<p>By senior year, I would complete 2 AP courses and 2 college courses at my school: World History and Calc. If I want to get into a competitive school, should I self-study APs? What's the point if I'm not actually taking the "challenging course" but a test? Or should I do something else?</p>
<p>The benefit of self-studying would be that you learned something without the benefits the classroom has to offer. Don't bother self-studying if you are only doing it for that reason. Self-study it because you are interested in this stuff.</p>
<p>Sometimes it does look good to colleges if you have a lot of AP's, but the main purpose of AP's is to get you credit or placement once you're admitted to college. You can self-study if you're really interested in the subject, but otherwise you might want to concentrate on something else, like extracurriculars or something.</p>