I’m a sophomore in high school and and doing pretty well this year with mostly A’s, except for like a B+ in honors chemistry. I barely got an A in AP World, because it was really hard, too. The rest of my classes were fairly easy. For next year, I’m planning on taking:
APUSH
AP Physics 1
AP Chem
AP Calc AB/BC
AP Bio
AP Comp Sci Principles
AP Lang
The only courses I would be worried about honestly would be AP Chem, and maybe physics. Other than that I feel like I would do alright in everything. I’m just wondering if anyone has any advice or suggestions before I go ahead and do this.
Agreed that trying to take multiple lab science classes simultaneously is not advisable, especially with APUSH as well which has a ton of reading. Cut back to one AP lab science class and see where that leaves you with respect to your other choices.
@DCCAWAMIIAIL I already took two years of a foreign language, and am not inclined to do any more since I already know another language fluently and plan on getting certification from my school for that. Also, I’m trying to get a lot of science classes in since I’m shooting for a T20 college. I feel like I would not have trouble with any except for maybe chemistry, but since I’m taking honors this year, at least I’ll have some already remembered.
Yes. Don’t take AP Bio and Chem concurrently. Taking 2 AP lab sciences concurrently is killer. In addition to the time commitment required by virtue of being AP’s, each requires a lot of time for labs and lab reports. For many schools, these classes are either double-periods, or require additional time before/after school. Maybe you are the 1% of the 1% who can handle these 2 together without your grades tanking, but that’s something for you and your GC to confirm. Even for a prospective STEM major, colleges would rather see a balanced schedule covering all core subjects; save one of the AP sciences for senior year.
No T20 is looking for specialists in HS.
As a multilingual person attending a T20, I can share that those colleges are really not accepting that as a reason to ignore their “suggestions” for foreign language coursework in HS.
@bopper I’ve taken AP Human, AP World, and AP Psych. I’ve gotten A’s in all of them. I know people who plan on setting up their schedules like this, but I’m honestly thinking about changing my schedule because three science courses in one year sounds hard to manage.
@skieurope Yeah, I’ll probably save APES for senior year honestly. I might want to continue doing the foreign language, but I’m not sure yet. If I do two science courses, as opposed to three, would that make my schedule more manageable? I just want to grind junior year to get good grades and GPA.
Unless you have a burning desire to learn about ES or are planning a career in ES, you should thing twice. TBH, it looks like you’re just padding your schedule with APs tos ay you took APs
AP Physics 1 plus either AP Chem or AP bio will be more manageable. But make no mistake, 6 AP courses (and the corresponding AP exam prep) plus preparing for ACT/SAT, plus ECs will be time-consuming. And the workload for AP Lang and UPUSH is heavily dependent upon the teacher.
@skieurope Oh wait I made a mistake. I meant to say that I’ll save AP Bio for senior year, might do APES and Bio together senior year in that case. I heard from some older friends about how AP Lang and APUSH is. Most people tell me that AP Lang is not too hard, and that APUSH is really easy, especially if you’ve taken AP World the year before.
@bopper To be fair, AP World is one of the hardest classes at my school, but yeah I guess the other two were pretty easy. I don’t think I would have much trouble with the schedule if I took off AP Bio and maybe Lang, though.
the AP’s you’ve taken so far are the “easy” AP’s, except APWH which introducted you to the approach.
In addition, your jr->sr schedule would be a big problem to an adcom (hubris followed by relaxation).
T20 expect a total of 6-8 AP’s for ALL of HS. Taking 5 junior year will NOT impress them.
Once you have 3-4 each jr/sr year, they’ll move to examining your EC’s and you better stand out there (in music, sport, debate, etc) or have a job where you consistently work a decent number of hours each week.
APUSH
AP Physics 1 => replace with regular or honors physics.
AP Chem
AP Calc AB
AP Comp Sci Principles => not really necessary, save for a “fun class” sr year
AP Lang
German 3
AP Calc BC
AP Gov
English Honors
German 4
(Honors Physics if not already taken)
AP Bio
AP Comp Sci A => not really necessary (if you want to major in CS, you better be coding/programming on your own), but you could take AP CS Principles as an easier senior class
@MYOS1634 The thing is that I really want to pursue the CS pathway that my school offers and you need a minimum of three CS courses in a row to get it, so I want to talk both AP Comp Sci courses. Also, Physics is pretty interesting to me so I would want to take AP Physics in 11th grade, that’s what most people in my grade are doing as well. For math, I was thinking to just do BC this year since its just AB, but with more content. Then, I was thinking to do Georgia Tech math in 12th grade if I get accepted into my school’s program.
@MYOS1634 Why not? I feel like Biology would be easier (I should have done AP bio this year, since I did Honors Bio freshman year), but since I’m taking a chemistry class this year already, I would already have a lot of things memorized for AP Chem. A lot of people at my school do this and usually do well.