AP Physics vs. Honors Anatomy

HankCT
Thu, 03 Sep 2020 19:30:20 +0000

My daughter is going into her senior year, and had her schedule planned, but they announced official schedules yesterday (only a few days before school starts) and they threw us some curves.

She had been expecting to take AP Physics. It would be a difficult class for her, but as she plans to apply to WPI, RPI, and a few other schools for digital animation / video game design (with schools like Carnegie Mellon being larger reach schools and schools like RIT being safety), we felt that was the right class for her to take.

Whoever is in charge of class assignment, assigned her instead to Honors Anatomy & Physiology. It is an honors class, but she has no plans to go into anything health or medicine related. There were several other classes she wanted (like honors Mythology) and they stuck her into Honors Journalism instead that we were “bait and switched” on, but the one that concerns me primarily is the science.

She reached out to the guidance counselor about this yesterday, and was told she could try to switch into AP Physics, but then would be at risk of getting anything decent for her English and History classes. This is all a bit strange to me as DD1 never had any schedule issues at the same school. Might be related to COVID. She told my daughter not to worry about physics and that she could always “write a letter” saying Physics was full and not an option for her.

Is this anything to be concerned with? Is H Anatomy essentially fine since its an honors class? Or will colleges, as I fear, see physics missing from her transcript and mark it as a potential red flag? I would think the letter from guidance counselor mentioning that physics was “full” would not even likely be read or could be missed.

At this point, do I make a stink? She’s ok with rolling with the punches, but she isn’t a strong advocate for herself. Normally I would chalk this up a life lesson, but I am concerned this one could impact her entire college selection process.

Thanks!