Twice in high school I sacrificed building my human capital in order to take courses that I believed would signal better quality — or at least, would enable me to signal better quality in other areas. Did this hinder my acceptance into Ivy-League schools and selective programs in the university I currently attend? Possibly. But at the time, I felt that taking AP courses that I didn’t care about would be a waste of time, especially when I had access to so many other beneficial activities beyond the classroom (namely work and free educational resources).
Junior year, I signed up for an APUSH course, but later dropped it because I thought I was wasting my time, human capital aside. I wasn’t learning about modern and world history (my true history interests) and I was exhausting myself and my ability to perform well in other top-level courses. After I got sick and saw that there was no way to make up my work in time to retain a competitive grade, I switched to a course in more modern US history and was a lot happier. I think I made the right choice — if I had stayed in the class, I wouldn’t have performed as well in my other AP class and my electives.
Senior year, I opted for a “regular” Calculus course even though I was eligible for both AB Calculus and IB Calculus. My reasoning was this: I was already taking AP Chemistry and AP Statistics, both courses relevant to my degree and own interests. Only 2 semesters of undergraduate calculus is necessary for my degree; science courses have more weight. Therefore, I didn’t see any reason to sacrifice my 3 science classes and job for a class I would have to take again (AP Calculus credit wasn’t accepted at the colleges I applied to).
Given that I’m in a specialized program at my university now and have learned from several high-achieving students that they didn’t gain much from their AP courses except human capital for their college application, I think that my instincts were more or less beneficial to me in the long-term, which is all that I care about.
One caveat I need to make is that I would have definitely joined up with my senior year elective (robotics) from the very beginning and stuck with it all through high school. I jumped from club to club from freshman through junior year, which hurt my human capital. In terms of human capital, it didn’t matter that I needed time and variety to discover what I really liked, only that I’d showed genuine interest, effort, and leadership opportunities within the extracurricular. Granted, all of this happened during senior year, but by then, the application process was over.
Second time taking the survey. I think a lot of my answers to the probability questions have changed in the last year — I think I’ve discovered more about myself and my beliefs since the first survey.