<p>I'm gonna be a junior in high school next year, and I'm planning to take:</p>
<p>AP US History
AP Environmental Science
AP Human Geography (or Chem I Honors...I haven't decided yet)
AP English Language and Composition
AP American Government (1/2 semester)
AP Macroeconomics (1/2 semester)</p>
<p>I'm also taking Pre-Calc Honors Special and I'm also in band (a lot of rehearsals). I can take Chem Hon at school next year or online over the summer. I haven't decided yet. </p>
<p>I go to a really competitive school and some students are taking like 8 AP's. I also want a better chance of getting accepted into good colleges.</p>
<p>Any advice? If you've taken any of these classes, what are your experiences with them? Will this be difficult?</p>
<p>If you think you can handle that course load and maintain your GPA then go ahead. But as you know AP classes are a huge time commitment and I know band can also take up a huge amount of time so take that into consideration. I took AP human freshman year and it a lot of close reading. I’m currently taking AP Lang and its not as much reading and work its just about working on your writing technique and critical reading stuff. I personally wouldn’t suggest taking all those APs because colleges look mostly at your junior year so you don’t want to mess up. It’s better to do better in a lower level class then do bad in an ap class in my opinion.</p>
<p>Junior year is extremely important, as colleges use it to determine your current strengths. I would suggest taking it only if you think you can get As. If you can that’s excellent, it would look amazing on your report card. But, if you get Bs (or lower), it may severely impact your future college choices. Only you can make this decision.</p>
<p>I’ve had a pretty similar course load this year (replace E. Science, Human Geo, and Gov with BC Calc, Psych, and Micro Econ) and definitely takes some time. You (should) know your limits based on how you’ve done with your previous course loads. Here are my experiences with each, which are pretty consistent with everyone else’s on here to my knowledge:
APUSH: Lots of reading, can be a pretty big time sink
APES: Not taken
AP Human Geo: Took it freshman year, so i don’t remember much, but I don’t think we did much and I still made a 5
AP English Lang: Not too hard, but my class has a fair amount of reading
AP Gov: Easy, read the study book and got a 5
AP Macro Econ: School does Micro and Macro weird, so I can’t speak for this one</p>