. If more languages are offered, take whatever appeals to you.
I know that many students worry about taking Honors or AP classes and having those "ruin" their GPA. This tends not to happen though, because most of those classes aren't graded on a curve or anything, so most people that take hard classes get 'B+'s or higher anyways. After all, if you can get into the class, then usually you will have demonstrated some sort of ability to produce high-quality work. Also, because there are many kids that want to go to good colleges and the idea is now that you HAVE to take these hard classes to get admitted, you might find yourself surrounded by people, er, stupider than you because they are trying really hard to fulfill the family tradition at Harvard or wherever. This means that you might end up at the top of your AP or Honors class anyways. Put Honors and AP classes anywhere you can on your four-year plan, as these will look great for colleges. From personal experience in Honors classes anyways, getting 'A's is actually easier than in a regular class because the teachers know that many people in the class have sparkly-nice GPAs and they don't want to be the ones who have the reputation for "screwing it up." (More on this phenomenon in the Teacher Psychology section.)
The only exception to the general rule of taking every advanced class you can is math. A bunch of students who took Honors Geometry, where the subject isn't hard but the workload is, found their envisioned 4.0s going down the drain. Math classes, more so than any other, tend to screw up GPAs, especially Honors ones. Don't take one unless you are one of the top math students in your class, are able to grasp concepts without detailed explanations, and are good at memorizing formulas and theorems.
Bottom line, take the most-impressive sounding classes you can scrape up and fill any schedular voids with fun ones. |
