Welcome! Today we will tackle a tool commonly used by high schools across the land, the college track.
What is a college track?
A college track is a general term used to refer to any informal major or program that high schools use to provide template graduation tracks in line with a given college interest. For example, many high schools will have a college track related to pre-med where the high school provides a pre-filled template of courses that will satisfy your high school requirements and also prep you for college.
With that definition out of the way, now we can dive into the main issue: are they effective?
Part 1: Are tracks useful?
Short answer: yes.
A track is a course load template for any student to follow. It does not matter your age or ability, the tracks or majors help you figure out exactly what you need to take for a given interest and how to do so in a way that guarantees you will meet high school graduation requirements.
For those reasons, it is useful.
Here’s where the problem lies: it is just a template. That can be problematic in two ways.
First, a template is a starting point. It is not intended to be the final version. Too many students use the majors as the final form of their high school academic journey, rather than acknowledging it is just one small part of forming your academic plan.
There are two reasons to understand why it is a beginning point:
The plans typically do not account for academic rigor - meaning they cannot evaluate if you are taking courses at an honors/AP level
The plans are generalist - meaning they do not account for specific plan variations
You need to take the template and enhance it with your own viewpoint.
Part 2: How do you actually use the tracks?
The majors that high school guidance counselors use should be used in a three part plan:
Use them as a foundation to build your schedule
Adjust for academic difficulty
Enhance based on your goals
Say that you want to go on a government track. There is probably a major for political science - this will include required courses for graduation and recommended courses with an emphasis on government.
Use that to map out your high school curriculum.
Once you have that, now you need to adjust the difficulty. Need to add AP courses? Do so now. Eliminate pure electives for government focused electives? Make those changes. Does changing the level of difficulty mean you have additional courses?
Finally, how do you adjust the schedule based on your own focus areas? Using the government example, do you have a pathway to foreign language fluency? Are you more interested in journalism capturing the inner workings of government?
Now is the time to make those adjustments. Once you do, the template transforms into a plan that you can follow.
Hopefully this provides some context on how to use the academic majors high schools use as guidance.