AP Stats or AP Bio?

Applying to College
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Probably a lot of “high end” private colleges limit the acceptance of credit units for AP and college courses from high school, so that students stay the whole four tuition-paying years. On the other hand, public colleges are often more generous with the credit units, since most students are subsidized in-state students whom they want to get graduated as quickly as possible to keep subsidy per student down and make space for the next group of students.

But subject credit and advanced placement is often quite different from credit units. A college may give no credit units, but allow subject credit and/or advanced placement for a specific AP score, or it may give credit units but no subject credit or advanced placement for a specific AP score.

Pre-med is another complication, in that many medical schools do not like seeing pre-med course requirements fulfilled with AP credit (though they also commonly see repeating AP credit as grade grubbing).

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The OP is aiming for business not pre-med.

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True, but my original point still stands. Whether AP Statistics or AP Bio, it will be a 5th AP course senior year. My first question was - will those schools accept them (I checked - they will, but pretty much need scores of 4 or 5). The second part of my question was to the OP - make sure he can handle two AP math classes at the same time. He could be capable of taking 3 AP math classes at the same time if he excels in math - don’t know enough about him. But, that is a lot on top of 3 other AP classes. On the other hand, some people are unable to take two math courses at the same time. He could also get the statistics background with a regular statistics course. It’s easy to say he won’t be taking AP science so his courseload will be manageable, but 5 AP courses are a lot for most people (whether or not there is an AP science course in the mix), and we don’t really know anything about the student in question. The OP has not given any indication of grades, scores, or ability. We seem to expect our children to be superhuman. When we were in high school, if your school offered more than AP Bio, AP Physics and AP Chem, you were in a super elite school district and even then, you maybe had 2-3 more AP classes to choose from. Now schools offer like 30 AP classes. Now we expect our children to take 5 AP classes every year.

Does he need another AP course? (this is not a rhetorical question) If he only has like 3 or 4 AP courses on his transcript so far, plus 4 more senior year, that would be 8. AP Stats would be 9. Will that break his application? If he has 13 AP courses already and AP stats would be 14, would that break his application? 9 AP courses might look low on a ND application - I dont know.

Are we forcing our children to work so hard to take as many AP courses as possible, when there may be little benefit to their acceptance (by this I mean taking 13 vs 12 AP classes for example) and even less after acceptance? Take a look at your son’s situation and see if it makes sense to take more AP courses or will regular Statistics be just fine, leaving 4 AP courses senior year. I never said do not do it, I just said think about it and look at his situation and how it fits in with the schools he wants to apply to and his major. How many AP courses has he taken so far? What is his GPA, class rank and test scores (not asking to know, just saying look it all over) - are they good enough to get into the schools he is looking at. Will another AP class really make a big difference? Or if he takes only 4 AP courses senior year, will he have a slightly easier, slightly happier senior year with no impact on his college prospects. Also, look at the overall picture and I’ll get to that.

So, while most are advocating to take one AP course or the other, I was offering a slightly different perspective that I wouldn’t have had when my daughter was a junior. I was saying to pause and take some time to think about whether he even needs another AP course at all. Without details, I have no idea - he might need it to bolster his application, but he might not. (Are AP Physics and AP English Lang his only AP courses to date for example?) If he needs more AP courses to bolster his application, then by all means take another AP course. If he absolutely wants to take an additional AP class and doesn’t think it will be an issue, then AP Statistics would be more pertinent to his planned major. One last note and something to consider, getting back to that overall picture - both ND and W&M prefer 4 units of science.

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  1. In my post I stated that the OP’s son should consult with his teachers and guidance counselor before creating his next year’s schedule and check the common data set for each college bring considered.

  2. IMO this student should develop a rigorous (given the schools he plans to apply to) yet manageable overall schedule. Taking every AP offered is absolutely not necessary and the OP’s S should also be careful to leave time to develop thoughtful applications.

  3. AP Stats is generally considered one of the less rigorous AP classes (likely not as difficult as AP Bio). I don’t think Stats will be the course that pushes a good math student over the edge – but again would 100% defer to teachers/counselors at the HS.

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AP calculus AB and AP statistics each cover what would be about a semester’s worth of material in college. I.e. they are slower paced than college. AP statistics also emulates a basic statistics course in college that is commonly taken by non-math-based majors to fulfill a math or quantitative reasoning general education requirement, and is also taken by high school students who want to opt out of the precalculus-calculus path, so its material is not generally considered highly difficult.

Among the other AP courses on the list, AP English literature is commonly used as honors 12th grade English, and AP Spanish is commonly what Spanish year 4 or 5 is (i.e. in the high school’s normal progression in Spanish).

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Thanks again all. He’s a good student, 4.0UW although currently has a B+ in APUSH. Has completed 2 APs HUGS and World History with a 5 and a 4. Currently taking APUSH, AP Physics 1 and AP Lang.

Would probably do better in Stats than Bio. But likes science, just a teacher issue really. If he should take it for more competitive schools than he will but would prefer Stats.

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