Next year, I will begin my high school curriculum. My school offers twenty-five Advanced Placement classes and twenty honors-level courses.
I am planning to take ten or more APs. Based on your experiences, which AP courses are the hardest and which are the easiest? Which look most impressive to colleges and which look minuscule?
First of all, not a single AP class looks minuscule or bad to college, so taking human geography or art will not dock your chances but in fact increase them. My advice is to take AP Classes you’re interested in and not the ones that everyone takes because they’re generally “harder” which is debatable. Besides that, the consensus is that while you’re taking the classes you enjoy it is smart to have an AP level course in either Physics/Biology/Chemistry. Which one is up to you. Also foreign language AP’s look very good because it shows proficiency in a language which is what colleges love to see. Going into 9th grade try not to overwork yourself by jumping into classes like AP Chem but do try to aim for a rigorous schedule. Good luck!
Ask older students at your school, because the difficulty of the test really depends on how well your teacher prepares you to take it.
AP Chem, Physics, and Bio as well as Calc AB/BC courses are notoriously difficult. APUSH and (depending on the teacher) English Lang/Lit are also very difficult. Econ is tough.
Psychology, Statistics, languages (if you are a heritage speaker), Computer Science, and APES are usually viewed as “AP Lite” and are not nearly as difficult as the first courses.
First, think of the usefulness of the AP classes. Then, consider other AP classes to increase the course rigor. Depending on your intending major and which schools you are going to apply, some AP classes are more useful. For instance, AP Calc BC and other sciences would be useful for both credits and advanced placement in STEM major. You are taking AP classes for higher course rigor and potential credits and advanced placements, not to please the admission officer. It would be a bad idea to take to most challenging AP class while it would get you nothing at the end.
Human geography is another one commonly seen as an “AP lite”.
Calculus can be “AP lite” if it is split into one year for AB and a second year for the remaining part of BC, rather than BC in one year after completing precalculus. The physics ones may be seen as “AP lite” if each part, which covers what is ordinarily covered in a semester in college, takes a whole year as a high school AP course.
However, the actual rigor of the high school courses (as opposed to the tests) can vary significantly. Some have posted experiences with what are normally “AP lite” courses being more rigorous due to the teacher increasing the rigor (e.g. an AP statistics teacher who went into more depth and used calculus because all of the student had calculus).