Even where there are no capacity limitations on the majors in question (the usual reason that there are secondary admission processes to change or declare major), engineering majors commonly have voluminous requirements and long sequences of prerequisites, so that someone switching into an engineering major without having followed the curriculum before then may have to do significant catch-up course work, possibly requiring an extra semester or few to graduate.
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Yes, this is something I wish I had asked more questions about early on. Our counseling isn’t great, I wasn’t thinking about college admissions in freshman and sophomore year when he made some of these decisions on his own.
The social sciences question is another whole can of worms! He did not take a social science sophomore year as he really wanted to take both AP chemistry and physics. He is currently in AP US History. He needs a semester each of Economics and Government to graduate. He could take one or both if those as AP classes next year for a full year or take them as regular non-AP classes for a semester or online over the summer and take AP European. Or do some combination of the above. He’ll definitely have some significant social science but maybe not in a traditional order.
Math (he has both AP Stats and Calc AB this year and is taking Calc BC next year) and English he’s fine (AP this year and next).
Foreign language he is a bit weak but probably OK for the schools and majors he is considering (Spanish III is the highest, taken in sophomore year because he had a year of HS Spanish in 8th grade). I am a bit worried about this though. He is pretty adamant that he doesn’t want to do more Spanish, unfortunately.
The reason for his issues: One of his seven courses each year has been Orchestra (he is a high level musician involved in both in- and out-of school groups) and another course has been a physical conditioning class that his coaches highly encourage their athletes to take. These are both unweighted courses though and because of that his class rank is very good but not stellar (20-30th out of 900 ish).
This is something I’ve thought a bit about. Civil Engineering (which is what he currently claims to be most interested in on engineering side) typically requires some geology courses and one of the schools he is really interested in doesn’t have Civil so I can see him going Environmental there. So I can see that course as maybe giving some insight (and having the additional advantage in his eyes of being a bit easier too).
Up to the end of this academic year, not counting next year or summer courses, how many years of history and social studies will he have completed?
He will have 2 years (Honors World History and Geography in 9th and APUSH in 11th).
Then that becomes a choice of 3 years versus 4 years (with more AP options) of history and social studies. Perhaps he can consider some of the same aims as with science courses:
- College admission competition: do the colleges in question indicate preference for 4 over 3 years? Remember also that the most selective colleges tend to prefer students with a well rounded base in the high school academic subjects, even if they also have particular strength or depth in one or more areas (e.g. science, music).
- Gaining advanced placement and/or subject credit in college: mainly AP credit that may be useful for general education requirements or taking more advanced out-of-major courses in those subjects. Should check AP credit listings and course prerequisites of various colleges of interest.
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He’ll end up with at least 3.5 because I think he is planning to take at least 1 social science AP course senior year. If that one is either Econ or Gov, he’ll have to do summer or 1 semester of the other.
Thought I’d give everyone an update - course selection info went out this week, and it looks like this is what S27 is planning to do:
AP Physics-C E&M
1 sem of Organic Chemistry/ 1 sem of chamber orchestra
AP Micro/Macro Econ
AP Lit and Comp
AP Calc BC
Symphony Orchestra
Strength and Speed
and he’ll take the Goverment course online over the summer (no AP)- still not convinced he’ll have time to do that.
The advantage of this schedule is he gets in the Physics that would be useful for engineering, gets to try out some different chemistry, and it hopefully it won’t be a totally overwhelming schedule for senior year. I was actually super happy to see him select chamber orchestra for the spring. Music is easy for him and makes him happy, so I think it will be a good way to spend part of second semester senior year.
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