I wanted advice for junior year, with the courses I should take. Ultimately, I wanna become a doctor, and My brother told me I should take AP Psychology because it would help with college/mcats. So, I was wondering should I take Spanish 4 (colleges like this) or AP psychology?
Depends on where you want to go to college. If you want to go to a state college, don’t take Spanish 4. If you plan on attending an Ivy League, they want you to take Spanish 4, but you don’t have to. Also, for most schools, AP Psych is offered senior year, so if this is the case for your school, hold off on AP Psych for senior year.
What’s your proposed schedule right now?
What’s your GPA and SAT scores?
What colleges are you aiming for?
For junior year I want my schedule to be the following: AP Lang, AP Stats, AP Bio, AP chem, Pre-Calc Honors, US History, (either Spanish 4 or AP Psych). Accounting only for 9th grade my gpa is a 4 (unweighted) and as a sophomore I’m taking AP Physics 1, AP world history, algebra 2, English etc. Ideally I would like to aim for an Ivy League. Haven’t taken SAT yet
You sound exactly like one of my college friends LOL. He’s currently a biomedical sciences major and he plans to go to an ivy league medical school (he’s got a near 4.0 GPA). For you, you don’t have to aim for an Ivy League, but since you’re aiming for medical school, I’ll tell you to do Spanish 4 and hold off on AP Psych.
I’d wait until you get your SAT scores back so that you can make a better decision on where to apply to for colleges. Remember, you’ve got a lot of time right now so things will definitely change.
Hope this helps and best of luck!
Because you plan on going to an Ivy League school, I strongly recommend taking Spanish 4. Take AP Psych your senior year.
Please actually list full schedule for this year (“etc” tells us nothing.)
The fact you have a 4.0 is good.
AP Lang, AP Stats, AP Bio, AP chem, Pre-Calc Honors, US History, (either Spanish 4 or AP Psych)
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Keep: AP Lang, Precalc Honors, Spanish4, US History
Drop AP Stats (if you wish, take AP Psych instead): you don’t need to double up and if you want an easy math class to prepare for college stats, take it senior year along with calculus.
AP Bio and AP Chem are two of the most time-intensive AP’s (due to labs, in particular). Therefore, you should only take one. Take one this year, the other senior year.
You could try and take APUSH but it requires a lot of reading so if it’s not your forte, stay with US History (Honors if possible).
Your last class can be an elective of your choice, perhaps art or even AP CS Principles or something that interests you;
Sorry, this year I’m taking AP World History, AP Physics 1, Chemistry, Algebra 2, Spanish 3, comparative religions (elective), English 10. @MYOS1634 I’m my school APUSH is considered one of the most time intensive APs because it requires around 90 minutes of outlining daily, so based on that would both AP Bio and AP chem be better because I anticipate they would be similar in time and APUSH won’t necessarily help me too much (I don’t think). Also, my school is very competitive so more APs is better. What do you think ?
No, AP Chem and AP bio both have labs AND a lot of daily homework, which, together, would be far more than 90mn a day.
However 90mn of outlining is a reason why APs get a bad name - you’d be better served taking us history at a cc for a semester… and, since you took comparative religions this year, take intro to philosophy second semester.
No, more APs isn’t better.
Colleges see through that -after a total of 6-8 the law of diminishing returns applies.
(Exception, if you live in Plano or similar, and want to attend UT. So, pretty specific situation).
Stwnford famously said " it’s not a game of who has the most APs, wins".
Meaningful ECs will be more important than one more AP class.
Higher level of foreign language in high school may allow you to complete a college foreign language graduation requirement in fewer courses.
Additionally, proficiency in a common language like Spanish may be helpful if you go into health care (as a physician or anyone else who interacts with patients).
In terms of the AP courses, biology, US history, and probably chemistry are “heavy” ones which attempt to cover a year’s worth of college level material (though some colleges do not consider them rigorous or advanced enough to allow exemption from their own introductory level courses). This means that you should expect them to have double the workload of “light” AP courses like statistics or psychology, or regular high school courses (unless the teachers in the latter courses like to pile on useless busywork).
So if you take all of AP biology, US history, and chemistry within your 7 courses next year, expect it to be about 10 courses worth of work (in contrast, none of your current courses is a “heavy” AP course).
What is “outlining” for AP US history?