<p>Has anyone gotten into an Ivy League school or Stanford/ MIT with less than 3 AP courses during their senior year, granted your school does offer APs?</p>
<p>There is not a bright line test (except possibly in the world of CC). Colleges say that they want you challenge yourself. They do not say you must take AP courses for the sake of taking AP courses.</p>
<p>Let me give you two examples – student drops AP Statistics to take Multi-Variable Calculus (not an AP course because it’s more advanced that Calc BC). Most schools would view dropping this AP course as taking a harder schedule…</p>
<p>Second example, my D’s HS offers an interdiciplinary course taught at the honors level, which would preclude taking AP English. Both D’s wanted to take this course because they found it interesting. In campus visits (before eldest D signed up for the course) we specifically asked admissions officers about taking this course rather than AP English. Everyone we spoke to said that this course sounded fantastic and wouldn’t hurt a student. Most even said that they would recommend this course over AP.</p>
<p>Note – in neither case was the non-AP an easy route, it was just a different course.</p>
<p>Further – and we discussed this with a few admissions officers along the way – taking an occasional course that is not even honors because it interests you shouldn’t hurt your chances. Let’s say you’re taking a very difficult course load, but you want to take a fun course (say photography, graphic design, clothing design … fill in the blank). This should be ok. Based on these discussions, the thought that every course needs to be an honors or an AP is probably just wrong.</p>
<p>Now – if you’re asking what will happen if you slack off senior year – well that’s a different story. If your schedule is significantly less challenging than it might be – well, this is a negative. Will it be a ‘killer’ – who knows, I’m sure some candidates are so stellar that they will get in even with a light senior schedule. However, you’ve worked so hard for so long, why risk blowing it now.</p>
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I think that says it all. It’s not worth it, man.</p>
<p>Thanks. Please keep the discussion flowing. @zephyr15: I will pm you in a bit</p>