I am currently going in to my sophomore year and I was wondering if anyone could give me any feedback on the courses that I am taking:
Ap world History
Ap physics
Ap environmental science
Ap Calculus ab
Ap Art History
German 3
English 2 gifted
I am determined to get all A’s in these classes and if I did so would it help me with getting in to an Ivy league college?
Yep. Although how much it actually helps when speaking about Ivies is debatable. Secondary course rigor is very important for higher tier colleges. Just make sure not to overwhelm yourself and take a serious blow to your average.
Your course rigor looks good, but that alone would not get you anywhere.
If anything, I’d worry about taking 5 APs without ever taking any APs before (I assume).
I’ve taken AP courses before and I have had only A’s in them
Your schedule looks very aggressive and looks pretty good. At the end of the day, ask yourself if you can really handle 5 APs at once and maintain good grades in them. AP Physics and AP art history I heard is very hard so you may want to reconsider some of the APs (not saying you can’t do it).
If you are sure you would not get anything lower than A-, it would be a perfect schedule for you. Otherwise, it is a very bad idea to be overwhelmed with rigor courses and suffer in GPA.
at my school the ap courses are weighted at 5.0, so even if i do poorly and get a b, it would still be considered a 4.0
That’s more APs than what I’ve taken so far, and I’m a junior and consider myself to have a rigorous schedule.
So yeah, I say it looks great if you’re confident that you can handle it.
@kevingrnsee same here. But in my opinion, if you’re not careful, it is very easy to get a B in an AP class. I mean one is spending at least 1-2 hours in each AP class. My friends taking art history and she spends at least 2 hours studying and can manage to get low A’s on tests. I mean, it really depends on the teacher so I can’t say anything either.
^ Not if the college is looking at uw GPA and/or recalculating GPA themselves, which the most competitive usually do.
@navaltradition I mean some teachers make the class extremely easy so all the students get A’s but other teachers make the class difficult so it’s hard to maintain a very high grade. I know one of my friends has a AP Biology teacher that literally has middle school biology questions on the test. Meanwhile, I’m getting 80 question tests that are college based and have to finish in 45 minutes…
For colleges, probably not. As all HS’s weight differently, colleges will often look at just the UW GPA, or apply their own scale.
Your schedule is great and if you can receive A’s in those courses, bravo. However, you’ll have to round yourself out in other ways to be a strong applicant.
Note that this schedule would require you to get nothing more than one occasional B since colleges look at unweighted grades/GPAs (ie., for them a B = 3, not 4). This would be very difficult to accomplish with 5 Aps but if you feel you can, go ahead; before you finalize that schedule, tough, talk with your GC to see how easy it is to “drop down” one level. In addition, most top colleges want to see 4-8 APs over the course of HS, including some in the five core subjects (English, Math, Foreign Language, Science, Social Science).
Admission to colleges (universities and LACs)in the TOP 50, even more so for the top 25, is about way more than courses and grades; those are just the first level. ECs, recommendations, and essays are going to be crucial.