Hi fellow CCers. I’m currently in the process of selecting my senior year course and I decide whether or not this schedule is too rigorous or not. My classes include:
• AP Biology
• AP Calc AB
• AP English Literature and Composition
• AP Stats/AP Psychology
• AP Government and AP Macroeconomics (both a semester each)
• Honors Anatomy and Physiology
• EMT course (allows me to apply for training and certification in as a EMT whilst gaining in-depth healthcare experience)
• Senior Early Release
We have a block schedule next year so we will only take four courses per day (A day and B day) I sincerely loved taking AP Chemistry this year. Although I struggled initially, I feel like it enhanced my previous chemistry knowledge and prepared me for college and I thought it was really fun! I might be a little biased though because I had such an amazing chemistry teacher. I also loved taking AP Lang, it has made my writing much more sophisticated. My teacher was pretty sassy and sarcastic and also made learning English fun so that was a plus. AP Physics 1, however, was definitely not my strong suit as I struggled throughout the entire year and had no fascination for learning new topics. I feel like I relied on my friends way too much in order to get a decent grade. Despite the fact I only had these three AP classes and even study hall, I was overwhelmed in the beginning of the year and accustomed myself to the workload very slowly. My fear is by taking this course load my senior year, I won’t have enough time to apply to college, scholarships and etc. and will be completely swamped with homework and studying to actually enjoy my senior year and do well in all my classes. Do you guys think this schedule will be too rigorous? Do you guys have any suggestions, advice or tweaks to add to my schedule? It would be greatly appreciated? And which AP course would be better stats or psychology? I’m still sadly contemplating about that.
What is your GPA? Do you have ECs? How well have you done on AP tests before?
For seniors, you will be spending time in the fall applying to colleges.
You may be a leader in your EC and busy with it.
You may get some senioritis at the end of the year.
On the other hand, you can get credits for college classes and will be taking the rigourous schedule colleges like…but they would also be okay if you took 1 or 2 less.
So if you have a good GPA and have done well on previous APs and are not super busy with your ECs, then it looks fine.
But if not , I would drop 1 or 2 of them (not Bio, Calc or Lit)
@bopper I have a 3.7 GPA (unweighted) and I’m currently in Beta Club, NHS and HOSA. Unfortunately when I ran for HOSA historian I didn’t win but I plan to be a committee chair in HOSA next fall and plan a HOSA event individually or with one of my friends. I took the WHAP and Human Geo AP exams last year scoring a 3 on each last year. This year I took Chemistry, Lang and Physics and I’ll find out my scores in July. I’m a hard worker but I don’t wanna get senioritis too early in the year by taking an excessively rigorous course load.
• AP Biology
• AP Calc AB
• AP Government and AP Macroeconomics (both a semester each)
===> keep these three
• AP English Literature and Composition
• AP Stats/AP Psychology
===> Choose ONE from the three: English Lit if you love reading, AP Stats to preview a class you must take in college, AP Psych if you are interested in the class or want to preview Psych before college. If you don’t take AP Lit, take Honors English; if you don’t take AP Stats or AP Stats but keep AP Lit, choose something else, a relatively easy class if you replace A&P with another class, or an easy AP (stats, psych, apes, CS principles, etc) if you take Senior Early Release/late Arrival instead of A&P. Make sure you have 5 academic classes, total.
• Honors Anatomy and Physiology => take something else, or nothing
• EMT course (allows me to apply for training and certification in as a EMT whilst gaining in-depth healthcare experience) => good
• Senior Early Release
Have you completed level 4 or AP of a foreign language?
Don’t take AP classes just the sake of their being AP.
“Something else” can be: AP CS Principles, APES, Art, Music, Culinary Arts, Current Events, or one of the “three” above that you considered dropping.
My choice would be:
• AP Biology
• AP Calc AB
• AP Government and AP Macroeconomics (both a semester each)
Honors English
AP Psychology/AP Stats
Foreign Language, Art/music, or CS Principles
EMT course
Early Release/Late arrival (I’d pick Late arrival before early release! :p)
I think you should also consider the rigor of each of those classes at your school. For example, at my high school, AP Econ was the joke class that often times people took to get a GPA boost/finance credit for graduation (I know, it’s bad). At other nearby schools, I’ve heard that AP Econ is known to be an extremely rigorous class.
Ask around to hear experiences from past students about these classes. Take note of what teachers teach these classes and if they’re a good/bad teacher, tough/easy teacher, etc. Then consider your course load.
If you find that you’ve signed yourself up for 5 known-to-be rigorous AP classes, you may want to reconsider your selection if you feel you may not be able to balance it. If you find that one or two of those classes gives less work or is relatively easier, then you’re probably good.
Good luck!
AP Biology
• AP Calc AB
• AP English Literature and Composition
• AP Stats/AP Psychology
• AP Government and AP Macroeconomics
Don’t take AP calc and AP stats. Choose one. Both are known to be hard courses at my school.
I personally found AP Bio to be pretty relaxed most of the time. Most of our homework was just reading and vocab.
AP Lit was easy. I had a 100 all year, but I am stronger in humanities.
AP gov was extremely easy. AP Macro was hard but I found it interesting.
My senior year I took AP Gov, AP Macro, AP lit, AP Enviro, and AP Bio. It wasn’t too much for me.
