So I am probably going to take these classes next year and I was wondering if they are competitive enough
DE English 101/102
Honors Precalculus/ Trigonometry
AP U.S. History
DE General Biology/ Biology-E or Environmental Biology
AP Microeconomics
AP Psychology
French 3
Bible
I plan to take these AP exams
-AP English Languages(maybe not)
-AP Environmental Science or AP Biology (I am probably not going to take this exam because I heard it is near impossible to self study for and Colleges don’t care about self studying anyways so I would be better of just taking SAT subject test.)
-AP psychology
-AP Micoreconomics
AP U.S. History
And these Sat subject test
World History
Literture
Math 1
Biology-E
U.S. History
Math 2
Is this good enough, and also I meant to put this under this thread.
What matters more than the specific classes is how the rigor of your classes compares to what is available to you, and what is typical in your school. Your GC will have to indicate how rigorous your course load is in the context of your school. In some schools, pre-calc as a senior would be a red flag- b/c the norm is to get to calc by senior year, while in others that is the usual math trajectory. Also, you don’t get extra points for having duplicate Subject tests & APs. I’m not sure why you are taking so many subject tests either- you rarely need more than 2, and I don’t know of any selective colleges that want more than 3. The main people that I know who do a lot of subject tests are home-schooled students who aren’t in a curriculum or people applying to certain UK unis that accept subject tests in lieu of APs.
As the poster above said, don’t take that many subject tests. Focus your time on 2 or 3 (max). As for your schedule, if that’s the most rigorous or as close to the most rigorous schedule you can get in your high school, then that is good enough and not something you should be really worried about. You have kids who get in from low-income high schools with little opportunities, but they likely took the most rigorous schedule available to them. Likewise, you should take advantage of as many of the opportunities available to you (that you are genuinely interested in). It’ll show you take opportunities when available, something that a school like Yale, who is able to provide a lot of resources for their students, values.
On the subject tests, junior year is the best time to take them since the topics will be fresh. I suggest looking at the testing requirements of schools you are interested in both for the number and types of tests. For example, Georgetown “strongly recommends” 3 subject tests and MIT requires 1 math and 1 science. Many schools will only take 1 of the math tests, not 2 if they require 2 or more tests. So, I’d advise taking 3 subject tests at most, including 1 math, 1 science and 1 “other”. If you are a “STEM” focused student, Math 2 is probably the better one to take and having just taken PreCal, you may in fact do better on it than Math 1.
