I’m in junior year and the time has rolled around for choosing my courses next year.
I’m taking AP US History this year, and it’s been REALLY difficult but manageable so far. Now, next year I’m trying to choose between AP Gov and AP Euro, and I’m torn. On one hand, AP Gov seems really interesting, but I’ve heard it’s more discussion-based and I’m not sure if I like that. On the other hand, AP Euro is said to be a more traditional course but much more rigorous and difficult than AP Gov, and I’m not sure if I’ll enjoy learning about a bunch of British monarchs with Roman numerals. I’ve also heard that AP Gov is a more of a freebie course, which I don’t expect to apply to me since the teacher who teaches it is extremely strict. But then again, I’ve had that teacher last year and he is an amazing teacher and I was one of his favorite students.
For anyone who’s taken (or even taught) either AP Gov or AP Euro or both, what do you think? Which should I take my senior year?
AP Government has many more practical uses, and it is actually required to take a government course in my state during senior year. This is what I would recommend. Of course, the course’s difficulty fluctuates a lot from school-to-school, so ask some student in each of these classes what it is like.
Ap gov is a lot of fun to me since im into social science ( psychology, anthropology) but euro will be a lot easier than ap us since their is less topics to cover than apush at least that is what i heard.
I’ve taken both and in my experience gov is way more conceptual and Euro is more fact intensive. While both classes use a fair bit of both you’ll be drudging through facts and details in Euro much more than gov where it’s more about understanding the precedents and importance that build on each other in the US government. Either way both are interestint courses that will be good for you too take. Also more colleges will make use of that AP gov credit than Euro is that’s any sort of factor for you.
It makes more sense to me to take AP Gov your senior year, since you’re going to enter the “real world” and encounter many things you learn about in the course. Your pros and cons of both courses also seem to point more towards AP Gov (given that the content in AP Euro might not be very interesting and that the course is more difficult than AP Gov).
(However AP Euro isn’t about monarchs, more about people’s life, key events/turning points in modern Western history, and history of ideas that led to these turning points or resulted from these key events.)