<p>Alright im going to be a sophmore in high school next year and I want to have the best chance to get into a really good university. Im taking the hardest CORE classes I can take with like AP euro history, honors english and honors algebra 2. Apart from my core classes im taking computer multimedia, spanish 3 and weight lifting. Is taking weight lifting a bad idea? Will taking weight lifting be a bad idea cause it might look like im taking the class for a easy grade or will the admission office not care. I could be taking a 2nd language class like Chinese or french, or newspaper. Your thoughts?</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter if you take classes like weightlifting; many colleges will just ignore them when calculating your GPA. If you take difficult academic courses, you will be fine.</p>
<p>Difficulty, or rigor, is DEFINITELY important! You should take the most rigorous classes that are offered at your school (AP, Honors). Weightlifting won’t count against you, but it’s a wasted opportunity to add another academic class to your record. These things matter to college admissions people.</p>
<p>That all being said, take as many AP classes and whatnot so that you can still be making A’s and a few B’s. If you take too many AP’s, sometimes all your grades will suffer - unless you’re aiming for the most elite schools, not taking <em>every</em> single AP couse won’t hurt you if you excel and if taking more AP classes would significantly lower your GPA. Most colleges admit students based on contextualized rigor - if student A takes all 3 AP courses offered at his/her school and student B takes 4 out of 12 AP classes taken at his/her school, often times, student A will be seen as more rigorous, particularly if they excelled.</p>
<p>It’s not a wasted opportunity if this person wants to weightlift or train for a sport</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s true - plus, if you’re already taking all the AP classes at your school, and you don’t really any more academics to take, it doesn’t really matter which non-academic course you take, I believe, particularly if your weight-lifting helps you excel in something else, like a sport.</p>
<p>And some colleges, like the Academies, might actually like weight-lifting.</p>
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That’s very true. Colleges want you to take the most rigorous classes at your school. They understand that you don’t control what’s offered, but they want to see that you’re the kind of person who tackles the most difficult stuff, and does well at it.</p>
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I didn’t say that very well. If OP has an interest in the sport, he should of course go for it! My own DD spent 8 hours every week at her EC, so I understand about pursuing a passion. My only thought was that he might want to pursue it as an extra-curricular, so that he can load up his transcript with As in academic classes.</p>