So I am taking APUSH and AP Lang this year as a junior in addition to 3 other honors classes. I have about a 3.8 gpa right now.
Here are my EC’s:
I volunteer at a local charity (about 4 hours a week)
I volunteer at my church (about 5 hours a week)
Mock Trial (4 hours a week)
National Honor Society (3 hours a week)
Member of a youthMentoring program, its like being a camp counselor but during the school year (10 hours a week)
So I want to jump from 2 AP classes to 5…
I want to take:
AP Gov & Politics
AP Lit
AP Stats
AP Bio
AP French
How long to each of these classes usually take a night??
You have to ask people at your high school (who have taken your prospective courses) how difficult your schedule would be. The difficulty level of any class depends on your teacher and school.
AP Stat and AP Gov’t and Politics are oftentimes considered “AP lites” since they cover only a semester of college material.
Your other classes seem manageable, but as I said before, you have to ask people at your school to really determine the difficulty of your classes.
^^^^ this all the way
It almost entirely depends on your teacher + your willingness to self-study alongside it… but more your teacher.
Are you a “naturally smart” student or a “hardworking” student? If you’re the latter you might miss out on a lot of time out in the sun and your social life, if you know what I mean. Your EC load is crazy. If you aren’t exaggerating anything you’re talking about approximately 5.2 hours of ECs per school day or 3.7 hours every single day. Then each AP course sucks additional life out of you. For me (“natural smart” student) last semester, it was >3 hours a night for all my APs (Stats, ELitAC, Spanish, Studio Art, Bio, Econ). Now imagine what that is for a studyholic-type student…
I don’t mean to discourage you. If you think you’re mentally prepared to take on that courseload, then do it. It statistically appeals to top universities.
Thank you so much for the help! Yeah my ECs usually are about 2 hours a day in total (so different ones different days) and a lot of it is done on the weekends. And I asked the seniors at my school and they said it was a lot of work, but your advice was really helpful too!
I’d say AP French, AP Bio, and AP Lit would each require 45 mn to 1h of homework per night. AP Gov and AP Stats are much lighter.
HOWEVER, this depends on the school, so as posters have already said, ask classmates who’ve already taken the class.
IAmNotCreative: ALL AP classes are equivalent to 4 months in college (1 semester, 3 classes a week), stretched to 9 months (high school pace - 5 classes a week). The only exception are Calculus BC, which is 2 semesters of college calculus andPhysics C which is 2 semesters of college physics ( college =3 classes a week) kept apace at 2 semesters of high school (with 5 periods a week).
The “AP lite” classes are generally equivalent of “gen ed” classes, not “pre-major” classes… or may be too light in content compared to some colleges’ depth. For example, AP Stats is algebra-based, but for many majors that require statistics, the class will be calculus-based, and the algebra-based statistics class will be a general education “math in the world” class for people in art and humanities who don’t want to take calculus.
Each college period requires 2 to 3 hours of homework, you have to work on your own a lot, and the pace is very fast, so having 5 periods allows high school teachers to break things down a bit more for younger students. That’s why taking a dual enrollment class is valuable, and why colleges like an A in a DE class (because nothing predicts success in college like an A in an actual college course. :p)
5 APs is possible, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re only taking 2 junior year. Senior year is the year you crash and you really don’t want to put forth the effort that APs demand. You might succeed if you take 5, but you’ll probably regret it while you’re taking them.
The AP Lit class can be extremely time consuming. Most colleges do not even give AP credit for that class, except as maybe elective credit – it does not go toward fulfilling general ed requirements for a major typically. I would drop that one for sure unless you plan to major in English in college.