No AP English or History

[Anonymous]

I have a STEM kid at a W school. Does amazing in his math and science classes. Barely tolerates honors English and history. He will finish HS with most of the numbers oriented AP classes—math, science, stats, economics.

Is not taking the most rigorous level offered in humanities going to be a ding on his application? His reach will be UMD because it’s no longer a safety for anyone. Otherwise he’s targeting STEM schools—Case, RIT, RPI. Would like to attend a college that wraps humanities into STEM with something like English for Engineers or the History of Scientific discoveries. His dream school is the open curriculum at Brown but well…he can apply but with a 4-5% acceptance rate I told him not to get his hopes up.

[Anonymous]

My Walter Johnson Asian son was accepted early action in an Honors program at UMD, for a Humanities major, without any APs in science (but he did go to AP Calc BC for math), and a concentration in APs for social sciences, and 3 languages, English, French and Latin. He had a 35 out of 36 on his ACT. His GPA at the time of application was 4.67 (and then it went down dramatically because he had a breakdown in the second semester!).

UMD swears they don't look at major interest when accepting students. I find that hard to believe, because it seems to me there are a lot more students interested in STEM than anything else at UMD. I thought that perhaps they were intrigued by an Asian male wanting Humanities, and one who had taken Latin to boot?

But the most important thing for UMD, in my humble opinion, is your kid's GPA and SAT/ACT test scores. They are that kind of school. The bar is high for an MCPS graduate to begin with, because they get a ton of applicants from that school system.

So if your kid doesn't want to go to AP level in the social sciences and languages, he really needs a near perfect score on his SAT/ACT, to make up for not challenging himself with the hardest courses available at his high school in those topics.

[Anonymous]

Many engineering programs will have an English requirement that is engineering-specific, as you suggest, though that really depends on the school.

I suspect your son is fine for Case, RIT, RPI. I have no idea about UMD.

I have an engineering major at a top private university who didn't take any AP English (or AP foreign lang either), but did take both APUSH and AP Euro, among 8 total weighted courses, including multivariable calc. I think AP history courses, if taught well, are a good option for the reading and writing experience. As for how that plays in admissions, view of the transcript is holistic - you don't need top rigor in all subjects, but it depends on what else you are taking.

[Anonymous]

Many humanities kids don't take AP calc or AP physics. Why would you expect all stem kids to take AP history or AP english, especially when they are not aiming for top schools? OP, I don't have an answer for you but I bet RIT RPI level is totally fine. Not sure about UMD engineering, it's a popular school.

[Anonymous]

Many MCPS schools don’t have a lot of aps. He will be fine.

[Anonymous]

I think he would be ok at RPI and RIT. Otherwise, yes, it is a dig. It’s not comparable to a humanities kid not taking a bunch of AP sciences or going past AP calc. English is the basis for every subject- including sciences. Demonstrating a strong command in written and oral communication, is seen as valuable for every area of study

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think he would be ok at RPI and RIT. Otherwise, yes, it is a dig. It’s not comparable to a humanities kid not taking a bunch of AP sciences or going past AP calc. English is the basis for every subject- including sciences. Demonstrating a strong command in written and oral communication, is seen as valuable for every area of study

This is false. Many high schools don't even offer that many AP courses. OP is asking about AP English and AP history, not the regular/honor english/history courses.

[Anonymous]

My DS is at Purdue and never took an AP English or AP History. He did take only AP stem (including social science like Econ/Psych and Calc/Stats/Chem/Physics/CS, etc.