By: Nico Belongie, FLVS Flex high school senior

 

As my high school career winds down, I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on the choices - academic, extracurricular, and otherwise - that have shaped my life these past four years. Prominent within this (dizzying) web of choices has been my involvement with individual courses (FLVS Flex), which I started utilizing in seventh grade.  I know that choosing Florida Virtual School (FLVS) to supplement my in-person classes has been responsible for much of my personal growth, as well as my success throughout the college application process. 

Academic benefits of FLVS courses

Academically, the FLVS courses I chose made me a much stronger candidate for college applications. The three Advanced Placement (AP) classes I took through FLVS, which was Computer Science A, Human Geography, and Environmental Science, improved my weighted grade point average and kept me competitive with my classmates, which is crucial to selective college admissions. Similarly, the scores I received on these exams proved I was able to master virtual learning and excel in several college-level courses on a standardized basis.

Quick tip: though AP scores don’t have too much weight on your application, having all 5’s and 4’s is a great indicator of academic strength! Any scores you do not report may lead to the assumption that you failed the exam.

Flexibility and rigor with FLVS

FLVS online courses provided me the ability to accelerate my course load, which improved the rigor of my transcript. For example, taking geometry online through FLVS saved me an entire year of math in traditional school. This allowed me to advance to the highest math level offered at my school, culminating in the completion of AP Calculus BC by the end of my junior year. Online classes are a great way to complete prerequisites, allowing you to demonstrate your ability to handle high-level classes by freeing up your schedule to accommodate them. 

 

Colleges are also interested in how you spend your summers, and an FLVS AP or Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) class is a great way to keep yourself academically active over the summer. 

Online courses taught me valuable soft skills 

Perhaps most importantly, FLVS Flex equipped me with invaluable skills. I learned how to learn independently, manage my time effectively, code proficiently, and deepen my knowledge of world languages. 

Personally, the most life-changing FLVS course I took was Computer Science A, where I mastered programming in Java. I applied these skills to my school’s robotics club, where I became the Head Programmer for my FIRST® Tech Challenge (FTC) team (shout-out to 3839 Mechanical Geniuses!). 

Although the course content did not directly translate into autonomous robot code, it taught me to think like a computer does: in terms of clauses, loops, and conditions. Together with my teammates, I was able to build a robot that stacked and scored tiles, clipped and placed blocks, and hung from a bar, with user input, or autonomously. 

While I don’t plan to pursue a career in computer science or robotics, the course deepened my appreciation for these domains and gave me the opportunity to explore them, resulting in a long-lasting and very involved extracurricular activity that I am proud of, even as my chapter with robotics comes to a close.

Finding the right college fit

For my application to Yale University (go Bulldogs!), FLVS enabled me to showcase my dual passions for STEM and world languages, which I believe made me a great fit for the institution. Yale’s commitment to interdisciplinary studies was reflected in my high-level courses in computer science, mathematics, and the life sciences, complemented by six years of study in French and Spanish. These achievements, largely facilitated by well-chosen online courses, enriched my in-school curriculum, extracurricular activities, and personal goals.

 

If there is anything I’ve learned through the ups and downs of college applications, it is that “fit” is often as important as being “qualified.” Successfully standing out from other applicants while fitting into the school’s student body is how you succeed in landing the college of your dreams. In the process, I learned that the philosophy of my initial dream college might not have aligned with my application or personality, and that’s perfectly okay. To truly “succeed” in the college hunt, it’s important to find the right fit for you, and to show off your unique “spark”, whether it be deep and focused, or broad and complex. 

 

 

About the Author: Nico Belongie is a high school senior in the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme, with special interests in the life sciences and world languages. He plans to study molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University in the fall.

As a FLVS Flex student, he took elective courses like World Languages, including Spanish and French, as well as Advanced Placement courses to help him accelerate his learning.