Hi all,
I am a high school junior who is currently planning courses for my senior year. There is one slot left to fill on my course guide and I am unsure as to whether I should take AP Spanish or Honors Multi-variable Calculus. The other classes that I will be taking senior year are AP Statistics, AP Macroeconomics, AP Chemistry, and AP Literature along with Band. I am interested in majoring in business in college, and I may possibly try to also major in applied mathematics. My interest in pursuing higher levels of mathematics is why I find myself leaning towards Honors Multi-variable Calculus. However, I really want to avoid language courses in college, and taking AP Spanish would leave that route open to me. The Honors Multi-variable Calculus class will be taught at my high school, so there are not any issues relating to traveling to a local college to complete the course. Any thoughts on which class I should register for next year are well appreciated.
Unless the college you attend has some sort of credit by exam for multivariable calculus, you would likely have to retake it in college if needed for your major (if you major in applied math, operations research, industrial engineering, or mathematical economics or some such) since colleges ordinarily would not give subject credit for a high school multivariable calculus course.
Why not take multivariable calculus instead of AP stats (an easy AP which isn’t calculus based so you’d probably have to take anyway if you’re going the applied math route) and AP Spanish. If you’re concerned about rigor, this would be more rigorous than taking stats.
I agree with the above: drop stats and take both AP Spanish and MV calc
Not to be contrarian, but I’d go with keeping AP Stats, and going with AP Spanish. The logic is that the rest of the OP schedule looks heavy, with both AP Chem and AP Lit. Try to test-out of foreign language and take multivariable calculus in college.
If you are super duper smart, do what @havenoidea says.
If you are regular smart, do what @damon30 says.
@bopper Both @havenoidea and I liked your post 
I would drop Stats as it is one of the “easier” classes while the other ones are rigorous. With a math major, you’re gonna to have to take the classes in college again anyways so your primary focus should be to get a background of these classes while in HS.
Great answers. Macro is probably one semester? But in the other thread, have you shorted some of the courses a top college would like to see?
The answer depends on what tier of colleges you will apply to and their wants.
The colleges that I am interested in are Wisconsin (in-state), UChicago (legacy), UPenn (Wharton), and Northwestern (Close by).
@Maltamilkbone So what did you decide?
I ultimately decided to follow your advise @damon30 and I made the decision to take Honors multi-variable calculus along with AP Statistics. I realized that my schedule would likely be too difficult if I had AP Spanish and AP Statistics. Furthermore, at my high school very few students are able to score a four or a five on the AP Spanish exam, so it is likely that I would not have been able to pass out of the course in college.
OP, make sure that you understand the degree (B.S. vs B.A.) at Wisconsin. A B.S. degree has a 3 unit requirement for FL. A B.A. has a 4 unit requirement.
I gave you the “like” for saying you followed my advice, but actually I don’t think anyone said to double up on math and drop the FL. As @Eeyore123 said above, make sure you know the language requirements for admission. There was a very long recent thread on this topic. The consensus was to treat “recommended” as “required” for FLs, unless you were very confident about your application strength otherwise.
Does anyone know if taking a foreign language in middle school counts towards the number of total years that you have taken a foreign language. I took Spanish 1 in eight grade so by high school my first Spanish class was Spanish 2.
Most colleges will consider the highest level completed for foreign language, but you should check the specific colleges of interest to be sure.