CB reports that 84 students in the entire country took more than 20 AP exams. 84 out of 3.7 million graduates.
You don’t seem to actually want the advice being given/answers to your question, from those have a lot of experience in these areas.
So please check back in 4 years and let us know how it went.
And 250 of those 84 students are CC members/posters. ?
Forget about your Freshman year curriculum, I’m interested in your 8th grade curriculum.
In 8th grade , you took:
High School Honors Pre-calc
High School Honors Algebra 2
High School Honors English
AP Psych
Got 100 on all of them, while engaging in a tier 1 activity, taekwondo (you use the present tense in “do taekwondo”), and clubs, despite being very weak and ill, and having surgeries.
Then there was your 6th and 7th grade curricula. I would like to know how, even though you were training every day, participating in national and international level competitions, you still managed to finish your entire middle school curriculum by the end of 7th grade.
You claim to go to a special school with one-on-one tutoring, etc. I am pretty sure that a school like that has amazing GCs who would be working with you on a 4-year plan. You claim to be getting information on AP exams from Ivy league adcoms. You claim to be hobnobbing with the Great and the Mighty. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, you are looking for advice on a pseudonymous online forum, full of strangers.
Despite all the connections you claim, despite supposedly being in a school chock-full of geniuses who also take up to 28 APs, despite having personalized education, you are here, asking a bunch of people about who you know nothing, whether you are taking the right number of APs.
PS. Exactly how you “start” engaging in a Tier 1 activity is puzzling, since, as far as I understand, it isn’t Tier 1 until your have achieved national level accomplishment.
There are currently 38 AP exams offered, but it is very unlikely any student could take all 38. Seven are for foreign languages (Chinese, French, German, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Japanese), and there are 2 Spanish exams so if you don’t take the first (Lang and Culture), it is unlikely you can take the second (Lit and Culture). OP is eliminating Calc A/B and just taking B/C. There are 3 different AP Art tests offered, but do people take all 3? Physics has 4 different exams… and on and on.
So ‘lots’ of people taking 20 or 28? I don’t think so. But the OP asked if she is taking ‘enough’. Well, if the goal is 25, then that’s 6 or 7 per year. Yes, 6 is enough.
OP didn’t list any art or foreign languages as a freshman, and it is going to be really hard to pick up 7 languages and produce 3 art portfolios in the last 3 years of high school.
And what ARE ‘tier 1’ activities? Are they tier 1 at all schools or only at some? Are they only sports or are they Nobel prizes and Congressional medals of Honor? I didn’t realize high school activities were ranked, and that starring in the high school play may not be a ‘good enough’ to be considered Tier 1.
Regardless of whether the story OP is telling is real or factitious, the sheer number of AP courses/exams doesn’t impress the people OP needs to impress for college admission. Other than in a few core subjects, APs are really a bunch of fluff, designed to line the pockets of the College Board. If OP really has the time, energy and intellectual curiosity, she is well advised to pursue some other more meaningful activities, including more in-depth focused study in an area of OP’s interest.
@1NJParent Gosh, I don’t think my son would agree that his AP Chem class last year was at all fluffy. He would agree on AP Micro & Macro though.
OP, you are missing the point all together here. Your question, ‘is this enough AP’s?’ Is wrong-headed to start. Enough for …what? To satisfy your need to study 100% of the time? Well, how could we know that? To be able to graduate early? Finish college in two years? Get admitted to Harvard? You see, all of those questions signal that you are missing both what HS and college supposed to be about.
A strong HS student takes full advantage of ALL of the opportunities around her and is learning to be a good friend, neighbor, citizen and worker. She sees what is right in front of her and tries to make it better. She is discovering where her talents are most effective…and studying for an AP test is not a very useful talent. Being able to be a member of a team and make others around you the best they can be is a useful talent. Observing the pattern of how things tend to work and finding a way to make things always work optimally is a useful talent. Being able to practice something 10,000 times to perfection, even if boring and tedious, is a useful talent. Seeking AP scholar status, just for the title itself, is not a useful talent. It helps no one.
College is not a destination. It is a pass through towards something better. No college is impressed by the actual goal being to go to their college. They are impressed by those who have learned enough about themselves, and the world, to know what they want to do while in college to reach their goals AFTER college. They want outward looking people, As they are the ones who do change the world.
