I’m thinking of taking as a freshman:
Honors Word Lit (capped at honors for freshman)
AP World History
AP Calculus BC
Honors (elective) Coding games with java
Should I take honors biology or AP biology?
Kids at my school are insanely competitive
I think I can put in the work
AP Calculus*
Not BC
sorry
Anyone?
I’m taking AP Bio right now as a junior and it’s really not all that different from Honors Bio that I took as a freshman. However, I will say STUDY, STUDY, STUDY if you do take AP Bio because the vocabulary you have to know is extensive and crucial to passing the class and the AP exam. Not a difficult course though.
Would taking AP bio be much harder without taking honors bio before?
@Foreboding Not at all. You pretty much learn the same things just at a more in-depth level in AP Bio, but that’s a given. I wouldn’t say Honors Bio helped me at all to be completely honest and it felt kind of elementary. You should be fine.
Ok, thanks.
At my school, Honors Biology is harder than AP Biology. Maybe that is just an oddity, but I think that you should go for AP Biology if you can handle the work. You learn pretty much the same things, and it looks good on the transcript. Biology is more of a “memorization science” (unlike Chemistry and Physics, which are more difficult to do without background knowledge), so doing AP without Honors Biology is not as difficult as you might think.
Nevertheless, you should talk with your counselor first and get her take on the issue. Some specific classes may be more difficult than others at your school.
Just because others are absurdly competitive does not mean you have to be. Carve out your own high school experience that provides you with meaningful activities/learning opportunities. Try to avoid following the crowd. In the long run, doing so will serve you well.
I don’t follow the crowd. Though I need to be competitive to get noticed for something different than the others in my school. I have my own interests, all of my electives and math are geared towards a career in computer science (I will take that next year)
Or maybe you will get noticed for not being just another sad stressed out insanely competitive kid from your school. Is AP bio normally a class with no prerequisite at your school? Ours requires honors bio. Also AP world is a lot of work at many schools. Consider if you will have enough time for activities, to enjoy high school, to get enough sleep. Talk to older students at your school and see whether they think your schedule is too much. Kids on this site don’t know what kind of student you are, or whether you’ve only got 6 classes or are juggling 8, or how hard the AP classes at your particular school are, and how much time your out of school committments take. Number of APs always needs to be looked at in context.
I’m making this question as a broad statement using general information from students who have already taken the courses, not looking for my school in general. As, by your own logic thats entirely up to the dedication/intelligence/effort of the students who are actually taking the course in my high school.
As I said, it’s hard for strangers on the internet to know for reasons I gave above. If you want anecdotes, my 10th grader is now taking AP world, AB calc, and an easy AP. AP world is a lot of work for her. The others not so much. But like I said, context matters. She is having a very heavy workload because she is taking 8 academic classes, by that I mean no PE or other class without homework. No study hall. Also she is a perfectionist person who probably spends more time than needed on assigments. She also keeps quite busy with a ton of ECs after school, some evenings, and often on Saturdays as well. I would not want her to be in AP bio now as she is already a little overloaded and AP bio is a fair amount of work ( her sister took it). I think she is planning to take AP bio next year though. For a different person in a different context, 3 APs would be easy. The material of the bio classes was quite similar but AP more in depth. I know my older kid would recommend chemistry before AP bio.