<p>Hey guys, I am a Freshman, and I was wondering if this is overkill or not:</p>
<p>Honors Geometry
Honors Biology
Honors English
AP US History
German I</p>
<p>Do you think 3 honors classes and 1 AP class is too much? Since I see some Seniors taking 3 or 4 AP Classes, I am wondering do you guys think I can handle the work?</p>
<p>I have a lot of free time so....</p>
<p>You have five class, so you’re good. I’d recommend spending the bulk of your free time on APUSH/ECs.</p>
<p>I’d caution any freshman taking APUSH. The material is drastically more difficult than any academic material you would have encountered in any class prior to this year, and many truly smart freshmen simply have not yet developed the skillset to succeed in that class. In fact, I’m fairly shocked that APUSH is even offered to freshmen–even the smartest kids at my school (where APUSH is offered to upperclassmen only) would acknowledge that they would have had serious troubles with APUSH had they taken it as freshmen. </p>
<p>In case it’s not clear, I do think that you could absolutely handle the workload. Your schedule is a little bit memorization heavy, with Bio and Geometry, but even with APUSH, the quantity of work is not too much for you. It’s simply that the overwhelming majority of freshmen haven’t developed the writing, general text interpretation, and text analysis skills that APUSH students are expected to have. While those skills may be developed over the course of APUSH, it would be very very difficult. </p>
<p>Again, I have no doubt that you’re very intelligent, but there are some classes that are simply not designed for freshmen, and APUSH is one of them. APUSH builds off a cumulative skill set rather than a cumulative base of prior knowledge, which is why unlike, say, Calculus, where a freshman who’s already taken Pre-Calc could certainly do well, a freshman in APUSH, even if they’d already taken many American history courses, would be hard pressed to analyze documents and write papers at the level expected in APUSH. </p>
<p>If you can, I’d recommend swapping APUSH out for a different history course–AP Human Geo is catered more towards freshmen, and introductory World History and US Gov classes set some of the foundation in place to succeed in AP Gov/AP World/APUSH. Hopefully this would also let you add a 6th class (assuming you have a free period now–5 classes is pretty unusual, although I don’t know how your school does it) and get some graduation credit out of the way. </p>
<p>You see a lot of schedules on CC that I’d deem unfeasible–kids taking AP Lit or AP Gov as freshmen, kids taking three AP languages on top of two honors sciences as frosh, but as an individual who attends a school that routinely sends 20+ kids to HYPSM every year out of classes of 400 (along with another ~40 to top 25s), I can say none of the kids at my school take schedules like that and it doesn’t hurt them. Take a schedule that gives you the best opportunity to learn. </p>
<p>So overkill…the hardest schedule ever.</p>
<p>I’m not sure about APUSH, but when I was a freshie, I took 3 “honor” classes for Math, Bio, and English and took APHUG. It was manageable, so you should be fine.
I’ve never taken APUSH, but it sounds like everyone on here says it’s hard, so you’d either have to work really hard for that class or switch it out to something like APHUG or maybe even WHAP.</p>
<p>I took APUSH as a freshman, and I feel most people overreact. At my school it’s a freshman AP class (with some seniors taking it as an elective), and it’s not that bad. It’s definitely on the harder side of APs, but it isn’t impossible especially since it’ll be your only AP. Just be sure to be prepared to change your studying methods if need be.</p>
<p>If you can handle it, do it. But only take them if you feel you can get As (and maybe a B+ in all) if you aren’t going to do well then it just isn’t worth it.</p>
<p>I think you’re good. Even though you have advanced classes, you only have 5 classes so use that to your advantage. If you’re good at math, H Geometry should be a breeze, and freshmen H English isn’t that bad either. You may or may not have some trouble with H Bio (it was one of the hardest classes I’ve EVER taken), but with a good teacher, you should be absolutely fine. The same goes for APUSH. It’s definitely a challenging class, and I can tell you that it’s nothing like you’ve ever done in middle school, but under the right guidance and preparation, I think you will do just fine.</p>
<p>Just know your priorities and strengths/weaknesses, and don’t forget about extracurriculars as well.</p>
<p>Good luck :)</p>
<p>p.s. Cornball, I don’t see it as “overreacting” but rather mentally preparing SweetGenius for the challenges of APUSH lol don’t want to give him/her the wrong idea about the class</p>