<p>Do you guys think that this general statement is correct?:</p>
<p>If you have major Ivy league ambitions, you should make it a goal to complete
some (several?) AP-level courses by your sophomore or junior year, even if your school considers APs to be a senior-level option.</p>
<p>I just realized recently that, statistically, most of the kids I consider near-matches for the Ivies completed at least some AP-level coursework by the end of their sophomore or junior year. What's more, it seems to me that the most foolproof prep for an SAT II exam is really a strong AP-level class in the subject. I am now wondering whether I should tell parents or students that, generally speaking, students who want to be in a position to consider HYP should try to be on track for APs as sophomores and juniors.</p>
<p>I think it's a very good idea, but it depends on the school. If your school offers like 10+ AP's then its a good idea to take at least one sophomore year. the most common are world/euro histories, which pretty much exists as subjects in all high schools.</p>
<p>It's not so much the AP designation as the general idea of challenging yourself intellectually within your local context. Some students who have "only" one or two AP courses as a senior, or even none, are still plainly high-achieving, intellectually ambitious students.</p>
<p>As a rule of thumb at my competitive private school the best kids take 1 AP in Sophomore year either European History which is ridiculously hard to get into or they take AP Computer Science A, another option that they give to really talented rising freshman is to take AP Bio if they've maintained an A+ in Honors Bio. However they prevent kids from taking more than 1 in sophomore year.</p>
<p>Junior Year: 2 Usually Taken --> AP US, AP Lang. (of language of choice) and then they let you sit AP English Lang & Lit exams if you've had an A all year in English. But honestly the best students take 3-4 AP Classes (4 only if there taking one easy AP like Stats) Im taking AP Physics C, AP Calc BC + AP US.</p>
<p>Senior Year: 3-4</p>
<p>And we send an large number of kids to ivies each year despite being a small school</p>
<p>It completely depends on the school. At my high school, there were absolutely no AP courses that freshmen or sophomores were allowed to take, and only two that juniors could take, Stat and US History. That doesn't stop the students from being extremely successful in admissions- five students got into Harvard my year, for a total of 15 students going to HYPSM.</p>
<p>In fact, my school is in the process of dropping APs completely (each year, they remove another few departments).</p>
<p>Many prep school students, who are matricualting at HYP, have not taken any AP in hardcore science or math. These kids have four to five geneartion of leagicies. They have very good atheletic abilities. They could have take in-depth course beyound APs in Languages and social sciences. So APs is not at all necessary to get into HYP.</p>
<p>My public school sends a couple to Harvard every year. APs
are only offered to juniors(4) and seniors (+7). Most harvard
matricualnts from my school have 6-8 APs by the end of their
senior year.</p>
<p>It is a very good idea for a student to take as many APs as he or she can handle. However, don't take too many APs to the point where it becomes detrimental to one's GPA.</p>
<p>i think it really depends on your school. like some people that have posted ahead of me, i wasn't allowed to take any AP's as a freshmen or sophomore (AP Euro and Stat are strictly senior classes). 3 are available junior year (English, Foreign Language, and USH) and a ton senior year. they won't let you take more than 6 though. i've only known one kid that had 10 AP's when he graduated and he was a freak of nature.</p>
<p>You need to take a courseload that is in line with the top students at your school. If no one at your school is allowed to take APs as a freshman you won't be penalized. If there's something you feel prepared to take and can bully your school into letting you take go for it! My son took AP Comp Sci as a freshman because it was the right level course for him. He took AP Bio as a sophomore because he'd already done Bio, Physics and Chem at a high school level. He took a few more as a junior and a few more as a senior. Our school now offers select sophomore AP Physics B (which doesn't give you college credits at a lot of colleges,) and/or AP World History.</p>
<p>A prep school that doesn't offer APs because they have courses they consider superior, and a track record with the admissions officers, is not at all comparable to your average public high school where taking at least some APs if they are offered is pretty much a requirement to admission.</p>
<p>My (.... normal public) school sends on average 40-45 students to top schools and this is how the APs go:
freshman year: 1 AP offered
sohomore year: 2 APs offered
junior year: 4 APs offered
senior year: 12 APs offered (not that many people actually take all 12, of course... they usually take anywhere from 7-9)</p>
<p>Hi, explode, when you write about seniors taking 7-9 AP courses, are you referring to taking seven to nine full-year AP courses just in senior year, or are some of those one-semester courses?</p>
<p>They usually take 7-8 full year, and two of them will be semester courses. Then many of them are encouraged to self study one or two, but only a few actually go on with it.
.... my school gets mostly 4s and 5s, though by senior year a lot of them just give up on some and get 2s and 3s.</p>