Your High School Course Selection Matters More Than You Think

If you’re a high school student, you probably spend the end of each semester thinking about what courses to choose for your next term. Every year brings its mandatory requirements—English, sciences, math, social studies—but as students go through high school, they often get more latitude to set their own schedules. These elective courses let students pursue their interests outside the core academic subjects.

While it may not seem so now, thoughtful planning about your course selection can make a big impact on the future opportunities available to you. In this blog, we’ll explain why you should think about graduation requirements proactively, some considerations you should make during course selection, and the way it can impact your larger goals. While your courses should be chosen in consultation with your advisors, we hope this blog can give you the knowledge needed to enter into those conversations with confidence.

Course Selection and Graduation Requirements

Every high school has a set of core requirements needed to graduate. In the most general sense, this means having a certain number of course credits for English, Math, Science, Art, and Social Studies—though each state has distinct requirements and individual schools may add their own.

The goal of these requirements is to ensure that every student graduates with a baseline level of knowledge that they can use to pursue basic social and economic opportunities. It can be hard to get even an entry-level job without an ability to write or do basic math. 

However, on top of these core course requirements are electives which allow students to expand their knowledge above the baseline. These courses allow students to delve deeper into a topic they are passionate about and develop new skills. It can encompass a wide range of topics ranging from the arts, music, computer science, and business.

Students should learn from their school what they need to do to graduate and think about what obligations they need to fulfill. After, they can review some of the courses their school offers and what interests them,

Balancing Challenge and Interest

As noted, one of the goals of electives is to give students the opportunity to pursue those topics they are passionate about. For some students, that may involve taking a more specialized course (e.g. a journalism course for English, a photography class for the Arts). It may also involve taking a more difficult, more rigorous version of a class that is part of the core curriculum (e.g. an AP or IB course).

Ideally, students should pick courses that challenge them. They should strive to avoid both picking courses that they think will give them an “easy A” (for example, an introductory language course in a language they are already fluent in) as well as courses that are too challenging or likely to cause burnout (for example, taking an advanced language course in a language you lack any foundations in). 

The goal should be to push yourself, to give yourself realistic goals to achieve. You want to weigh difficulty versus personal interest, your own aptitude versus the course requirements. In this way, you can use electives to develop an aptitude for the subjects you want to pursue in your life. 

Planning for Colleges and a Career

These selections help “that tell a story” of your interests and passions, both for yourself and for others. This can be incredibly useful for colleges whose goals are to enrich your life and prepare you for a career devoted to a particular expertise.

A well-crafted course list operates as a kind of years-long “demonstration of interest”. It communicates to admissions that you are not merely seeking a degree in archeology or hospitality management on a whim. They are able to follow your journey through increasingly advanced and specialized courses, knowing that you are both engaged in the material and will be entering the degree program with some basic understanding. 

It lets them feel a sense of reassurance that you will succeed in their own degree programs and be able to pursue a career post-graduation. 

If you have a particular kind of program you want to get into, it may be useful to check with the school (and your high school and Class 101 college advisor) if they expect you to fulfill any prerequisites while in high school. It may also be useful to explore the program and think about what it entails and if there is anything you can do now to show you are academically engaged and have clear interests.

Resources and Support

The journey through high school does not need to be one that students handle alone. It can be helpful to consult a wide variety of authorities while picking courses—including friends, parents, mentors, school counselors, and Class 101 college advisors. 

These people can help you “get out of your own head”. While you are the ultimate authority, an outside perspective can sometimes be useful in giving you perspective or raising issues you might never have considered.

It may also be useful to look at any planning tools or course selection guides offered by your school. If you are a junior now, you might look at the number of electives you have this year and next and plan out what you will pursue to graduate and achieve your academic goals. 

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If there is one important takeaway we want to leave you with, it’s this: The best course selection is the one that demonstrates planning and clear intention. Your transcripts ought to communicate to an outsider not only what your interests are but that you are willing to pursue challenging courses to advance those interests.

We encourage students to plan their courses early (and to have back-ups in case a course fills up or gets canceled). Students can review those courses annually or at the end of each term. Most importantly, however, seek guidance so you can make the selection that best fits your needs. If you need help, you are welcome to reach out to a Class 101 college advisor today to discuss your journey through high school and college.