<p>Right now, I go to a very competitive school (one of the top 10 public schools in New Jersey), and many of the classes are very difficult, particularly AP Chemistry, AP Biology, and AP English. I took those classes, and it hurt my GPA a little. The thing is, people rarely get As in those three classes; my teachers told me most people get low Bs and Cs in them. Those classes were very difficult in comparison to the APs and SAT IIs, because I got all 5s on the AP tests for those classes and 800s for Chem and Bio. Will universities take the difficulty of the classes I take into account? Because I keep seeing people from other schools easily get As in those classes, while they don't do so well on standardized tests (usually <4 on the AP test and <770 for the SAT II).</p>
<p>hah dude im in the same boat as you and i got rejected from all the UC’s I would have gotten into if i’d taken the easy route.
but thats cause UC’s suck. I think it depends on the university. Got into my first choice though, which was a private, so i think they look more holistically (UC’s claim they look holistically but they really dont at all)</p>
<p>Thanks for the info man. Reassures me a little bit, because I keep seeing chance threads on here with people getting 3.8-4.0 GPAs and low standardized test scores at the same time. In my school, usually over 60% of students in an AP class get 5s on the AP test and 800s on the SAT IIs. However, very few can ever get more than a 94. Damn my hard school >_></p>
<p>LOL yeah my schools like that too. Try to apply to (prestigious) schools which look at your app more holistically (or ones that put more emphasis on test scores). Apply smart, not to schools that everyone else is applying to. My biggest regret lol. </p>
<p>Makes sense anyways to apply to schools that put more emphasis on your specific strengths.</p>