<p>I come from a large public competitive school and as a sophomore kids are already taking 3 or 4 APs. Is it better to keep an extracirricular in my schedule, in my case, symphony orchestra (an audition-required class), or add an AP? Symphony is considered a great extracirricular at my school, but would it be better to add an AP every year (an addition of 2 APs) and increase my chance at being the valedictorian??</p>
<p>Not both? Unless you mean that it would be too overwhelming, which I can understand. At that point, it’s your decision to make. Is symphony orchestra a time-consuming EC that you are passionate about? Then go for it, unless being valedictorian is more important to you, which is also understandable.</p>
<p>well the current budget crisis is affecting my schol in ways that they are cutting a lot of flexibility in our schedules, and having orchestra affects my schedule so I can’t take certain APs</p>
<p>Well, is the orchestra any good? Will you gain anything from playing in it?</p>
<p>we’re not as good as, lets say music schools and some private schools, but we’re considered pretty good. And its considered one of the best extracirricular classes at my school, so I’m taking it. But the school is highly competitive and I’m worrying my rank will drop. Usually the top 5 at my school of around 780per graduating class take more than 10 APs before graduation.</p>
<p>Well, what’s the orchestra playing? I think that can give me an idea of the caliber of the orchestra.</p>
<p>And also, how long will you be in the orchestra if you join it? I think adding one AP per year would be advantageous if you only have 2 years left to play in the orchestra, but I think the orchestra would be a better choice if you would play in it all 4 years of high school.</p>
<p>And one more thing, how good are you? How far up will you be seated? I don’t know what instrument you play, but I do know that (especially for strings) sitting in the back is not as “impressive” (on college apps) as sitting in the front (i.e. 1st or 2nd chair winds, first couple of stands of cellos, 1st violin or front of seconds as opposed to last chair 2nd violin, etc.).</p>