When it comes to colleges with competitive admissions policies, a transcript decorated with Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses may seem like a prerequisite to acceptance.

After all, AP and IB classes are designed to demonstrate college readiness. Unfortunately, they are not universally available.

If you are home-schooled or attend a rural or very small high school without advanced courses, you do have options. Most colleges value diversity in their student populations, and the admissions process typically takes into account differing access to educational opportunities. But academic rigor is still key.

Here are four pieces of advice to help you select the challenging junior- or senior-year courses you need for college admissions success.

[See how high school classes can offer college benefits.]

1. Choose honors-level classes: First, search your course catalog for honors-level classes. While honors-level courses do not conform to set external standards like AP and IB classes do, the term “honors” indicates that the course is more challenging than its usual version.

Honors-level may not have a universal definition, but it will indicate to colleges that you were taking the most rigorous classes available to you.

As you build your schedule, follow this general rule of thumb: Choose courses that demonstrate curiosity and intellectual rigor. For example, instead of selecting an easy elective, choose an option like honors-level music theory or honors-level sociology.

2. Develop an independent study: Another option is to develop a challenging independent study with the help of a favorite teacher. This is also a great approach for home-schooled students who may not adhere to the structured format of a traditional high school.

My own high school had no AP or IB options, no advanced language classes and no math courses beyond introductory calculus. As a result, I arranged several independent studies that were intended to approximate second-level calculus, an advanced class on English novels, and German courses that were equivalent to third- and fourth-year study.

These classes helped me gain admission to a number of highly competitive colleges, including the University of Chicago, Carleton College and the honors program at the University of Washington. If you cannot develop an entire independent study, ask your teachers for extra-credit projects that you can cite on your college applications.

You can also incorporate massive open online courses into your independent study. This will likely require some negotiation and planning, generally with the help of a teacher and guidance counselor.

As you design your independent study, ensure that you will be able to explain to a college admissions representative what your course objectives were, whether you met them and how you were evaluated.

[Learn tips to recover from a high school sophomore slump.]

3. Register for CLEP exams or SAT subject tests: Your third option — standardized tests — is not a class, but it is still worth considering. Not all colleges require CLEP exams or SAT subject tests, but many will consider them as part of your overall application.

If your high school does not offer AP or IB classes, you can still demonstrate your academic abilities by taking subject-specific exams in biology, history, literature, math and other subjects. Each test has ample study material, so you can even design an independent study around the exam that is the most relevant to your college and career goals.

Chances are you will not be able to tackle all the tests, so select just one or two that best demonstrate your commitment to education and your capabilities. As a bonus, many schools will accept sufficiently high scores on CLEP tests as college credit or course prerequisites. Thus, a CLEP or SAT subject test can allow you to demonstrate that you are competitive with students from larger or better-funded high schools.

[Check out three questions to ask before taking SAT subject tests.]

4. Document your accomplishments: A final piece of advice is that as you complete each honors-level class or independent study, take a moment to document your accomplishments.

This is because your high school guidance counselor may be asked to rate the relative difficulty of your courses when he or she forwards your transcript to a college. Keep in mind, however, that your guidance counselor works with many students and may not be aware of how hard you worked, or at what level of sophistication.

Save documents like exams, papers, reading lists and syllabuses. Not only can you use them as you compile your college applications, you can also share them with your guidance counselor.

Gaining admission to a competitive college is difficult for any student. But with careful planning, it is possible no matter what classes your high school offers.

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4 Tips for Selecting Rigorous Courses Without AP, IB originally appeared on usnews.com