High School Courses: How to Strategically Select Your Classes
Choosing your high school courses can feel equally exciting and puzzling: it’s too easy to make the wrong move.
The classes you take during your high school career will help you discover new passions, build lasting relationships with friends and teachers, and ultimately, play a huge role in your college applications. Perhaps even more importantly, planning your course load is a constant back and forth between ensuring that you’re challenging yourself “enough,” but not pushing yourself so hard that you don’t have time to participate in activities that you love or perform to the best of your ability in school.
Thankfully, picking high school courses doesn’t always have to translate into frantic Google searches to see if it’s better to get a B in AP Calculus or an A in Calculus. It is possible to navigate the process with grace and foresight – and it gets easier when you start early.
Here’s a yearly breakdown of InGenius Prep’s top tips for planning your high school courses. We’re here to help you hit your stride and succeed without ever feeling overwhelmed.
9th Grade
Do: Test the Waters
When it’s time to choose between regular, honors, and AP courses, 9th grade is the perfect opportunity to test the waters and ease into challenging classes. As a general rule of thumb, most students can manage 1-3 AP courses per year, building up to 3 or more by senior year. 9th grade is the perfect time to start on the lower end of that spectrum and assess by the end of the year if you should increase or decrease difficulty.
Be realistic about balancing classwork with extracurricular commitments. If your school does not allow 9th graders to take AP courses or has a set schedule that all freshman begin with, have no fear. As you progress in your high school courses, ask yourself if you could be challenged more or if you should lighten your load next year.
Do: Ask Yourself What You Can Control
Don’t overlook the importance of electives! This is the area of your schedule where you exercise the most control. While it’s not recommended that you max out your course load with electives, remember that colleges are not looking for one-dimensional students.
It’s important to explore interests that are outside of your core academic focus (or ones that aren’t academic at all). Courses like orchestra, visual arts, or theater can add personality and depth to your application, especially when you demonstrate sustained involvement in a particular interest.
Don’t: Overload Yourself Early
I worked with a student who had taken an extraordinarily high-level math course during 9th grade. Although she was a bright student, she was not prepared to meet the demands and expectations of such a rigorous course. As a result, she ended the year with a D+ in the class, which had a negative impact on her college applications three years later.
It can be tempting to “load up” early, but starting a class before you’re ready deprives you of the ability to experience that class at a time where you can fully take advantage of its opportunities. Don’t rush into a course that you’re not confident you can successfully tackle. Students and parents alike often wonder if it’s more impressive to get “better grades” or take “harder classes.” If it’s the difference between an A in an honors course and an A- in an AP course, push yourself. But in this case, the answer is clearly “better grades.”
10th Grade
Do: Focus on Passion
If you’ve already figured out your passion, now is the time to start strategically demonstrating that interest through your high school courses. Use your 10th grade year to prioritize the classes that truly matter the most to you. What are you excited to learn? How can you demonstrate depth in a particular core focus or intersection of interests?
The high school courses on your transcript will represent an important piece of your application persona, or how an admissions officer will remember who you are. Scale back on classes that don’t matter to you to clear space for those that do, so that you can create a clear narrative about who you are as a student on your future applications.
Do: Think About Your Trajectory
The second phase after “testing the waters” in 9th grade is ensuring that you are able to appropriately increase the difficulty of your course load of your high school courses over time. Make sure that you continually challenge yourself by taking on harder classes while your grades simultaneously improve. Admissions officers will look for an upward trajectory in your grades and in rigorousness. This shows that you’re able to acclimate well to higher levels of learning and bodes well for your academic performance in college.
Don’t: Be a “Renaissance” Student Who Does It All
A Stanford Former Admissions Officer once said that “Stanford prefers lopsided students to well-rounded students.” You don’t have to be a “renaissance student” who can do it all to gain entry into a top-ranking school – so why bother designing your schedule to appear “well-rounded?” Instead, focus on the core subjects, both academic and non-academic, that align most with your skill sets, interests, and passions. It works in your favor to be an angular student.
11th Grade
Do: Think Like a Superstar
Be a superstar at your high school. When an admissions officer reads over your application next year, they will evaluate your experiences in the unique context of your high school and its students. You don’t have to be the best at everything and you don’t have be the next Steve Jobs, but you should strive to be the best that you can in your particular context and for your unique interests.
Have an open conversation with your guidance counselor where you ask what is typical for most students at your high school, or students that are interested in biology, computer science, or fiction writing. What commonalities do you notice? How do you compare? Are there more rigorous courses available to you that you’re not taking advantage of?
Do: Start Checking College Requirements
While you want to focus on high school courses that highlight your passions and application persona, you’ll need to think about logistics as well. Your guidance counselor helps you reach your school’s and state’s requirements for graduation, but it’s your job to start thinking about how to meet prerequisites for schools of interest. University of California or University of Texas school systems are popular choices, and they boast unique requirements for admissions. If you’re in a non-California or non-Texas high school, your school may not be preparing you to meet admissions standards for these schools, like the University of California’s requirement that a student has two years of a foreign language. Don’t wait until senior year to realize that it’s too late!
Don’t: Forget About Testing
While not all schools require SAT Subject Tests, many top schools recommend that you submit two of them. Other schools will often look for SAT Subject Tests for future engineering or computer science majors. 11th grade is the perfect time to think strategically about how you can align your course load with future subject tests so that you can spend less time cramming for another test.
12th Grade
Do: Avoid Being Overwhelmed
This year, you’ll need strong time management skills to balance a heavy course load, extracurricular commitments, work on your college applications, and everything else that comes with being a senior. You should actively work towards striking a balance between intellectually challenging yourself to prepare for college level classes and ensuring that you are able to perform well in your high school courses.
After you apply to colleges, your guidance counselor will submit a mid-year report that shows your 1st semester grades. It’s important that you proactively manage your time and course load so that the midyear report doesn’t show a dip in grades, which could especially make a difference for schools where you’ve been deferred or waitlisted.
Do: Take College Classes for Credit
If you have the opportunity to take courses at a nearby college for high school credit – do it! This is a fantastic opportunity to genuinely engage with a subject you’re interested in at a much deeper level, experience a taste of what your college classes will be like, and show a college that you’re taking advantage of every opportunity to challenge yourself.
If it’s not possible for you to take a college course, talk to your guidance counselor about the possibility of pursuing an independent research project or internship for credit. These experiences are unique and will not only positively shape your senior experience, but leave you with the independence, skills, and ambition to succeed in college.
Don’t: Avoid Challenges
Although you shouldn’t challenge yourself to the point of performing poorly, senior year is not an excuse to slack off in your classes. An admissions officer will notice if you’ve deliberately stacked your schedule to take the easiest classes possible, and it will likely read as though you are an immature or unmotivated student. Push yourself to stay challenged – even if you’re starting to come down with a bout of senioritis.
When picking your high school courses, it’s hard to strike a happy medium. But with a bit of foresight and strategy, you can ensure that your high school transcript is a strong one. As you dig through your course catalog and talk to your guidance counselor, keep these tips in mind!