Unsure about which path I should take for Senior year

JimKollar

5-Year Member
Joined
May 30, 2010
Messages
2
Hello all, I have been working towards getting accepted into West Point for a few years now, and I need some opinions on my senior year of highschool. I truly appreciate those that take the time to read through all of this and give me their thoughts/opinions!

First of all let me explain the type of student/athlete I have been so far:
I currently am a Junior enrolled in the International Baccalaureate (http://www.ibo.org/) program at my school, which is a pretty challenging academic course which requires taking all AP or IB classes. My classes this year are currently:
AP Calculus AB
AP Physics 1
IB Economics (very similar to AP)
AP European History
Honors American History (AP is not offered until Senior year)
and AP Spanish 3

I currently have a 4.50 (weighted) GPA this year and around a 3.7 (weighted) cumulative GPA (I struggled during freshman year and got a 3.0).
I received an 1870 on my SAT with a 700 in math, 620 in reading, and 550 in writing. I have not taken the ACT or any subject tests yet.

I also have been on the varsity waterpolo and swim teams at my school for 2 and 3 years respectively, meaning I have lettered in both 5 times total and have been a team captain for both.
However for swimming, I have made 1st Team All-League 3 times, Competed in CIF Finals (state championships for California), and have reached qualifying times for being a High School Swimming All-American.

I also have been selected by my school to be it's delegate to California Boy's State this summer.

I also try to do as many outside-of-school activities and community service as possible.


Now the question I have is that I was very interested in joining my school newspaper for my senior year of Highschool. The problem is, that in order to be in newspaper at my school you are unable to take the AP Physics 2 class, as they are both the same class period. Me not taking AP Physics would mean I couldn't complete my "IB Diploma", which only means I did not take all the necessary classes to complete the program, but it does not affect my GPA at all. I could still take as many IB/AP classes that I wanted.

My Senior year schedule would look like this:
IB Higher Level Math
AP Literature
IB World History
IB Theory of Knowledge
and either AP Physics 2 or being in my school newspaper.

I don't know how the USMA would weigh joining a program such as newspaper compared to taking a class such as AP Physics 2, so I was wondering if joining newspaper would benefit me or be detrimental to my success in being accepted to the academy.

I truly appreciate any thoughts/opinions on what I should do my Senior year, and the current chance you may think I have into being accepted into the academy next year :)
 
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