To understand rigor, look at the post pinned at the top of the forum.
To complement:
Highly selective colleges expect 6 to 8 APs, total, over high school. They’re not interested in “AP robots”, who take all the AP’s just because they’re APs, but they also don’t want you to take whatever interests you at the expense of AP core classes.
As Stanford put it “it’s not a game of who has the most APs, wins”.
If your school offers few AP (IB/AICE etc) review your HS profile to make sure it’s specified on it as well as whether there are conditions for taking those since that’s what adcoms will use to estimate your profile. In addition, ask your guidance counselor whether what you take matches what is required for “Most demanding” curriculum at your HS.
There are indeed various types of AP: core, rigorous electives, and introductory electives (also known as “not very rigorous” but better than regular classes in the subject, so adding rigor to an already rigorous schedule of core classes).
Note that when I say “AP”, here, I mean “courses showing rigor as expected by top colleges”, so that may include IB, Dual Enrollment (also called RunningStart, PSEO, Concurrent Enrollment), or AICE classes.
-AP cores, that very selective colleges really want to see in relation to your major. For instance, if you’re applying for a STEM major, you’ll be expected to have more STEM AP cores than if you’re applying in Humanities, and vice versa.
These include
AP Language, AP Lit
AP Calculus (AB or BC)
AP Chem, AP Bio, AP Physics (1, 2, C)
AP Foreign Language
AP World History, AP US History, AP European History
The absolute ideal for a well-rounded, excellent at everything student would be one in each category but most students lean towards Humanities&Social sciences or STEM, so that they may skew towards the field they’re most interested in.
AP electives that are not core classes but still rigorous
AP Seminar, AP research
AP Economics
AP Gov
AP CS A
AP electives that are either “gateway to AP classes for 9th/10th graders” or AP classes for strong students who aren’t strong in that specific subject or exploratory classes
AP CS Principles
AP Human Geography
AP Psychology
AP Statistics
AP Environmental Science
In your case, if your school offers AP Gov and you’d be leaning toward humanities, you’d definitely be expected to take it. As someone leaning toward Cognitive Science, Psychology, or Neuroscience, it’s iffy since you’re in-between social science and stem!
You wouldn’t be expected to take AP CS A as a junior and since you want to discover CS, CS Principles as an exploratory AP is well-chosen. If you like some aspects of it, you can ask your teacher whether s/he’d recommend you for AP CS A.
Anatomy&Physiology helps for nursing but premed is nothing “medical”. It’s just an intention you validate by taking chemistry with chemistry majors, biology with biology majors, physics with physics majors, calculus, biostats, English, psychology, sociology, ethics… and ranking top 10-20% each time. The courses don’t include anything specifically medical till med school HOWEVER the activities you choose MUST involve clinical contact.
Note that Spanish fluency will be a big deal if you pass the “algorithm cut” stage and move to the “interview” stage, so if you’re so strong you could take AP Spanish as a sophomore and are seriously considering AP Spanish Lit (which is like AP English Lit but in Spanish, so, really hardcore) consider whether colleges on your list 1° offer medical Spanish or Spanish for the Health professions and 2° will allow you to minor in Spanish relatively easily or with a great range of courses.
The most important courses you may take as a future premed may well be AP Calc and AP Chem (as those are two big weedout courses in college. Weedout means that the exams are deliberately designed so that a large percentage of students doesn’t get a “med school worthy GPA”.) AP Bio also matters but isn’t as hard as AP Chem.