You have demonstrated the exact wrong kind of thinking here. Sure, selective colleges want to see rigorous courses so that they can be sure candidates can succeed in college classes. But success in any career, and life, is not at all about the ability to study for some test. It is about open-mindedness, and dogged determination to achieve the little things and the big things. It is about the ability to empathize with others and see their point of view. To pick your battles well, and not sweat the small stuff. To suffer defeats and get right back up again. These are not things learned via AP classes or tests. They are learned through earnest involvement with your peers and community members and activities which focus on the greater good. This is what a mature high schooler has figured out. Your responses signal that you haven’t, yet. But you are very young and have a ways to go.
Stop imaging some competitive race for the number of APs gold cup. Start looking around you and seeing where else your time can be spent well. You seem to like the idea of competition. Then channel that into a competition for something that matters. Go ask the local librarians how you can help ensure that every three year old is read to five times a week. Go the your local senior center and ask how you can help make sure every senior shut-in has a healthy meal every day. Break records like that. No one cares if you’ve taken enough APs.
@cypresspat My post (#44) specifically excluded the few core subjects, of which AP Chem is one.
I’m curious about your math plans. I know many very advanced math students, and finding the appropriate sequence of classes in high school for 3 or 4 years post-Calc BC can be challenging. One problem is that kids who get to AP Calculus in grades 7-9 often find nothing of appropriate rigor at local colleges (unless they happen to live close to a university).
As you are taking Calculus BC as a freshman now, please be sure you have spoken with a knowledgeable adviser about your plans. A rigorous math progression that gets you at least to the mid-undergraduate level by HS graduation will be more impressive to admissions officers than 6-8 additional fluff APs. And don’t bother with AP Stats.
@1NJParent You are right. My apologies. I think I was too triggered by the word ‘fluff’ to properly absorb your statement. Maybe because it was coincident with my tripping over my son’s book bag filled with 2 AP physics, AP calc, CS, and AP Lit. books. ? Come to think of it, of the pittance 10 APs he will graduate with, I think he would only put Micro/Macro in the fluff category. Jury is still out on the AP CS class. That could be fluffy. But I guess he must have been advised well by his GC.
What exactly is Human Geography, by the way?
These posters “get it.” The wealth of understanding shared is priceless. Let’s hope OP can absorb, for her own good. Her choice, whether to listen or not.
@cypresspat A joke.
And another 250 are on the A2C subreddit. But perhaps Trevor Packer’s assistant will dispute those numbers as being wrong, too. 
There have been some great shares on this post. If it falls on deaf ears for OP, hopefully others will read this thread and gain some valuable insight.
Just an opinion but I would be interested in OP’s view of all this next year at this time. Guessing it might be different?
To answer the OP’s original question: since most high high school only offer six periods, or course it’s enough, you really can’t take anymore. The question everyone seems to want to answer is whether it’s too many. The answer to that question is, “Whatever floats your boat.” 25 v. 18 v. 12 really isn’t going to make a difference even to top-20 schools (they could fill their classrooms with kids with perfect SAT scores, 4.0 and bunches of AP classes). It’s the other stuff that will make a student standout. So if you’d rather spend time studying for an AP class than doing other things, have at it.
While I agree with the general sentiment that stats are only a part of a holistic evaluation, and accept that there are many high stats applicants, let’s not get carried away. There are approximately 500 perfect SAT scorers in a typical year, while there are approximately 40,000 entering freshmen at USNWR top 20 schools.
My statement was mean to be figurative, not literal, but in the case of some top 20 schools (Pomona, Catltech, etc,), I would be accurate, and that’s not accounting for the kids who got 36 on their ACTs. I’m guessing your kid got a 1600?
Listen to and respect those who know more than you do (especially when you asked for advice). And there are a lot of people who know more than you do. AP courses/exams do not offer you wisdom; that is achieved by time on the planet learning life’s lessons from experience and from others.
@twoinanddone “Tier 1 activities” are extracurricular activities that have achieved national-level or international level recognition. So the “tier” describes the end result, not the intention or the training. Participating in an activity which MAY result in national recognition is not considered being involved in a Tier 1 activity. So winning 1st place in the USA Math Olympiad is a Tier 1 activity, but it only becomes a Tier 1 activity AFTER you have won the award, not when you join the Olympiad team, or even advance to the regional finals (or however the competition works).
Unless, it rises to the level of a hook, a Tier on activity sounds like just a real nice EC, and maybe not even that a nice an EC if it’s not relevant to your major.