I know that many colleges require or recommend 4 years of “social studies.” My child’s high school requires a semester of “personal finance.” Does personal finance count as social studies for college admissions? Thanks!
No…personal finance is an elective.
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This would be a question for your guidance counselor. It varys. For example at my school, you can count it in social studies, but some schools it is only elective. But if it does count, I would still take a true history/social studies course that year since personal finance will not be impressive to college admissions officers.
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Thank you. I am asking in terms of college admissions, not high school requirements. It sounds like my child should take another social studies class in addition to the personal finance class then. Thank you for the advice!
That is what I would recommend personally. Personal Finance is not really seen as a super high rigor option since it is generally an easy A class. But it’s still important to know and understand, so I think you should take it with an AP social study such as AP World History, AP Human Geography, or even AP Psychology. All of these (especially the latter 2) are on the eaiser end of AP courses, but they are still impressive to colleges.
Helpful. Thank you.
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Where I live, personal finance is the state-mandated “social studies” offering for all public high school seniors. IIRC, the legislature eliminated a history class requirement to make room for personal finance. (they really, really like whittling down history classes).
It’s not my understanding that colleges penalize applicants for taking the state-mandated class as their senior year SS.
ETA, in case it matters, the SS progression for kids seeking rigor at our HS is AP World in 9th, AP Gov in 10th, APUSH in 11th, then personal finance.
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Yep, each school is different, so it’s important for OP to reach out to their guidance counselor. My school is AP Human geo (9), ap world history (10), apush history, ap us gov and comp gov (12). Then you can throw in personal finance if you want any year. It just depends on the school and state requirements. And I agree, no college will penalize for meeting state requirements.
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Well, that’s interesting. It would be so much better for us if colleges considered Personal Finance as a social studies class because then that would open up an extra elective slot for my child to take an elective they want to take. (Again, I’m not concerned about high school or state requirements. We’ve got that covered. This is an admissions question.) We’re just wondering if the personal finance class my child is required to take could also serve as a semester of social studies for those colleges that like to see four years of history/social studies. For example, per UMich’s CDS, they actually require four years of history and social studies.
How your high school considers it is irrelevant. It’s how the college looks at it that counts. The college is not going to look through your high school handbook to see what category the high school puts it in. That are not going to consider it an elective at one high school and a social science at another. Even if it’s required by your high school, I think the college is more likely to put it in the elective category.
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Thanks! Yes, I know. Again, I’m not at all concerned about how my child’s high school is categorizing the class. We’ve got that covered. Again, this question is 100% about how most COLLEGES look at a personal finance class. Do most colleges count that as a social studies class when they’re counting up whether an applicant has four years of social studies/history? For example, if colleges see “Civics” on a high school transcript they automatically assign that as a “social studies” class. My very specific question is what colleges do when they see “Personal Finance” on a high school transcript. Do they count that as a “social studies” class? If anyone knows the answer to that specific question, I would be grateful!
My understanding is more selective colleges are unlikely to see something like Personal Finance as a college-prep class, and therefore would not really see it as “counting” toward any sort of recommendation for History/Social Science classes even if it was counted as such by the HS.
Of course if you literally had no choice but to substitute this sort of class for a year of college-prep History/Social Science due to the way the HS was structured, hopefully that would be reflected in the school report. But I would think that would be pretty unusual.
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For what it is worth, it looks like California public universities treat high school personal finance courses mostly as “college preparatory electives”, meaning that most of them do not fulfill specific categories like social studies or math (although a few do, presumably depending on the actual content of the courses).
Whether or not other colleges have the same opinion of how to categorize such courses is a question to ask them.
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This is very helpful! Thank you!
Extremely helpful! Thank you!
Again, no…personal finance is generally an elective. Of course I can’t speak for every college, but I can’t imagine many would consider personal finance a core academic class. ETA: and the more selective the college, the less likely a school would consider this class a core academic course.
Just for perspective, many colleges do not consider PLTW courses as core either…and those courses tend to be pretty ‘academic’.
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Got it! This has been very helpful!
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Note the difference between core/non-core and academic/non-academic classifications. In particular, there may be academic courses that are non-core, so they count as college-prep courses, but not toward fulfilling requirements or recommendations in core subjects (English, math, social studies, foreign language, science, and sometimes art). PLTW and apparently many personal finance courses tend to be considered academic but non-core. Computer science is a more common example of this type of course in high schools. In IB schools, the theory of knowledge course would be another example.
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At my D’s school personal finance is required for graduation and is in the math department, but does not replace the need for 4 years of math. If your child is applying to a school that requires or expects 4 years of social studies/history, I would not expect the personal finance class to “count”.
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Good analogy. Thanks!
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