Am I challenging myself for my junior year?

If your intended major is neuroscience, please realize that may be a capped enrollment major even at “non-prestigious” universities. Thus it may be a competitive admit. Unless you’re a URM or your school doesn’t offer AP CS, AP CSP in your junior year may seem a lot less rigorous. It’s fine to explore courses, but perhaps that should have been in freshman or sophomore years.

You can always look into something online like EdX if you want to just see what comp sci is , and then decide AP CS or CSP for senior year. Frankly, I think AP Spanish Lit would be a better fit for you instead of AP CSP. It shows an AP in a non-science area, and shows authentic interest outside a STEM field. Also, you may consider Honors Gov, as suggested already, if that’s offered. Your application will be in competition with others in the STEM/ premed route, and expect many of them to have high rigor in their set of junior level courses.

If your future major was undecided or business or social science/humanities, I would agree with others here that AP CSP would be okay.

Thanks for the insight! My school doesn’t have Honors Gov, they just AP Gov, which is a semester-long course and followed up with AP Macro. I didn’t want to take it because I have little to no idea/interest in the American government, due to the fact that I came from having Pakistani schooling for my entire life to suddenly being thrust into the American system in middle school. Because of this and the fact that I had already skipped a grade in Pakistan, I became two grades ahead for my age, so I’m two years younger than all my peers. This was also a reason my counselor and my family didn’t want to pressure me with AP Physics, AP Language, AP Government, AP Macroeconomics, AP Spanish Literature, Honors Anatomy, Honors Pre-Calc, and AP CSP. I hope you understand what I’m trying to say, because it’s a really complicated and kind of situation. Do you still think colleges would look down on AP CSP given this?

If you want a feel for Computer Science without taking the class in school check out this list of online courses: CS Journeys Resources - Online courses | Code.org. Do note though, these are more focused on teaching you programming, not really the other topics I mentioned above.

AP Lang and AP CSP are both relatively easy, but I can’t vouch for AP gov/AP physics/AP Macro.

What would you take instead of AP CSP? AP Spanish Lit? Honestly I would say that you should pick the one that interests you the most.

Also, because you are from Pakistan, do you or your parents have a green card or citizenship? If not, you’re going to be put in the international applicants pool, which opens up a whole other can of worms.

Yeah, that would be problematic. But no, thankfully my parents both have green cards

Also, thanks for the link! Definitely will check it out :))))

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Good luck with your decision!

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I have no idea what adcoms are thinking. The advice I gave was based on general consensus from my child’s GC and the types of courses juniors aiming for a competitive stem field generally take. In the end, take what you can handle. My son did not take APUSH junior year, even though many of his classmates, even STEM kids, take APUSH. And if some adcom thinks that’s not rigorous enough, oh well. Do realize that adcoms receive thousands of applications - I am not sure they have the time to analyze your specific situation unless it is something very compelling.

By the way, if you’re 2 years younger than your peers, this may cause some issues for college. You would have to check. And since you will always be 2 years younger than your peers - how will that impact things when you have to take a lot of high pressure courses in college - or are you planning to take 5 years to finish undergrad?

I’m not deadset on my major as of right now. I’m open to taking Psychology even, which I know will be a lot less ‘cutthroat’, for lack of a better word. if it’s related to the Cognitive Science area, then I’m interested.

Given your insight, I’m able to objectively see that my workload isn’t really as heavy as it should be either way. I think I’ll talk to my counselor about either calculus or government. Thanks again!

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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” :stuck_out_tongue: 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 :slight_smile: 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.

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Thank you so so much! This was hugely informative!

I was not aware that AP Stats was considered gateway, so that’s interesting, since I was taking it senior year. I’m taking the AP Biology test today (wish me luck!), so I’ve gotten that out of the way, but other than that I think I either need AP Calc or AP Gov/Macro to up my coursework load a bit.

Once again, I really appreciate your insight! Thank you!

For pre-meds, the grading scale is:

A = acceptable
B = bad
C = catastrophic
D = disastrous
F = forget it

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Hey guys! I don’t know if anyone;s even still on here or remembers, but I was able to take AP Calculus AB! My schedule looks like this now

AP Physics 1
AP English Language and Composition
AP Calculus AB
AP Computer Science Principles
Creative Writing (elective)
Regular Government

I should have taken AP Gov theoretically, but that would have to be coupled with AP Macroeconomics, and that would result in 6 AP exams at the end of the year, and as a 15-year-old with 8 extracurriculars, leadership in 3 of those clubs, JV tennis, and a baby brother at home, I thought that was way too much.

What do you guys think? Any feedback is appreciated :slight_smile:

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Very rigorous and balanced, except foe the absence of foreign language but I seem to remember you plan on taking it senior year.

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Yes, I do. I was really upset when I couldn’t fit it in, though :(((