Junior year planning and breadth vs depth – very long, sorry

sbjdorlo
Tue, 07 May 2013 18:44:51 +0000

hs2015mom,

First, is your daughter high energy and does she need little sleep? If so, I think all her ideas are very doable. Because it appears to be a very, very busy schedule, I would want to know that she can do it all and get great grades (As) and great test scores while doing her ECs.

Also, is she self-motivated? I would say if she wants to do it all and is motivated, she can do it all! If she doesn’t have any challenges to learning, the sky’s the limit, as they say.

Probably a good thing to do would be to prioritize. What’s most important to her? And what’s most important to get on her transcripts? After that, she can prioritize based on level of interest.

Also, is she an excellent test taker or will she need time to study and bump up those scores? That’s something to think about.

Has she looked into Cooper Union? Might give that a look, too. [Welcome | Cooper Union](http://cooper.edu/)

Re. foreign language: I’ve told this story before but I can repeat it. My son took two semesters of Arabic only (and one year of ASL with me but I hardly count that) and he did just fine in college admissions because everything else on his application was good, I guess. He got straight As in all his college classes, so that probably helped. Can she just do two semesters of college German and be done with that?