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1- I’m 40, and childless, so maybe I’m just out of touch, but do high schools do Majors? (Fwiw I’m from the northeastern US)

2- How would that work? Legacy admissions mean your family has a legacy. You can’t just conjure that up because you have a kid who can’t meet academic admissions standards.

3- If you pull a 4.0 in any specialty of academics, no matter how much engineers might sneer at you on their message boards, somewhere a school will admit you because they’re the “forefront of basket weaving in the country”, and I think that’s pretty cool.



> do high schools do Majors? (Fwiw I’m from the northeastern US)

There are specialised high schools [1]. Even my generic public California high school had unofficial "lines," e.g. if you wanted to take certain AP classes in senior year you needed certain prerequisites, and some bunches of classes naturally went together, socially and academically.

[1] https://www.schools.nyc.gov/enrollment/enroll-grade-by-grade...


This is quite different than the lines people were doing at my high school /s.

But seriously, earlier specialization does make sense. American education takes too long to get people into the workforce if you are in liberal arts.


while high schools don't do majors they have several tracks. I didn't have to take any math or science my senior year. there are lots of options for a student to take easy courses for a great gpa


> there are lots of options for a student to take easy courses for a great gpa

True, and the people who are interested in a person's gpa know that, and will look a little deeper as a result.


In Italy yes, in the US it's more a la carte.




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