If you’ve enrolled at Excel High School and you’ve begun choosing your classes, you may have some questions about choosing your elective classes. Choosing the right elective courses is a very important decision for any high school student, so make sure you to take your time and do your research.
What Are Elective Courses?
Elective courses include any of the classes you sign up for beyond the required core classes of English, math, science, and social studies. Your school most likely has required elective courses such as a fine arts or physical education requirement. However, you will also have room in your schedule to select a couple of classes each grade level outside of the requirements. Choosing your electives can be overwhelming, so here are some tips for selecting your next elective credits:
Check Future Colleges’ Recommendations
If you’re planning to attend a college or university, you’ll want to check their website to see what they recommend or even require. Your elective choices might be limited based on that potential school’s recommendations. Some schools like to see that potential students have taken a certain number of foreign language credits, while others require you to have more fine arts credits to be considered for admissions.
You should be able to find this information by checking the school’s website. Carefully go over their admission requirements and take a look at the different academic departments that you might be interested in studying. This will give you a clearer idea of how to prepare yourself for both admissions and success when you start your college classes.
Investigate Career Interests
Electives are also great opportunities to investigate career interests. College is an investment of both time and money, so the more certain you feel about what you want to study before your first year, the better off you will be in the long run. You can find your school’s elective courses in their course catalog, so as you look through them, check for any that align with your career interests.
By taking an introductory course in coding, you might discover that you have a knack for that skill and want to pursue a career in that direction. You might take a class about sports science or sports medicine and discover a passion for working in one of those fields. Likewise, you might have always thought you wanted to study electrical engineering after high school, but after taking an elective course about it, you might decide to pursue other interests more in line with your skills.
Exploring your career interests through elective classes is a smart way to make sure you enter college with a strong idea of what you would like to study, with no big surprises once you start the courses after high school.
Pursue Your Passions
Another great aspect of electives is that they give you a chance to pursue your passions. If you’ve always loved digital photography or astronomy, taking an elective class about those hobbies allows you to earn high school credits for practicing a skill and activity you already enjoy. Electives are a good opportunity to spend part of your high school days doing something you love and learning more about it on a deeper, more academic level.
Maybe you don’t know what you enjoy, but the course catalog lists some classes that sound really interesting. Electives give you the opportunity to find out more about your interests and possibly even find a life-long hobby or passion.
Plan for Life on Your Own
Living on your own brings with it a lot of responsibilities and requires all sorts of knowledge for adult life. Some elective courses provide you with important life-skills that you will never regret learning in high school. You could take Finance to learn about investing your money wisely or a life skills class that teaches you about everything from basic safety tips to budgeting your money and navigating a new workplace.
Depending on the courses your school offers, you will have a lot of options to fill those elective credits. Excel High School offers a variety of courses 100% online that you can take to fulfill your elective credits, too. If you’d like more information about the classes we offer, give us a call at 800-620-3844 or text us at 952-465-3700.
