<p>What does the average AP student take in your high school? What are the course offerings like? Any sacrifices that AP kids have to make to fit their schedule? </p>
<p><em>Bonus</em> How many periods are in your day? Block schedule? Lunch?</p>
<p>If your school doesn't offer APs, do honors or equivalent.</p>
<p>In my school all AP sciences are double periods so you lose an elective. Because of this, most AP kids end up without electives as they’ll take an AP science with either Physics or Organic Chem as an “elective”. The first AP is offered sophomore year and then they’re slowly added after that. I remember two years ago the (almost) valedictorian dropped lunch so she could add in another AP, but ended up losing the 1 spot because she got a C (which is amazing at our school, AP Physics is hardcore, no one gets a B) on her AP Physics final while number 2 (1) got a C+</p>
<p>The typical AP “path” at my school is:
Sophomore Year: AP US History
Junior Year: AP Gov & Politics, AP Chemistry, AP Calc AB or BC (although some are in Pre-Calc), and AP Art History
Senior Year: AP Literature, AP Biology, AP Stats, AP Physics (you have to take physics junior year), and AP Calc AB or BC if they didn’t take it Junior year</p>
<p>We go off a 12 period schedule, everyone has 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 11th, and 12th period. Each period in total is 45minutes, with half-bells in the double (i.e 4/5) periods. You can have lunch 4, 6, 8, or 10 and depending on your lunch that’s the way your schedule is; for example I have 6th lunch so my schedule goes:
1, 2, 3, 4/5, 6, 7/8, 9/10, 11, 12</p>
<p>Sophomore Year: AP US History
Junior Year: AP Lang, AP Euro or AP World, potentially AP Env Sci or some other joke AP
Senior Year: AP Lit, AP World, AP Bio or AP Chem, AP Calc AB</p>
<p>That’s the “normal” courseload for the “smart” people at my school. As a Junior in AP Physics B, Human Geo, Lang, World, and Comp Sci A, in addition to a Digital Electronics Engineering course generally agreed to be harder than or on par with AP, I’ve been told I have an insane schedule. At 5 APs, I’ve tied the highest-achieving Seniors. In my school of 1300, there are about 4 people with 5.</p>
<p>none until junior year…</p>
<p>Junior: Calc AB, Lang, APUSH, Bio (some take physics as it is a pre-req for AP Phys)
Senior: Calc BC, lit, euro, Phys (for those who took physics junior year), stat (most take it senior year), spanish/french, and econ when it’s offered</p>
<p>Our school doesn’t offer many AP classes, and even the brightest students don’t take more than 4 or 5 at a time because they are very challenging.</p>
<p>@xbabby: do you get to choose which lunch period you get, or is it forced upon you?</p>
<p>Since our school is so small, we only have three AP classes. It would be nice to have more, but we don’t have enough teachers to be able to offer that many extra classes. AP Bio is generally taken junior year at our school, while AP Lit and AP Calc AB can be taken senior year. AP Calc BC was recently introduced into our school. To get into AP Calc BC, you need to take precalc your sophmore year, Honors Intro to Calc and AP Calc AB your junior year, and then AP Calc BC. At first the only person who was taking this track was this legitimate genius who rightfully deserved to get ahead of the rest of our class. However, now the track for that class is being offered to sophomores that are not any better than the people in our current AB class. They are seriously only in there because they are the teacher’s favorites. Makes me mad.</p>
<p>We also have a block schedule. 4 80 min classes a semester, totaling 8 classes a year. Fifth period is activity period, which is 45 min long. You take two activities a semester, totaling 4 activity periods a year. Lunch is 30 minutes and is in between 3rd and 4th periods (everyone eats lunch at the same time). </p>
<p>Oh and honors classes-wise, we have Honors Into to Calc, Honors American Lit., Honors World Lit., and College-Level A&P. That’s it. We really should have Honors Algebra 2 because it is significantly harder than its counterpart. The other teacher barely teaches the kids andything outside of Algebra 1. Which they already had freshman year.</p>
<p>What does the average AP student take in your high school? What are the course offerings like? Any sacrifices that AP kids have to make to fit their schedule?</p>
<p>An average AP student will take AP Euro, APUSH, AP English Lang and Lit, and AP Calculus. So… that makes 5. We pretty much have every single AP class offered except the really easy/hard ones. We don’t have Physics C, Latin, Japanese, Chinese, French (it is offered, but it always gets canceled since no one takes it), Psychology, or Human Geo. Sacrifices? From what I’ve seen on CC, my school likes giving lots of homework for AP students. LOTS.</p>
<p><em>Bonus</em> How many periods are in your day? Block schedule? Lunch?</p>
<p>We get seven periods plus lunch. AP students don’t have to sacrifice additional periods for an AP class.</p>
