Hi,
I’m attending a small, religious, private high school as a sophomore. My parents put me in this school when I was younger, in about second grade, however they said if I feel like I need to leave that I can. I love the community in this school, but I feel the education is lacking. There is little to no EC’s except a few sports because there isn’t enough people. In fact, the robotics team got pulled this year because there wasn’t enough people in it. The only EC’s the school has besides a few common sports (Like football, soccer, and basketball), is a debate team, stuco, and nhs. I’ve had a few times where I’ve wanted to start a club, however again due to lack of interest (Due to the fact that my class has so few people), it didn’t go through. On top of this there is nearly NO difficult/rigorous classes for my sophomore year that I can take. There are no AP classes available to sophomore (Usually schools have 1 or 2 they can take). Only core classes and a few electives (Which again are sparse due to the small school size). The staff call the school college prep, however the classes feel very easy (Which can be limiting to my education). All these factors have made me have to seriously think about switching schools, but I’m not sure how much it will help on college applications. Any suggestions and help is greatly appreciated.
If you take the most rigorous classes offered, colleges can’t really hold it against you that you didn’t take an AP that isn’t offered.
You can always do extracurriculars outside of school. For one, robotics teams do not have to be school-affiliated. You could always try joining the activities at your local public high school. My large public school doesn’t offer much variety to sophomores and below.
I transferred because of a similar situation. After a terrible experience in my first school, I transferred to an “alternative” school. I soon discovered that my classes were incredibly easy. This school had no AP classes, and students with severe learning disabilities were in classes with NHS students. (I guess this was because of the small amount of students, they didn’t want to create a few very small student classes.) We also had to take an extracurricular during school hours, which I’m not sure counts as “extracurricular”. There were no outside activities, except a track team. I changed to the public school in my new town because of this. I’m much happier, even though it’s not a great school. I’m not in any Honors classes, but I think this is mostly because I was in very easy classes before.
So, if you’re worried about education, transferring may be a good choice. But, if you enjoy your school, you could always join some clubs outside of school.