Despite what the New Trier strategic planning board claims the mission of this high school is, I think that it's fair to say that the ultimate goal of most students at New Trier is to get into a good college. To get into a "good" college, you've got to have an impressive college transcript: great GPA, extracurriculars, good test scores, etc. But all this is easier than done.
More often than not, students choose to take higher level classes to boost their GPA or because it's what they think colleges will want to see. AP and level four classes are hard enough and on top of all that, students still have the added stresses of all the other extracurriculars-sports, plays, music, whatever they may be. I'm not saying this is always a bad thing, some people can handle it better than others. But for some people it simply gets unmanageable; sometimes it means you have to drop down a level, stop playing a sport for a season, or just end up with bad grades in good levels (which kind of defeats the purpose, don't you think?) Or then again there's always the other route one of my best friends is currently trying out-take a bunch of APs, keep all your extracurriculars, and just...forfit any form of social life for a year.
Regardless, i think it's important consider Murphy's Law (anything that can go wrong, will.) when deciding on a schedule. Afterall, yeah-you could get the easy teachers and have a really great year. But who knows? Maybe you'll get the hardest teachers in the whole school; So if you plan on swamping yourself with work so a "good" college will accept you-pay at least a little mind to your well being and be realistic with what you can handle. What matters is that you're happy.
More often than not, students choose to take higher level classes to boost their GPA or because it's what they think colleges will want to see. AP and level four classes are hard enough and on top of all that, students still have the added stresses of all the other extracurriculars-sports, plays, music, whatever they may be. I'm not saying this is always a bad thing, some people can handle it better than others. But for some people it simply gets unmanageable; sometimes it means you have to drop down a level, stop playing a sport for a season, or just end up with bad grades in good levels (which kind of defeats the purpose, don't you think?) Or then again there's always the other route one of my best friends is currently trying out-take a bunch of APs, keep all your extracurriculars, and just...forfit any form of social life for a year.
Regardless, i think it's important consider Murphy's Law (anything that can go wrong, will.) when deciding on a schedule. Afterall, yeah-you could get the easy teachers and have a really great year. But who knows? Maybe you'll get the hardest teachers in the whole school; So if you plan on swamping yourself with work so a "good" college will accept you-pay at least a little mind to your well being and be realistic with what you can handle. What matters is that you're happy.