High School Science Selection

 When it is time to select a new class for the upcoming school year, selecting a science can be a little tricky. What happens in different science classes is about as diverse and varied as any content area under the same umbrella. After all, in a regular freshman English class you’re reading text, discussing it, and writing a bit. The same is really true for an advanced-level senior English class, right?

However, the things a student is doing in an earth and space science class is completely different from what goes on in an anatomy class. Still, both classes are considered a science and in some places they might even be taught by the same person. There’s just a lot of variety within the curriculum of any school’s science department.

So, with such diversity how do you know which science course to take? To begin, it's obvious that students will need to take any specific science classes that are required of them. For example, in Florida where I counsel, students are required to have three science credits one of which must be biology. So, everyone takes biology, that’s a given, but those other two science credits are up in the air. Determining which ones to take can be easier for some students than for others. A student who is dead set on a career in medicine would do well to focus on courses like biology, chemistry, or anatomy. A future mechanical engineering student will likely benefit from physics.

What about the student who isn’t really going to touch science in the future though? How do they decide what science classes to take? My advice here is to just spend some time thinking about the curriculum offered and make a rational decision about which course has the most potential to be meaningful to you in the future, even if that means reaching for some connections,

For example, perhaps you have a budding writer on your hands. There’s generally not a ton of science involved in that. However, maybe a course like forensic science would be a good choice because there’s a lot of fodder there for storytelling. What about an artist? At some point they might want to draw a human figure, right? So maybe anatomy is a good choice. In fact, courses like anatomy or biology are always a good choice because a student is certainly always going to have a body and any knowledge that might come into play when they are sitting in a doctor’s office one day either to discuss themselves or a family member can be beneficial.

Making a decision about which science course to take can be a little challenging for a student without strong science inclinations. However, science is all around us in our everyday lives so making meaningful connections can be done by anyone. Sometimes, it just takes a little thinking.

How the Pandemic impacted college admissions

 

When the pandemic struck, it had a radical impact on college admissions. This bled into many areas. Potential students couldn’t tour schools. Many weren’t compelled to pay tuition at a school in another town when they were just going to be remoting in their classes anyways. Some students have been challenged to even finish high school while faced with quarantines and different educational formats than they are used to. However, one of the main effects COVID 19 has had on college admissions is seen in the old college admissions staple of standardized testing.

 

When the pandemic started in the spring of 2020, the SAT and ACT canceled all of their upcoming tests. Testing resumed in the fall but many students were not comfortable entering public settings to take a test and many test centers remained closed. Perhaps the testing services would have considered virtual options, but those can be tricky and the cheating scandal that happened the previous year did nothing to promote those. 

 

So, with many students cut off from the ability to take tests, how were so many colleges supposed to require them? The logical approach for many (but not all) colleges was to go test optional. 

 

Prior to the pandemic, this practice had been trending in college admissions. So, it wasn’t unheard of it. Still, there were many schools that previously relied on testing. The tests’ function is to provide a comparative basis for students who come from a variety of high school settings and backgrounds. The SAT and ACT are the national standard for high school students. 

 

Without this information, schools that do not require test scores have seen an uptick in applications. Students who may have felt their scores were a liability for admission are now emboldened to apply. This has proven to be a challenge for colleges. Those who made the switch were used to having test scores as an evaluation tool. They are now forced to evaluate an even larger application pool with less data.

 

I think that colleges are still trying to figure out the best approach to this. This isn’t the first time they’ve evaluated students and their experience is worth a lot, but I would imagine we’ll see college retention rates take small dips as some students struggle to keep up at colleges they might not have previously gotten into. From the student perspective, just because you might be able to get into a certain school, doesn’t necessarily mean you should go there. Success in college is all about finding the right fit. A student and their college are partners in education and if you don’t fit with that partner, the experience will lag. Going to a college that simply exceeds your aptitude could have disastrous life-long consequences, so be honest with yourself in this regard. 

 

I suspect that colleges are using this time to reevaluate their admissions process and the criteria they use for their decisions. Time will tell how their process evolves. In the meantime, students have the opportunity to consider some schools that have been out of reach for them before, but they would do well to keep in mind how the traditional demographics of that school align with their own skill set.