Follow up: will colleges care which year I took a class in? [multivariable calculus in 10th versus 11th grade]

Applying to College
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So sorry if this is against the rules–feel free to delete.

A couple days ago I made a post about not taking multivariable calculus this year (10th grade) due to health problems, but feeling bad/mad at myself about not taking it because I feel like I could have pushed through, and a lot of kids at my school seem to take it in 10th, and how that would affect college applications.

And, while I did get the response it would be fine, I feel like I forgot to mention part of my concern was due to the fact that I know you are compared against kids from your school in college admissions. A commenter stated “Unless you are attending an elite science/math focused school, it is highly unlikely that multivariable calculus in 10th grade is the norm.” I don’t have any stats on it or anything, but it is a stem focused competitive school. It probably is in my favor that I’m not planning on going into cs/engineering, but chemistry, yet I still feel like not taking the class this year was to my detriment. I guess I’m looking to see if the extra information makes a difference–I would ideally like to know if there is anything I can do to make myself more competitive to admissions to like fix the fact I didn’t take it, I guess?

again, feel free to delete! :slight_smile: I just didn’t get a chance to respond to comments on my other post because I was busy with school, ironically lol

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The sense in which your school context matters is complicated. For some colleges, it might not matter much as long as you otherwise are what they are looking for. For other colleges, they might take a deeper dive into what was available to you, and the most selective may well be looking for people who have challenged themselves as available across all the core areas.

But usually when I have seen college AOs discuss this issue, they have in some way acknowledged that not every kid will take every advanced class at high schools with a lot of advanced classes. Different kids will make different choices, going farther in some areas versus others, and that is fine.

OK, so getting to MVC at all is unusual for most high schools. Getting to it before senior year is even more unusual. Getting to it by 10th more unusual still. And not that no one ever does it, but no college, not even the most math intense, is going to have that as a standard requirement.

So then what about the idea of challenging yourself? Well, that is complicated, but I am skeptical that you would have to take MVC in 10th in order to have what overall looked like a very challenging curriculum, even if other people at your HS did get to MVC in 10th.

That said, this is really something that should be evaluated in light of your entire curriculum. Like, what else are you taking? Are you challenging yourself in the other four core areas, Natural Sciences, English, History/Social Sciences, and Languages? And so on.

As a final thought, in terms of what you should do . . . in the end how you do in HS is important. Not that you have to be perfect, and you should take some risks, but it is important to only REASONABLY challenge yourself. Reasonably challenging yourself means taking the classes where you will be challenged, but collectively only to a degree that is consistent with an overall healthy and happy HS experience, one where you are also developing physically, emotionally, socially, ethically, and so on.

And in fact, a lot of the more selective colleges really pay attention to that sort of development, and prefer kids who they think are relatively mature, have sustainable habits, are social, and so on.

So if you do that, you will have good college choices. If you fail to do that, you might actually have worse college choices. Or at least no better.

So reasonably challenge yourself, do your reasonable best, focus on healthy development in ALL those ways, and trust you will be able to find multiple great college options for you. Because if do that, you will.

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The definitive answer doesn’t change from the last time you asked:

Closing