@MYOS1634 Alright, I decided to remove Psychology from my list as I asked two seniors who both had/have taken psych and they said it’s mostly busy work, you have to self teach yourself in order to succeed and the class has a substandard coach as its teacher, whereas in stats there is claimed to be never a boring day in class, he gives half points back on tests (a 70 on a stats test would mean an 85 with corrections), and the teacher is excellent because he helps you whenever you are confused on a topic. I also have an acquaintance that was a former AP Stats teacher and I could occasionally ask him for help for topic I’ve been struggling on. You see with Lit, I have had an absymal relationship with books since birth (my dad keeps on nagging me about that) but I know I’m going to inevitably be forced to read and analyze texts in college. By taking Lit I hope to inprove my reading comprehension as well as my desire to read. Besides, the lit teacher, from what I heard from seniors, is absolutely phenomenal at teaching and requires us to do research papers we’ll eventually be doing in college. I also want to take anatomy and physiology because I like learning about the human body and I want to become familiar with dissecting different deceased animal bodies, since I will be going into the medical field. In addition, the teacher for anatomy and physiology was also my freshman biology teacher I had my freshman year, so it will be nice having her teach again. The highest foreign language I ever took was Spanish 2, I already have 3 foreign language credits, and I never took an AP Language nor do I want to because at this point it would be a waste of time.
@beccarain Yeah I’m also considering that. My senior friend recommended me to take gov since the teacher gives you half points back on tests (read above) and it mostly memorizing which is one of my strengths. Econ on the other hand has a horrible teacher but is extremely generous with EC and his tests aren’t too bad, if I read the textbook I’ll be good.
@blackkitteycat Cool schedule! I wish I was as strong on humanities as you! Ugh I know it might be irresponsible of me to double up on math but I feel like if I don’t take both I might miss out on something. Ugh I’m still lost. :-S
@masterblackninja : for foreign language, colleges count level reached. If you only reached level 2 you won’t be eligible for a lot of selective schools (including all those that “meet need”). Reaching level 3 is considered the minimum required level for a selective 4-year university.
I understand your rationales for the other classes.
Be aware that AP Lit is likely to be very difficult and time-consuming if you aren’t excellent at reading. It’s cool to see you willing to challenge yourself but don’t overwhelm yourself either.
I’d drop AP stats then, and definitely take Spanish 3 since it’s a core class that you’ll need to apply to a variety of colleges.
So, revised proposed schedule:
My choice would be:
• AP Biology
• AP Calc AB
• AP Government and AP Macroeconomics (both a semester each)
AP Lit
Spanish 3
A&P
EMT course
Early Release/Late arrival (I’d pick Late arrival before early release!)
@MYOS1634 I really appreciate the advice, but since I’m only interested in colleges in Texas I don’t need three years of a foreign language. Every college I have ever looked at only required two years, nevertheless recommend three. Besides the Spanish 3 teachers at our school are the atrocious at teaching, my ambitious friends last year were complaining everyday last year on how their teacher was the “devil”. No one got a grade above a 86 and there were C’s across the board, it was just absolute mishap. And yes I know Lit will be my most challenging class but I’ll do whatever it takes!
@MYOS1634 I agree with op, if their college list doesn’t include colleges that want 3 years of a foreign language, its not entirely necessary. (That being said languages are great to take). FWIW I’m putting together my college list, which includes some pretty selective institutions (MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt, etc.) and none have recommended more than 2 years. It might be my intended major (engineering, looking at more technical schools), but you seem to overgeneralize that statistic a lot.
When applying for a college, consider that 'recommended ’ means 'required if you want to be competitive '. However if the class is horrible, I agree you can take your chances by offsetting this and taking more advanced classes in other subjects (what you seem to be doing).
However in Texas the main criterion for public universities is class rank. What universities are you aiming for and what’s your class rank?
When applying for a college, consider that 'recommended ’ means 'required if you want to be competitive '. However if the class is horrible, I agree you can take your chances by offsetting this and taking more advanced classes in other subjects (what you seem to be doing).
However in Texas the main criterion for public universities is class rank. What universities are you aiming for and what’s your class rank?
@MYOS1634 My class rank is currently 67/673, which is just barely in the top ten. I’m doing everything I can right now to raise my class rank. The universities I’m aiming for are all of the UT colleges, TCU, SMU, Baylor and West Texas A&M. I know at this point in time it will be difficult to move to the top seven percent (unable to be an auto admit to UT Austin) but I still want to have a good schedule regardless.
EMT course could wait until you’re a freshman in college. Please don’t stress yourself.
@NASA2014 Well I would do that, but since this course is double blocked (my school does block scheduling) it would force me to pick two alternative classes to fill in the void which would simply worsen my dilemma. Plus this course saves me a semester and potentially one semester’s worth of time and money in addition to letting me get my certificate straight out of high school. I might even be able to find a job as a freshman in college! This opportunity is just too good to abandon.
I agree that the EMT class is a good choice.
The thing with my schedule is I don’t want to sacrifice my GPA for a rigorous schedule, especially since I’m the last person in the top ten. But at the same time I don’t want a schedule that is too undemanding.@snowfairy137 Thanks for agreeing with me!
I agree EMT is a great choice since it leads to a great part-time job (pays well, good for resume, counts for health-related graduate programs).
Since you’re top 10% and (I assume) would apply to a major in the Agricultural College (you spoke about Health field and animals so I inferred vet?) , your odds are good at all Texas universities except UT where it’s a reach for anyone not top 7%. Rank stops at what you have at the end of junior, although if you were borderline (like top 8% junior year) and managed to improve, you have a shot and can submit again after first semester.