For my junior year I am already taking AP english language, AP Calc AB, AP environ, AP USH, and Journalism. However, I cannot decide on the my 6th course. AP Psych will be super super super easy at my school and it would be an easy A. However I feel like colleges would rather see a rigorous course like AP Art hist because it is an actual class. It fills out my fine art requirement and seems very interesting but I feel like it is a much harder class overall (more homework and writing and harder tests than psych). I am very conflicted between the risky choice and the safe choice. Any insight on the difficulty of APAH? Personal experience with these type of decisions?
Art History at my school is very easy, we basically take notes for a couple of weeks and then have a test. That’s it, no homework, no quizzes, no chapter outlines. All we do in class is talk about the pieces and since the teacher lectures directly from the book, we don’t need to read the whole chapter for the test as long as we take good notes. However, the Art History teacher at another school in my district makes his students read a lot of outside material before class and has much more information on his presentations. And from what I understand, the AP exam isn’t that hard, you just need to know the overall styles and movements and be able to write essays about any given work of art they show you.
I’m taking AP Psych and APAH this year, and I think Psych is way harder than APAH because of all the reading and notes, so my school is basically the opposite. Basically, take Art History if you really like art. I know some people in my class that took it just because they needed AP credits that hate it even though it’s easy because all we do is talk about art. If you aren’t interested in art but you think you can pay attention and do the work then go for it!
I think colleges care more about your score on the AP exam since the difficulty of the courses differs between schools, but that’s just what I think. Good luck!
@marenec Thanks! What you described seems to be pretty similar to APAH at my school, I think i will take it! You are right about classes varying from school to school because at my school APUSH is extremely easy and its hard in other schools.
Did anyone think the ap test was hard?