<p>All the very selective colleges evaluate you in context of what your school offers. Counselors are supposed to send the school’s profile with their recs; the school profile details the AP courses offered, the ranking deciles, average SAT scores of the seniors, background info of the high school, etc. If your school does not offer AP WH, you will not be penalized by not taking it. I didn’t take AP WH, and I got into many very selective schools.</p>
<p>In regards to your question about AP Envi Sci or Physics, I would recommend taking the class you are most interested in… that makes for a more enjoyable senior year, and colleges like seeing students following their passions. Although AP Environmental Science was by far my favorite class in high school (I’m thinking about pursuing environmental engineering/policy/law/consulting or medicine as a career), do not take it just for the AP label. </p>
<p>Just to give you a preview: in AP Envi Sci, you will be studying ecosystems, water pollution, air pollution, disposal of waste, alternative energy technologies, climate change, human population growth, etc. This is a non-biased, non-politicized course that details how much humans are destroying the environment, the possible future implications of this carelessness toward the environment, and what we can do to solve the crisis. In my opinion, every student in high school should take this course so they realize how much they are negatively impacting the environment by driving SUVS, drinking bottled water, etc. The environment is in a dire state, and until everyone is educated about the problems affecting the environment, it will only get worse and screw up the economy and our health even more.</p>
<p>Anyway, take whatever you are most interested in. My biased self recommends that you take AP Envi Sci. If you have any questions about AP Envi Sci, feel free to PM me.</p>
<p>I go to a very competitive High school that is nationally recognized and I took AP Environment last year. The actual course is a complete joke and was easy to get an A but the AP exam is fairly difficult.</p>
<p>Or…take a class that period AND self-study a different AP on your own time. I would recommend comparative government if you are aiming to be a political science major.</p>
<p>AP Physics is probably harder but if you already have a rigorous courseload, it’s not going to hurt you to take Environmental instead. AP Physics can be fun (well…on a relative scale) if you have a good teacher and like math. Just take whatever’s more interesting to you. Don’t worry so much about your anticipated major because that will probably change like 8 times when you’re in college.</p>
<p>Make no mistakes, Environmental Sciences in high school is about as hard a science class as a class like macroeconomics or comparative government and about as unbiased as a Michael Moore movie. At least at my school, its more like a social studies class. I think there is something to be said about taking a lab science (at my school physics is while E.S. isn’t) but then again, regular classes can be pretty pointless. How about you take physics, buy a princeton review physics b textbook and self study and take the AP anyway? Kind of a best of both worlds. That is, if you like math. If not take APES because for a social studies type student, its an easy A at most schools.</p>
<p>Make no mistake, this is horrible advice. “unbiased as a michael moore movie”, come on. There’s no reason to take an intro class in physics if you do not want to pursue the subject further. Learning a little bit about newton’s laws and about how to characterize the motion of objects with mathematics isn’t very useful by itself. I say this as an engineering student.</p>
<p>@connstudent: Maybe you had a biased teacher, but overall, I feel the class is unbiased… My teacher was never pushing any sort of treehugger or green agenda on us; we got a balanced perspective on environmental issues. Of course, this varies from school to school, but the best taught APES classes are unbiased. </p>
<p>@OP: This is a VERY GOOD class to complement AP Biology. Since Environmental Science deals a lot with biology, both classes reinforce each other. I used some envi sci knowledge on my AP Bio exam and used some AP Bio knowledge on my AP Envi sci exam, and this worked out quite nicely because I got 5s on both!</p>
<p>@wlpc1919: it is a shame that you only viewed AP Envi Sci as an easy A. Even though it was easier than AP Bio and AP Physics, I truly enjoyed it and felt that it was the most important class I took in high school besides calculus and English. With the green job sector expanding and with the effects of environmental damage starting to be felt, it is important that EVERY SINGLE American is educated on how we are harming the environment every day. This class was an eye-opener to me. I took it very seriously, and it was definitely one of the few classes that I looked forward to every single day. Then again, I also had an amazing, interesting, and cool teacher, so you would have viewed Envi Sci differently if you had him as a teacher.</p>
<p>Environmental science is bull at my school, that I am sure of, and not so much because of the teacher but rather because of the textbook. Maybe at other schools its okay, but at my school, its the class seniors take to get an easy A in an AP weighted class. Besides, it shouldn’t take a year of class to figure out whether or not mountains of waste and Hummers are good for the environment, so the idea that it is an enlightening class should be thrown out the window. At least in High school Physics, you can cover most of the material by yourself so you won’t be prone to a potentially bad teacher when you take your A.P. A lot of kids just aren’t prepared for the APES and they have nothing to do except get a 3 or a 4 because it is much harder to self study for.
I change my position, if at your school you hear that the Environmental Science teacher isn’t boring/close minded/a nut and actually teaches well, take the class because it definitely relates more to a PolySci major considering the environment is a big focus for politics today and that it is more of a discussion class. Besides, it is less of an introductory class and more of a class that you probably will take in college any way. Then again, maybe you want to take a cursory glance at physics to see if it strikes your fancy. You know more about your situation more than anyone on this site, and colleges probably won’t care all that much which class you take seeing as you already have taken all honors science classes.</p>