<p>I had 4 APs at school, and one as independent study. At school- AP Calculus AB, AP English Lit, AP Euro, & AP Spanish Language. On my own- AP Psych. For non-AP classes at school, I had Physics and Theology (Catholic high school). </p>
<p>What non-AP classes do you have on top of that? if you have several other classes, that would affect your ability to do 5 APs. Try to limit other classes so you can really focus on the AP stuff. Will you have a study hall? That was something my parents required me to have- leave one period free, I couldn’t add another class, that was the condition for taking the 4 AP at school plus 1 on my own.</p>
<p>Ok, so you’re considering AP Calc AB also, English Lit, French, Bio, & Euro. I can help with some of those. AP Calc: If you’re good at math, don’t worry about it. I think I’ll have a 4 for sure but somewhat likely a 5 on the AP test, and I didn’t really work that hard in the class. Math is easy to me anyways, as in I hardly ever have studied for math tests in my entire life, like I maybe study 1 hour for a semester final, so I had to do a little more in AP but not all that much. If you’re not good at math, plan on struggling in it, as I know people who got Bs in previous math courses and then had difficulty in AP, but I have always had As in math, and again have an A in AP Calc, but with slightly more effort than my previous non-AP math courses. AP English Lit: I’m not exactly good at analyzing literature that I find boring, but I definitely got better at it. We had lots of papers (like 1 each week) plus practice FRQs and tests. There wasn’t a lot of homework, except for papers, but that would depend on your teacher. AP Euro- that was my most difficult class by far, but also the most interesting. We happen to have gotten stuck with the toughest possible teacher for this class in entire school (and anyone you talk to at my school would say that, guaranteed!- I’m not exaggerating here!); however tough, he’s an excellent teacher, very few questions he didn’t know the answer to about history. So, here it can be a difficult course, but I’ve heard at some other schools, it may not be any worse than APUSH. He told us at the beginning of the year to take our APUSH class grade and knock it down a full letter grade, as no one at my school has ever gotten an A in AP Euro, and that is not just kids talking- the teacher said it and he has taught that course the entire time my school has existed. So this course can be ok, or it can be horrible. AP French- I haven’t taken it, so idk, but at my school, that class is a joke, but I don’t know about your school. AP Bio- again, differences between schools, and I haven’t taken it. I’ve heard it’s a lot of homework, but not necessarily difficult to understand- just a lot of busy work, and people have 2-3 hours every night at my school and the people in it are constantly studying at lunch everyday before their daily quizzes. That class practically consumes their lives because of the amount of work, from who I’ve talked to, and my sister is taking it next year. I wouldn’t take it because I hate bio, but people who are interested in it do fine in it. My friend who loves it got a 5 on the AP test last year, and that will be my sister next year I’m sure.</p>
<p>I definitely see your point about getting the college credit because that’s one of the main reasons why I took the classes I did. Although someone here said to only take APs that relate to your college major, I disagree with that. If you go to a college with lots of gen ed requirements and you took APs that you passed the exam for, you’re gonna be glad you took those APs. I should have 1 year done of college credits if I passed all my AP tests this year and then add that to the AP credits I have from sophomore and junior years. None of those have anything to do with my primary major, which will be piano performance (although I’m probably gonna do a double degree with History as the second major, so AP Euro will help for that).</p>
<p>I had the same thing junior year- 1 AP, and then went to 5. It’s do-able, but it does take work. Give up a lot of social time and sleeping in on weekends to do homework, if you want to keep good grades, etc. </p>
<p>Also, the one AP I had junior year was APUSH, just like you. I had that plus 3 honors courses and 6 other courses, total of 10 courses junior year. I dropped band and jazz band senior year for AP classes, partly because AP classes are gonna get me college credit, and because our music program at school sucks. I just do all my music stuff outside of school to get ready for auditions as a music major. Hope you did well on the APUSH exam! </p>
<p>As far as how APUSH overwhelmed you, even with that being the only AP you took, I think APUSH has more work than some AP classes. APUSH, at least for me, had more homework than AP Calc, AP English, and AP Spanish definitely. AP Euro was more difficult (but that’s partly just my school, really tough teacher, people fear taking the class, which is why there’s only 3 people in it total whereas most other classes are 15-20 people per section of the class). APUSH had daily homework, whereas Euro didn’t for me, but it had more studying when it came to tests and longer papers (I wrote research papers up to 30 pages). </p>
<p>As far as if you had to drop one AP: I don’t know which one to say, don’t know which one would be least important to your intended college major, sorry.</p>
<p>You have a fine GPA to start with. Just know that it probably will go down a little. For me, junior year 1st semester unweighted GPA I got a 4.0 and 4.11 2nd semester, and this year, 1st semester I got a 3.723, and this semester, all the grades aren’t done yet, but I’m predicting a 3.833, with a final cumulative GPA around a 3.9 unweighted, so it didn’t do that much damage for those classes plus being gone for piano auditions.</p>
<p>“How did you manage your time?” Come home, practice piano, homework, go to sleep=life everyday. Weekends= get up, homework, piano, more homework, sleep (plus piano competitions for me and auditions in which I was gone). Set out a schedule and don’t procrastinate. If your teachers give you a list of assignments weeks ahead of time, consider that a gift and plan out your time, listing out each week and what you need to get done each day and weekend. Then I had to deal with AP Psych self study. I had worked on that the previous summer, so I didn’t do that during the year except for Christmas, Easter, and Spring Breaks review stuff.</p>
<p>“Were you stressed all the time?” I deal with stress well, probably better than the average person, because I just say like “well, I gotta do all this crap, might as well get it done instead of complain, freak out, and stress out about it”- the freak out thing would be my sister! I’m tired and everything, but I’ve made it through, and on Thursday after my last final, I’m coming home and sleeping, because I need to. I’ve been up til midnight almost every night this semester. 2nd semester was by far worse than 1st semester, probably just because of AP test prep in addition to normal homework.</p>
<p>“Did you have tests every week?” I think I did. Some classes more than others. AP Calc, we had quizzes 4-5 days a week, plus tests every 2-3 weeks, and take-home AP quizzes that we submitted online. AP English- only 4 tests the whole year because the focus was on polished writing assignments about literature and analysis stuff. AP Euro- only 2 tests a quarter (4 a semester), so that and 1 paper a quarter was all that was in your grade, which made those tests pretty important. AP Spanish- random tests and quizzes, really unorganized teacher. So yeah, I had something every week. Plus Physics and Theology, but those were easy.</p>
<p>“Did it affect your academic progress?” Did one class affect my progress in another? Sometimes I had to focus on one, like when I had an AP Euro test I tried to do minimal work on everything else. Other than that, not really cause I still got As in everything except AP Euro (since no one does, all you can hope for at my school is a B).</p>
<p>Yep, that was long, but I think I answered all your questions, the best that I can anyways for now.</p>