Sorry. I agree should check. This is just the link guidance has for all seniors at my kid’s school so i assumed pretty accurate. I can delete my above post if people would prefer. We found it a good starting point.
For most schools I don’t think it would doom a student’s application to fall short on “recommended” years for one subject as long as the rigor is there, overall.
My guess is that the reason for this CC advice is that some students do the minimum in all the subjects they don’t prefer, and think that they can make up for that by adding specialized electives or depth in one area. For example, a student might take the minimum requirement for english, social studies, and foreign language, in order to make room in their schedule for a lot of computer science or engineering, thinking these electives will make them more competitive for admission. (I feel like we see this fairly often.)
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I think you should leave the link as is. It’s a good starting point and everybody can double check the colleges’ specific websites for the schools their kids are considering applying to.
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I think the link is a helpful starting point. Thank you! And I also took @SJ2727’s advice to google high school requirements + school name. This was very useful, too.
I think S26 meets most definitions of good rigor. He’ll have 4 years of English, 4 of history/social sciences, 5 years of science (doubled up this year with required chem and honors physics elective this year, taking AP Chem next), 4 years of math through AP Calc BC, 3 years of Japanese (and 1 year of Italian if he wants to do it). And 4 years of drawing and painting (honors and AP), which I know is not a core class but he is pretty committed to his art.
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D26 will graduate with 8 years of orchestra (2 periods for 4 years) like her big brother, so I know how it can be to work in core classes around that!
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When a school says 4 years, do they mean all 4 years in high school? Or through level 4?
I’m just curious, because S26 is applying for music, and none of his schools ask for 4 years, but he’ll have Spanish 2, Spanish 3, and Spanish 4 on his transcript, with no language in senior year. Obviously, he took Spanish 1, but his school doesn’t list middle school classes on the transcript.
For languages, my understanding is that it’s through 4th level. Colleges will see starting high school at level 2 and understand that it’s following level 1 done in middle school. There are by the way some colleges that do ask to list any high school equivalent math and LOTE courses done in middle school (the CSUs and one or two others I’ve seen ask for this).
For math however my understanding is that it’s generally 4 years of math during high school regardless what level you started at.
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Our in-state flagship requires:
- 2 yr of same foreign language
- 2 yr of social sciences (1 of which must be US History)
- 1 yr of fine arts or career/technical education
- 4 yr English
- 4 yr math
- 3 yr lab science
Plus there’s guaranteed admission if you’re in the top 25% of your graduating class OR have a 3.0 UW GPA in the above required classes by the end of junior yr.
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D26 now won’t listen to me about foreign language and is refusing to take the CLEP exam in Spanish. This means that if she chooses to attend U of A, she’ll definitely have to take 1 or 2 semesters of it. As a compromise, she did agree to take the CLEP exam for Calculus, so at least there’s that. 
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Just found out C26 managed to accumulate 45 volunteer hours at school this past school year… except they missed the deadline for submission to formally log the hours. Hoping they can still get them. Can they add it to their volunteer hours on college applications even if not formally logged? Their summer volunteering will probably end up being 80-90 hours, but that will be automatically logged as hours for them.
Why not? Our school doesn’t log anything, kids just estimate.
I guess if hours appear on the transcript it might be weird if there is a discrepancy. But it seems to me that in any case there might be legitimate hours that wouldn’t get logged for whatever reason.
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UoA? Worth noting some subjects (like architecture of course 
) have a higher GPA threshold for auto admit.
AFAIK the transcript just has grades and GPA, nothing else.
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Our school doesn’t track any volunteer hours. One of the places S26 volunteers tracks on their own dashboard but it’s not connected to the school in any way. I don’t see why you couldn’t include the hours in C26’s Activities section
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Yes, UofA. But D26 isn’t applying as an architecture major. Or an MIS major either…that one has an insanely high GPA requirement for admission to that major. Even if you just first get admitted as a business admin major and then apply at the end of freshman & sophomore yr to the MIS major, they only allow you 2 tries to apply and then if you don’t get selected, no MIS major for you.
That plus the fact that she has zero desire to take business classes like econ & accounting AND she’s way more interested in 2 other majors instead (which don’t have min GPA requirements) mean that none of the GPA stuff is a deciding factor in her case.
Has anyone opted into the Direct Admissions through College Board? The CB will send some information to a small handful of colleges and those colleges will offer acceptances without fees or an actual application. We are debating it here. I think we will try to see how it works out. None of the colleges are high on the list, but I could see 1 or 2 being reasonable. Direct Admissions: Skip the College Application – BigFuture
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I’ve thought about having D26 opt in for this.
Same- it’s up to the students to track and our high school logs nothing.
Honestly for my D26, I am actually encouraging her to cut back slightly on the number of “very likely / likely” on her list, because if she has a lot of acceptances she’s going to have a terrible time deciding at the end (I know my D!)… so, she doesn’t need more direct admissions to confuse the issue further 
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I’m wary of doing anything that starts spamming us. Is it possible to see a list of colleges without first opting in to receive stuff?
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