I have a dilemma I’m facing. For sophomore year There is An honors English 10 class which is almost a guaranteed B and I plan on getting all A’s but also that class is known to improve writing skills by a lot. My junior year schedule is Ap Comp, Ap Us history, Ap Calc BC, Ap Biology, and Ap Computer Science. Senior year I’m taking Ap lit, Ap Econ macro, Ap chemistry, Ap Stats and Ap physics C. Do you think that if I got that B it would effect my application as a whole? I’m trying to get into Stanford, Harvard, or Yale. Is there anything I should do to improve my application from an academic stand point? The other classes are manageable A’s. I also scored high on psat and aspire.
Take the class if you think it will improve your writing skills that much! You will be drawing on those writing skills for literally the rest of your academic career and writing is one of the most important tools in your application. There are going to be thousands of other applicants with your grades and better, many of whom will be very similar to your profile in every way EXCEPT for the essays that you write. They are literally the only thing that can definitively separate your application from someone else’s. Grades and test scores that are top tier are a given, but it’s things like writing that make the real difference.