11th grade....

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

Well, another year has come and gone, and with it all my cares about everything! lol anyways
10th grade in a nutshell was basically a stupid excuse for me to lose sleep over dumb teachers.

Anyways, lemme fill in all incoming freshmen (9) and sophmores (10) about what I’ve done the first two years
of high school:

4 AP classes
countless Pre-AP classes
Good PSAT score
Awaiting my AP scores…
(Read other posts about that, “Taking 3 APs as a sophmore too much?!?”)

Anyways, the plain answer to that is no. As long as you put yourself first, don’t listen to anyone else
and you focus really well and get good teachers, you’re golden. For me, this was the first year I can
truly say I had some wack-ass teachers (especially Chem).

11th grade schedule:
AP English 3 (Language)
AP US History
AP Physics 1
AP Latin
AP Music Theory
AP Calc AB**
German 3 Pre-AP

I haven’t decided if I want to do Pre-Calc over the summer or not, but I am leaning towards yes

Now you might be thinking, “acdc55, you’re gonna die.” Well it depends. My school is weird in that we
only have one AP Bio and Chem teacher, but we have a plethora of Calc and Physics teachers that have
their masters in the field. My Latin teacher has been my teacher the past 4 years, so no surprise there. The
Music Theory teacher is also a teacher I’ve known for 6 years, and he used to be my band teacher for 2 of those
years. There’s a good chance my AP Euro teacher this year will be my US Hist teacher next year. Aaaand… I can
safely say that all (but 3) English teachers at my school (around 15 total) are excellent. So in short, I hope I don’t die.

Now with the teachers in mind, if I can get my act together and focus like never before and change over the summer, its
possible to have a great Junior year (9th grade was great, 10th grade was BRUTAL). tbh This summer is really dedicated to
change, and if I can develop better habits earlier, I should be fine. But let’s be realistic: easier SAID than DONE. Hey,
miracles happen, so you never know…

Comment questions if you are a 9th or 10th grader, and 11th and 12th graders please suggest some inspiration and ideas if you’ve taken these classes listed above.

Much appreciation!!

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Just finished my junior year. I am a hopefully future airspace engeering major and the AP physics 1 exam was brutal. AP language and AP were both very manageable classes. However, I would not recommend taking both precalc over the summer and doubling up on language classes.

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I’m in incoming sophomore, and I was wondering if self studying 2 (or 3) AP classes is too much? Next year I’ll have 6 normal school classes (because my school is an IB school so we don’t have Honors or Pre-AP), and 1 AP class (AP World). With those 7 classes and a study hall, do you think it’s too much to self-study AP Stats, AP US Gov, and AP Comp Gov?

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@connorkraska Just saying, self studying AP exams does not impress college admissions. But if you do want to self study, self studying for the history subjects isn’t too bad while self studying stats might be a bit harder.

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Hey @connorkraska! How are you? Tbh I think from hearing from my peers, and from some personal experience, self-studying AP exams like Human Geo, Psych, Env. Science (even Govt!) is a good way to get rid of credits fast. I wouldn’t self-study Stats, but I like that you have initiative. Comparative and US Govt at my school are a requirement to graduate, and most people at my school self-study, while the Accelerated Alg II teacher also teaches Stats at our school (she is great). So… I mean just listen around and get counselor advice, but if your math skills are good, go for it. IB is also a good alt. if your school doesn’t have Pre-AP so take the classes in stride and pace yourself man!

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@Blue1998 Thanks for the tip!! Although, my German teacher hasn’t given HW this year (I’m being 100% w/ you) he really does interactive and real-life German exercises. And I think it’s pretty easy to keep Latin and German separate in my mind they sound very different, work differently and, culturally, the two languages are very fascinating and not like some cliche ‘High School Musical Spanish class’ lmao. As for Pre-Calc, I’m still thinking, maybe yes maybe no… idk I’ll think about it.

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I am currently learning 4 languages outside of school, so I am really not one to judge! At our school, precalc is a semester course so I think you might be ok. Just make sure you take AB not BC! I think the reason I posted again taking it was because I thought you were taking BC.

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What AP’s do you plan to take next year? If there aren’t more that appeal to you, I would spread them out between your junior and senior year. I took AP Calc, Lang, and Music Theory this year, and all three were extremely stressful. While much of it does depend on the teacher, there’s rarely such a thing as an easy AP. It’s easy to look at all those courses and think you can handle them, but do you really want to? Plus, colleges don’t expect you to take THAT many AP’s. 6-8 is all it takes to impress them.

I tried self-studying for AP Psych. I had the book, I looked at it every once in a while. Come registration time I had no clue if I was prepared to take the test, so I just didn’t. Self-studying was a lot harder than I thought, and you have to be extremely disciplined to do it. I thought I could do it, but it was just too much on top of everything else I had going on.

Do you have any EC obligations? You need to make sure you have time for these as well, and if you don’t have any, you need to get some. You also want time to relax. You don’t want to burn out before senior year.

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Also, I should mention that it’s better to take courses that align with your potential major. The Music Theory class description I had said that it was meant for only music majors. I decided that I didn’t want to be a music major the summer before, but decided to take the class anyway. Terrible mistake. You’ll have no motivation to study for a class that has so little relevance to your future career goals.

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Thanks @dragonfly26 I’ll consider the option before summer registration in August