<p>Just thinking “aloud” here. Tell me if I’m wrong …</p>
<p>State requires a number of 4.0 classes that lower my son’s GPA – things like PE, fine arts, health, speech. Seems like there would be an advantage to putting these classes off until your senior year, doesn’t it? Do colleges base admission on a transcript after six semesters? And then you submit a final transcript to them just so they can make sure you haven’t crashed and burned?</p>
<p>Of course, the risk is that you could fail one of these classes and not graduate! :)</p>
<p>For early or rolling admissions, acceptance is based on grades from the first 6 semesters. For RD admissions, 7th semester grades are considered as well (and they are important). </p>
<p>I assume the problem here is that the HS does not weigh the required courses. Selective colleges are not terribly concerned with weights assigned by the high school: Although they’re interested in the rigor of an applicant’s curriculum, they generally re-weigh grades from high school transcripts according to their own metrics. I think that the only reason to “put off” unweighted courses is for purposes of class rank and/or decile placement. For instance, if the student believes s/he is in line to be val or sal, or wants to assure s/he is in the top 10% of the class in a state whose public flagship institution uses a top 10% rule for admissions or scholarship purposes, then it might be a good strategy to put off the required classes that might drag rank and/or GPA down.</p>
<p>These are the sorts of silly games that students tend to play when they’re trying to be val or sal (although it’s usually in substituting courses rather than ordering them differently). So far as college admissions goes I don’t think it makes any difference whatsoever. Most colleges ignore the artificial weights assigned by the school (in part because there is generally no consistency or reason to these weights from school to school). They’ll simply look at what the classes are and what the grades achieved are. If anything, if the school wants to know what courses you’re taking in Senior year you might look a bit silly with a schedule that was full of gym, health, speech… </p>
<p>In our case it was music that caused the GPA issue. Even though everything on record was an A it was mathematically impossible to be val, sal or even in the top 3-4 because music courses aren’t ‘weighted’ and some students dropped music classes (band, choir, orchestra) to take a random extra AP course. In our case we decided that given that 5 mins after graduation nobody cares if you’re val or sal it would be best to avoid manipulating ones education for such vanity issues.</p>
<p>Good point, rocketman, about making the senior load look too cushy, but he’ll have plenty of AP courses that senior year, too. It’s just turned out that he has never taken speech or health and still has one more semester of PE to go, so I wondered whether doing all those in spring of senior year rather than fall would be beneficial. His PE credit will coincide already with his spring sport.</p>
<p>His spring sport has an associated class so as long as you’re enrolled in class while you play the sport you get credit. It’s a ninth period after school.</p>
<p>OP - As previous posters have stated, it kind of depends on where your son is rank-wise – and perhaps a little on where he is socially. (If he’s in the chess club and on the debate team, going out for football junior year will look flakey at best.) On the other hand, your S didn’t make the rules and he wouldn’t be breaking any by gaming the system a bit. Playing a sport to avoid P/E, volunteering at a health clinic to avoid Health class, and getting Music Appreciation waived based on musical accomplishment are all legal (at our local HS) and can definitely move a top student up a bit. It certainly beats having a parent join the Board of Education (which is the current preferred method for boosting a student’s rank at our local school).</p>
<p>He’s a great student with a good GPA, but at his competitive school, he’s at the 21st percentile. I’d like to see him scoot into that second decile! I’m starting to feel like rank has become the end all and be all, regardless of his four-year varsity status, leadership positions, good test scores, etc. Not looking to do anything illegal (or to run for public office!), just trying how to best play the hand he has.</p>