Correcting Those High School Senior Year Courses

Rising high school seniors can still absolutely correct those senior year courses. At Ivy Coach, it’s one of the things we do with students during our initial one-hour evaluation.

Rising high school seniors, do you think it’s too late to start correcting those high school senior year courses of yours? Think again!

Around this time of year, we get quite a few rising high school seniors who come to us seeking Ivy Coach’s assistance navigating the highly selective college admissions process. The first step to working with Ivy Coach is by completing our one-hour evaluation. And the very first thing we do during this one-hour evaluation is ensure that there are not mistakes in a student’s high school coursework. You see, so often there are indeed mistakes in coursework — mistakes that won’t hurt an applicant’s case for admission to highly selective colleges so much as they will preclude an applicant’s chances for admission. It is a rare instance when a student doesn’t have costly mistakes in coursework. After all, just because a high school recommends a student take a select set of coursework doesn’t mean those are the courses the student should be taking to optimize their chances of admission to an elite university. High schools so often get it wrong. Even the high schools that pride themselves on their college placements.

One comment we quite often hear during free consultations to discuss our service offerings, which we conduct before our one-hour evaluation — a comment we particularly hear from the parents of high school seniors — is that it’s too late to change coursework. This is, quite simply, false. The summer months are a great time to make up for coursework that could and should have been completed during a student’s freshman, sophomore, or junior years. Parents of high school seniors so often then say with such conviction, “My daughter’s courses for senior year are already set. There is no way we can change it with the school at this time.” Hogwash.

Of course students can still change their senior year coursework. Of course parents can still kindly ask school counselors to correct mistakes in coursework that can preclude their child’s case for admission to a highly selective institution. It is by no means too late. In our experience, if parents and students ask kindly and are persistent, the school will always allow them to challenge themselves to the fullest. High schools generally don’t want to be blamed by parents that their students didn’t get into their dream colleges because they wouldn’t let their students take a particular class.

Correct coursework is but one component of Ivy Coach’s initial one-hour evaluation. The evaluation also includes recommendations on SAT/ACT, SAT Subject Test, AP testing, and TOEFL testing for international students. We help students find a hook in their extracurriculars — and in their narratives. We share examples of how our past students have made themselves wonderfully weird in their applications. And weird is the word. Our students at Ivy Coach are wonderfully weird. We make recommendations on an Early Decision / Early Action strategy, taking into account the high school’s relationship with various colleges. We discuss how students can effectively demonstrate interest in colleges, an important factor in highly selective college admissions.

And whether students and parents work with us after this one-hour evaluation or not on their applications and through the admissions process — where the bulk of our secret sauce comes into play — they will come away with invaluable insights that will optimize their case for admission.

If you’re interested in correcting those senior year courses as well as other mistakes in how you present yourself to highly selective colleges (and if you’re looking for insight into how you can present to admissions officers as wonderfully weird), fill out Ivy Coach’s free consultation form and we’ll be in touch to set up a time so we can answer questions you may have about our service offerings, including where it all begins…through our one-hour evaluation.