"Mistakes are only a bruise, not a tattoo."| A MIT Student's Advice on High School Courses
We had the fortunate opportunity of interviewing Cami, a student at MIT, via email about: High School Courses
Cami is:
majoring in computer science, comparative media studies, and business management,
an MIT admissions blogger, admissions panelist, associate advisor,
the MIT 2023 Class Council vice president,
and a plethora of other things!
Q: Did you only take the courses offered at your school or did you also take online/summer courses?
A: I only took courses offered at my high school.
Q: If you scored in the top 5% how did you manage to balance all the coursework and load?
A: I spent a lot of time after school working with friends and my teachers! It was really nice, kind of like office hours, but in high school. So I would usually get to school around 7am (I was in 0 period Academic Decathlon) and would stay anywhere from 5-8PM, usually in a teacher’s classroom with friends doing work. So it never really felt like work, but it was a good way to get the coursework out of the way.
Q: If you had to choose between two classes that you both wanted, how did you decide?
A: Whichever peaked my interest more, honestly.
Q: How do you prepare for tests?
A: Depends on the class! I’m a big advocate for adjusting your study methods depending on the class. Some days it would be vocabulary review, other times it’s just practice problems, other times it’s reviewing notes.
Q: How did you keep track of your work and assignments?
A: A physical agenda and color coding my classes, making a task list every day. I have a system where I write the assignment the day it is due, rather than writing it the day it is assigned. This makes work feel less cluttered.
Q: Which AP classes did you choose? Why?
A: I did 12 APs in high school. The number in parentheses indicates the year I took it. I took AP Human Geography (1st), AP Psychology (2nd), AP Chemistry (2nd), AP Calculus BC (2nd), AP English Language and Composition (3rd), AP Biology (3rd), AP Computer Science A (3rd), AP Spanish (3rd), AP US History (3rd), AP English Literature and Composition (4th), AP Government (4th), and AP Physics C: Mechanics (4th). I really just chose what I was interested in and what made sense for my high school. I opted to take more chemistry than physics because I liked chemistry more. I didn’t take world history because I didn’t really like the teacher for world and I heard it was hard. Stuff like that.
Q: Did you set a limit for the number of AP classes you would take?
A: Not really.
Q: Which one would you say was the easiest and which one was the hardest?
A: AP Psychology was a lot just vocabulary memorization. I did not take the AP Physics exam because it was so challenging and I just wanted to relax my senior year, so I’d say that one was the hardest one.
Q: What is one thing you wish you knew while you were in high school?
A: I struggled a lot socially during high school, so I would say that the mistakes you make in high school are simply temporary mistakes, and don’t actually hold a lot of weight.
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Learn more about Cami and her experience on her LinkedIn account.