At my school, you take APUSH in 10th grade, and due to scheduling conflicts, I could not take the course. My school’s college counselor stressed that it would be near impossible for me to get into a top school without taking us history. I took an online honors history course the summer after 10th grade. Now, I am a rising senior and I was planning on taking a dual enrollment online us history course, but now I’m thinking it might be a better use of my time to take a class like linear algebra or python instead. For context, I want to study ecology/mathematics and my top schools are harvard, cmu, yale and brown. PLEASE HELP!!! THANK YOU!
More to the point, I’m unaware of any US high school that doesn’t require US history to graduate. So the answer to your question is yes.
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You don’t need AP History- you need US History of whatever flavor your district requires to graduate.
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As others mentioned, be sure that your curriculum covers all the requirements for graduating high school, and you’ll also want to make sure you cover requirements for your own state universities. Your college counselor should be able to double check this coursework for you.
The following FAQ gives an outline of the standard high school curriculum that selective colleges expect to see:
Linear algebra and python aren’t necessary for admission to any university. You’ll only want to consider courses like these if you have additional space in your schedule after fitting in all the coursework in the above FAQ (or if you’ve run out of math classes at your high school and you need a math class to take as a senior).
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I agree with others. I think it will be adverse to your stated college ambitions not to take US History at all. But it doesn’t have to be AP US History if that does not make sense for you.
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Find out if this will fulfill your high school graduation requirements. IOW….will your high school accept this online U.S. history course to fulfill your graduation requirement? If not…you need to take a U.S. history course that does.
If this was required at your school…why was there a scheduling conflict. IOW, what did you elect to take instead.
Will you have four years of social studies taken during high school? Many colleges will expect that…especially the elite ones.
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If your school has dedicated college counselors, then it is likely that they are quite knowledgeable about both college admission requirements and high school graduation requirements.
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If your school offers foundational AP’s and you did not take one of each (US or World History, Lang & Lit, Calculus, Sciences [at least one]), that could be problematic for the schools you are considering applying to.
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Ok looking at the comments, I will be taking the DE class. My school’s pretty small, so scheduling conflicts are pretty common. I ended up taking APHUG instead during 10th grade and I took AP Euro this year. If I really wanted too I could take APUSH as a senior, but I would just prefer not to, since schedules aren’t finalized till the week before school starts, and there could be another conflict.
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Double check your school’s requirements as well. At my student’s high school, you have to take all the courses that are required for graduation at the school itself. I don’t know how widespread this is. As mentioned above, it would be odd if US history wasn’t a graduation requirement.
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I understand that you want to avoid this class. You need to understand that a US History course is required by a large majority of universities, especially the elites.
It does not have to be in an AP format. It can be, as described above, by @Blossom in any “flavor”, as long as it teaches US history.
The elite colleges are tiny. They only have so many seats available. They tend to reject 90% or so of the applications because they just don’t have the space for the hundreds of thousands of students who want to attend their schools.
You can bet those schools are going to be looking for a US history class on each HS transcript. Listen to your college counselor. They have experience with these kind of issues.
You may not be able to graduate, with a high school diploma, if you don’t have a record of an acceptable US history course on your transcript that is accepted by your school district.
I recently posted about the “almost valedictorian” who could not graduate with his class.
He was admitted to a very prestigious, elite top 10. He wasn’t able to graduate with a high school diploma (lacked biology) so he couldn’t attend the college which had given him a good scholarship. He ended up going to summer school and had to start at a community college.
When we met with the Admissions Director from Stanford (my husband is alumni), one of the things that she REALLY emphasized was to “learn to follow directions” from the university and the high school staff.
On their application, they stated that the student should not send any additional paperwork, or media, with the applications.
She indicated they had no space for excessive documentation. Yet, every year, they received bound journals, music videos, and research papers (etc.) that weren’t needed. So, because those students didn’t follow directions, it was an automatic rejection.
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I got to a very small private school, so they are 100% willing to accept the DE transcript, and it will be sent along with my HS one. but, yeah, I didn’t know us history was so important, so ill def be taking it now.
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To echo everything said above—take some, any, US History class. The top schools will absolutely be looking for it.
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References to US history are going to come up in a wide variety of contexts at a US college. It is just one of those general knowledge things they are going to expect, at least from a US student.
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Not even just the top schools. For example, it’s one of the courses cited by ASU as required.
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OP started a new thread on the same topic (which was unnecessary). Closing.