<p>Question: I am currently a sophomore and one of the top students at a strong high school. Strong in terms of admissions to prestigious universities. We are scheduling and I'm in a bit of a dilemma. Our school follows the Michigan Merit Curriculum, in which Freshman year a student would be required to take Biology Freshman year, then Earth-Science Sophomore year, then Chemistry or/and Physics Junior year, then senior year an AP in one of the previous.
I asked my science teacher if I could double up on Chem and AP Bio at the same time, since chem is a pre req for AP Bio, and he said yes, but this would not allow me to also take Physics, since I would have to drop another core class. My strength is in mathematics, and was intending to enroll in AP Physics B & C senior year. He also said AP Bio concurrently with Chem would be harder in difficulty, because the first unit of AP Bio is basically all Biochem. So what I wanted to know, would it hurt me when applying to a selective school to not have taken an AP Science before senior year, since they would have no knowledge of how I would preform in an Advance Placement Science. Right now I'm leaning towards the following schedule:</p>
<p>AP Calculus AB
AP Statistics
Chemistry
Physics
English III
Spanish III</p>
<p>AP Calculus BC
AP Physics
AP Bio, Chem, or U.S
AP Literature
Government & Economics
Spanish IV</p>
<p>Now, I attend to apply to some prestigious universities, such as Columbia, U of M - Ann Arbor, Stanford, etc. </p>
<p>If you miss one AP class, it will not be the end of the world. I know plenty of kids who got into prestigious universities while taking minimal AP classes.</p>
<p>Follow the classes you like. You don’t need to take everything.</p>
<p>My recommendation: Take APUSH junior year because of its insane difficulty, and put off AP Stats for your senior year, when you’ll slack (and be overloaded with college apps and extra AP’s). And also… senior year, take AP U.S. Gov (instead of the other gov course, unless it’s required).</p>
<p>Like chanfest22 said, you don’t need to take every science course under the sun. Personally, I did Bio Honors freshman year, Earth Science Honors and Chem H soph year, Physics Honors soph year (doubled on history instead), and just AP Physics next year.</p>
<p>For you… can you take Chem H over the summer?</p>
<p>To comment on what joshcasto said, yeah, I thought about taking Chem H over the summer at north western, the only problem is that I’ll be over seas for most of the summer, so I don’t think it would be feasible. Also, school doesn’t offer AP Gov, and normal gov is a req anyways. I’m actually digging the AP U.S. then AP Stats, mainly because a lot of prestigious universities are requiring two or more SAT II’s and that would help me take the one over U.S. So I would have the Math and U.S. SAT II down, maybe could do the physics.
Only question left, would</p>
<p>AP Calculus AB
AP U.S.
Chemistry
Physics
English III
Spanish III</p>
<p>be a schedule where I would feel like dying some nights, I don’t mind 3-5 hours of home work, but anything affecting my sleep would be annoying.</p>
<p>or, another, thought, (sigh), I could </p>
<p>AP Calculus AB
AP Statistics
Chemistry
Physics
English III
Spanish III </p>
<p>then </p>
<p>AP Calculus BC
AP Physics
AP Literature
Anthropology/Sociology, and Professional Web design
Government & Economics
Spanish IV</p>
<p>I’m in Ohio, so we have a lot of people who go to U of M, but tons of them don’t take AP sciences until Senior year. We have people at Columbia who do the same thing. My sister didn’t take an AP Science till Sr. year, and she had people from U of M’s science department calling her to recruit after she was accepted.</p>
<p>Besides that, I think it’s sort of silly to go through both Calc AB and Calc BC. Unless you really want to do that, you can just take BC in senior year and in junior year, instead of AB, you can take APUSH.</p>
<p>Also, AP English is really easy if you have even an ounce of skill at English in your body, so you should at least try AP Eng I think.</p>
<p>So:</p>
<p>APUSH
AP Statistics
Chemistry
Physics
English III
Spanish III</p>
<p>AP Calculus BC
AP Physics
AP Bio, Chem
AP Literature
Government & Economics
Spanish IV</p>
<p>I would go for Chem rather than Bio, but that’s just me. You might also want to consider AP Econ or AP US Gov or AP Comparative instead of Government and Econ.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input Milliancad. AB to BC is the route my school requires, so couldn’t really do that. Also school doesn’t offer a plethora of ap courses like AP Econ or AP US Gov or AP Comparative, just have the core ap science, math, history, english, art, and spanish. We just have gov and econ and that’s the state/school requirement senior year. I think I’ve narrowed it down, I just need to decide whether to take Stats or U.S. next year, I’m leaning towards stats atm just because some of my best friends also taking the class, but U.S. wouldn’t be bad either. In our school, Stats is like hour of homework each night and one to two big projects in the year, and from what the teacher told me U.S. is like an hour and fifteen minutes every night of studying/review and a paper/essay due every Friday, test every week and a half.
If I take stats next year, I could take an easy class senior year or chem,bio
If I take U.S. next year, I could take an easy senior class, or stats, bio, chem
Would either class look worse than the other, thinking stats would benefit me more for direction ( either engineering, medicine, or business), but U.S. may help me on the SAT Subject test. We also offer Euro, supposed to be easier, but U.S. would be more my thing.</p>