This week The Source launches The Road To College, a new series designed to help young people and their parents with different aspects of preparing for college. Written by Antilles School College Counselor Chris Teare, the series will appear in the Source each Monday throughout the school year.
As school reopens across the territory, students are beginning to survey the academic menu of courses available in the coming year. What courses a student "orders" from that menu will make or break many college applications, for the first criterion of college selection is the strength of your program.
If you want to impress the college of your choice, it’s essential to go for the heartiest entrees available.
As you consider what to order, realize that the high school grades colleges most respect are those that you earn in academic classes. Employing my menu metaphor, such courses come from what I call "The Five Basic Food Groups": English, Math, History, Science, and Foreign Languages.
The Old School cuisine that colleges seek always starts with what you could call the staples, especially the protein, in your diet—not garnishes or side dishes … and certainly never desserts.
Continuing our culinary analogy, the college admissions office’s dream diet will consist of the Basic Five for four full years. Such breadth and depth of study impresses colleges enormously, especially because they know that no high school requires its graduates to undertake the Basic Five for four full years.
Thus, anyone who does so has challenged him or herself broadly and deeply—impressing colleges in the bargain.
This positive impression is all the more true for those students who are able to take advanced or honors-level courses, especially those labeled Advanced Placement (AP) on the transcript. Indeed, the very first question that the most selective colleges in the country ask when looking at a student’s record is: “Has the student challenged herself?”
If there are advanced, honors, or AP courses available—and you want some love from a college—you need to take tough courses in your areas of greatest ability and interest.
Then you need to do well, clean your plate, and show you’ve made the most of your meal.
You can move away from the Basic Five and the four full years; however, if you substitute along the way, just be sure you’ve replaced the item you’ve dropped with something of equivalent or greater value.
If you forego the mainstays of the academic menu, just be sure that the art, music or other elective you select makes the most sense for your plan when it comes to where you will apply and what you hope to study.
The more traditional your college and likely major, the more "meat and potatoes" should be on your high school plate. Artists and musicians can order differently.
A final note for skeptics: If you doubt what the colleges where you will apply know about your school’s offerings, perhaps because they’ve never visited your campus, realize that high schools publish profiles that accompany transcripts.
The profile has the menu of all the entrees available; colleges will know if you skipped the nutritious offerings and loaded up on desserts instead.
Bon appétit!
