I’m a sophomore interested in the International Relations field, and I’m in the midst of course selections for junior year. So I know junior year is the most important year of high school, and it’s a good time to impress colleges by piling rigorous classes (APs)…but the APs offered at my school next year don’t interest me. (Euro, Macro/micro econ, and Bio)
I am planning on taking Econ at school, and self study Human Geography and US Gov’t and Politics. But this means that my transcript will show that 6 out of 7 classes during junior are regular honors level…which isn’t very “impressive.”
What are your thoughts? Is it preferable to take rigorous courses (that I’m not interested in) to show that I’m challenging myself, OR should I take classes that I care about and get the AP test scores to verify? Do colleges have a preference?
If you want to apply to the top tier schools, I would take the APs offered by your school because you want your guidance counselor to mark off that you have taken the most rigorous schedule available. If you are not aiming for those school, I would still take AP Economics as obtaining an understanding of that subject could prove to be useful for International Relations.
Agreeing with @happy1 & @Conformist1688! The pre-reqs for most IR programs include some amount of world / euro history & econ. If history and econ really don’t interest you (esp after taking classes in them), you might want to revisit your IR focus. Also, Human Geo doesn’t get much respect as an AP, and AdComms don’t seem to give self-studied APs the amount of credit I would give them. In general, it seems that AdComms rank school work over self studying.
@collegemom3717 thank you for your response! I should have been more clear in my original post. I am taking AP US History this year and I genuinely enjoy the learning history, and I definitely taking AP Econ. I am on the fence about AP Euro because it is known to take up a lot of time and it is boring compared to other history APs. I was wondering if it would be better for me to self study an AP Gov’t and Politics (human geo doesn’t really matter, it’s just a filler subject that I’ll study along the way with friends for fun) outside of school and not take Euro.
(basically --> Econ at school, Gov’t and Politics outside of school OR Econ and Euro at school.)
What are you thoughts?
Econ and Euro at school.
IR = history, politics, and economics in the world.
See if you can do Human Geog for fun with friends as a social activity, and take the test… but it doesn’t really “count”.
A better use of your time may be if a community college offers a class such as Development, Comparative politics, etc.
Agree with the others about taking Econ and Euro in school. If you are really interested in IR, don’t self-study Human Geog. Spend the time learning a language that is in demand and from a part of the world that interests you - and read up about the culture and history. Here’s a list, but there are others out there - do some cross-checking:
