My schools AP limits will only allow me to either take 4 junior and 3 senior or 4 senior and 3 junior year. If I take the former option I’ll be able to get my Capstone diploma and finish AP Phys C junior year (before college apps), and slide AP Chem into senior year. Which option is better?
Are you saying if you take 3 Junior year you can’t take Seminar til Senior year and then will miss Capstone?
At many schools, the two Capstome APs are not rewarded. That said the two classes were my daughter’s favorites abd she wouldn’t trade them for anything.
What’s better is what you prefer. You didn’t state a major but If there’s a sequence of courses you want to take, then take them.
If there are four good AP classes that you want, that are taught by good teachers, and you can handle the load, then I’d take the four in 11th grade. You will hopefully have a string of 5’s that you can submit to the colleges, to demonstrate that you will succeed in college-level classes.
Why in the world would your school limit the number of AP’s in senior year? Any chance of your lobbying to get this absurd limit removed? At my kids’ school, they were allowed to take all AP classes as soon as they could handle them, and were at that level. Most of the brightest kids took 3 APs in 10th, 4 in 11th, and 5 in 12th (some even more than that). If the kids could handle it, their was no restriction on the number of AP classes.
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Not all schools are the same, our school limits kids to 1 AP at max (most kids take 0) in 10, 3 in 11th and 3 or 4 in 12th. We are at a highly ranked public school in NYC suburb who sends many schools to excellent schools. Most APs have prerequisites and APs are taught at an extremely high rigorous level.
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Exactly. Our local high school has a similar AP philosophy, and the top students generally graduate with 6 or 7 APs in total. The HS offers high honors (as well as honors and on-level) in most core courses starting freshman year, and these courses have equivalent GPA weighting to APs…without the burden of needing to follow an AP curriculum.
For OP, I encourage them to take what they feel they can handle junior year.
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Take the AP courses aligned to your interests and potential major.
I honestly think 4 is too much either year, but it depends on what else you are taking or doing beyond academics. I would do three junior year and do well on those exams. Those are the scores you will self report. Senior year take the 4 if you want to, you will be accepted before you even take the exams.
Research the colleges you may be interested in attending and look at their info about which course equivalents align to the AP classes you may take. Some state flagships will take all you bring and give you credits and some highly selective privates may allow you to opt out of the entry level courses, but no credits accepted. This may or may not matter.
What you will notice is none of these colleges really care about the College Board capstone/seminar/research courses the College Board has encouraged high schools to add while dropping other electives or core area courses. Admissions officers do not care one way or the other about that accomplishment of completing the College Board series. If you do it great, if not but you took courses equally or more challenging- also great!
I understand this philosophy, although it violates the principal of “curriculum differentiation” that FINALLY, by high school in a good district, allows those capable of the highest academic achievement to self-direct into appropriately challenging classes. But to tell students that they are limited to only a certain number of AP classes (as if classes for the highest achievers were a rationed commodity), and then tell them that if they take four of them in junior year, they can only take three of them in senior year? That’s ridiculous and absurd. Do we tell the children in need of special ed that they can only have services for one of their four years of high school, and they should choose which year they want them?
But if this is the reality that this student must deal with, assuming that they are capable of managing the academic workload of four AP classes in junior year, and are capable of getting high scores on the AP exams for those classes, then an application with four high scores from junior year and being enrolled in only three AP classes in the fall of senior year (with an accompanying letter from the guidance counselor that explains the school’s absurd AP policy), would look better than 3 high scores from junior year, plus enrollment in four AP classes in the fall of senior year. The former shows higher concrete achievement already on the books.
And yes, of course most students would do better with 3 APs in junior year, and 4 in senior year. But there are some students who would be best served by a normal/honors high school curriculum in middle school, and a mostly AP curriculum throughout high school. They deserve access to such a curriculum, without limitation, in the same way that special ed students deserve access to special ed, without unnecessary, arbitrary limitation.
back to OP - if they want the AP Capstone - regardless of if colleges eat that up (they don’t appear to), it sounds like they can only take Seminar now if they take four as a Junior - so to me that’s the way to go.
My daughter did this and it was easily her most memorable class and helped her as she starts research in college.
The student called this out - so I’m assuming this is of utmost importance to them (personally).
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All other things being equal, it’s often better to frontload coursework as senior year can be hectic with college and scholarship applications, leadership in ECs, and social activities.
The AP Capstone was my D22’s favorite part of the AP program, by far. The research project honed her analytic and communication skills and the experience helps close the writing gap that exists between AP and IB programs. She’s had multiple admission and scholarship interviewers ask her about it, she submitted her final project in lieu of the short essay to multiple top schools, and the fact that she was one of fewer than 1000 juniors in the country to 5 both exams helped to set her apart from other applicants.
It really depends on your goals and the type of school to which you are applying, though. To the point of multiple posters, most colleges do not offer credit as there is no comparable freshman course to swap out. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t valued, especially at schools that prioritize experience with original research and demonstrated writing skills. Amherst and Williams, for example, were all about it.
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There is a correlation between schools that eliminated class rank and schools that limit the number of APs allowed. Both changes were instituted, in part, to reduce stress levels and competition between students, not to enhance academic preparedness. My daughter attends a great, large public school in PA and it is standard for the top 10% of the class to graduate with 12-15 APs. They get into good colleges and do well once they get there.
There’s value for some teachers to have the freedom to deviate from the AP curricula and teach what they think is best. That said, I don’t think deviating from standards works for every school, teacher, and student group. It also varies by subject, as not all APs are created equal.
Totally agree. It was my son’s favorite Aps of the 8 he took and the one that was the most useful for research and public speaking. Sometimes you take Aps to better yourself and not for the credits. It was a very rewarding class series.
No, I’d still finish Research junior year but I wouldn’t have enough overall APs for the diploma.
Not sure I understand - for Capstone you need Seminar and Research.
Anyway - Ap with this or that such as AP with Distinction - are just hype.
Take the classes that are right for you. The classes themselves, quantity vs. what is offered at your school, and sometimes (depends on the school) the score in the course is what matters.
Be the best, most interested you that you can be (meaning, do what you want, what interests you) - and let the fluff stay on the sideline (fluff meaning - made up awards).
Good luck.
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