Conflicted student with a confusing transcript + limited college options

MYOS1634
Tue, 17 May 2016 14:45:17 +0000

Since you’re a high need student, DO NOT graduate and attend community college. As a transfer you won’t be eligible for the big scholarships nor Questbridge nor Posse.

If you can attend CC through dual enrollment, do it, take as many classes as they’ll allow, provided you don’t graduate from high school. It’s typically the best solution for students who have used up all course offerings at their school.

I’m worried that you’re trying to cut corners and take the easiest way out. It translates as “intellectually lazy” for adcoms and since your EC’s are average, the only thing you have going for you in order to get sufficient scholarships to attend college is to push yourself academically in every possible way.

Doesn’t your DE college have French if your HS teacher isn’t good? What about taking it through your state’s virtual high school?

Unfortunately, if you want to get a full scholarship to a good college, you’re going to have to push your foreign language level past level 2. You have to show excellence at all levels, whether you’re interested or not. You should push yourself in the areas you’re interested in and complete what top colleges expect from a regularly well-rounded student. If your school offers an upper-level class of something and you don’t take it, or if the local college offers it and you don’t take it, it’ll be counted against you because your school system is rather weak. For instance, it’s typically not required to take calculus if your school offers 20 APs - you can take 6-8 others. But if your school only offers 3 AP classes and one of those is calculus, you’re supposed to take it.
In addition, if you don’t take calculus, you really should take French and Arabic to the highest level offered at your HS or CC, in addition to English, History, Political Science.
Colleges will NOT care whether the teacher’s horrible or if you find the class boring.

I agree it’d be smart to stay another year, focusing on your research project and DE classes that you can push to the highest level offered by your community college.