AP classes/Junior year schedule

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

I got to Stuy HS.

How good of a Junior Year schedule is this for t20 universities?

AP Chem
AP Calc BC
AP CS
English
Precalc
Math Team
Spanish III
US History

2

I don’ understand why you have both precalc and AP calc BC?

The rest looks fine.

3

8 classes- that’s a lot, no? or that the standard at Stuy?

4

Because if you are a top math student and want to get ahead, you can take Precalc Honors and AP Calc BC at the same time.

Also, im taking Precalc Honors, not regular Precalc, if that makes a difference.

5

Also, will taking APUSH help me in college admissions? TBH I don’t want to take it at all, I am taking AP WH this year and I absolutely hate history…

6

This will be a GC question. It’s difficult for the average user to say what the GC will consider “most demanding” forStuy students, since to us outsiders, every student’s schedule looks demanding.

Since Stuy places a sliding cap of number of AP courses you can take based on your GPA, my guess is that if your GPA allows you to take 4 APs, then you should take 4 APs. But if you’re able to take 4 APs, I would also say you are better served taking AP Lang.

7

I can take 4 APs, however, does generally taking APs in subjects irrelevant to what you want to student help you at all?

8

For top colleges, they want to see rigor across all core subject areas, It does not mean that every subject needs to be AP. But few colleges get excited about the student who only takes APs in STEM. HS is not the time for specialization.

9

Any other opinions?

10

For a student at Stuy, my best advise would be to talk to the current graduating seniors in your EC’s (science bowl, quiz bowl, robotics, orchestra, chess, whatever…) who will be attending colleges you want to attend and ask what their Junior year schedule looked like. A few years ago, when my son graduated HCHS, about half the kids at the MIT NYC area admitted students get together were from Stuy, so there should be no shortage of seniors there who could give you some good Stuy specific advise on classes.

11

I guess, but I still want the advice of others. However, I will definitely take your advice!

12

I’ll also page @gibby , whose 2 kids went to Stuy.

13

https://stuy.enschool.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=127571&type=d&pREC_ID=253246 says that precalculus is allowed as a corequisite with AP calculus BC. However, this seems to be a race of dubious value, since no college requires math beyond single variable calculus in high school (which you can complete with precalculus as a junior and AP calculus BC as a senior), and high school course work beyond single variable calculus may be harder to get advanced placement for in college.

14

I’m taking BC as a junior because I like math, not for college.

15

Accel Pre-calc is a lot harder than any AP Calc course imo

16

My GC said that those 3 APs are enough, and that I shouldn’t push myself too much by adding APUSH, especially if I want to go into STEM.

17

If I do this for junior year, my schedule for senior year will be along the lines of:

Math Team
AP Physics C
Multivariable Calc (post AP class)
Complex Calc (post AP class)
English
Whatever Social Studies.
System Level programming (post AP class)

  • Some other classes