Next year (sophomore year) I will be taking the following classes:
Honors English
Honors Concert Band
Honors Chemistry
Honors Spanish III
AP Calculus AB
AP Physics 1
APUSH/Honors US History
Would the time commitment be too large to include the vast amounts of homework in APUSH? I also participate in chess, scrabble, basketball, and baseball, along with marching band in the fall. I’m thinking that I will need to hold back from APUSH, but I wanted some advice first before scheduling it.
You should consider if you want to focus on STEM or on humanities or both. What are your aspirations? What type of job might you want in the future? If you are sure you want to go into STEM, then you may want to put more focus on STEM and take more of the highest level classes in that area. Then take challenging courses but not those that will command too much time, in humanities. So whether I’d advise a student to take APUSH depends on how meaningful that class would be to that student given the student’s long term goals. Naturally all students should be well educated about United States history but whether to take a course that demands as much reading as APUSH should be guided by the student’s interest in the topic and how meaningful each course will be for that student.
agreed^ if humanities aren’t your thing, don’t bother with APUSH
it is an awesome course though! (maybe thats just bc the teacher at my school is pretty good)
It really depends on how the teacher teaches it, there are some AP Teachers that assign work loads upon work loads, and there are teachers that assign barely anything.
I don’t know how it is at your school, however at mine APUSH was fairly easy for those who recieved the teacher that taught it last semester. However, the teacher teaching it this semester gives out more work than we had the entire last semester for the class.
My point is it really depends upon the way the APUSH teacher decides to teach it, you should also take into consideration with whether you will be able to balance it with AP Calculus and AP Physics, from my knowledge those classes have lots of work.
If your APUSH class gives tons of work, then you should be prepared to study a ton and get less amount of sleep, then again you could drop the class.
If your APUSH Class has a mediocre amount of work to none I believe that it is manageable if you are an organized person and can stay on top of things.
I took APUSH last year as a sophomore but I didn’t take 2 other APS like you did. And already I had a crazy workload. it’s one of the hardest classes in my school so workload might change depending on the school.
The class was originally a 2 year class in my school but they combined it that year so that might also be why.
I suggest taking the class if you’re really into history and humanities otherwise it won’t do you good to your grades and you won’t enjoy the class.
So you would recommend against it? Spanish should be easier this year than last, and I heard that calc ab isn’t very hard. I guess I can use that possible extra time (if physics doesn’t suck it away…I’m not sure what to expect really) toward my study of chess or to work out.
From my experience, it requires A LOT of reading. The tests in that class consisted of 2-4 chapters with about 20-40 pages in each chapter to read. To fully understand what you are reading, it’s best to read it twice though, which takes up a good 4 hours the night before a test.
If you’re not that big on history, then I wouldn’t take on the extra stress.
When I took it I regularly did 6-8 hours of homework each week for it (and more in March and April). Talk to the APUSH teacher and ask how much time an A student typically spends on homework. Then look at the time commitment for other classes and ECs and see if it all adds up so you can go to bed at a reasonable time. Besides the workload, APUSH isn’t super challenging. It’s very interesting.
At my school students take US History as juniors. As a student who is aiming for a STEM career, I did not take WHAP or APUSH as I did not feel the need to take an extra AP which I could delegate to a class I enjoy. I still took a challenging workload but took an extra math class and had more time to work on stuff out of school rather than reading the latest developments on who warned the revolutionaries that the British were coming and the intricacies of USH. I took regular USH which satisfied my need for a USH course and do not regret the decision I made.
To follow up on your question I say not. I think you are more STEM oriented. APUSH is a very intensive class and expect to spend hours each day doing homework/reviewing/studying. The whole class has around 46 chapters for the AP exam. The tests and quizzes will consist of 2-5 chapters of material (or more). Some teachers (like mine) like to review material so you would have to review all the previous chapters. It is extremely time consuming!
It depends in EVERY school. You need to ask students who have already taken it to know how much work it is. Also, talk to the teacher.
For example, all those comments above, I find it ridiculous you have to spend at least 6 hours each week, or 4 hours a night. But that’s because at my school, it hardly takes up an hour . . . A WEEK. In fact, I think I spent like 30 minutes a week. But, I am very good at history, and easy got an A last semester (and same thing for AP Euro. Got As AND a 5 on the exam).
So, depends on your school and you. Are you good at history? Does your school assign loads of work?
I’ve talked with a few of the top students taking the class and they all said that it’s a ton of homework. The teacher is the head baseball coach so I’ll talk to him about it.