Scheduling Trends
February 6, 2020
As the last months of the school year come into view, freshmen, sophomores,
and juniors have to make the stressful decision of what classes to take next year.
Students are sent home with an elective sheet, where they mark their top choices
and alternatives for non-core classes. There are already four core subjects that
students must take, until they receive the required amount of credits, including:
math, science, social studies, and english. This leaves them with three other options
for classes to fill in their schedule. During their english classes, they go to the
auditorium to set up their schedules for next year.
In some ways, there are trends among the classes that students take. It has
been noticed that, generally, “students who have already taken AP courses tend to
take them again,” Ms. Walker, a new guidance counselor to Freedom, said. In terms
of how important these AP courses are for college, it has been noted that many out-
of-state colleges do not accept the credits that students earn in high school, while
most, if not all, in-state colleges and universities do. She has also stated that in
many cases, students with a 3.5, or higher, GPA are the ones that tend to take AP or
Dual Enrollment courses.
For a lot of students, taking AP classes is necessary to prepare for college and
earn the credits before applying to their chosen university, so many this year are
signing up for these courses to take in the upcoming year. Olivia Murrin, 10, said
that rather than taking honors classes, she, “would rather take AP classes because
it looks good on the transcript and gives me practice for what I need to be ready for
in college.” A large number of students are opting to take AP classes over honors, in
hopes of increasing their GPA to get a better chance at being recruited by four-year
universities.
Still, many students believe that it’s not vital to take higher level courses and
would rather stick to honors, balancing out this trend. “I would rather take honors
[classes] because the workload’s not as heavy,” Glynn Morgan, 11, said. Plenty of
people partake in out of school activities, so the workload of Ap and Dual Enrollment
classes do not work for them. As for which electives might be the most popular,
Morgan stated that he thinks students across the school take “AP World History, AP
Human Geography, and culinary, because many other students do.”
Whether or not a student takes AP/ Dual Enrollment classes or just honors
courses, scheduling is very important for counselors and students alike. This
process determines what classes the students will be enrolled in and what teachers
they will have for the upcoming year.
