Creating a Balanced Diploma Program
Your high school transcript is a one-page summary of the courses you have taken over four years. While it is possible to meet graduation requirements in three years, the norm is four. Likewise, some students take five years to complete their course of study and have good reasons for their decision. They weren’t slacking.
The courses your student is required to take to meet graduation requirements vary from state to state. Added to the required courses are elective courses. Electives are often thought of as less intense courses. If that’s the case, they may be identified as such by admissions staff and not included when calculating the student’s GPA. Some electives are used to go deeper into a particular content category which is what we recommend. In other words, students use them to take more science, more math, more English, and more social studies.
If your student is completing their high school course of study in the standard four years, we recommend spreading out their course work as evenly as possible. If your student needs 26 units to graduate, they should plan on taking 6 to 7 units each year. Avoid taking only 3 to 4 units in each of the first two years and then being forced to step it up to 8 to 10 units the final two years. That makes for a grueling finish. It also may draw the attention of admissions staff who then might question just how rigorous the course work actually was given your student doubled the number of courses taken the last two years.
So, what does a balance course of study look like? Here’s one possibility:
If you use this list, here’s a possible schedule to follow over the four years:
As you can see, the core subjects of math, English, science, and social studies are spread out over the four years. The senior year represents a lighter load, in recognition a student may be spending quite a bit of time researching, visiting, and applying to various colleges. But, this is just a suggestion. It doesn’t have to be this way.
When it comes to the actual content you choose to use to create these classes, there are lots of options. I’ll discuss this in my next article.
Thanks for reading!
Curt Bumcrot, MRE
Check out Thelma’s classes for next year Here. She’s offering some great content and is now enrolling students!
