Hi, my school starts academic advising (course selection) for the 2015-16 school year next week and throughout February. I’m a sophomore (class of 2017) so i’ll be picking classes for my junior year.
I want to get into my dream school (which is very selective/a public ivy) so of course I need to be very careful picking my classes…but I need some advice possibly from current juniors/seniors…?
I’m taking one AP class this year (we can only take one as sophomores, AP World) but I need to take as many as I can to look good on a college app.
I’m not the best at math so I don’t have many STEM AP courses, but I want to balance that by taking humanities AP courses–
can someone let me know if if these classes would be too hard to do all at once next year?
AP Lang
APUSH
AP Biology
AP Psych
Specifically AP Bio and AP Psych. I’m debating whether to take AP Human Geo instead of Psych, but human geo can also be a freshman class so it might not be rigorous enough for colleges to even consider it a big deal.
Thanks!
It’s not taking “as many as you can to look good on a college app” - it’s quality over quantity with AP courses. Certain AP courses are considered rigorous (AP Calc, AP Chem, AP Bio, etc). Some are considered “lite” (AP Psych, APES, etc).
I put down an example below. Student 1 would have the stronger course load. It doesn’t matter that they took the same number of AP courses as Student 2 - Student 1 class selection shows more rigor than Student 2’s, even though Student 2 still has a difficult course load.
Student 1
AP Lang
AP Calc BC
AP Chem
AP World
Student 2
AP Lang
AP Psych
APES
AP World
That doesn’t matter. Every school is different - some schools only allow certain AP classes certain years. For example, at my school, APUSH is a freshman class - but that doesn’t mean that it’s not rigorous.
Not only that, but AP Psych isn’t considered rigorous either; on the contrary, it’s considered to be one of the “lite” AP classes (along with AP Environmental Science and some others). You can’t compare taking AP Psych to taking a class like, say, AP Calc or AP Bio. Now, I’m not saying that the class is easy - I never took it, but it seemed like a lot of work based on what my friends often said about it.
Anyways, I think your AP selection is well-rounded - with a rigorous science course to compensate for the lack of AP Calc. I don’t think it matters if you take AP Human Geo over AP Psych. Regardless of whichever you choose, good luck next year 
Thanks so much! this was my first post on CC so thanks for all the help. i’m quite interested in biology so i was hoping AP Bio would help my courses seem a bit more well-rounded. Thank you!!!
@luna860 no problem! AP Bio is a difficult course, but it’s good that you’re interested in it - I hope you do well 