<p>On average, Juniors and Seniors at my school will take all 4 core subjects at the AP level except for math or science, which is usually just Physics 1, but there are plenty of students who are at the mathematical maturity to take their first physics as Physics B AP, or are just ahead on their sciences. Unless you graduate under the minimum plan here in Texas, you have no excuse to not take an AP science your senior year. Also, depending on whether you have monolingual or bilingual abilities, you can take AP Spanish. Since its a south texas here, that’s also normal. I swear, there’s only one or two classes per AP subject that are not AP, and even those are CP or Pre-AP. Nothing below CP whatsoever. Plenty of students also take Calculus their senior year.</p>
<p>So it’s normally,
Junior:
AP Lang/Comp
AP USH
AP Spanish
Maybe AP Physics</p>
<p>Senior:
AP Lit/Comp
AP Gov’t and AP Macroeco
AP Spanish Lit
AP Calculus AB, maybe BC
Any AP science [Biology, Physics, Chemistry, or ES]
AP Psychology</p>
<p>And for the insatiable bastards like me, we also have AP Statistics, AP Physics C, Dual Enrollment Organic Chemistry, and Independent Study in Mathematics.</p>
<p>6 Periods and the average AP Student takes only 5 AP classes in their high school career: APUSH, WHAP, AP English&Lit, AP Government, AP English Language</p>
<p>AP Classes:
AP U.S. Government
AP U.S. History
AP World History
AP English Lit & Comp
AP English Language & Literature
AP Calculus AB/BC
AP Statistics
AP Biology
AP Chemistry
AP Physics B
AP French
AP Spanish
AP Mandarin
AP Studio Art </p>
<p>That comes to a total of 15 classes. Not bad for a non ranked school.</p>
<p>Normally:
Sophomore: AP Euro
Junior: AP US and either AP Physics, AP Chem, AP Bio, or a combination of those three
Senior: AP Gov, AP Microecon (rare choice- only 10 taking this year), AP Lit, AP Calc AB or AP Stats (rarely both, but sometimes), AP French or Spanish (rarely taken at all), AP Chem Bio or Physics</p>
<p>They’re considering adding in AP Lang instead of 11 Honors for Junior year, since it’d be practically the same class. </p>
<p>AP Sciences have an every other day lab, and AP Microecon and AP gov meet every other day for a full year. </p>
<p>9 Periods a day, no block schedule. You don’t get to pick your lunch, but seniors have some flexibility (if they are on good terms with their counselor) in making their schedule ex: I made it so I have classes 3-7 with no lunch, so I go into school two periods late and leave two periods early</p>
<p>Everyone at my school is required to take the underclassman core during frosh/soph years. This consists of English, Math, History, Language, and Science. Substitute any of the five core areas with a respective AP and you’re good to go. There are ^No pre-req’s for APs at my school, so even a freshman can (potentially) take 5 APs, in addition to our communications cluster (public speaking, debate, philosophy, or writing seminar - choose one each year.)</p>
<p>We have a “shopping period” when students can shop for classes and drop out with no effect on their transcripts, so generally, many students (especially ambitious freshmen) end up realizing that they cannot feasibly handle all 5 APs.</p>
<p>Thus, we take a minimum of six classes (math, eng, sci, history, language, communication cluster).</p>
<p>There is an optional period choice for those who want to stack on additional APs (this is where fillers like psych and human geo come into play). It is possible for a junior to have exhausted the AP curriculum (e.g. Took AP Lit and AP Comp frosh and soph years), for which case there are IB classes also available…</p>
<p>No breaks except for lunch.</p>
<p>In short, everything is messed up…and there are people if every grade in each of my classes!</p>
<p>So, at my school there are seven periods and lunch is based on the location of our fifth period classes. Our school has Early Dismissal/Late Arrival for seniors for up to two periods. But this is how AP works there:</p>
<p>Social Studies:
<p>English:
<p>Sciences:
<p>Mathematics:
<p>Foreign Languages:
<p>The Arts:
<p>As for sacrifices, in order to be in more than two AP classes at my school you have to be willing to do 7+ hours of homework. Some people have to quit choirs, bands, and other courses because they can’t fit their schedules with classes that are only offered once or twice a day like AP French, AP Music Theory, AP Physics C or AP Chinese.</p>
<p>My school is small (my graduating class size is 182 students!). Therefore, we only manage to have six APs which become available to take beginning your junior year. </p>
<p>AP Bio (Jr/Sen)
AP Chem (Jr/Sen)
AP English Lit/Comp (Sen)
AP Calc AB (Sen)
AP Euro (Sen)
APUSH (Jr)</p>
<p>Of course, I was not one to be bound to such constrains. Lol. I had to fight the school board to get into AP Bio as a sophomore, unheard of in my district (Got a 5, btw. Awww, yeah!) At the time I was taking chemistry as well, so I was spending four periods a day in the science wing. My schedule has been completely screwed up since. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to dual enroll in a college to take some higher-level biology classes as anticipated… I took chem last year and am taking the other four this year as a senior. My APUSH class is actually online, although we do offer it at my school–only offered because it couldn’t fit into my schedule. Usually, a student would have no problem with scheduling all of these classes, although I think that only one other girl will have completed all six at graduation. The usual max is around five, either chem or bio and Euro or APUSH. On average, I’d say an AP student takes about three, and the most common are Lit (basically a blow-off class…LOVE IT), Calc, and Chem.</p>