As a parent, wondering if my child would be able to switch down from an honors class to a regular class for her second half of senior year, if she’s already been accepted to colleges.
She has a rigorous schedule. Currently in 2 non-honors class (math, and elective creative writing, which has been a more enjoyable easy A for her thus far). Rest of classes like science, economics are honors, or AP like psych.
Next semester she replaces creative writing with an honors elective, and at that point she would have ALL honors/AP classes barring math, which is actually toughest for her already.
Wondering if she dropped that honors elective and took a normal elective instead, if colleges would care. She wouldnt be dropping any of her year long classes, just one 2nd half class that would come after all of her acceptances/declines had already come in.
For an elective, probably not an issue. However, she still has to inform the colleges of any change to her schedule. If they have an issue, they’ll tell her.
Actually may not be considered an elective. I think she has to have a senior year English credit. First semester is creative writing (non honors), second semester is honors mythology. She has a similar situation with first half honors econ, second half honors poli sci.
So she could downgrade on one of those potentially. The other option is to “take it easy” and maybe risk a C somewhere and not drop anything. Option 3 of course is to have her continue to grind and stress all year.
More than likely. I still think she’d be OK to downgrade one if she thinks the stress level will be too high. Although TBH, honors mythology sounds like a class that could be interesting, fun, and painless.
I would not advise the “take it easy” approach; planning for a C is a sure-fire way to find up with a D.
@skieurope I agree on Mythology. I took that in college myself and enjoyed it. In fact, AP/Honors everything sounds great to me now as an adult. Compared to my everyday job, which is a brutal amount of hours, work, difficulty mixed with uninteresting material, going to HS or college and taking awesome advanced courses where the students and teacher are engaged, sounds fantastic to me. It’s not easy to convince a teenager of the same, however. In the end my guess is she will just stick with what she has signed up for. Probably have more of a struggle with honors polysci than mythology
Yes, and colleges do not like surprises on the final high school transcript, whether they be schedule changes (particularly in the less rigorous direction) or substantial drops in academic performance (mainly D or F grades, though going from a 4.0 to a 2.0 with all C grades would not be good either).
Curious, if HS classes are already stressing your D out (esp dreading mythology vs say multi variable calculus), how is she going to handle college? Don’t get me wrong, your D should enjoy her senior year, but you would think a lot of stress is already off since she presumably has acceptances in hand for college(s) she is happy to attend vs classmates who are still waiting for good news.
@BKSquared I was anticipating this sort of reply, mainly because it is a thought I have had many times. I guess my answer would be … I expect college to be stressful for her (and most kids). Being in an AP/Honors track in HS is stressful for most kids as well. For me, she has already proven she can do it … but there is a part of me that would want her to have at least one semester where she doesn’t feel taxed.
I dont think she would dread mythology by any means, shes more afraid of math courses. Shes fine in science, social, history. In the end we’re not likely to change anything, just wanted to hear some feedback.
I would be very careful about downgrading the schedule.
As noted above your D would have to contact each school she has been accepted into and ask if the schedule change would impact her acceptance. If the answer is no she should get it in writing and save the reply. FWIW my friend’s D asked her ED school if she could downgrade one class and was told that if she did so they would review her acceptance so to some schools (especially the more competitive ones) it could be an issue.
In addition, if she does downgrade her schedule your D should notify any college she is still waiting to get an admissions decision from of the change. Again, this should be done in writing.
As an aside, my D took a semester of mythology/fairy tales in HS and loved it but of course the level of work in a class like that is very teacher dependent.
Our motto second semester senior year was “B’s are fine” – but I found that both my kids kept their grades up but just stressed less about everything. And I let them both goof off a bit (both took an easy p/t job) the summer between senior year of HS and starting college which I think was valuable in terms of letting them recharge and get excited for their next step.