Dropping DE Courses in Senior Year

[Melabella]

DD has been accepted to several colleges, but we are awaiting financial aid awards to make the final decision on where she will attend.

 

She is dual enrolled at our local university.  When she applied to schools, she had to list her courses for her senior year. For second semester that included the following:

 

Calculus 

Honors Chem w/lab

French 2002

French 3001

Intro to Psychology

Greek 3 (through Lukeion, not dual-enrolled)

 

She's also a TA/SI Leader for Intro French classes, so she has to sit in on another French class as well and works 10 hours/week overall on campus. 

 

She had to give up Greek 3 this semester due to an unavoidable schedule conflict with her DE classes. I feel confident that dropping Greek is not a deal breaker.

 

However, yesterday she dropped the Psych class because it was too easy.  The professor stated that the class would be a lot of busy work and, in fact, the first homework assignment was a crossword puzzle. Unfortunately, there are no good options for adding a replacement class that work with her schedule.

 

How likely is she to have her college acceptances rescinded if she does not replace the psych class?  She will still be taking 14 hours and will have met all of her high school requirements for graduation.  The only other option is to take an Ethics class that has horrible reviews on ratemyprofessor.  Would it be best to suck it up and take that class even if she's likely to get a B in the class? 

 

 

[chiguirre]

She could study on her own and take the CLEP if her CC awards credit for it (a lot of them do, as do state universities) or sign up for the AP if that is still possible. In any case, I'd have her study on her own and put it on her transcript as a homeschool class instead of DE.

[Bootsie]

Unless psychology was meeting a necessary high school graduation requirement or admissions requirement for your university, this should not matter.  Many students take an incomplete load their senior year.  Also, scheduling problems can cause students to take something different in the second semester of their senior year than what they had as planned on their application.

[Melabella]

None of the colleges she will attend next year accept CLEP credit.  AP self-study might be an option. 

 

The Psych course is not a requirement for high school graduation or college admittance.  We originally chose the Psych class because her top choice school is known to have a GPA killer Intro to Psych course  (and she will have to take the course at some point for her intended major), but psych specifically isn't needed right now.  

 

Just wondering how colleges will view dropping two classes?  

[Julie of KY]

My instinct says if you are dropping two classes then you should probably replace one of them - but it certainly doesn't have to be a duel enrolled class or a really hard class. It could be a discussion based home class based on Teaching Company videos. It could be a self-study literature or history or anything else where the bulk of the work is reading with possibly a paper for output.

 

I don't think you have to sign up for a new class if there is something you can do on your own.

[JanetC]

I like the idea of just doing a home-based, low-busy work class. It should either be in the social sciences (like psych) or in foreign language (like Greek was). I prefer social sciences because she already has two foreign language credits in her remaining schedule.

 

It does not have to be AP, but there is a series of self-paced EdX.org AP Psychology classes you might want to look at.

 

Good luck.

[G5052]

You could do a low-key home class in psychology with Great Courses and some reading and call it a day. You could even pick some popular psychology books and have her write an essay on each one.

 

Some of the very selective schools I'm familiar with would want to see a full load in the last semester, but I can't speak to specific schools.

[MariaT]

Sometimes seniors change their schedules in the middle of the year due to scheduling issues, such as with the Greek class. I agree other posters that she will want to show that she is continuing to pursue the 'most rigorous' course plan available. And you will also want to demonstrate intellectual rigor and persistence by pursuing the subject on her own.

At some point you will need to send the colleges the mid-year transcript and then an end-of-the-year transcript. You may want to include a counselor letter from yourself explaining why two classes were dropped -- you can upload the letter and transcript together on the CA. I would not say that the Psych class was too easy, but instead say something about an independent study was a better fit.

Maria

[Melabella]

Thank you for your input everyone.  At the last minute, DD's advisor was able to get her into an honors Political Science class that was already filled but that worked with her schedule. That puts her back at 17 credit hours, so I don't think any of her colleges will worry about just dropping Greek. As Maria T suggested, I will just include a letter of explanation with her final transcript.

[GoodGrief]

Sounds like you found a good solution. I think it was a good call to replace one of the classes in some form. We were in a similar situation last year, when my daughter's dual enrollment Chinese class was cancelled for second semester due to low enrollment. Having four years of a language was likely important to her schools, so she decided to self study for the AP Chinese test at home, and meet weekly with a tutor, thus creating a course for second semester.

[goldberry]

I was really worried about DD having to do a withdraw this year, but so far has not mattered at all.  She's not applying to anything crazy competitive though.

[MerryAtHope]

I'm glad you found a good solution! I was going to say, since the school she is transferring to is known for having a really tough Psych class, maybe studying on her own now would give her a leg up for that later. 

 

And, that's ridiculous that the class will be filled with busywork!