Seeking input on senior year course selection

carbmom
Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:17:21 +0000

My daughter is a current junior and will register for next year’s classes soon. Now I know course selection is best discussed with the school counselor, but she attends a large public high school in a dead broke school district, so the counselors are not helpful. Hence I’m seeking advice here from the knowledgeable online community.

D has great academics, already finished 4 AP classes, Chinese, Chem, Physics 1, WH, scored 5 on all. This year she is taking 4 AP classes, Physics 2, Eng Lang, Calc BC, and Econ (2 exams), on track to score all 5’s. For senior year, she plans to take Physics C, Psychology, and CompSci.

The issue is with her English and math classes. Since she’s in Eng Lang this year, the natural sequence next would be Eng Lit. But she is a pure STEM kid and doesn’t want to do Lit. Instead she favors an honors class on speech/debate and public speaking (which really is more helpful and useful to her). For math, her school does offer AP stats, but for some reason that class is considered a joke by upper class students and the teacher is “mean”. So instead she wants to take an honors advanced math that focus on problem solving skills and is taught by the math team coach.

My question is: would taking two honors classes instead of two AP classes senior year be viewed negatively rigor-wise by the most selective colleges? Right now the downside I see is with weighted GPA which affects ranking somewhat, but she’ll be top 2% for sure.

Just for background, D has a 36 ACT (one sitting), SAT subject math II and chemistry both 800, 4.0 uw GPA, and an AIME qualifier. Her current reach school is MIT.

Any input is greatly appreciated.