Picking the right classes can be one of the most important and challenging decisions a high school student has to make. Often, your elective classes represent what you enjoy doing or are interested in learning about. Sometimes, they can even reflect what you plan to do as a future career.
High school is when you start to have control over the classes you take. In elementary school, everything you learned was common curricula – not something you specifically chose. In middle school, you get some freedom in class choice, but only about two electives a year from a very limited selection of classes.
When you reach high school, the education system throws a lot of new things at students. For one, there’s a much larger abundance of electives to choose from, and the list expands as you go into higher grades. Alongside more elective options, you get more free periods to fill with whatever classes you may want to take. In order to take these classes, students need to forecast for them.
So, how exactly does it work?
Forecasting is the process of students choosing their classes for the following school year. While that may seem simple, there can be complications and a lot of thinking needs to go into the process.
Knowing what classes you want to take is really up to you for the first time. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to take classes that you’d enjoy, but you should take classes that will help you towards your goals.
Not everyone has goals for their future throughout high school, but it can be helpful to set a goal of what you want to be capable of doing. For example, a GPA you want to achieve, a college you want to apply to or a career you want to devote your time to. Once you have a goal in mind, it becomes much easier to pick which classes you want to take.
Getting classes changed after you’ve been assigned a schedule is never an easy task, so making sure you’re okay with the classes you chose before submitting them is crucial. You should always double-check with your counselor before finalizing your classes to make sure everything you pick is right for you.
On the topic of changing classes, the best time to do so is before the school year – the one before the year that you picked classes for – ends. You can always reach out to your counselor about changing the classes you forecasted for, and they will be happy to help you out but counselors are less likely to reply to you promptly over the summer, If you do end up changing your mind about your classes over the summer, you can talk to your counselor about changing classes in the first few weeks of the new school year.
Now that you’ve been prepped with a guide on how to forecast, you’re ready to make your own plan for forecasting with this new information in mind.
