home based business nutrition
Which high school electives can help my chances of getting into an Ivy League school?

This year I’m starting my sophomore year of high school and I’d like to know which classes can help my chances. The available electives are:

1.Health: Nutrition Science/Health Quest

2.Life skills: Foundations for Living, Consumer Math, Home Ec, Budgeting

3.Technology: Web Design, Computer Programming, Graphic design (Photoshop), ICDL (International Computers Drivers Liscence)

4. Business: Accounting, Business Math, Grammar, Home-based business, General business, Essentials of Business, Business communication/presentations skills

5. Humanities: American literature, British literature, Essentials of communication, Anthropology/Sociology, Foreign language


First I want to point out that NONE of these will “help” your chances of getting into an Ivy. Your chance of getting in will be determined by your GPA, your courseload (the most rigorous possible), your class rank (you need to be in the top 5 or 10 in your class), your SAT scores (you need a 700 or higher in each section, preferably higher), your application essays (need to be mature, insightful, and unique), and your activities (you need to be involved in your school and community, show leadership, show altruism, and show real talent at 1-3 different things). If this is possible for you, great! Then continue. If not, then you need to think about what schools you are actually competitive for, and your choice of elective is less important – take whichever you find most interesting.

Anyway. Top colleges want to see that you’ve excelled at the hardest courseload possible at your high school. AP/IB, Honors, whatever. They usually consider 4 years of a foreign language to be a necessary component of this rigorous courseload. Since that is on your list I assume that you otherwise wouldn’t have one. So. Easy answer, take the foreign language elective.

If you are already planning to take a foreign language and still have this spare elective, then I would think about the kind of application you want to put together and take as an elective whatever will support you in the way you plan to present yourself to college admission officers. If you want to emphasize how intellectual you are then take whichever the hardest elective is. If you want to develop your programming skills in order to later discuss your passion for video game development or whatever then take computer programming. If you are passionate about nutrition, “locavore” activism, and helping food-insecure communities, then… well even in that case I wouldn’t take nutrition, I would do an independent study and then focus on activities outside of class.

The vast majority of these sound bullshitty though. You’re going up against people who take Calculus as sophomores; do you really want to have something like “consumer math” or “budgeting” on your transcript?

Nutrition Business Blueprint – John Spencer Ellis Home-based Nutrition Business Model


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