Throughout my high school career, I’ve taken the most rigorous classes at my school. Therefore, I had been planning to take AP Lit my senior year. However, as class selection nears, AP Literature students have been coming to my classes and telling us to take AP Lit next year. Throughout their discussions, I’ve kind of developed a feeling that AP Lit is not the class for me. There is a lot of work, class discussion and analyzing literature. I’m might be able to muster through the class with an A, but I am not sure if I would be enjoying it. Another choice is College English, which is comprised of bi-weekly essays. It is a totally self-run class, which I have always excelled at. But it provides much less intellectual stimulation than AP Lit. AP Lit, however, is a lot more work and I was planning to do lots of things my senior year, such as running for a state-wide position and working to improve my community. I have also heard that College English doesn’t look as good as AP Lit for colleges (even though I am not planning to major in English). Also, the colleges I am applying to (4 Ivies) do not accept the College course, but it will allow me the credits to graduate. What should I do?
Here is a short list of pros and cons:
-AP Lit could be intellectually stimulating, but it comes with 3x the work which I could rather allocate to other great things.
-I would likely get a B in AP Lit, hurting my 4.0 (I don’t really care for college, I just really, really want to do my salutatorian speech)
-AP Lit has a lot of analytical class discussion, which I do not like.
-College English is a mostly independent course, which I like.
-Most of my friends are taking College English.
-Applying to Harvard, Yale, and MIT, I might not look as good to colleges because I took the “easy way out” (unsure if colleges would think this, but the teachers in my school think this)
-Would not get college credit for College English
Thank you!